A Bitcoin Core Developer Says He Lost More Than 200 BTC In A Hack
Luke Dashjr, a Bitcoin OG and core developer, says his PGP key was hacked, which led to almost all of his Bitcoin being stolen on December 31.
Luke Dashjr, one of the first people to work on Bitcoin, says he lost “basically” all of his BTC in a hack just before the new year.
In a tweet from January 1, the developer said that the alleged hackers had gotten their hands on his PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) key. This standard security method uses two keys to get into encrypted information.
In the thread, he gave the address of a wallet where some of the stolen BTC had been sent, but he didn’t say how much of his BTC had been taken.
When this was written, the wallet address in question showed four transactions between 2:08 and 2:16 UTC on December 31 that added up to 216.93 BTC, which is worth $3.6 million at current prices.
Dashjr said he didn’t know how the attackers got his key, but some people in the community think it might have something to do with a tweet he sent on November 17 saying that his server had been hacked by “new malware/backdoors on the system.”
In his most recent Twitter thread, Dashjr told a user that he only discovered the recent hack when Coinbase and Kraken sent him emails about login attempts.
The CEO of Binance, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, has also heard about what happened. In a post on January 1, he sent his condolences and his support.
“Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it comes our way, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these often and have Law Enforcement (LE) relationships worldwide,” he wrote.
Some people in the crypto community have thought that the loss might have been caused by weak security.
In a January 1 Reddit thread, a user named SatStandard said that Dashjr may not have taken the November 17 security breach “seriously enough” and later said that the Bitcoin developer “did not keep different activities separate.”
“He had a hot wallet on the same computer. He did everything else. It looks like he was really complacent.”
Some people think it may not have been a hack. They say someone might have found the seed phrase by accident or happened in a “boating accident” before tax season.
In this case, a “boating accident” refers to a running joke and meme that was first used by gun fans but has since been adopted by the crypto community. It is about people trying to avoid paying taxes by saying they lost all their BTC in a “tragic boating accident.”
Self-custody, which became a hot topic after FTX went bankrupt last year, has also become a hot topic because of the news.
Zhao, who had warned the cryptocurrency community before about self-custody, said that it’s sad to see that even an OG Bitcoin Core Developer lost more than 200 BTC ($3.5 million). Self-care comes with a different set of dangers.
Udi Wertheimer, a BTC social media influencer, also questioned whether self-custody was a safe and viable option, saying that people “shouldn’t manage their own keys.”
“If even one of Bitcoin’s OG developers messes this up, I really don’t know how other people are expected to do it safely.”
“That’s not to say self-custody is bad. But you shouldn’t manage keys directly,” he said.
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