US authorities seize crypto theft loot

Presumably North Korean hackers stole digital currency worth the equivalent of $600 million from the makers of an online game.US investigators have now retrieved part of it.

US authorities have seized over $30 million worth of cryptocurrency.According to crypto intelligence firm Chainalysis, this is digital money that the North Korea-linked hacker group Lazarus stole from the makers of the popular online game Axie Infinity.

The company said in a blog post that it was involved in the recovery alongside US law enforcement and other crypto organizations.The seizures represent about a tenth of the total funds stolen from the blockchain game in March, according to Chainalysis, according to Chainalysis.

More than a billion dollars stolen

"We estimate that North Korea-affiliated groups have stolen approximately $1 billion in cryptocurrency from DeFi protocols so far in 2022," the company also said.Chainalysis was referring to decentralized financial protocols, a generic term for financial services offered on public blockchains.

In order to hide the money from the authorities and exchange it for real currencies, the attackers are said to have used the Tornado Cash service, among other things.Because of its ties to North Korea, US authorities imposed sanctions on the platform in August, mixing money flows and thus facilitating money laundering.A 29-year-old developer of the service was arrested in the Netherlands.

Crypto exchange Coinbase said Thursday it is funding a lawsuit against the U.S. Treasury Department to block sanctions that bar Americans from accessing Tornado Cash.In the lawsuit filed Thursday in a U.S. district court in Texas, six Tornado Cash users accused the Treasury Department of violating constitutional rights to free speech and exceeding its authority in sanctioning the cryptocurrency mixer.

The lawsuit alleges that while the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has certain sanctions authority, its jurisdiction does not extend to software code and smart contracts.»Tornado Cash is not a person, entity or organization. “It is a decentralized, open-source software project that restores the privacy of Ethereum users,” the lawsuit says.

White House complains about energy consumption

But this argument has increasingly less political support.The White House has now presented a new report that complains about the high energy consumption of cryptocurrencies, which have no positive effects.The authors of the report recommend restrictions if operators do not switch to techniques such as “Proof of Stake”, which use significantly less energy.

According to the Washington Post, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is also preparing several reports according to which crypto forms of investment could endanger the financial stability of the USA.The SEC also wants to put a greater focus on investment fraud in these markets.