FBI Investigates Bitcoin Theft from Bitcoin Core Developer

In the investigation of the theft of over 200 BTC from Bitcoin developer Luke Dashjr, the FBI has requested personal data of participants from the CoreDev Atlanta meeting. This was reported by Brink co-founder Mike Schmidt.

A screenshot of his letter was posted by Bitcoin Car Talk video blog creator, known as Mike In Space.

Schmidt noted that the event took place in October 2022, a few days before the TABConf 2022 conference.

In January 2023, Dashjr reported the loss of bitcoins due to the compromise of a PGP key. He did not specify the amount lost, but the wallet address he shared contained 216.9 BTC. At the time of the transactions by the perpetrators on December 31, 2022, the assets were valued at ~$3.3 million, and at the current rate, ~$15.4 million.

Schmidt stated that he disclosed to law enforcement the names of CoreDev Atlanta participants, their GitHub nicknames, and email addresses. He was required to keep the request confidential for a year. After the period expired, he decided to inform those affected.

“I have no details about the investigation or whether the request was related to a specific suspect or just a general information gathering as part of the investigation,” wrote the Brink co-founder.

In a conversation with The Block, he clarified that he has not been in contact with the FBI since.

“Good job, Luke. The guy who wants to tell you how to use bitcoins couldn’t even protect his own and, as a result, forced the FBI to disclose the data of everyone who attended the conference,” commented Mike In Space.

Dashjr is known as a staunch opponent of Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens, arguing that they contribute to spam in the Bitcoin network.

However, the mining pool Ocean, co-founded by the developer, has left it to users to decide whether to process blocks with such non-financial transactions.