Laptop Used to Trace Bitcoin Stolen From Bitfinex Headed to Smithsonian
A 2019 MacBook Pro is being put in a museum about the U.S. monetary system as it helped seize $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin.
The 2019 MacBook Pro used by the IRS to trace and seize $3.6 billion worth of Bitcoin stolen from crypto exchange Bitfinex is being put in the Smithsonian’s National Numismatic Collection. At the time, a Department of Justice press release touted the recovery of the stolen BTC as its “largest financial seizure ever.”
The National Numismatic Collection (NNC) aims to document developments in history related to the United States monetary system. Ellen Feingold, the collection’s curator, said that the laptop captures a “shift” in the public’s knowledge of Bitcoin’s traceability.
As such, the laptop has been installed in the Smithsonian’s “The Value of Money” gallery, alongside seashells, tea, stones, silver, and gold. Feingold herself readily admits that the MacBook Pro initially looks out of place—at first glance, at least.
“To me, contextualized within the diversity of forms of money over the last four millennia, the laptop and the cryptocurrency it represents look less like a radical departure from the past and instead like a continuation of human beings defining and redefining value relative to the world around them,” the curator wrote in Smithsonian Magazine.
On Monday, Heather Morgan—who also goes by her rap alias “Razzlekhan”—was sentenced to 18 months in U.S. federal prison, for her role in the 2016 Bitfinex hack. Prosecutors recommended that Morgan deserved a much lighter sentence compared to her husband Ilya Lichtenstein, who stole the 119,000 BTC in 2016 and years later asked Mo
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