Lead Bitcoin Developer Claims Lost Over 200 BTC in Hack

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One of the leading developers of Bitcoin ($16,629 BTC), Luke Dashjr, claims to have lost “essentially” all of his BTC to a hack that happened just before the New Year.

In a January 1 post on Twitter, the developer said the alleged hackers somehow gained access to its Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key, a common security method that uses two keys to access encrypted information.

In the thread, he shared a wallet address where some of the stolen BTC was sent, but did not reveal the total amount of his stolen BTC.

At the time of writing, the wallet address in question shows four transactions between 2:08 and 2:16 UTC on December 31, totaling 216.93 BTC, worth $3.6 million at current prices.

Dashjr said he had “no idea how” the attackers gained access to his key, although some community members pointed to a possible link to a previous Twitter post from Dashjr on November 17 which noted that his server had been compromised by “new malware/backdoors on the system.”

Dashjr told a user in his most recent Twitter feed that he only noticed the recent hack after receiving emails from Coinbase and Kraken regarding login attempts.

The incident also caught the attention of Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who offered his condolences and support in a January 1 post.

“Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it happens to us, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help you with, please let us know .We deal with them often and have relationships with law enforcement (LE) around the world,” he wrote.

Some members of the crypto community speculated that lax security could be to blame for the loss.

In a January 1 Reddit thread, a user calling himself SatStandard suggested that Dashjr may not have taken the November 17 security breach “seriously enough” and then suggested that the Bitcoin developer “didn’t not separate the different activities”.

He had a hot wallet on the same computer he did everything else. Looks like he was really complacent.

Meanwhile, a few others seem to suggest that it might not have been a hack at all, suggesting that someone had stumbled across the base phrase somehow, or that it was part of an unfortunate “boating accident” before tax season.

A boating accident in this context refers to a running joke and meme originally used by gun enthusiasts but since repurposed by the crypto community about people trying to avoid paying taxes claiming to have lost all their BTC in a “tragic boating accident”.

Cointelegraph contacted Dashjr on Twitter for more information on the alleged hack, but did not hear back at press time.

The news also sparked a debate around custody, which became a hot topic after FTX collapsed last year.

Binance’s Zhao, who previously warned the crypto community against self-guarding, said, “Sad to see even an OG #Bitcoin Core developer losing over 200 BTC ($3.5 million) . self-guard [has] a different set of risks.

BTC’s online social media influencer Udi Wertheimer also took time to consider whether self-custody was a viable and safe option, commenting that one shouldn’t “manage one’s own keys”.

“If even one of Bitcoin’s OG devs mess this up, I really don’t know how the other people are supposed to do it safely.”

“That’s not to say personal guarding is bad. But you shouldn’t manage the keys directly,” he said.

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