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Comment by adastra22

4 months ago

What is the purpose of this comment?

It describes the legal status of stolen cryptocurrency changing after the first sale. This HN story is about stolen cryptocurrency. In particular:

> The wallet has sold around $200 million worth of stETH so far

If some of those sales took place within jurisdiction of a U.S. state that has ratified UCC Article 12, then the buyer of the stolen cryptocurrency is now the new legal owner.

  • The hacked coins are not "free of conflicting property claims."

    • > The hacked coins are not "free of conflicting property claims."

      2023, American Bar Association, https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/resources/bu...

        .. “take free” regime introduced by the 2022 UCC Amendments for these assets.  Under these rules, a person who acquires a CER for value, in good faith and without notice of any conflicting property claims, is deemed a “qualifying purchaser” and, as such, takes it free from any preexisting property claims.  
      
        The 2022 UCC Amendments draw heavily from the UCC Article 3 provisions for negotiable instruments, and these provisions have the effect of making CERs negotiable.  It follows that if a secured creditor obtained a security interest in CER inventory and only perfected by filing, that creditor would be at risk of the debtor disposing of the collateral and transferring control to a qualifying purchaser that would take it free from any competing claim.

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It is important everyone is thinking real hard about how this is different from traditional theft: there is no way to actually prove the operators didn't just steal everything themselves vs actual real hack theft.

  • There is. ZachXBT has already gotten a bounty for unambiguously pinning this on the Lazarus Group (North Korea).