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The Great South African Job – Two South African Brothers Vanish With $3.6 billion of Bitcoin

The Great South African Job – Two South African Brothers Vanish With $3.6 billion of Bitcoin
Bitcoin is soaring

Will people ever listen: for all the ills of governments and regulators, they remain a better alternative than handing over your future to young men in garages and unknown addresses. Yes, Bitcoin is decentralized, they preach, but they never remember that everything is unified at the exchange. In the traditional fiat money, you know your enemy – crazy central banks who “mess up” a lot. To avoid that mess, people now move into a bigger mess, disguised as liberation.

Yes, the news is that two brothers in South Africa have wiped out a cryptocurrency exchange, and are off with the coins, valued at close to $4 billion: “Two South African brothers recently vanished with $3.6 billion worth of bitcoin in what could potentially be the biggest cryptocurrency heist in history. In 2019, Ameer Cajee and his younger brother, Raees Cajee, founded crypto investment app Africrypt. Not long after, the siblings, along with 69,000 bitcoins worth roughly $4 billion at their April peak, are nowhere to be found.”

It all began in April when Ameer, who is the company’s chief operating officer, informed their clients that Africrypt was hacked, compromising their accounts, wallets, and nodes.

In an unusual step, 20-year-old Ameer told them not to report the incident to authorities as this would impede attempts to recover the funds.

A few suspicious customers, however, did report the hack. They contacted Hanekom Attorneys, according to Independent Online, who then tried to track the brothers down. When unsuccessful, Hawks, a police unit in South Africa that targets crime and corruption, was looped in.

“We were immediately suspicious as the announcement implored investors not to take legal action,” Hanekom Attorneys told Bloomberg over email. “Africrypt employees lost access to the back-end platforms seven days before the alleged hack.”

This is my suggestion: the best thing that will happen in the world of cryptocurrency is the government coming to regulate it. While the believers will not like to hear that, the fact is this: unless we can eliminate the weakest link which remains the crazy exchanges, never count your coin blessings yet!

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Bitcoin continues to crash

Meanwhile, Bitcoin continues to struggle. The leading coin is well below $35,000 per unit now and the reason is connected to sustained coin warfare by China: ” a major catalyst for the decline is the Chinese authority’s war against cryptocurrencies. “

As mentioned above, a major catalyst for the decline is the Chinese authority’s war against cryptocurrencies. In their latest attempt to stop all cryptocurrency-related transactions, miners in Ya’an, one of the major crypto mining hubs in China’s Sichuan province, received an inspection notice that required shut-downs.

Friday, Wu Blockchain reported that Alibaba Cloud, China’s largest cloud service provider, made calls to cryptocurrency and mining companies registered in China regarding potential domain name cancellations due to regulatory requirements. This caused the hashrate for Bitcoin to drop to an 8-month low which indicates that mining activities in China are at an all-time low.

That’s not all, another factor causing the decline is that the Agriculture Bank of China, the world’s third-largest bank by assets, is set to implement anti-cryptocurrency measures and rigorously vet its clients to ensure they are not engaged in any form of illegal activities including crypto transacting, trading or mining.


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3 THOUGHTS ON The Great South African Job – Two South African Brothers Vanish With $3.6 billion of Bitcoin

  1. Things don’t run themselves, whether you believe in traditional governments or anything else, something must always be in charge of every human affairs. You cannot truly decentralise human activities without creating chaos, most individuals haven’t attained such high level self-governance, to the point that we can now disband constituted authorities.

    Prices of food items are skyrocketing, instead of becoming productive, we are here still talking about how to build wealth via digital coins. Not sure of any economy that became great by just trading currencies.

    This coin thing should remain a playground for kids, while adults should immerse themselves in the onerous and complicated task of nation building, for a livable and sustainable society.

  2. “This is my suggestion: the best thing that will happen in the world of cryptocurrency is the government coming to regulate it. While the believers will not like to hear that, the fact is this: unless we can eliminate the weakest link which remains the crazy exchanges, never count your coin blessings yet!”

    Professor, the people that made real money from bitcoin don’t register on exchanges. The idea of crypto exchanges is the first step of cryptocurrency fraud, no matter how sweet and profiled the exchange sounds. I have lost bitcoins to an exchange as well, who as this ones, went vanishing. As a Blockchain Developer, the idea of bitcoin or decentralization is still active, i.e. trusted trade between two parties. Those who are not bitcoin or cryptocurrency maidens know how to protect their coins.

    Government regulations, when it is not fiat, will cripple the industry, and because government fiat are going into extinction due to this disruptive innovation, we are getting the news of CBDC.

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