Although the Canadian government has quelled protests against the vaccine mandate in Ottawa, the hunt for Bitcoin The intent to finance those protests continues.
That’s because most of the $880,000 worth of peer-to-peer crypto donations have slipped from the fingers of the government.
Last month, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Applicable Canada’s Emergency Act gives the government the power to freeze any bank account associated with donating to a protest. This happened shortly after crowdfunding platform GoFundMe was pressed to refund $10 million in donations back to donors.
However, a crypto-native fundraiser called “bitcoin for truck drivers“Stopping has proved more difficult.
The Ontario Supreme Court ordered owners of multi-sig wallets controlling donated bitcoins to freeze holdings, as well as another 122 different crypto addresses. A multisig wallet requires the authorization of multiple people to make a transaction.
One member of this multi-sig wallet was “Bitcoin Team Lead” Nicholas St. Louis, also known on Twitter as Nobody Caribou.
Before ordering, however, CBC informed of At that time, 14.6 bitcoins out of a total of 20.7 had been distributed to 101 different, anonymous wallets.
These were probably St. Louis purses recorded Handing out batches of 0.144 bitcoins at a time to truck drivers – each worth around $6,400.
CBC reported that St. Louis stated in an affidavit on February 28 that approximately 5.9 of the remaining bitcoins had been confiscated by authorities. decrypt Have contacted St. Louis for confirmation and will update with exact figures.
Canadian authorities to track bitcoin
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) still claims it can seize and track bitcoins.
“As part of its capabilities and plans to tackle crypto crime and track crime-related transactions, the RCMP typically uses various police procedures, as well as collaborates with applicable law enforcement partners,” it said. Told. in a statement to CBC,
However, as Canadian digital currency lawyer Matthew Burgoyne points out, attempts to freeze bitcoins belonging to unknown holders could prove far more complicated than in the case of St.
“The limitation is that crypto can simply be transferred to another wallet address that is not frozen,” he said. CBC“And it may be moved in an attempt to obscure the original source, or to extract as much money as possible from the frozen wallet.”
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