The CEO of the world’s largest crypto exchange says that executives from one of its clients recently fell victim to a multi-million-dollar heist.
In a post on social media platform X, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao says the executives were lured into traveling to Montenegro for a purported business trip but were instead kidnapped and forced to empty their crypto wallets.
The robbery setup led to a total loss of around $12.5 million, but Zhao says the perpetrators can no longer access most of the stolen assets since Binance and its partners worked to freeze the wallet holding the ill-gotten funds.
“We investigated the on-chain activities and reached out to our partners earlier today to have the wallet frozen, as all of the funds were taken in USDT and transferred to a Tron wallet. We managed to freeze about $11.8m of the $12.5m stolen.”
When asked how crypto is better than banks when digital assets can also be seized, Zhao says there are limitations when it comes to freezing crypto assets.
“It’s a balance, and there is no perfect balance point.
If you use XMR (Monero), then there isn’t much anyone can do (or to help you with), as far as I know. Bitcoin can be traced, but not frozen, until you send it to a CEX (centralized exchange).”
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