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Bo Shen reopens $42M crypto hack cxase with recovery bounty

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Bo Shen reopens $42M crypto hack cxase with recovery bounty

Bo Shen has reopened efforts to recover about $42 million in crypto stolen from his personal wallet in 2022. 

Summary

  • Bo Shen offered a recovery bounty after reopening efforts tied to his 2022 personal wallet hack.
  • Investigators already helped freeze about $1.2 million connected to the stolen crypto, Shen said publicly.
  • Shen said better tracing tools and fresh leads have revived recovery efforts, though uncertainty remains.

The Fenbushi Capital co-founder now offers a bounty to people or groups that help recover the assets, as investigators revisit the case with newer tracing tools and fresh leads.

Bo Shen said he will pay a bounty worth 10% to 20% of any recovered funds. He said the reward will go to any individual or organization that makes a material contribution to the recovery effort.

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He also said onchain investigators ZachXBT and Taylor “Tayvano” Monahan have already helped freeze about $1.2 million linked to the stolen assets. Shen said his team will distribute rewards after the recovery process is complete.

The new bounty brings attention back to a case Shen first disclosed in November 2022. At that time, he said attackers drained about $42 million in digital assets from his personal wallet.

Shen said the stolen funds were personal assets and did not affect Fenbushi Capital or related entities. That distinction remains central to the case, as the renewed recovery effort focuses on assets taken from a private wallet rather than company-controlled funds.

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Furthermore, blockchain security firm SlowMist later said the theft happened after someone compromised Shen’s mnemonic seed phrase. The firm said the stolen assets included about $38.2 million in USDC, 1,607 Ether, nearly 720,000 USDT, and 4.13 Bitcoin.

According to the case details, the stolen funds later moved through services and exchanges that included ChangeNow and SideShift. These transfers made the recovery effort harder, especially during the early stage of the investigation, when cross-chain tracking tools were still less developed.

New tools give investigators another chance

Shen said tracing tools in 2022 could not fully support a case of this scale and complexity. He said that limit reduced the ability of investigators to follow asset movements across different chains and platforms.

He now says recent progress in artificial intelligence-based analysis and onchain forensics has improved that process. Shen said investigators now have “new leads” and a “clearer picture” of how the funds moved after the hack.

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Charles Hoskinson: Bitcoin Quantum Upgrade Cannot Save Coins

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Brian Armstrong's Bold Prediction: AI Agents Will Soon Dominate Global Financial

TLDR

  • Charles Hoskinson said Bitcoin’s quantum proposal would require a hard fork instead of a soft fork.
  • He argued that the plan would invalidate existing signature schemes used by current Bitcoin users.
  • Hoskinson stated that the proposal cannot recover about 1.7 million early mined bitcoin.
  • He said roughly 1.1 million of those coins belong to Satoshi Nakamoto.
  • The proposal suggests users could reclaim frozen funds through zero-knowledge proofs tied to BIP-39 seed phrases.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson challenged a new Bitcoin proposal that targets quantum threats. He said the plan would require a hard fork rather than a soft fork. He also argued that the change cannot recover early coins linked to Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin’s Quantum Proposal Faces Hard Fork Dispute

Bitcoin developers proposed BIP-361 to freeze addresses vulnerable to future quantum computers. They said the change would phase out old signature schemes and protect dormant funds. However, Hoskinson rejected the claim that the plan qualifies as a soft fork.

He stated, “To actually do this, you need a hard fork,” in a YouTube video. He argued that the proposal invalidates signature rules that users still rely on. Therefore, he said old software would stop working unless every participant upgrades.

Developers described BIP-361 as a rule tightening that older nodes could accept. In contrast, Hoskinson said the measure changes core validation standards. He added that Bitcoin culture has long opposed hard forks because they alter network history.

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BIP-361 co-author Jameson Lopp addressed the debate on X this week. He wrote that he does not like the proposal and hopes adoption never becomes necessary. He called it “a rough idea for a contingency plan” rather than a final plan.

Satoshi-era Holdings Remain Beyond Recovery

Hoskinson said the plan cannot protect about 1.7 million early bitcoin. He stated that around 1.1 million of those coins belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argued that those holdings predate modern wallet standards.

BIP-361 suggests that users could reclaim frozen funds through zero-knowledge proofs. The proof would tie ownership to a BIP-39 seed phrase used in newer wallets. However, Hoskinson said early wallets did not use seed phrases.

He explained that the original Bitcoin software relied on a local key pool. That system generated private keys without a deterministic seed phrase. Therefore, he said no proof based on BIP-39 can verify those older coins.

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He said, “1.7 million coins can’t do that. It’s not possible.” He added that migration would require cryptographic proof that early holders cannot produce. As a result, those coins would remain frozen under the proposal.

Lopp estimated that 5.6 million bitcoin sit dormant across the network. He argued that freezing them would prove safer than letting quantum attackers unlock them. He presented the freeze as a protective option rather than a finalized policy.

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After Kalshi Appeal, Prediction Markets Fight Could Head to Supreme Court

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Law, CFTC, Court, Kalshi, Prediction Markets

An appellate court is expected to reach a decision after hearing arguments from Kalshi and lawyers representing the state of Nevada.

Some legal experts speculated that the state vs. federal jurisdiction battle over regulating prediction markets companies could soon be headed to the United States Supreme Court.

On Thursday, the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit heard oral arguments from lawyers representing prediction markets platform Kalshi and Nevada authorities over the state’s ban on the prediction markets’ event contracts. The appeal was over a lower court decision preventing Kalshi from offering certain event-based contracts in Nevada, based on claims that the company needed a gaming license.

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Law, CFTC, Court, Kalshi, Prediction Markets
Thursday oral arguments by Kalshi and the State of Nevada. Source: US Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit

The appellate judge overseeing Thursday’s oral arguments and the lawyer for Kalshi acknowledged that there had been several state-level enforcement actions against the company and other prediction market platforms, including criminal charges filed in Arizona. However, last week a federal court blocked Arizona authorities from enforcing the state’s gambling laws on Kalshi’s event contracts.

“I think the body of case law does demonstrate that what we really need to avoid here is having a state and a federal court considering exactly the same issue at exactly the same time and potentially reaching different outcomes,” said Colleen Sinzdak, representing Kalshi.

Related: CFTC probes oil futures trades tied to Trump’s moves in Iran: Report

Central to Kalshi’s argument was that the platform’s event contracts were “swaps” falling under the purview of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) rather than state gaming authorities. CFTC Chair Michael Selig has backed this position in the case of Crypto.com’s prediction markets against Nevada authorities.

The appellate court did not immediately announce a decision following oral arguments. Any ruling could affect how state courts treat prediction market platforms like Kalshi and Polymarket as policymakers come to terms with the growing market, expected to reach $1 trillion by 2030.

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Coinbase’s top lawyer weighs in on prediction market arguments

Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal, whose company was not a party to the Kalshi proceedings but has a stake in the prediction markets fight, speculated that the case could go the US Supreme Court.

“The questions at oral argument are an unreliable signal in predicting the leanings of a court,” said Coinbase chief legal officer Paul Grewal in a Thursday X post following the oral arguments. “Either way, I stand by my longstanding prediction— the Supreme Court will resolve whether sports [contracts] on [Designated Contract Markets] are swaps subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the CFTC.”

The US Supreme Court gave states the authority to regulate sports gambling in its 2018 decision in Murphy v. National Collegiate Athletic Association.

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