According to CryptoPotato, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has issued a subpoena to gather personal information from attendees of a Bitcoin core developer event in 2022. The subpoena is linked to allegations made by BTC developer and co-founder of Ocean mining pool, Luke Dashjr, about the theft of over 200 BTC in a hack. Mike Schmidt, co-founder of the Bitcoin non-profit Brink, revealed that he received the FBI subpoena as part of the investigation into Dashjr’s claim.
The subpoena specifically requested details about attendees of the October 2022 CoreDev Atlanta event, which occurred just before TABConf 2022. It asked for the first and last names, GitHub usernames, and email addresses of the attendees, with the aim of investigating Dashjr’s allegation. Despite a confidentiality provision that expired a year later, Schmidt complied with the demand on the advice of legal counsel.
Schmidt criticized Dashjr for not adequately protecting his own Bitcoin holdings. By publicly announcing the theft of his Bitcoin, Dashjr inadvertently subjected conference attendees to FBI scrutiny, leading to their personal information being disclosed to the authorities. Dashjr revealed that his funds were stolen due to a Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) key compromise on December 31st, 2022. PGP is a data encryption and decryption program that provides cryptographic privacy and authentication for data communication. At the time, the stolen BTC was valued at around $3.3 million. However, due to market recovery and the subsequent price surge due to spot Bitcoin ETFs and the upcoming halving event, the stash would now be worth over $14 million.