What I find most interesting is that anybody else in America that had $1B to their name - dirty or otherwise - would have almost zero probability of going to prison in the short-to-medium-term, and would therefore never actually hand over the cash. Very, very good lawyers are quite affordable at that point. It's hard to imagine someone with $1B in drug money, for example, just handing it over to the feds.
A very quick search for "largest cash seizures" shows a couple in the $200-300M range. In both cases, the authorities found and seized the physical cash. I don't see any precedent for someone handing it over.
I wonder what made this situation so different. Is it the illiquidity of Bitcoin at that scale? Or did Hacker X just not retain a lawyer/know what to do?
Pretty much anyone who has $1B has a vast amount of institutional power too. They own the means of production, or they have deep connections in business and government. Those are the things that keep you out of jail.
Having a BTC wallet is one of the only ways to have a billion dollars and zero institutional power, so the money is little help here. The US government is also heavily incentivized to come down hard on these sorts of people because they’re threatening the dominance of the US dollar.
The wallet was completely illiquid. No market would accept coins that were linked to it. You could exchange small amounts(like thousands of dollars at most probably) with in person transactions but then the government would know where you were when they track down the person you sold to. And they really want those billion dollars. Plus there's a non zero chance that the person on the other side of the in person transaction is law enforcement.
