According to a recent report by CNBC, a divorce case came into the light as the wife took the help of forensic investigators. Currently, the price of Bitcoin (BTC) is above $27,000.
The Bitcoin-linked Divorce Case
A husband hid nearly $500,000 in BTC. His wife found out about it and hired investigators to find where the BTCs were. However, there is an interesting story behind this Bitcoin-linked divorce case. The wife was surprised that her husband was earning $3 Million annually, and didn’t have many assets. After spending half a year on this puzzle, the wife shockingly found that the 12 Bitcoins in her husband’s account cost half a million.
Nick Himonidis, a New York-based forensic investigator, said that 25% of his divorce-related cases involve some elements of cryptocurrency. According to him, “Some of those are simple and straightforward.” They just take help from trading platforms such as Coinbase.
“Coinbase-like companies hold the records of your brokerage account just like your broker at Morgan Stanley keeps your records,” Himonidis further added. It is “virtually impossible” to trace and de-anonymize transactions in Monero. However, in one case, he had found around $700,000 worth of Monero on a Macbook.
The forensic investigator found something called a command line wallet for Monero. It is a kind of software wallet for which you need to go into a command line prompt to access this wallet. It is a Bash shell command on a Mac environment. One can’t find it with the Finder on the Mac.
Himonidis said that he and his firm track funds with the help of a tool, the Internal Revenue Service. This tool is only available to law enforcement and financial institutions. But even with new tools, his work is a literal race to cope up with the new technological innovations.
Furthermore, Mark DiMichael, a certified cryptocurrency forensic investigator also shared about his experience. He said that it is difficult to seize when crypto is stored cold, but it is still traceable. He also added “ In a divorce case, you have to prove that crypto is there.” That’s sufficient for the judge to order remedies to retrieve those funds.
BTC Price Performance
At press time, Bitcoin price is trading at $27,076.05 with a 24-hour trading volume of $7.42 Billion. Bitcoin is up 0.71% in the last 24 hours, with a current market cap of $524.1 Billion. While the year-to-date (YTD) price of BTC also showed a bullish outlook, as the most traded cryptocurrency by market cap soared more than 60%.
In the last 24 hours, BTC marked its low at $26,880.16 and high at $27,265.92. However, the recent weekly and monthly price analysis shows a bearish trend in BTC.
Disclaimer
The views and opinions stated by the author, or any people named in this article, are for informational ideas only and do not establish financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading crypto or stock comes with a risk of financial loss.
Nancy J. Allen is a crypto enthusiast and believes that cryptocurrencies inspire people to be their own banks and step aside from traditional monetary exchange systems. She is also intrigued by blockchain technology and its functioning.
Source: https://www.thecoinrepublic.com/2023/05/21/husband-hid-500000-in-bitcoin-while-wife-hired-investigator/