Hawks say they have airtight case against a South African arrested on terrorist financing charges

They then and ask Luno to hand over who owns the bitcoin address they transferred money into
not quite how any of this works, especially keeping in mind this transaction happened back in 2017
it's not like Luno knew or even today knows with 100% certainty who owns or controls a blockchain address that any of their customers transfer crypto to, rather with things like travel rule legislation they rely on customer self-attestation

they also make use of blockchain analysis services e.g. Chainalysis, which monitor for known warning signs and maintain lists of known criminal addresses, but that's about it, there's no infallible way to identify the owner of an address other than observing its behaviour ... there's no crypto yellow pages ...

the destination address was most likely flagged as a problem by government agencies, CIA/FBI etc, not the useless Hawks, then it becomes easy to figure out where transfers made to it came from as it is recorded on the blockchain, that's where Luno would get involved if one of their internal wallets gets identified as a source of a transfer to a dodgy address

Struggled to remember the name of the company but it’s Notabene that monitors travel rules for crypto and Luno has some stake in them
technically Luno Expeditions had a stake in Notabene, until it got killed off and just became DCG's venture arm again :whistling:

Although I see they only partnered in 2021 which was way after this transaction, but similar stuff probably existed already.
quite correct, travel rule didn't even exist back in 2017, but blockchain analysis and sanction lists certainly did, Chainalysis would be the company name in 2017 (and still today in addition to Notebene etc)
 
technically Luno Expeditions had a stake in Notabene, until it got killed off and just became DCG's venture arm again :whistling:

Was just going by their own website that calls Luno an investor.

quite correct, travel rule didn't even exist back in 2017, but blockchain analysis and sanction lists certainly did, Chainalysis would be the company name in 2017 (and still today in addition to Notebene etc)

Aah yes definitely heard do Chainalysis before, didn’t realise it was in this same context.
 
Was just going by their own website that calls Luno an investor
it's accurate enough, hence why I say "technically"

the venture / investment part of Luno doesn't exist anymore, but seeing as they are wholly owned by DCG and DCG still does plenty of ventures the Notabene stake just rolled up one notch higher in the same family of companies

or hell maybe the stake is on Luno's books still, who knows, makes little difference in the end
 
it's accurate enough, hence why I say "technically"

the venture / investment part of Luno doesn't exist anymore, but seeing as they are wholly owned by DCG and DCG still does plenty of ventures the Notabene stake just rolled up one notch higher in the same family of companies

or hell maybe the stake is on Luno's books still, who knows, makes little difference in the end

Yeah end of the day it’s all DCG so it’s really just an accounting thing.
 
Uuum, I'm pretty sure the state itself is a terrorist organization, or at least a terrorist old boys club which is the same thing.
 
I found the terrorist wallet. That transaction is worth $6900 today o_O
Oh interesting! How much Bitcoin did he get for his R11,500? Are there still UTXOs in that wallet?

Update: It looks like that original post on Medium actually spotted Hoorzook's transaction on 30 November:


Apparently this is linked to the same account that kidnapped children in South Africa.
I looked into this connection.

The inbound transaction's wallet address was flagged by BitcoinWhosWho, which mentioned the kidnapping case.

They didn't realise they were looking at a Luno address.

Original sauce: https://medium.com/@bendobrown/trac...mers-finances-through-blockchain-e9c52fb6127d
 
Oh interesting! How much Bitcoin did he get for his R11,500? Are there still UTXOs in that wallet?

Update: It looks like that original post on Medium actually spotted Hoorzook's transaction on 30 November:



I looked into this connection.

The inbound transaction's wallet address was flagged by BitcoinWhosWho, which mentioned the kidnapping case.

They didn't realise they were looking at a Luno address.

Original sauce: https://medium.com/@bendobrown/trac...mers-finances-through-blockchain-e9c52fb6127d
It is pretty damning that we have the exact transaction :laugh:

Nice catch with the Luno thing though.
 
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From the article:
He said the Hawks found videos, images, and articles containing extremist material that promoted violence on the accused’s electronic devices, as well as speeches by former al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

@3Gee and his buddies better use a good proxy server
 
the destination address was most likely flagged as a problem by government agencies, CIA/FBI etc, not the useless Hawks, then it becomes easy to figure out where transfers made to it came from as it is recorded on the blockchain, that's where Luno would get involved if one of their internal wallets gets identified as a source of a transfer to a dodgy address
This is the major problem they're facing. Nobody knew it was a problem address until after transfers were made. So how can they claim with certainty he knew what it was for?
 
how does clicking the ad cost them money? (serious question)
cos I will definitely join you.....

Sometimes there is a base rate to place the ad, and then a secondary click-through rate which is paid after the fact based on the ads clicked.

Depends on the platform and volumes etc but more or less how it works.

Besides the cost in this case there would also be a budget cap, so in a way if you click the ads there’s a better chance of them going away more quickly as they hit the budget cap and then don’t get displayed.


It’s very in-depth and Google specific but loosely applies to all of them.
 
It's either or, not both. But yeah, advertisers typically prefer cost per click as it's more targeted and you only pay for what you use. The caveat is that in a lot of cases secondary clicks don't count. This is to protect advertisers and some of them even detect botnets because publishers will use them to increase their earnings. So in most cases it's a futile exercise.
 
Sometimes there is a base rate to place the ad, and then a secondary click-through rate which is paid after the fact based on the ads clicked.

Depends on the platform and volumes etc but more or less how it works.

Besides the cost in this case there would also be a budget cap, so in a way if you click the ads there’s a better chance of them going away more quickly as they hit the budget cap and then don’t get displayed.


It’s very in-depth and Google specific but loosely applies to all of them.
Thank you.
 
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