The attack on non-KYC exchanges is underway if this OP_RETURN message is accurate. With all funds confiscated by the RCMP, and worth pointing out that probably most of the users are legally using cryptocurrencies for purchases or savings. But the governments don’t want you to have any financial privacy, or funds they can’t control or steal from you.
https://www.therage.co/tradeogre-theft/
The crypto exchange TradeOgre has been drained for Millions of Dollars. An op_return transaction claims that the funds are now in custody of the Canadian Government.
TradeOgre is a custodial non-KYC exchange particularly popular among users of the privacy coin Monero. To sign up with TradeOgre, users needed nothing more than an email address. Two months ago, users first began noticing that TradeOgre’s website went offline and the exchange had ceased all public communication.
This morning, for the first time since July 29th, TradeOgre funds are on the move – to an address allegedly controlled by the Canadian Government.
On September 10th, an op_return transaction was funded by the non-custodial exchange ChangeNow carrying the following message: “Crypto assets controlled by the RCMP Cryptoactifs contrls par la GRC,” apparently referring to Canada’s national police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
This morning, the Bitcoin address associated with the op_return began loading up on hundreds of BTC, all coming from the exchange TradeOgre, according to Arkham Intelligence. Over the course of a little over four hours, the address reached a balance of more than 126 BTC, or close to $15,000,000. At the same time, TradeOgre Ethereum funds seem to be drained for another $17 Million. The same message appeared on an Ethereum transaction associated with the drained ETH funds.
While there appears to be no requirement to publicly announce seizures on behalf of the Canadian Government, the op_return message, as well as the Ethereum IDM message, appear to either be some twisted joke to blame the Canadian Government for a hack or exit scam of TradeOgre – or, an officer of the RCMP with a particularly sad sense of humour thought it would be funny to ridicule TradeOgre users who just lost Millions of Dollars.
Because lets face it: even if the Canadian Government had seized the TradeOgre funds, it wouldn’t be any less of a robbery. The funds on a custodial exchange do not belong to the exchange operators, but to their customers, and using a non-KYC exchange is not a crime; at least for now.
The Royal Canadian Police did not respond in time to a request for comment before the publishing of this article.