Recent messages sent via OP_RETURN data have sparked debates in the crypto community regarding the legal control over legacy Bitcoin wallets. Some users claim that these wallets may have been hacked.
Messages About Wallet Control
On July 1 at 12:30 a.m., messages were sent out via OP_RETURN data, stating "we have taken possession of this wallet and its contents." The transactions involved P2PKH addresses, an old format commonly used in Bitcoin's early days.
Expert Opinions on the Situation
Ripple CTO David Schwartz shared a balanced perspective on the situation, noting that the incident might fall into one of two explanations: either someone is laundering funds under the guise of wallet recovery, or they are exploiting weaknesses in old private key generation to claim abandoned wallets.
> "I think there are two likely explanations: 1) Someone is laundering their own money by claiming they found the keys somehow. 2) Someone has found wallets with weak keys or nonces and is trying to lawfully claim them as abandoned. Hard to say which." — David 'JoelKatz' Schwartz.
Security of Bitcoin Wallets
Despite the significant attention garnered by the transaction messages, there is no evidence that Bitcoin's main cryptographic system has been hacked. The idea that this could involve Satoshi's wallets remains uncertain. However, the incident has raised concerns about the security of storing cryptocurrency. If any keys from that era were poorly generated or reused, they could be at risk of being discovered and claimed by third parties.
So far, there has been no movement from the addresses linked to Satoshi, and no major wallets have been breached. While the messages are strange, the more dramatic stories lack technological evidence.
