The Prince Group "Pig Butchering" Seizure (Oct 2025): In what is currently the largest-ever forfeiture action, the DOJ seized 127,271 BTC (approx. $15 billion) from Chen Zhi, chairman of the Cambodian Prince Group. The funds were linked to a global network that allegedly used forced labor to run cryptocurrency investment scams.
The state's only purpose is to protect your private property. And yet, on that foundational thing, they fail time and time again. And instead, they are the ones who pervert the law to steal your private property.
But luckily we have Bitcoin. It's the only true form of private property that has ever existed. Every other form can be taken from you with violence. But with Bitcoin, when you have those words in your head, no one can take it from you. It is truly yours.
Discussion
The Bitfinex Hack Recovery (Feb 2022): Federal agents seized roughly 94,000 BTC (then worth $3.6 billion) from Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan ("Razzlekhan"). The government obtained the private keys after a search warrant allowed them to access files on a cloud storage account owned by the couple.
The Jimmy Zhong / Silk Road Theft (Nov 2021): During a physical raid on Jimmy Zhong’s home in Georgia, IRS-CI agents found a computer hidden in a popcorn tin in a floor closet. They seized 50,676 BTC (then worth $3.36 billion) that Zhong had stolen from the Silk Road marketplace a decade prior.
The Ross Ulbricht / Silk Road Case (2013 & 2020): The FBI seized 144,000 BTC directly from the Silk Road servers and Ulbricht's laptop following his arrest in a San Francisco library.
2020: The DOJ seized an additional 69,370 BTC from "Individual X," a hacker who had moved the funds from the Silk Road years earlier and agreed to forfeit them to the government.
The Minnesota Cabin Heist (USA, Sept 2025): Two brothers held a family at gunpoint for nine hours. They forced the father to drive three hours to a remote cabin to retrieve a hardware wallet, eventually stealing $8 million in crypto.
The B.C. Hostage-Taking (Canada, Nov 2025): A British Columbia investor and his family were held overnight by masked intruders. The victim was waterboarded and beaten until he transferred $2 million in Bitcoin. The attackers reportedly found him due to his online posts about crypto success.