Participants in the 6 January attack on the US capitol could have received 28.15 Bitcoin (BTC) from a mysterious French computer programmer, Chainalysis alleges.
On 8 December 2021, 28.15 BTC, worth $938,428.11 on 22 January 2021, were sent to 22 addresses in the United States, Chainalysis Insights claims. Most of those addresses belong to far-right activists and internet personalities, Chainalysis alleges.
For instance, Chainalysis claims podcaster Nick Fuentes, an alleged white nationalist, received 13.5 Bitcoin (BTC) worth $450,045.45 on 22 January 2021. Fuentes was seen at the Capitol on 6 January but claims not to have entered the building or participated in the attack. Other alleged recipients include the VDARE Foundation which operates VDARE.com a popular racist and antisemitic website and Gamergate leader Ethan Ralph.
Chainalysis is a digital analysis company that monitors and tracks cryptocurrency transactions. Chainalysis’s analysts detected the Bitcoin transfers while monitoring a mysterious Bitcoin account they call the Extremist Legacy Wallet.
The Mystery of the Extremist Legacy Wallet
Chainalysis’s experts think somebody bought the Bitcoin from a French cryptocurrency exchange. The purchaser used the Extremist Legacy Wallet to distribute the Bitcoin to the recipients.
Chainalysis claims the Extremist Legacy Wallet has been active since 2013 but they do not who owns it. However, the Wallet is associated with Bitcoin addresses bearing the pseudonym “pankkake.”
The Chainalysis team traced an email address to a person identified as a French computer programmer. Chainalysis analysts think the programmer could be dead because of a suicide note posted on the day after the donations.
The French publication 20 Minutes reported the death of the French computer programmer who was the apparent owner of the Extremist Legacy Wallet. Unfortunately, nobody can verify these claims because they do not identify the programmer.
The Associated Press describes the donor as a chronically ill 35-year-old French man who anted to leave his wealth to “certain causes and people.” Unfortunately, the AP refuses to identify this individual.
Who financed the Capitol Attack?
The Chainalysis allegations raise important questions about the Capitol Riot.
The most important of those questions is how did tens of thousands of far-right protesters get the money to travel to Washington DC? I know airline tickets are cheap these days, but are they that cheap? Notably, the cheapest airfare from Denver to Washington, DC, on 22 January 2021 was $43. However, some airline tickets I found on Google were as high as $363.
Moreover, many of those people presumably drove, which means they had to come up with several hundred dollars for gas money. Beyond airline tickets and gas money, the protesters had to stay somewhere, so they had to pay for hotel rooms or Airbnb rentals.
How did tens of thousands of ordinary Americans, many of whom are barely scraping by, get the money to travel to Washington for the Stop the Steal? I live in Colorado and I know some right-wing activist types most of them are lower middle-class whites with limited incomes. They do not have the extra cash to travel to Washington on a whim.
I have to wonder, did ex-President Donald J. Trump (R-Florida) and his allies cover the mob’s travel costs? If they did that’s a crime that could land somebody in a federal prison.
The FBI Investigates
A more troubling possibility is that a foreign government or intelligence agency paid for the riot.
Notably, Business Insider and NBC News claim the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating claims foreign actors financed the Capitol Riot. However, the FBI does not comment on ongoing investigations, so I cannot verify those claims.
The FBI’s probe includes the 28.15 Bitcoin (BTC) dispersed on 8 December 2020, Business Insider claims. The US House of Representatives also plans an investigation of foreign involvement in the riot.
I don’t know if a foreign government financed the riot. However, I think these claims will lead to more efforts to ban Bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptocurrency. Censors and regulators are already using the 6 January tragedy as a pretext to limit our freedoms.
Originally published at https://marketmadhouse.com on January 22, 2021.
