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MIAMI — The civil trial of Ira Kleiman vs. Craig Wright kicked off in Miami on Monday to perhaps answer one of Bitcoin’s greatest mysteries: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto and what happened to the estimated 1.1 million BTC in his possession?

Wright, an Australian computer scientist and early cryptocurrency pioneer, has been claiming to be the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin since 2016. This suit posits that Wright did not act alone. According to Ira Kleiman, his late brother David – a fellow computer expert and longtime friend of Wright – was the co-creator of Bitcoin and is entitled to a share of a trove of bitcoin currently valued at $66 billion.

The suit alleges that David Kleiman and Wright formed a partnership and established an entity called W&K Info Defense Research, LLC, that they used to mine bitcoin and organize their intellectual property, including the Bitcoin source code.

Ira Kleiman believes that his brother was solely responsible for mining Satoshi’s treasure trove of bitcoins, and has accused Wright of swindling them through a combination of forgery and deceit from David’s estate after his death.

Wright denies the allegations and says that, while David Kleiman was a friend and confidante, the two were never partners and that he alone is Satoshi Nakamoto.

A panel of 10 jurors selected Monday will have three weeks to hear the evidence and decide the fate of Satoshi’s fortune.

‘Partnership’ paper trail

In his opening statement on Monday, Kyle Rosche, an attorney for the Kleiman estate, established a timeline for the jury that aimed to demonstrate Wright’s conflicting statements about the nature of his relationship with David Kleiman.

According to emails shown to the court on Monday, Wright repeatedly referred to David Kleiman as his “partner” and his “business partner” until after the latter’s death in April 2013.

Rosche told the jury that after David Kleiman’s death, Wright’s story began to change: he continued to call David his partner but started to distance himself, and claimed that David had transferred their shared intellectual property into Wright’s possession.

According to Rosche, Wright’s relationship with Kleiman’s surviving family members began to sour sometime in 2015, when Ira was informed by Australian tax authorities that he fraudulently claimed to pay David Kleiman approximately $40 million for materials belonging to their shared company, W&K Info Defense Research, LLC.

Rosche told the jury that after 2018, when Ira Kleiman filed suit against him, Craig Wright began to deny that he and David Kleiman had ever been partnered – or that he’d ever had a partner at all, aside from his wife Ramona Watts.

In deposition footage dated April 4, 2019, Wright said, “He was never my partner. … I hate the whole concept of partnership.”

Inside the defense

Wright’s defense seems to largely hinge on two factors: his diagnosis with Autism Spectrum Disorder and the lack of a written agreement between him and David Kleiman.

In her opening statement, Amanda McGovern, counsel for Wright, claimed that Wright’s autism made him difficult to communicate with, overly literal and combative. Rather than pushing back against the veracity of the plaintiff’s timeline, McGovern instead attempted to convince the jury that Wright and Ira Kleiman simply have a different understanding of the word “partner.”

McGovern painted a picture of Wright’s lifetime of social difficulties, claiming that he came from “a very difficult home,” had “very few friends in his childhood” and “he was considered strange … even by his sister.”

“At thirteen, he wore a ninja outfit to a playground and all the other kids called him a freak,” McGovern said.

For Wright, math and cryptography became a refuge away from bullying at home and at school.

According to Rosche, however, Wright’s diagnosis with autism is a recent development: he was diagnosed sometime after 2018 by Dr. Ami Klin, director of the Marcus Center for Autism – and an expert witness for the defense. Rosche told the jury that Wright was diagnosed over the phone by Klin who had, at the time of diagnosis, never met Wright in person.

Will the real Satoshi please stand up?

While both the plaintiffs and the defense posit that Craig Wright – either alone or alongside David Kleiman – invented bitcoin, reality is murkier.

Despite Wright’s claims (as well as his history of lawsuits against his detractors) he has not been able to definitively prove that he is Satoshi Nakamoto.

After announcing in May 2016 that he would move Satoshi’s bitcoin – proving that he had access to Satoshi’s private keys and was therefore Satoshi – Wright failed to do so, writing, “I do not have the courage. I cannot,” in a now-deleted blog post.

The cryptographic proof he provided instead has been accused of several high profile cryptography experts as being fraudulent.

Past accusations of document forgery and other fraud repeatedly came up during the first day of trial, as the plaintiffs’ attorneys showed the jury examples of doctored emails from Wright that added and deleted sentences from David Kleiman, changed dates and more.

Follow the money

If the jury finds in favor of the plaintiffs and Ira Kleiman is awarded his brother’s share of Satoshi’s bitcoins, the question remains whether the court has any way of retrieving them.

The still-unsolved mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, and Wright’s seeming inability to retrieve the coins in his wallet, mean that recovering the coins may not be possible. If Wright is not Satoshi – or, if he is and has somehow lost access to the wallet – it is unclear how Ira Kleiman will get his hands on half of Satoshi’s stash.

Furthermore, there are some in the crypto community who question whether the 1.1 million bitcoins at the heart of this case even exist. In a blog post from 2018, Tokyo-based software developer and self-proclaimed “Bitcoin archaeologist” Kim Nilsson traced wallet addresses supposedly held by Wright, tying many of them back to the 2014 Mt Gox hack.

Coinbase is the best-positioned cryptocurrency-related company to benefit from the industry’s soaring growth, Hayden Capital said on Monday in a memo on the crypto exchange.

• Coinbase could reach $49.2 billion in revenue exiting 2025 under a bullish outlook of mass crypto adoption, rising interest among institutional investors and the sector growing to $6.8 trillion in total size. Under a more conservative crypto market cap estimate of $3.4 trillion, the firm would more than double revenues to $21.3 billion by 2025
• Hayden’s prediction for 2021 revenue of $8.8 billion is higher than other analysts’ estimates; Coinbase is projected to generate about $7 billion in revenue this year, according to FactSet estimates.
• Hayden Capital believes that Coinbase will hold its market share lead over other exchanges, while also fending off competition from other fintech firms, including Robinhood and PayPal.
• In addition, Coinbase also contains a “much larger share of the regulated spot markets in the U.S. than is widely understood, as opposed to looking at the usual trading volume leaderboards” on which most analysts are focused, the letter said.
• Founded by former New Street Research and J.P. Morgan small-cap equity fund research analyst Fred Liu, Hayden is a value-oriented investment firm, with holdings mostly concentrated in 6-15 core positions, according to its website.

Three U.S. senators released statements in response to Monday’s government report on stablecoins from the Biden administration.

Senators Sherrod Brown, Pat Toomey and Cynthia Lummis all reacted to the report in statements that strongly indicate the boundaries of the coming debate on stablecoins. All three sit on the Senate Banking Committee, with Brown and Toomey as, respectively, the chair and ranking member.

The report notably included recommendations for new legislation. As this report has been the subject of lengthy interest from Congress, these responses from senators representing both parties will likely set the tone of the debate over any legislation that may result from today’s recommendations. Most notable among those recommendations was the need to restrict stablecoin issuance to firms that are insured depository institutions — effectively, banks with FDIC insurance.

Brown, a political ally of Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen as well as a long-term colleague of President Joe Biden, said:

“We must work to ensure that any new financial technologies are subject to all of the laws and regulations that protect investors, consumers, and markets, and that they compete on a level playing field with traditional financial institutions.”

Critical to the framing of Brown’s statement is the placement of new technologies like stablecoins within existing statutes. While today’s recommendations included a request for new legislation, the reach of existing authority is the subject of much debate.

Given the political realities of Congress today during an extended period of partisan strife — resulting in a broad slowdown of successful legislation outside major packages — neither financial regulators nor market participants likely want to hold their breath until new law emerges.

The administration has been cautious about any suggestion on limits to existing regulatory authority over crypto. Especially, they have maintained that regulators like the Securities and Exchange Commission and Commodity Futures Trading Commission should be more involved in stablecoins. It is, therefore, no surprise that SEC Chairman Gary Gensler promised to do just that in his own statement:

“While Congress and the public evaluate this report, we at the SEC and our sibling agency, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, will deploy the full protections of the federal securities laws and the Commodity Exchange Act to these products and arrangements, where applicable.”

By comparison, Senator Toomey’s statement said:

“As the Biden administration acknowledges in its report, it is the responsibility of Congress to clarify whether, and to what extent, federal agencies have jurisdiction over stablecoins. While Congress works on thoughtful legislation, I hope the administration will resist the urge to stretch existing laws in an effort to expand its regulatory authority.”

Like Toomey, Senator Lummis highlighted that the President’s Working Group requires legislation to get its central request into statute: “As the report clearly states, though, Congress will, and should, have the final say.”

In addition to reasserting that these decisions belong in the hands of lawmakers rather than regulators, Lummis said that the policies suggested today would lock out new players in the market. 

“However, proposing that only insured depository institutions may issue a stablecoin is misguided and wrong. As of now, it’s not even clear that FDIC insurance is available for stablecoins,” Lummis continued. “I am concerned that this recommendation will only serve to benefit big banks and will restrict innovation. We should all be able to agree that startups should have the same chance as Wall Street institutions to succeed.”

Central to the debate is the framing of what is and is not already law.

Among financial regulators, Gensler has been particularly vocal in categorizing a widening circle of crypto projects within existing definitions of securities. Yet that has not translated into a noticeable uptick in, say, legal enforcement actions by the SEC. 

Similarly, Michael Hsu, Acting Comptroller of the Currency, made a statement today that drew a comparison between the “wildcat banks” of the 19th century that led to the creation of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the stablecoin market today. Hsu’s past remarks have centered around this sentiment. 

Rostin Behnam, Biden’s nominee to run the CFTC, has similarly both requested greater statutory authority over crypto while framing that authority as within existing provisions of the Commodity Exchange Act. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Canadian miner Bitfarms plans to grow its mining capacity to more than 2 exahashes (EHs) per second in November after hitting a record hashrate last month, according to a SEC filing on Monday.

• The miner’s October bitcoin product rose 12.5% from September, due to production from its newly built, larger production facility in Cowansville, Québec. The company increased its mining capacity to 1.8 exahashes.
• “With new miner deliveries en route and deliveries continuing throughout November, this month we expect to grow our hashrate to over 2 EH/s and improve our electrical efficiency to 44 watts per terahash,” CEO Emiliano Grodzki said in the statement.
• The company has mined 2,750 bitcoin so far this year and plans to achieve 3 EH/s mining power by the end of the first quarter of 2022, and 8 EH/s by the end of 2022. Bitfarms is constructing two new production facilities in Sherbrooke, Québec, that are slated to be completed in two phases next year, adding 78 megawatts of total capacity.
• Bitfarms said on Oct. 4 that its hashrate, or computing power, increased to over 1.6 EH/s through the expansion of operations at its Cowansville facility and by installing 450 new Bitmain S19j Pro miners.
• Shares of Bitfarms were up 8.8% at the close of markets on Monday without any significant news and outperformed most of its crypto mining peers. On Oct. 1, Bitfarms said that it produced 38% more bitcoin in the third quarter than it did in the second quarter as new mining equipment was installed.

NFL superstar Aaron Rodgers offered a resounding endorsement of bitcoin on Monday, tweeting that “I believe in Bitcoin & the future is bright.”

• The longtime Green Bay Packers quarterback and three-time MVP revealed that he’s working with Square’s Cash app to receive an undisclosed amount of his salary in bitcoin for the first time.
• Rodgers signed a four-year contract worth $134 million with the Packers in 2018.
• Rodgers also said he’s giving out one million dollars to his fans who submit their cashtags on Twitter and follow Square’s Cash app.
• In the video accompanying his tweet, in which Rodgers is dressed as John Wick, he tells his fans that “we can go to the moon together.”

I believe in Bitcoin & the future is bright. That’s why I’m teaming up with Cash App to take a portion of my salary in bitcoin today.

To make Bitcoin more accessible to my fans I’m giving out a total of $1M in btc now too. Drop your $cashtag w/ #PaidInBitcoin & follow @CashApp pic.twitter.com/mstV7eal04

— Aaron Rodgers (@AaronRodgers12) November 1, 2021

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS), an Ethereum-based, open-source protocol for domain names, announced Monday that it will decentralize its governance process through the use of delegates and a dedicated token.

Initial details for the $ENS token were outlined in a blog post, with the team behind the protocol writing: “We believe that both ENS and the DAO space have matured enough that now is the time to pass ENS governance over to the community via the creation of a DAO and the $ENS governance token.”

The team went on to write:

“Specifically, we wish to have the ENS root multisig pass over control of the existing ENS treasury, its future funds, and control of the .ETH registrar contract that is in charge of the pricing and registration mechanism for .ETH names. The first order of business for the ENS DAO will be to formally request these from the ENS root multisig key holders. Starting today, people may nominate themselves as ENS governance delegates.”

Information about the exact process for distribution or how many $ENS tokens will be minted is not yet available. “$ENS tokens will be opened for claiming a week from today (snapshot was made yesterday), with more details about it then,” the team wrote.

The blog post noted that the delegate-focused model is “a good place to start” and suggested that this model could evolve or change over time. The post also includes a link for community members to nominate themselves as delegates.

“We need individuals and groups who are dedicated to the growth and longevity of ENS. If you’re interested in taking an active role in ENS governance, now’s your chance,” the team wrote. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Barry Silbert’s Digital Currency Group is looking to hire a team of financial advisors for a wealth management business, according to sources with knowledge of the firm’s operations.

As The Block first reported last December, DCG has been planning to launch a new wealth management business for the past year, with an eye to formally open next year. A source with knowledge of the firm’s plans told The Block that the new division will focus on wealthy crypto millionaires, catering to a wide range of wealth advisory needs. 

DCG is now undertaking a hiring push for the new business, advertising the open positions on LinkedIn through a post seeking a private wealth advisor to “work within Digital Currency Group’s newest subsidiary.” 

“The subsidiary remains in stealth mode, but will be working with the world’s leading crypto blockchain and DeFi entrepreneurs and investors,” it added. Sources estimate that the firm could onboard more than 10 wealth advisors to start. 

The role will create “comprehensive wealth management plans” and “build relationships with our members.”

DCG’s new business will aim to carve out a long-ignored niche within the wealth management world: those whose wealth is primarily based around crypto.

“It’s for someone who made $2 million in crypto and prior to crypto you had like $150,000 and now you’re wondering what to do with your money,” the person said. “They will work with you around your finances, look at diversifying.”

DCG is also looking to hire private client insurance advisors, product managers, and a number of other roles for the new unit. 

Though the exact timing of the launch is unclear, DCG’s announcement of a $700 million secondary funding round on Monday — which valued the company at $10 billion — hinted at the opening of the still-secretive business. 

“Lastly, DCG is building a new subsidiary that will launch in 2022. More to come,” the company said. 

© 2021 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

A new report and recommendations on the regulation of stablecoins issued today by a coalition of U.S. financial authorities is, on the whole, sensible and contains a lot of elements that crypto advocates taking the long view should support. But it strikes a worrying tone of urgency that could lead to a regulatory power grab in the almost-certain absence of clear action by legislators in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate.

Stablecoins, such as tether and USDC, are cryptocurrency tokens tied to a basket of assets meant to “peg” each token’s value to a stable currency, such as U.S. dollars. By far the most worrisome element of stablecoins is that the assets backing them are not subject to consistent oversight, raising serious concerns about their quality and, yes, stability. In the event of a broad market downturn, a supposed stablecoin backed by fragile instruments could instead lose value rapidly in the crypto equivalent of a bank run.

David Morris is CoinDesk’s chief insights columnist

The new report, a joint project of a Presidential Working Group on Financial Markets, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, broadly proposes rigorous new oversight of stablecoin backing. The report goes so far as to suggest bringing stablecoin issuers into the U.S. federal deposit insurance system, making them very close equivalents to traditional banks, “subject to supervision and regulation at the depository institution level by a federal banking agency and consolidated supervision and regulation by the Federal Reserve at the holding company level.”

That recommendation represents a welcome acknowledgment of the validity of stablecoins as a potentially useful financial and technological innovation. The report even hints at a path for existing traditional financial institutions to issue their own stablecoins, which could be a significant net positive for the growth of cryptocurrency as an element of the broader financial system.

(The report does not address so-called “algorithmic stablecoins.” I’m still convinced they’re financial magic beans, but they are far less-widely used than backed stablecoins. This omission should be welcomed, as it gives these Baron Munchausens of crypto more runway to prove they can somehow hold themselves up by their own bootstraps. Or not.)

There are portions of the report that seem more debatable, particularly those focused on the technological and operational risks of stablecoins. Without downplaying the real risks, it’s hard to imagine a federal regulator qualified to oversee those elements of a stablecoin, and the report does not show awareness of the potential for robust oversight of the systems and code by the industry and public. The phrase “open source” does not appear.

The most worrisome part of the report, though, is the real-world path to regulation that it implies. To its credit, the report leads off its recommendations with a call for legislative action, which would involve more public debate, oversight and room to capture the operational nuances of a new technology than if agencies were to regulate stablecoins through existing law drafted for fundamentally different kinds of systems.

Unfortunately, this legislative focus feels like window dressing in what could very well wind up a regulatory power grab. Given U.S. legislative dysfunction, the report’s call for new laws covering stablecoins may not lead to much productive action, and the report seems well aware of this. In the final section, it states that “in the absence of congressional action, the agencies recommend that the [Financial Stability Oversight] Council consider steps available to it to address the risks outlined in this report.”

In other words, if Congress doesn’t act decisively (which the report’s authors certainly know it won’t), the report urges regulators to enact its recommendations anyway.

Read more: What Is a Stablecoin?

It repeatedly suggests that stablecoins pose an immediate threat to consumers, if not the financial system as a whole. It describes the situation as “urgent,” for instance stating that “legislation is urgently needed” to address the issue. But the language of urgency in regulation and legislation is almost always reason to worry about a power grab in the making.

In this case, the sense of urgency also seems clearly wrong. Stablecoins are still an extremely niche financial instrument, in usage if not in overall value. Serious oversight is justified in the long term if stablecoins become more widely adopted as a consumer payments instrument, which could expose everyday users to serious and hidden risks. But right now they are overwhelmingly used by speculative traders who, it must be said, should be well aware of their inherent risks and seem to simply not care.

Read more: What Stablecoins Might Become – Bennett Tomlin

Even assuming that the collapse of a stablecoin like tether would impact the market for bitcoin, only about 14% of Americans currently own bitcoin, and they should know it’s still a speculative investment (especially now that the Federal Trade Commission has warned crypto exchanges against downplaying risks in their marketing).

I am personally very worried that financial instability could lead to the rapid and chaotic unwind of stablecoins, with serious consequences for crypto-assets up to and including bitcoin. But regulators shouldn’t be in the business of preventing people from losing money when they make risky bets.

There is no reason to believe that even a legislature disproportionately made up of grandstanding, self-interested blowhards doesn’t have a decent amount of runway to learn more about a novel, niche instrument before trying to impose one single vision of how it should work.

Quick Take

• The regulatory environment surrounding the New York cryptocurrency ecosystem has been evolving since crypto companies first filed for Money Transmitter Licenses back in 2013.

• Any person or company conducting Virtual Currency Business Activity must attain a BitLicense as stated under the N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 23 § 200. 

• Businesses that have received the Superintendent’s approval in conjunction with being chartered under the New York Banking Law may engage in Virtual Currency Business Activity without holding a BitLicense.

• In total, the Block has identified 39 companies across 6 verticals in New York’s regulatory/licensure ecosystem in addition to a vertical dedicated to breaking down the N.Y. Comp. Codes R. & Regs. Tit. 23 § 200.

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En un primer momento Cynthia Gutiérrez se negó a descargar Chivo Wallet, la billetera digital desarrollada por el gobierno de El Salvador para el uso de bitcoin en todo el país, lanzada el 7 de septiembre.

Decidió descargar la aplicación el 16 de octubre después de enterarse por otros salvadoreños de que hackers habían activado billeteras asociadas con diferentes documentos de identidad, conocidos por sus siglas como DUI en El Salvador.

“Esto fue creciendo cada vez más, llegando a mi círculo cercano”, dijo Gutiérrez, de 28 años, a CoinDesk.

Cuando Gutiérrez introdujo sus datos personales, apareció una pantalla con una notificación que indicaba que su número de documento ya estaba asociado a una billetera. Inmediatamente, hizo una captura de pantalla, temiendo que sus datos fueran utilizados con fines ilícitos.

El caso de Gutiérrez es uno de los cientos que salvadoreños han denunciado en redes sociales y presentado ante la justicia desde septiembre, cuando bitcoin fue establecido como moneda de curso legal y Chivo Wallet empezó a utilizarse masivamente en el país.

Entre el 9 y 14 de octubre, Cristosal, una organización de derechos humanos de El Salvador, recibió 755 notificaciones de salvadoreños que denunciaron robos de identidad con sus billeteras Chivo, dijo a CoinDesk Rina Montti, directora de investigación de derechos humanos de esa entidad.

En la mayoría de esos casos los salvadoreños afectados intentaron activar sus billeteras después de enterarse del gran número de denuncias por robos de identidad.

Los hackers tienen un incentivo: cada billetera viene cargada con $30 en bitcoin proporcionados por la administración del presidente salvadoreño Nayib Bukele para incentivar a los ciudadanos a utilizar esa criptomoneda.

Al cierre de esta edición, el gobierno de El Salvador no había respondido a una solicitud de comentarios sobre las denuncias de robo de identidad realizadas en las Chivo Wallet.

Con la adopción de bitcoin, Bukele situó a su país centroamericano en el centro del debate mundial sobre el futuro del dinero. El proceso no estuvo exento de críticas, como las realizadas contra el artículo 7 de la Ley Bitcoin, que estipula que todos los comerciantes deben aceptar bitcoin como forma de pago cuando los clientes lo ofrezcan.

Posteriormente, el presidente negó que la aceptación del bitcoin fuera obligatoria. Los salvadoreños quedaron confundidos por la discrepancia entre lo que dijo el presidente y lo que decía la ley.

En agosto las encuestas mostraban que entre el 65% y el 70% de los salvadoreños se oponían a la adopción de bitcoin en el país, y se produjeron varias marchas de protesta en las calles. Según los últimos datos oficiales proporcionados por Bukele a finales de septiembre, más de 2 millones de personas habían descargado la Chivo Wallet como parte de una agresiva agenda que también incluyó la minería de bitcoin con energía volcánica.

Fácil de engañar

Según el sitio web oficial de Chivo Wallet, para abrir una cuenta hay que escanear el frente y contrafrente del DUI, y luego realizar un reconocimiento facial para comprobar la identidad de quien quiere registrarse. No obstante, varios salvadoreños denunciaron que el sistema tiene fallas.

Cuando el Youtuber Adán Flores, salvadoreño dueño del canal La Gatada SV, se enteró de los hackeos, recordó que su abuela no había abierto su Chivo Wallet y decidió utilizar el caso como prueba. Aunque sólo poseía una fotocopia de su DUI, lo intentó de todos modos y, para su sorpresa, la aplicación aceptó el documento como válido.

Flores siguió con el proceso de verificación, que luego le requirió realizar el reconocimiento facial en tiempo real. El Youtuber tomó una foto de un póster en su pared de Sarah Connor, personaje de la serie de películas “Terminator”.

Segundos después la Chivo Wallet dio la bienvenida a la abuela de Flores y entregó el bono de $30, según un vídeo que Flores envió a CoinDesk como prueba.

Otros casos subidos a las redes sociales mostraron directamente cómo una foto al azar —la de una taza de café, por ejemplo— fue suficiente para sustituir el DUI y luego pasar la prueba de reconocimiento facial.

Los salvadoreños no siempre intentan abrir sus cuentas por sí mismos. Según Montti, de Cristosal, la mayoría de los 700 salvadoreños que denunciaron el robo de identidad pidieron a conocidos que intentaran transferir dinero a través de Chivo poniendo sus números de DUI como cuentas destinatarias. Descubrieron, así, que las direcciones estaban preparadas para recibir transferencias. En otras palabras: los números de identificación ya habían sido registrados por personas que no eran los legítimos propietarios.

Preocupado por la suplantación de identidad, Ramón Esquivel pidió a un conocido que enviara dinero a una billetera con su DUI el 11 de octubre. Para su sorpresa, la transferencia se realizó con éxito, a pesar de que él nunca había activado su cuenta.

“Con enojo, me di cuenta de que habían utilizado mi DUI”, dijo Esquivel a CoinDesk, y agregó que tras el episodio presentó una denuncia en la Fiscalía. “Al robar mi identidad para esta aplicación, quedo expuesta a que usen mi identidad para cometer actos de lavado de dinero que quedarían registrados bajo mi identidad, comprometiendo mi integridad“, afirmó.

Atención al cliente

Gabriela Sosa, presentadora de un medio de comunicación salvadoreño, intentó activar la Chivo Wallet con su DUI hace dos semanas, pero un mensaje de error saltó en la pantalla informándole que ya estaba registrada.

En cuanto ocurrió llamó al número oficial de soporte de Chivo, 192. “Seguí llamando durante varios días hasta que me dijeron que tenía que ir a un punto Chivo”, contó Sosa a CoinDesk. El sábado 30 de octubre acudió a ese centro de soporte y su cuenta fue finalmente recuperada, aunque no el dinero en un primer momento.

En su cuenta de Twitter Sosa dio a conocer los detalles de la cuenta a la que se habían destinado los $30. El nombre del propietario era Michael Santacruz.

Días después, compañeros de trabajo y de universidad enviaron capturas de pantalla de ese tuit a Santacruz, quien nunca había activado su cuenta de Chivo Wallet hasta entonces, según los mensajes privados que envió a Sosa y que ella publicó en su cuenta de Twitter.

Santacruz intentó abrir su cuenta, pero una notificación decía que su DUI ya había sido registrado. Al igual que Sosa, Santacruz se dirigió a un centro de ayuda de Chivo y, tras recuperar su cuenta, se dio cuenta de que ésta había sido utilizada para recibir dinero de cinco cuentas hackeadas, según dijo. Santacruz no respondió los pedidos de comentarios de CoinDesk.

Cristosal no fue la única ONG que abordó el problema. Acción Ciudadana, una organización sin ánimo de lucro especializada en auditoría social, presentó una notificación a la Fiscalía General de la República (FGR) el 12 de octubre después de que el presidente del grupo, Humberto Sáenz, y el director, Eduardo Escobar, descubrieran que hackers habían registrado sus billeteras Chivo.

Acción Ciudadana dijo a CoinDesk que hasta ahora, dos semanas después de la presentación, no hubo una respuesta de la FGR.

Laura Nathalie Hernández, abogada especializada en tecnología de la firma salvadoreña Legal Novis, ha estado recibiendo solicitudes de ayuda de víctimas de robo de identidad en sus billeteras Chivo. La primera recomendación que dio a los afectados fue publicar el tema en redes sociales para hacerlo público y también presentar una denuncia ante la FGR.

Según Hernández, la entidad que gestiona la aplicación debería ser el primer lugar al que acudir. “Pero tampoco tenemos mucha información sobre quién es el responsable”, dijo, y añadió: “No sabemos quién lo gestiona, si hay una tercera empresa. No ha habido transparencia”.

Responsabilidad poco clara

Según los términos y condiciones de Chivo Wallet, la autorización de una cuenta está condicionada a un proceso de conocimiento del cliente (KYC, por sus siglas en inglés) realizado por CHIVO S.A. de C.V., una empresa privada creada por el gobierno para lanzar la billetera. Este proceso de verificación “comprende el suministro de la información y documentos que sean requeridos para el cumplimiento a cabalidad del proceso”.

La responsabilidad de la empresa no está clara. Según los términos y condiciones, los usuarios se comprometen a “divulgar ni dar a conocer a terceros cualquier información, DUIs, contraseñas o cualquier código que utilice para acceder al sitio”. Pero los términos también establecen que “no será responsable por cualquier pérdida o perjuicio que pueda sufrir el Usuario a consecuencia de accesos por terceros no autorizados a su cuenta como consecuencia de hackeos o extravío de contraseñas”.

El personal de soporte de Chivo no respondió a las preguntas de CoinDesk sobre quién es el responsable de un hackeo en el caso de que el verdadero propietario de la cuenta no proporcione información.

Chivo añade que los servicios de verificación serán proporcionados por la empresa directamente y/o a través de un tercero contratado por la compañía para tal fin. Pero al cierre de esta edición la firma no había respondido a la pregunta de CoinDesk sobre qué otro tercero presta servicios de identificación a la plataforma.

Sosa, la presentadora salvadoreña, dijo a CoinDesk que finalmente recuperó su dinero, y aclaró que su queja no es contra la aplicación ni contra el gobierno de Bukele, sino que solamente desea generar conciencia sobre el problema.

Gutiérrez aún no ha recuperado su dinero. “Intenté contactar con el servicio de atención al cliente y no me dieron respuesta, ni hay una institución que tenga claro el proceso a seguir en este caso”, dijo.

Esquivel dijo que no le interesa ni el incentivo de $30 ni la aplicación del gobierno.

“Si acaso uso bitcoin, será con una billetera en la que tenga yo la custodia de mi dinero”, dijo.