The following letter has been drawn up by @apshamilton at @jpbliberty on behalf of a number of the Steem investors who are directly named in the code of Hard Fork 23. It has been sent by JPBLiberty acting on behalf of their clients to a number of significant exchanges who deal with Steem today.
If you have a contact with an exchange that you don't think we will have reached please get back to us with contact details and we will send a specific letter.
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Letter to Exchanges
Dear Sir/Madam
URGENT: Theft of $5M in Crypto Assets - Steem Hard Fork 0.23
I am writing to you to on behalf of a number of cryptocurrency investors whose assets are about to be expropriated by the proposed hard fork (0.23) of the Steem blockchain scheduled for less than 24 hours time.
The nature of this hard fork, which has just become public in the last few hours, is to involuntarily transfer the Steem cryptocurrency holdings of over 50 Steem account holders (23.6M Steem ~= US$5M) to a new Steem account called @community321.
Details of the code of this planned theft are at: https://github.com/steemhardfork/steemhf/commit/66321e06f862a28b53e5268f0d67db0fd65b3bcf#diff-5f5356c18939f3b2ce7f3e74ab944614R14
A list of the accounts being expropriated and the amounts involved are at: https://peakd.com/steem/@holger80/calculate-the-amount-of-seized-assets-in-steem-hf-23
As a cryptocurrency exchange currently listing Steem, you will be asked by Steem witnesses and/or Steemit Inc to modify the version of the Steem blockchain code you are running on your servers to version 0.23 in order to implement this theft.
YOU MUST NOT IMPLEMENT THIS CODE CHANGE (HARD FORK 0.23).
If you do so, you may become an accessory to criminal offences including grand larceny and securities fraud as well as expose yourself to civil liability for damages.
JPB Liberty is a litigation funding company which prepares and arranges funding of legal claims related to the cryptocurrency industry. JPB Liberty is investigating a class action lawsuit against all persons knowingly involved in Steem hard fork 0.23.
JPB Liberty is also well advanced in preparing a class action lawsuit against Facebook, Google and Twitter for banning the advertisements of the cryptocurrency industry in early 2018. Your exchange has a large claim in this lawsuit. More details at www.jpbliberty.com.
It is far better to be the beneficiary of a large class action lawsuit than to be the target of one. I can be contacted at @akivah on Telegram.
yours faithfully
Andrew Hamilton
CEO
JPB Liberty Pty Ltd
Australian Legal Practitioner
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This is really getting more interesting, we all need to fights back. Great work guys 💯💓🙏💯
I have also informed them in their post on steem that their actions are illegal and they should use other means for unrelated issues.
They responded politely which confirms they have received my warning and are aware of the possible legal implications.
I wish you all luck to persue action to recover your assets if stolen. You have my support. I am located in Korea if you need assistance here.
https://bittrex.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/360043411632-Statement-on-the-Steem-network-STEEM-SBD-version-0-23-proposed-hard-fork
Not quite a total refutation of the hardfork but a reasonable first step from Bittrex at least
Nice work @apshamilton @brianoflondon
Wow. Way to go. Finally something to fight back
This seems clear and useful.
Very curious how this plays out.
I would be pretty furious if I was being robbed in this way.
Nice work
The witnesses dont have a say.
Awesome, let's fight it out.
I hope I don't get scammed
Due process taken!
Did y0u hear about the funds being sent to bittrex?
Shared.
하이브 증인들이 훔친 내 하이브 토큰은 정당합니까?
Nothing was taken from you. Something was not given to you.
Hard fork is chain separation, I received 20,000 hive tokens, stolen by hive witnesses.
Show me where you at some point held Hive and then they were taken from you by code.
If you never received Hive, that's because you did something that made the community of Hive not want to give you any Hive. Hive tokens were a brand new creation distributed out to loyal members of a community who want to build tech together.
Do you know anything about hard fork? Hard fork copies the chain. The paper case is also copied.
It's not that I didn't give it to you. He stole it.
A fork is not a clone, it represents a deliberate change to the code and the data (if necessary) of a blockchain.
Hive was created as something brand new. It just happened to closely follow Steem balances but those who worked so hard to build it had no OBLIGATION to air drop ANYONE. They were, in fact, completely correct to exclude anyone associated with the attack on and hijacking of Steem.
Hive is not new. It's separated by hard fork. It's a copy of the steam. I also copied the steam wallet. My steam was copied with a hive token. But witnesses stole it.
There is a typo in the first sentence :O
Seeing as Bittrex now have the funds... we might have to change our advice to them!
Updates here: https://peakd.com/steem/@apshamilton/justin-sun-thwarted-a-white-knight-saves-the-steem-stolen-by-hf0-23-by-sending-to-bittrex