Singapore’s High Court has allowed financial research firm Intelligent Sanctuary (iSanctuary) to link non-fungible tokens (NFTs) containing a legal document to cold wallets linked to a hack, according to UK-based iSanctuary and local press reports.
A global freezing order issued by the court identified NFTs as soul-bound and linked them to the respective wallets. The NFTs will not prevent transactions with the wallets, but will serve as a warning to counterparties and exchanges that the wallets were involved in a hack. Additionally, iSanctuary claimed that thanks to NFTs, it has come up with a way to track funds leaving the wallet. The NFTs are permanently linked to the wallets.
iSanctuary said on its website that it was employed by a businessman who had lost $3 million in crypto assets and was able to trace the stolen funds. Further:
“The on-chain and off-chain evidence was presented to the High Court of Singapore by a senior investigator from iSanctuary and the global injunction, a first issued by that court, was granted. iSanctuary’s financial and crypto researchers identified a series of cold wallets that held the proceeds of the crime and their method of servicing via NFT was accepted by the court.
No additional details were provided. iSanctuary named Mintology, an app created by Singaporean NFT studio Mintable, as the producer of the NFTs. This was indirectly confirmed by Mintable founder Zach Burks in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Thanks @straits_times for the great article.
I’m happy to help clean up the crypto space and move the NFT ecosystem into a realm of usability, away from jpeg speculation!
The future of NFTs is coming! https://t.co/PKmd7uxD7k shows how.https://t.co/S8Jf2seNhy
— Zach Burks (@ZachSpaded) October 18, 2023
The Straits Times reported on October 17 that the case was related to a stolen private key and that Singapore-based crypto exchanges were involved in laundering the money from the hack by fraudsters “purportedly from Singapore.” It added that the case “includes countries from Singapore to Spain, Ireland, Britain and other European countries.”
Related: Hodl to megayacht: Mintable founder shares crypto journey
The newspaper quoted iSanctuary founder Jonathan Benton as saying: “This is a game changer; if necessary it can be done within a few hours. We can operate the wallet and start monitoring the blockchain, identifying those who hold illegal assets, issuing civil or criminal orders, and even warning signals.”
In Italy and the United States, NFTs have been used to serve court subpoenas.
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