Nancy Guthrie has been missing since Sunday, Feb. 1. Authorities believe she may have been abducted from her home in Arizona in the middle of the night. Over the course of the past week, there have been unverified ransom notes sent to major news stations and media outlets that have made demands of the Guthrie family. Specifically, the person who sent the note asked for some $6 million in Bitcoin by Monday, Feb. 9, at 5 p.m. local time. If the ransom was met, the person said they would return Nancy within 12 hours time. The deadline, however, came and went.
Parade interviewed Tony Yazbeck, co-founder of The Bitcoin Way, for some insight into Bitcoin as it relates to the Guthrie case.To begin, we asked Yazbeck the significance of a person requesting ransom in Bitcoin.
"Asking for ransom in Bitcoin lets the person demanding payment avoid banks, chargebacks, and identity checks that normally come with wire transfers or cards. It also works across borders instantly, so they do not have to deal with exchange rates or international banking rules," Yazbeck explains.
"Another big factor is that Bitcoin feels anonymous to most people, which gives the person making the demand confidence that they are harder to identify and stop."
We also wanted to know how Bitcoin transfers work.
"A Bitcoin transfer works peer to peer. You are not asking a bank, company, or any middleman for approval. You can send Bitcoin anytime, anywhere, and in any amount. You prove the coins are yours by using your private key to sign the transaction and then you broadcast it to the Bitcoin network. Miners all over the world independently verify it by checking that you actually own the coins and that they have not already been spent. Once confirmed, it becomes permanent and at that point it cannot be reversed, frozen, or changed by anyone," Yazbeck says.
One of the most important questions that has popped up following the ransom demand is whether or not Bitcoin account—or a Bitcoin transfer—can be traced."Oh yes, Bitcoin transfers are very traceable," Yazbeck tells me. "Every transaction is recorded publicly on the blockchain forever. Anyone can follow the path of coins from one address to another.""What's not automatically visible is who owns a specific address. Bitcoin doesn't use namedaccounts like a bank does. It uses addresses, which are just strings of characters. If an address ever gets linked to a real person through an exchange, a service, or sloppy behavior, then past and future transactions tied to that address can often be connected back to them," he adds.
Another question we've seen is whether or not the person who demanded the Bitcoin may have lived outside of the U.S. This concern surfaced after it was reported that the note sender demanded money in "USD." According to Yazbeck, it doesn't."Mentioning Bitcoin in USD terms doesn't really change anything. Bitcoin itself isn't denominated in dollars. USD is just a reference point to help the victim understand the rough value at that moment. The actual payment still happens in Bitcoin, and the exact dollar value can change by the hour. So legally and technically, the USD reference has no force. It's just a pricing explanation, not a separate currency requirement," he explains.
On Wednesday, Feb. 11, TMZ's Harvey Levin confirmed that the outlet received another demand, this time from someone who wanted 1 Bitcoin in exchange for information about the person behind Nancy's alleged abduction.
Yazbeck says that the person making the demand is likely "someone who understands what Bitcoin is and is thinking in Bitcoin terms, not dollars, and wants a clean, round amount that's easy to communicate."
"It can also signal confidence or experience, since they're not negotiating or adjusting the number to match a specific dollar value," he adds.
As Parade understands, in order to obtain cash from Bitcoin, one would need to utilize a crypto exchange (think Coinbase or Kraken). Once that exchange is complete (in whichever denomination the user wants—USD, EUR), they would then use a crypto debit card for spending or they would need to find a Bitcoin ATM to get cash.
The Bitcoin rate can and does fluctuate. At the time of this writing, 1 Bitcoin was worth $67,989.75.
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