On May 22, 2010, Laszlo, a programmer from Florida, USA, successfully purchased two pizzas for the first time using 10,000 bitcoins.
This day was later designated as "Bitcoin Pizza Day".
Ten thousand Bitcoins were worth about $30 at the time.
Nowadays, everyone knows that the price of these two pizzas is high enough to treat treasures all over the United States to eat pizza.
In March this year, the price of Bitcoin exceeded US$70,000 per coin for the first time, and 10,000 Bitcoins were worth more than US$700 million.
Many netizens felt sorry for Laszlo's narrow escape from huge wealth.
What is even more depressing is that Laszlo later spent approximately 90,000 Bitcoins.
Neither Laszlo nor the 19-year-old California boy who struck the deal with Laszlo have enjoyed the huge wealth brought by the skyrocketing price of Bitcoin.
Those who really make huge profits from it are a very small group of people, including Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange Binance, Li Xiaolai, the "first person in China's Bitcoin", and Winklevoss, who once sued Zuckerberg for plagiarism. Brothers and so on.
And more ordinary people are suffering the indirect harm caused by it.
Recently, the British police uncovered a huge money laundering case.
The money laundering method of those involved is to convert illegally obtained wealth into Bitcoin.
In 2014, Qian Zhimin, who had previously been little known, registered the Blue Sky Gurui Company in Tianjin, selling investment products by promising a rate of return of up to 300%, and claiming that the company had a side business of Bitcoin mining.
In retrospect, this was a premeditated fundraising fraud.
Shortly after the company was established, Qian Zhimin used high salary as bait to successfully persuade employee Ren Jiangtao to become the sole shareholder and legal representative.
At the same time, Qian Zhimin opened a Bitcoin account in the name of Ren Jiangtao.
In the following three years, Qian Zhimin successfully defrauded 130,000 unsuspecting investors of US$6.3 billion, and converted a large part of it into Bitcoin.
In 2017, relevant Chinese departments were preparing to launch an investigation into Lan Tiange Rui, and Qian Zhimin fled the country upon hearing the news.
In 2018, the British police paid attention to the transformation of a Chinese single mother from a poor delivery worker into a billionaire in an instant, and followed the clues to lead to this huge money laundering case.
As of the incident, Qian Zhimin had more than 61,000 Bitcoins seized.
The decentralized encrypted digital currency represented by Bitcoin has naturally become a tool for money laundering due to its anonymity, tax-free, global circulation, and difficulty in supervision.
Zhao Changpeng once became the richest man in China, but now he is reduced to a lamb waiting to be slaughtered.
In November 2023, Binance and Changpeng Zhao reached an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice.
Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering charges, stepped down as CEO and paid a $50 million fine.
Binance will also plead guilty to a criminal charge and agree to pay a total fine of $4.3 billion.
One month later, the U.S. court again imposed a civil penalty of US$150 million on Zhao Changpeng.
It also requires Binance to hand over US$1.35 billion in improper trading fees and pay an equal amount of fines to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.
In addition, Binance and Changpeng Zhao are also facing prosecution from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
