Spending bitcoin is harder than stealing it

NEW YORK : Stealing cryptocurrencies is relatively easy. The hard part is turning the proceeds into cash. That’s the lesson from the arrest on Tuesday of Ilya “Dutch” Lichtenstein and his wife Heather Morgan, an artist and rapper also known as Razzlekahn. The pair face charges of conspiring to launder bitcoin stolen from a virtual exchange in 2016. Yet six years later the U.S. Justice Department was still able to seize unspent tokens worth $3.6 billion.