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Taiwan sees the first domestic $170,000 Bitcoin robbery

21 February 2018 21:00, UTC

Taiwan has recently seen probably its first Bitcoin-related robbery, reports the local police. Three young men have decided to attract a Bitcoin holder by telling they are going to buy a sum of this cryptocurrency from him.

When they met in Taichung city, the criminal group violently forced the victim to transfer $170,000 to their accounts. They even tried to disguise the whole event as a drunken fight by making Tai (the surname of the one who got robbed) to consume the local Kaoliang alcoholic drink.

But some of the witnesses have apparently guessed the true intention of the criminals and called the police. All people from the criminal group are already arrested, including their alleged leader Shih who was the one who planned the whole affair. One of the criminals tried to hide on a separate island of Kinmen which is also the territory of Taiwan - to no avail.

The island lying just across the strait from the mainland China is independent from the latter, although the Chinese government thinks directly the opposite and views the current situation as abnormal. Anyway, the independence gives the government of Taiwan an opportunity to learn from China’s mistakes in cryptocurrency regulation. As recently noted by a local entrepreneur who heads the vast cryptocurrency-related corporation, the officials of Taiwan do not want to upset the younger generation which is very fond of digital currencies.