Maine Expresses Interest in Managing Unclaimed Cryptocurrencies: State Treasurer's Report
Summary:
The Maine State Treasurer's Office issued a report revealing the state's potential interest in formally managing abandoned and recovered cryptocurrencies. The state currently holds over $328 million in unclaimed property. The report highlighted the necessity for programs like Unclaimed Property to address forgotten cryptocurrency accounts. It revealed that the state might lack the authority to handle recovered crypto assets but expressed interest in doing so in the future. The report also drew attention to the larger problem of abandoned cryptocurrencies, common in the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Maine State Treasurer's Office recently put out a report indicating the state's potential for formally overseeing forgotten and retrieved cryptocurrency. The report shed light on Maine's unpreparedness in dealing with digital assets, stating: “While we have yet to manage cryptocurrency in our office, programs such as Unclaimed Property may need to begin addressing the issue of forgotten cryptocurrency accounts.”
At present, Maine is in possession of over $328 million in unclaimed property, as confirmed by official figures. To search for unclaimed property on the state's website, prospective claimants need to provide their name, address, and property ID details.
The report also revealed the state treasurer's will to bring about reforms in dealing with technology, automated clearing house (ACH) payments, and cryptocurrencies, highlighting lack of clear mandate to handle recovered crypto assets, but expressing potential interest in doing so down the line.
Abandoned cryptocurrencies is an issue that is well-recognized within the Ethereum ecosystem too. Back in the summer of 2014, 8,893 individuals participated in an Ether (ETH) presale event. Almost a decade later, millions of dollars in ETH still remain unclaimed in those presale wallets.
A related interesting development was reported by Maine Wire: the Maine Democratic Party members declined to return a donation worth $100,000 they received from Sam Bankman-Fried, even after the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York demanded political committees to refund the donations received from FTX post seven guilty verdicts in the FTX-SBF case.
In the previous year, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase introduced a tool capable of retrieving unsupported ERC-20 tokens mistakenly sent to its address. Describing its recovery tool, Coinbase stated, “Our recovery tool can facilitate the movement of unsupported assets straight from your inbound address to your self-managed wallet without revealing private keys at any stage”. This was achieved through a unique technology that bypasses the centralized exchange infrastructure, sending the funds directly from the inbound address.
Cryptocurrencies sent to unsupported wallets that cannot be retrieved contribute to the continually enlarging bulk of unclaimed cryptocurrencies. Coinbase aims to change this by providing “the Ethereum TXID for the transaction where the asset was lost and the contract address of the lost asset” which can then be utilized to retrieve the lost assets.
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Published At
11/9/2023 11:29:56 AM
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