A hacker has been sentenced to five years in a US prison for laundering the proceeds of one of the biggest ever cryptocurrency thefts.

Ilya Lichtenstein pleaded guilty last year to hacking into the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016 and stealing almost 20,000 bitcoin.

He laundered the stolen cryptocurrency with the help of his wife Heather Morgan, who used the alias Razzlekhan to promote her hip hop music.

At the time of the theft, the bitcoin was worth around $70m (£55.3m), but had risen in value to more than $4.5bn by the time of they were arrested.

The $3.6bn worth of assets recovered in the case was the biggest financial seizure in the DOJ’s history, deputy attorney General Lisa Monaco said at the time.

“It’s important to send a message that you can’t commit these crimes with impunity, that there are consequences to them,” district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said.

Lichtenstein, who has been in prison since his arrest in February 2022, expressed remorse for his actions.

He also said that he hopes to apply his skills to fight cybercrime after serving his sentence.

Morgan also pleaded guilty last year to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering. She is due to be sentenced on 18 November.

According court documents, Lichtenstein used advanced hacking tools and techniques to hack into Bitfinex.

Following the hack, he enlisted Morgan’s help to launder the stolen funds.

They “employed numerous sophisticated laundering techniques”, the US Department of Justice (DoJ) said in a statement.

The methods included using fictitious identities, switching the funds into different cryptocurrencies and buying gold coins.

Lichtenstein, who was born in Russia but grew up in the US, would then meet couriers while on family trips and move the laundered money back home, prosecutors said.

Morgan’s Razzlekhan persona went viral on social media when the case emerged.

Even as the couple attempted to cover up the hack, she published dozens of expletive-filled music videos and rap songs filmed in locations around New York.

In her lyrics she called herself a “bad-ass money maker” and “the crocodile of Wall Street”.

In articles published in Forbes magazine, Morgan also claimed to be a successful technology businesswoman, calling herself an “economist, serial entrepreneur, software investor and rapper”.

Bitcoin (BTC 3.44%), the world’s largest cryptocurrency, has been on a great run this year and has roughly doubled — well ahead of the bull market and hitting new all-time highs. The token has benefited from the creation of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), lower interest rates, and a growing view that the token could be a hedge against inflation.

However, Bitcoin may just be getting started, according to MicroStrategy Executive Chaiman and billionaire investor Michael Saylor, who says he thinks the token is going to soar.

Going all-in on Bitcoin

In September, Saylor, a perennial Bitcoin bull, said on CNBC he thinks Bitcoin could hit $13 million by 2045, which implies 16,939% upside from its current price (as of Nov. 9) of roughly $76,296:

My long-term forecast is that [Bitcoin’s] going to go to $13 million over 21 years… Bitcoin is 0.1% of the capital in the world right now–I think it’s going to go to 7% of the capital.

Saylor also pointed out that Bitcoin has had an annual rate of return (ARR) of 46% for the past four years, which is why he is assigning a risk-free return of 50%. He said his central case forecasts 29% annual returns for Bitcoin during the next two decades.

Saylor has every reason to be bullish. His company MicroStrategy, whose stock has soared roughly 400% this year, is the largest public owner of Bitcoin, holding 1% of all tokens outstanding.

Saylor is also putting his money where his mouth is. MicroStrategy recently announced plans to raise $42 billion over the next three years, half through equity sales and half through debt. The proceeds will be used to buy more Bitcoin.

MicroStrategy President and Chief Executive Officer Phong Le said in the company’s recent earnings release, “As a Bitcoin Treasury Company, we plan to use the additional capital to buy more Bitcoin as a Treasury reserve asset in a manner that will allow us to achieve higher BTC yield.”

Can $13 million really happen?

I don’t know if $13 million for Bitcoin can ever happen. Bitcoin is still an incredibly volatile asset, and I think price predictions for Bitcoin are somewhat meaningless, especially those made two decades in advance. However, I think Bitcoin has several tailwinds that could propel it higher.

With the election over, Bitcoin and the entire crypto industry may get some regulatory relief. The new administration may take a different approach and institute new leadership at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has not been a friend of crypto. Not only does he seek to have more regulatory jurisdiction over crypto, but an SEC memo of his known as SAB-121 makes it difficult for banks to hold Bitcoin as a custodian because they have to include these assets on the balance sheet, which increases their capital and liquidity requirements. The potential removal of SAB-121 would make more financial institutions willing to custody Bitcoin.

Additionally, Bitcoin has caught on as a hedge against inflation. Recently, BlackRock‘s CEO Larry Fink called Bitcoin an alternative to gold. He also said this belief will become even more commonplace “if we can create more acceptability, more transparency, [and] more analytics related to these assets.” While inflation has come down, many expect the environment to remain inflationary long term due to fiscal spending and an unsustainable national debt situation.

Finally, interest rates are forecast to drop further, making riskier assets like Bitcoin more appealing because safer assets like U.S. Treasury bills and bonds yield less and are less likely to keep up with inflation.

No one knows if Bitcoin will hit Saylor’s target years from now, but there are signs that several forces are converging that seem bound to drive up Bitcoin’s price.