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“Francis has been less than forthright with his ever-changing stories,” Ms. deSouza’s lawyers claimed in one filing.
No secret stash ever materialized. A spokeswoman for Mr. deSouza said he had disclosed the entirety of his cryptocurrency holdings at the beginning of the divorce. “As soon as Francis knew that the Bitcoin was caught up in the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, he told his ex-wife,” the spokeswoman said. “Had the Mt. Gox bankruptcy not occurred, the division of the BTC would have been entirely uncontroversial.”
Ms. deSouza declined to comment through her lawyer.
But the appeals court found that Mr. deSouza, 51, who is now the chief executive of the biotech company Illumina, had violated rules of the divorce process by failing to keep his wife fully apprised of his cryptocurrency investments.
He was ordered to give Ms. deSouza about half the total number of Bitcoins he had owned before the Mt. Gox bankruptcy, leaving him with 57 Bitcoins, worth roughly $2.5 million at today’s prices. Ms. deSouza’s Bitcoins are now worth more than $23 million.
Not all crypto divorces involve such large sums. A few years ago, Nick Himonidis, a forensic investigator in New York, worked on a divorce case in which a woman accused her husband of underreporting his cryptocurrency holdings. With the court’s authorization, Mr. Himonidis showed up at the husband’s house and searched his laptop. He found a digital wallet, which contained roughly $700,000 of the cryptocurrency Monero.
“He was like: ‘Oh, that wallet? I didn’t think I even had that,’” Mr. Himonidis recalled. “I was like, ‘Seriously, dude?’”
A Guide to Cryptocurrency
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A glossary. Cryptocurrencies have gone from a curiosity to a viable investment, making them almost impossible to ignore. If you are struggling with the terminology, let us help:
Bitcoin. A Bitcoin is a digital token that can be sent electronically from one user to another, anywhere in the world. Bitcoin is also the name of the payment network on which this form of digital currency is stored and moved.
Blockchain. A blockchain is a database maintained communally, that reliably stores digital information. The original blockchain was the database on which all Bitcoin transactions were stored, but non-currency-based companies and governments are also trying to use blockchain technology to store their data.
Coinbase. The first major cryptocurrency company to list its shares on a U.S. stock exchange, Coinbase is a platform that allows people and companies to buy and sell various digital currencies, including Bitcoin, for a transaction fee.
Crypto finance. The development of cryptocurrencies spawned a parallel universe of alternative financial services, known as Decentralized Finance, or DeFi, allowing crypto businesses to move into traditional banking territory, including lending and borrowing.
In another case, Mr. Himonidis said, he discovered that a husband had moved $2 million in cryptocurrency out of his account on the Coinbase exchange, a platform where people buy, sell and store digital currencies. A week after his wife filed for divorce, the man transferred the funds to digital wallets, and then left the United States.
