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It’s no surprise that Wences Casares, the CEO of Xapo, a bitcoin startup, is a big bull on the digital currency. His company, which specializes in insured Bitcoin vaults, just raised $20 million in a funding round led by Benchmark. But Mr. Casares belives that other bitcoin bulls, especially those in the U.S., do not fully appreciate the value of the currency, which has proved especially sticky in emerging markets prone to wild currency fluctuations, such as Mr. Casares’ home country Argentina. In a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Mr. Casares says he’s not worried about bitcoin’s own...

U.S. investigators have recovered 951 items looted from Iraq's National Museum, but have not gained access to central bank vaults thought to contain priceless objects or a secret storage site known only to museum staff, the lead investigator said on Friday. Marine Col. Matthew Bogdanos, leader of the team investigating the museum's losses, was unable to give a firm figure of the number of items still missing from the museum's collection following the looting spree in the days after U.S. forces entered Baghdad. In a briefing from Baghdad to reporters at the Pentagon, he said his team of 14 investigators...

Most Looted Cash Is Recovered in Iraq By SLOBODAN LEKIC .c The Associated Press BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - U.S. officials believe they recovered most of the $1 billion taken from Iraq's central bank by one of Saddam Hussein's sons before the regime's collapse. A total of $950 million - $850 million in U.S. currency and another $100 million in euros - were found by U.S.-led coalition troops in 191 boxes hidden in government palaces throughout Baghdad, U.S. Treasury officials said Thursday. On March 18 - before coalition aerial strikes began - Saddam's youngest son Qusai ordered a central bank official...

Three Getaway TrucksBy William SafireNew York Times | May 9, 2003 The night after President Bush gave him 48 hours to surrender, Saddam Hussein sent his son Qusay to the vault of Iraq's Central Bank to make a modest withdrawal for the family's departure. It took three tractor-trailers to haul away nearly a billion dollars in cash — all in $100 U.S. greenbacks — plus $100 million worth of euros. Thus did Saddam & Sons bring off the grandest larceny in bank history.Reading Dexter Filkins's scoop in The Times, my mind harks back to a question asked of Frank Sinatra...

Reward Offer Nets Thousands of Items Missing From National Museum U.S. Customs agents announced yesterday that investigators, working with military officials and Iraqi authorities, have recovered about 700 artifacts and 39,400 manuscripts that disappeared from the National Museum of Antiquities in Baghdad during chaos and looting that followed the U.S. invasion of Iraq. ... The agency, which is working from an inventory of losses from thefts last month, said that some high-value items apparently were stolen from vaults where museum staff had stored them for safekeeping. So far, Iraqi authorities have identified 38 missing items classified as high value, Boyd...

WASHINGTON - More than 700 artefacts and tens of thousands of ancient manuscripts that had been missing from the National Museum in Baghdad have been recovered by teams of investigators in Iraq, US officials said on Wednesday. Some of the missing works were stored in underground vaults before the United States-led invasion of the country. The US investigators located the vaults over the past week. They forced them open, revealing hundreds of artefacts that had apparently been stored there to protect them from being damaged in a US assault. The find included ancient jewellery, pottery and sarcophaguses, officials said. The...

FIFTY-seven Iraqis have been arrested after an audacious attempt to rob a branch of the national bank in Basra, a British army officer said. The group managed to blast open one of six vaults in the bank with grenades which they had attached to one-metre thick concrete walls after breaking in through the basement of the building, Lieutenant William Horley of the Irish Guards said. But the sound of the blasts alerted British troops in a nearby base and "we caught 57 red-handed", said Horley. "They had bin bags full of notes, pressed and bound up in cellophane." Most of...

Baghdad, Iraq Press, April 19, 2003 – Shortly before the fall of Baghdad to U.S. marines on April 9, Saddam Hussein's younger brother, Qusay, looted millions of dollars from the Iraqi Central Bank, a bank employee told Iraq Press. The employee refused to give her name for fear of being implicated in the theft, but said she saw Qusay and a business partner of his, Hasan Habib al-Mawsawi, entering the bank on April 8, just one day before U.S. marines made their way into the heart of the Iraqi capital. "Qusay and Mawsawi were accompanied by a gang of some...

Experts: Looters Had Keys to Iraq Museum By JOCELYN GECKER .c The Associated Press PARIS (AP) - Experts say that what seemed like random looting in Baghdad - the pillaging of treasures dating back 5,000 years in human history - was in fact a carefully planned theft, and the stolen artifacts may already be in the system that traffics in stolen artifacts to collectors in Europe, the United States and Japan. FBI agents, meanwhile, have been sent to Iraq to help recover the stolen antiquities, while in Washington, three members of the White House Cultural Property Advisory Committee resigned to...

PARIS, April 17 (AFP) - Much of the looting of treasures at Iraq's national museum was carried out by organised gangs who traffic in works of ancient art, according to experts at a United Nations conference called on Thursday to examine the war-damage to the country's cultural heritage. "It looks as if at least part of the theft was a very deliberate, planned action," said McGuire Gibson, of Chicago University's Oriental Institute, who is president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "Probably (it was done) by the same sorts of gangs that have been paying for the destruction...

<p>PARIS (AP) -- Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting.</p> <p>The U.N. cultural agency, UNESCO, gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion.</p>