It's only at 12 bitcoin ($120k) right now. (serious question) why do you think it could be as high as $50 to $100 mm? Is there a way to see the total including unconfirmed transactions?

I think longtom read this as 9k-50k BTC rather than as 9k-50k transactions.

No. No one is saying that.

I'm not saying that these are all from the hack, I'm saying that the activity on the Bitcoin blockchain has significantly spiked, and it looks like a very large number of transactions have yet to be confirmed. So any amount so far is just the beginning - more is sitting in the mempool ready to be confirmed.

If I dress myself like a valet and you hand me your car keys in front of a hotel, am I stealing the car when I drive off?

Well in this case people intended their money to go one place, but they got tricked and it ended up in another. I'd call that stealing.

Whether it got technically stolen from the charity or whatever they meant it to go to or from the original owner, that's debatable.

For example, historically the UK had "Theft By Deception" a type of theft in which the requirement is that you deceive people, intentionally, in order to permanently deprive them of something of value rather than just taking it.

This was replaced by modern Fraud crimes this century. The new crimes reduce what prosecutors need to show somewhat. With "Theft by deception" there can be a problem if the prosecutor struggles to show that the defendant actually permanently deprived the victim of something of value, especially if the victim realised there was a problem in time to use some sort of "claw back" mechanism. With Fraud the prosecutor can show that the defendant intended to gain even if ultimately that didn't work, so long as the deception actually happened the crime was not merely attempted.

All these Tweets are Fraud by False Representation under that replacement law, because the tweet deliberately pretends to be from somebody (e.g. Apple or Bill Gates) when it's actually from the perpetrator of the crime and it's clear that they intended to gain from getting Bitcoin sent to this account even if a prosecutor can't prove how much they actually made.

Well in a way it is, the point of the verification check box is authenticity that twitter is supposed to guarantee, this breaks that trust

Yep, theft by fraud is still theft.

If I ask you to give me a loan and I say I'll pay it back with 100% interest in a few days, and then I run away with your loan and never pay it back, then yes, it's stealing.

That's all that's happening here, except in units of BTC and not USD...

The username is pleasingly appropriate for the comment.