[HN Gopher] $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has ...
___________________________________________________________________
$7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved
Author : aent
Score : 214 points
Date : 2021-04-14 18:31 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| nknealk wrote:
| Here's an interesting question -- if you receive BTC from one of
| these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You
| know it's stolen and you might worry someone else who you might
| pay in the future would be able to track down that it's stolen,
| so do you ask for "clean" BTC that isn't linked to known theft?
|
| I don't necessarily know the answer here. This is something that
| you can't do with paper bills
| young_unixer wrote:
| Monero tackles this problem. Coins are fungible and
| transactions are private.
|
| https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/fungibility....
| Skunkleton wrote:
| That both does, and doesn't solve this problem. If someone
| pays for services with stolen assets the ideal scenario is
| that the criminal is apprehended, the service provider
| doesn't lose money, and the funds can be returned to their
| rightful owner.
|
| Monero protects the service provider, but doesn't solve the
| other problems.
| lumost wrote:
| It's a curious question for the value proposition of
| blockchain denominated currencies.
|
| There is a real possibility that in the future, all stolen
| assets will _eventually_ be recovered and returned to their
| owners. There needn 't be any limit to recovery given a
| universal, traceable, and non-fungible transaction log.
| Pretty soon payment processors/recipients would start
| maintaining blacklists of stolen coins which they refuse to
| transact in.
|
| The value proposition of theft/fraud may be significantly
| curtailed in such a world.
| Skunkleton wrote:
| That won't handle the case where some coins are stolen
| and used before they are marked as "bad". Some merchant
| will be out of luck once the transaction is reversed.
| Really that is no better than what we already have from
| credit card payment networks.
| spinny wrote:
| AFAIK exchanges will not accept certain outputs, this is
| probably based on taint analysis. I believe the FIFO method [1]
| is the most accurate and probably used by exchanges
|
| [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf
| Osiris wrote:
| I work at a distributed exchange and we have a blacklist. if
| funds are sent in from an address that's blacklisted we hold it
| and don't send them the other half. I don't know what the
| business does with those coins after that but there is a
| compliance team so I assume it's properly handled.
| londons_explore wrote:
| The mere fact a distributed exchange has a central compliance
| team tells me it isn't very distributed...
| cyberpunk wrote:
| What stops them from just sending it to an intermediate
| address first?
| miohtama wrote:
| > if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for
| something, do you refuse it?
|
| It's a crime to spend money you do not own. Like if you would
| find 500k in paper bills in your car. There is no source of
| funds it would be your legal asset. You hand it over to police.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Finding money and using miney that your know is stolen are
| totally different situations.
|
| 'finding' is ofcourse situational, but abandoned property can
| be 'found' and claimed
| slivanes wrote:
| Coinbase suspended my merchant account from receiving funds
| about 5 years ago without warning. I was receiving funds as any
| merchant would, with the occasional payout to bank. I had no
| idea why they suspending receiving, and as some already know,
| their support was not very supportive. The only reason I could
| think of is possibly receiving tainted funds?
| schmichael wrote:
| > if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for
| something, do you refuse it?
|
| You cannot refuse a BTC transaction. You could return it in a
| subsequent transaction, and pay the transaction fee, but I
| would imagine your address would be forever tainted by a number
| of illicit address/transaction tracking algorithms.
| [deleted]
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| Pretty sure what they mean is 'do you refuse it _as payment_?
| ' - i.e. should you provide the thing someone is paying for
| or send the payment back and ask for untainted coins?
| chrisa wrote:
| That's an interesting angle to cash out... just start sending
| to 1,000s of addresses - who's to say which addresses are
| owned by the criminals, and which are owned by other people?
|
| They'd get less than cashing it all out themselves obviously,
| but it would take forever to unravel what actually happened
| (if possible ever)
| danielrpa wrote:
| You could use also do that to embarrass/blackmail
| politicians or other prominent people. Imagine the threat
| "You either do what I want or I'll send you 1 million
| dollars" :)
| cgb223 wrote:
| What politicians accept Bitcoin as donations?
| wyck wrote:
| I think whole bunch of them do, Eric Swalwell accepts
| like 6 of them.
| canadianfella wrote:
| 6 bitcoins?
| jimmydorry wrote:
| BTC plus five altcoins, I imagine is what he meant.
| saas_sam wrote:
| Wasn't that the one associated with a known CCP spy?
| https://www.axios.com/china-spy-california-
| politicians-9d2df...
| roywiggins wrote:
| More like "targeted by."
| jbverschoor wrote:
| This is essentially what a tumbler does
| pennaMan wrote:
| The suggestion is a philanthropic variation of a tumbler.
| lancepioch wrote:
| They could just setup their own Bitcoin tumbler
| fireland wrote:
| Tumbling on bitcoin doesn't work like it used to a few
| years ago. There are now multiple companies dedicated to
| blockchain tracking and analysis. All coins coming from
| tumblers are flagged. It's possible because the bitcoin
| blockchain is public and every balance and transaction is
| visible to the whole world.
|
| Many exchanges refuse to accept coins that have passed
| through a tumbler. If you attempt to deposit these coins,
| the exchange will refuse to credit you unless you provide
| copious amounts of documentation. Currently they do not
| seize your coins but will force you to withdraw them.
|
| Some exchanges are even going through users' deposit
| histories and are retroactively flagging deposits from
| coin mixing services:
| https://twitter.com/kristapsk/status/1374336620158140419
|
| This is why many criminals are moving away from Bitcoin
| into Monero, which has anonymized transactions and
| doesn't suffer from the chain analysis problem.
| atat7024 wrote:
| So if someone buys a stick of gum from me after taking
| rent money from a tainted BTC address, I get flagged?
| londons_explore wrote:
| It only takes a few exchanges _refusing_ to flag coins
| and the whole flagging system fails.
|
| The bad money gets mixed with the good in the exchanges
| wallet, and sent to random people...
| o-__-o wrote:
| Currency of the future
| ASalazarMX wrote:
| Send it to 7,500 random wallets, including your own, and
| you can keep as many millions as wallets you have. Most
| people will keep the money, making them indistinguishable
| from your own wallets.
|
| IANAL, but if crime prescription is possible, you could
| transfer to 5,000 wallets and keep the rest for your
| pirate-themed retirement island.
| vmception wrote:
| We've done that on a number of projects
|
| Basically communities freak out when they think
| founder/team is selling any of the project's tokens no
| matter how long its been or whether what the stated
| vesting conditions were
|
| So we just bundle it in monthly distributions in
| multisend transactions to new addressses, some of the
| transactions are monthly vesting payments to marketers,
| some of the payments are to ourselves. Not possible to
| distinguish.
|
| (This is also possible because communities also demand
| that issuers put funds and the tokens into liquidity
| pools, which is not always compatible with having a ton
| of other tokens just sitting in separate vesting
| treasuries. So liquidity pool shares are vesting and they
| can be sent anywhere and unbundled)
| the_local_host wrote:
| I had the same idea, and it would be _funny_ , but
| investigators wouldn't have to unravel the whole thing.
|
| They'd just have to look at anyone unwise enough to use the
| money instead of turning it over to authorities (or
| abandoning the wallet).
| mattigames wrote:
| Almost nobody would turn to authorities, people just
| think it's their lucky day and spend it, so they would
| target a lot of innocent people.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| Most people wouldnt actually know that the money is
| illicit
| social_quotient wrote:
| How about universal basic income? Send some to everyone
| monthly. Would be curious the social implications of elicit
| money used as a welfare utility.
| hervature wrote:
| Yes, look forward to my $20 check that lasts one month.
| issamehh wrote:
| I'd take that over still not receiving a stimulus check
| despite needing them more than ever.
| [deleted]
| 0xtr wrote:
| why would I? I mean we still use dollars even though a lot of
| them are used to buy heroin and hookers
| retrac wrote:
| Knowingly receiving then spending stolen money or property is
| a crime in many jurisdictions. In many cases it may be
| phrased like "or ought to have known" so wilful ignorance
| isn't a defence.
|
| Even unknowingly receiving stolen money or property leaves
| you on the hook, potentially. If the rightful owner tracks it
| to you they can go "that's mine!" and the courts will order
| you to give it to them. The loss you incur here is yours; the
| law treats it as an incentive to be diligent and to not deal
| in stolen goods.
|
| You can of course then try to recover the value you are owed
| from the person who sent you the stolen goods/money, if you
| want/can. And they from whoever sold _them_ the stolen goods
| /money. And so on, all the way back to the original thief.
| The whole chain is tainted. (Pun intended, maybe.)
| liorn wrote:
| Can one even refuse it? If someone just sends tainted coin to
| my address, am I screwed?
| spinny wrote:
| what is tracked is outputs and inputs, not addresses.
| addresses are derived from a public key or a script.
|
| when a block is mined, an output is created, outputs can only
| be spent once. a bitcoin transaction is just a list of
| existing outputs (inputs) and new outputs to create
| (outputs). each output is created with a lock script, to
| spend the output you must provide the unlock script which
| normally contains at least a signature and a public key
|
| returning the output that corresponds to the unwanted
| transaction should do
| noxer wrote:
| Not an answer to your question but BTC does not really have
| wallets. Someone just signs a number of BTCs with his private
| key and your public key so the only way to sign it again is
| with your private key. This is essentially how it "moves" to
| "someone". Some other DTLs (blockchains) actually have
| wallets/accounts with properties where you can disable
| incoming funds/add a name/change the password and such stuff.
| csomar wrote:
| Unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin addresses are just a hash of a
| public key. The sent Bitcoins are unspent outputs that you
| can selectively (depends on the wallet) decide not to use.
| arcticfox wrote:
| What's wrong with simply returning it? Any "tainted coin
| tracker" could easily build in a mechanism for detecting that
| horsawlarway wrote:
| The simplest answer is that returning it isn't free.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also there is a good question is there some limit or
| ratio of tainted coins that would be considered non
| incriminating. Or if there isn't would single satoshi
| taint all coins? If there were wouldn't dilution of funds
| be possible? That is wash them by sending to wallets with
| enough funds...
| furyofantares wrote:
| Ok so use it to pay the fee, returning the rest.
| [deleted]
| noxer wrote:
| You just washed part of the BTCs which is now owned by
| the miner.
| tristanj wrote:
| That's assuming a BTC miner even agrees to process the
| transaction. Why would a BTC miner want to deal with the
| headache of tainted bitcoins? It's such a problem that
| Marathon Digital Holdings, a major bitcoin miner, has
| stated they will refuse to process transactions from
| tainted addresses. In the near future, I expect more
| mining pools to do the same.
| noxer wrote:
| If they were send to you, someone does process them.
| sennight wrote:
| Every so often a moron shows up trying to sell the idea of
| colored coins... it is almost as if they've never heard of
| "fungibility".
| noxer wrote:
| Would you return stolen goods to the thief? How about
| return it to the owner/authorities. May not be simple but
| certainly better than sending it back. If all else fail
| there are black hole addresses to forever lock the BTCs.
| feanaro wrote:
| And why would currency users even bother with it? If I
| receive a payment for something, I don't feel the need to
| pretend to be the police.
| swinglock wrote:
| Why would you give money to a criminal?
| grlass wrote:
| iirc, a number of wallets allow you to specify which unspent
| TX outputs you use.
|
| So if you got tainted coin sent to your address, you could
| avoid using that UTXO in future TXs.
|
| That might protect you from some scrutiny.
| gst wrote:
| That would work. But then there's also the question if the
| received transaction counts as taxable income in the
| jurisdiction of the receiver. If that's the case and if
| they received a very significant amount they would be
| forced to sell some of the coins so that they can pay the
| tax for them.
| myself248 wrote:
| Is everyone expected to know the addresses by heart? Does
| software flag them? If so, where does the list of tainted
| addresses come from?
|
| Total outsider here, asking honestly.
| spinny wrote:
| exchanges keep lists of stolen coins and probably use taint
| analysis https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf
| vmception wrote:
| There are a number of ways, you can use a non-custodial bridge
| like RenVM and receive renBTC which can be used as collateral
| or just traded in plain sight for something more liquid
|
| Like all blockchain analysis, following the conversion process
| always _assumes_ that all addresses involved are tainted
| forever because its also assuming it is under custody of the
| thief, so if you really want to play along further and think
| that this is both true and that the thief needs to hide then
| the thief can just drop all the converted assets into
| Tornado.cash and take them out later.
|
| Even if you think that cashing out Tornado.cash is hard, they
| can always just pump the price of some other token that they
| already bought with clean funds, and those cleans funds just
| become highly-profitable-trader-clean-funds. While the
| addresses with tornado.cash sourced funds are just bagholding
| whatever token they bought.
| pie420 wrote:
| You can definitely do this with bills... You realize when a
| bank gets robbed the serial numbers are tracked and confiscated
| when they show up, and often lead to the theives
| zabzonk wrote:
| Which is why thieves prefer used notes.
| ericsoderstrom wrote:
| If someone pays you in cash, do you really look up the serial
| numbers of all the bills you receive?
| dkersten wrote:
| And keep a list of all serial numbers of stolen money to
| check against.
| Emendo wrote:
| This sounds like an use case for blockchain.
| aliswe wrote:
| Nah
| Guest19023892 wrote:
| No, but I might deposit that money in the bank, and the
| bank could check those serial numbers.
| Geeflow wrote:
| Actually, some people do.
|
| There are tools like EuroBillTracker
| (https://en.eurobilltracker.com/) where you can enter the
| serial number of bills that you received and can watch them
| travel around the world. If someone else tracks them as
| well, that is.
|
| I entered 31 serial numbers over the last 15 years. Those
| haven't been seen again so far. I guess it's not the right
| kind of game for me... :)
| myself248 wrote:
| I played with Where's George? for a few minutes, then got
| bored. None of these things seem to have enough adoption
| to make it interesting.
|
| If there were money in it, someone would throw OCR at the
| problem. Say, attach prizes to certain bills, or finding
| certain patterns of bills (say, two bills whose serial
| numbers are mathematically related a certain way).
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| If a government wanted to encourage spending, they could
| turn the lottery inside out by offering payouts on cash
| being spent by everyone. You take a picture of your money
| and if the serial number is today's lucky winner you get
| $1MM. Though maybe that would encourage hoarding instead?
| Cobra effect perhaps?
| Someone wrote:
| Euro coin tracking was a bit popular in the early days of
| the euro, as it showed how coins moved around Europe (you
| can't identify individual coins, but each country has its
| own coins that can be used throughout the euro zone.
| Spanish and Italian coins move to Germany and the Benelux
| faster in summer than in winter, for example)
|
| You can still play that game with new coins, but it's
| less f visible now, as most coins are old and those
| already are well dispersed throughout the euro zone (and,
| of course, more and more people pay with a card)
| spoonjim wrote:
| This isn't so far fetched. Cash registers already have
| Internet connections and can be outfitted with cameras to
| record all bills going in, except maybe those inserted in a
| stack. And ATMs might already be recording serial numbers
| of dispensed bills. Essentially they might/could do with
| currency what they do with license plates, which is track
| where everything goes and at what times.
| Eduard wrote:
| Like 0 cash registers I have ever seen employ this.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Truth is, most cash these days probably only has one or
| two transactions between bank withdrawal and bank
| deposit.
|
| If the banks track serial numbers, they could probably
| build a fairly complete picture of what kind of
| transactions are going on. With the vast amount of data,
| you could probably fill in a lot of the gaps.
| deftnerd wrote:
| It's a feature on some money counters, which seem like
| something banks might use at the end of the day to check
| the balances in the drawers.
| alcover wrote:
| ATMs might already be recording serial numbers
|
| I've been wondering about this forever.
|
| Say John gets bills from the ATM then pays dealer Dylan
| for weed. Dylan then buys a beer at a bar.
|
| If Dylan gets convicted, and banks collaborate with the
| police, then John gets subjected to - at least - parallel
| reconstruction.
| o-__-o wrote:
| Plausible deniability wrecks that entire thesis (someone
| existing between John and Dylan such as a gas station)
| [deleted]
| TrainedMonkey wrote:
| No, but eventually they end up at the bank or similar and
| tracing process starts. One banknote probably won't tell
| you much, but if thieves are spending constantly you will
| find many, and you only need to get lucky once.
| Someone wrote:
| I don't think the "confiscate" part is categorically true.
|
| If the police arrest suspected criminals and find money that
| can be traced back to criminal activity, they'll confiscate
| it (permanently only after a trial). "Traced back" typically
| need not even involve checking serial numbers. If you've a
| lot of cash, but no regular job that explains how you could
| have that much money or why you would keep it in cash, that's
| enough to confiscate it.
|
| If, on the other hand, they find John Doe in possession of a
| banknote that was paid out in a ransom or stolen from a bank,
| and cannot link John Doe to any crime, John Doe can keep the
| money (they'll ask him whether he knows where he got it and
| may be able to force him to exchange it for untainted money,
| but that's it)
|
| (Counterfeit money is different. If the police finds you in
| possession of it they'll confiscate it, even if they know
| that you're a victim)
| cesarb wrote:
| I saw something like this happen when I was younger (this was
| pre-web, in the 80s or 90s, so I unfortunately haven't been
| able to find any online references to it): there was a big
| bank heist, and the stolen banknotes were new notes which
| hadn't been put into circulation yet. The ranges of their
| serial numbers were widely distributed by the press, and for
| instance cashiers at supermarkets were supposed to verify
| whether the serial numbers of the banknotes they received
| matched any of these ranges (since the banknotes hadn't been
| put into circulation, they were treated similar to
| counterfeit money: they officially didn't have any value).
| The country's currency has changed since then (it was the
| hyperinflation times), so that whole banknote series is no
| longer valid nowadays.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Funds like this can be frozen when 51% of mining pools start
| censoring transactions. Pools are now beginning to do this. I
| expect there will be a lot of BTC like this that starts to
| realise they need to be trying to dump it / escape into monero as
| quickly as they can
| thysultan wrote:
| The price of bitcoin will plunge to 0 if that happens, which is
| the reason why it won't.
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| The new breed of users doesnt care at all about such things.
| Usually the price goes up as it becomes less cypherpunk and
| more of a regulated surveillance instrument - speculators
| will argue that it increases legitimacy and encourages
| institutional investment. It will still be a scarce asset
| that hedges against inflation
| vokep wrote:
| You're missing that for this to work, miners, those who
| invest into processing bitcoin transactions, would be
| willingly lowering the value of what they do. Other
| comments bring issues they'd already face in cost trying to
| adopt banning more transactions. But if they accepted those
| costs, bitcoin's reputation of stability and trust would be
| broken, if 1 BTC = 0.75BTC because .25 was from tainted
| transactions, nobody wants to risk that happening to them
| so they'd abandon quickly and the price would plummet. But
| if the price would plummet then miners would be inclined to
| do the opposite to avoid that happening.
| staplers wrote:
| Monero is mostly traceable still.
|
| Source:
| https://www.sciendo.com/article/10.1515/popets-2018-0025
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| That article has been debunked for years, it is very old
|
| https://www.getmonero.org/2018/03/29/response-to-an-
| empirica...
| fireland wrote:
| It's not, that analysis is from 2017 and the issues described
| have been mitigated. The Monero team updated mixin sampling
| algorithm to better reflect real world usage. They increased
| the ring size from a minimum of 4 in the paper to 11. The
| team is working on increasing the ring size from 11 to 64,
| and possibly 128 (provided there is enough block chain
| space).
| tromp wrote:
| There's a difference between pools not accepting txs in their
| mempool, and pools refusing to build on other miners' blocks
| that contain them. Pools are beginning to do the former (which
| doesn't cost them), not the latter (which would cost them
| dearly). Only if a majority of hashpower does the latter will
| censoring be effective (and then no longer cost them again).
| ajkdhcb2 wrote:
| Of course they can't start orphaning blocks yet, but they can
| once it is more popular. It wouldnt take much government
| pressure, obviously governments will want to stop people from
| processing illegal transactions, and miners won't care
| fireland wrote:
| A hashpower majority is not needed. For the latter, if a
| single digit percentage of the hashpower decides to enforce
| the ban, other miners in the network have an economic
| incentive to join the ban as well.
|
| The reasoning is explained here
| https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-
| regu...
|
| In short, if a miner chooses to include banned transactions
| in its block, it means that block cannot be built off of by
| fully regulatory compliant miners. Fully compliant miners
| will be still building off the previous block in the chain.
| If fully compliant miners win the hash race and mine the next
| 2 blocks, the original miner's block will not be part of the
| longest chain, and they will lose all their block reward.
| TearsInTheRain wrote:
| Who gets to determine which addresses are "poisoned"?
| China? The US? I have to imagine the ideologues in the
| bitcoin community will fight back against that. Also, not
| being censorable is a big part of bitcoin's value prop so
| this type of regulation would likely crash the price as
| well.
| PaulAJ wrote:
| They are probably waiting for the Statute of Limitations to
| expire. For wire fraud that is 10 years.
| cm2187 wrote:
| But that wouldn't make those bitcoins theirs legally, would it?
| [deleted]
| frombody wrote:
| I believe in Hong Kong it's 12 years for criminal charges and 6
| years for civil charges.
| gowld wrote:
| Fencing stolen property is a fresh crime with a new countdown.
| vmception wrote:
| Unless it's the same owner just rotating addresses
| gscott wrote:
| It would be easy to use satellites to find the person with
| hundreds of Tesla's in their front yard.
| spinny wrote:
| people in crypto buy lambos
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| you can buy a telsa with btc
| atat7024 wrote:
| Or a lambo
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| not with converting it to fiat.
|
| and we both know I did not mean _that_ Fiat.
| Black101 wrote:
| Does the limitation resets if you move the funds publicly?
| afrcnc wrote:
| Transactions only amount to $740mil, though:
| https://twitter.com/search?q=bitfinex%20hack%20from%3Awhale_...
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Is that money trapped in the system? The moment they sell to USD
| that account is now linked to a real person no?
| mam2 wrote:
| You mix through monero
| jb775 wrote:
| I wonder if they could somehow collect interest off it
| anonymously. I read about certain coins offering staking, but
| not sure how it works and if it's possible to collect interest
| without revealing your identity.
| Taniwha wrote:
| No one is going to pay you interest unless they can use your
| deposit while they are doing so (loaning it out to others at
| a higher interest rate)
| atat7024 wrote:
| Decentralized exchanges would be able to do all of the
| above.
| vmception wrote:
| It isn't and that's not what people would do.
| chrisa wrote:
| It's more difficult, but not impossible I think:
|
| On the Bitcoin side you can "wash" it by mixing it with other
| coins, or deposit/withdraw it through multiple exchanges.
|
| Then on the output side, you can get rid of it through shell
| companies or through less reputable sites, or into countries
| that won't extradite criminals.
|
| So - it's definitely harder than normal, but I think you could
| find a way.
| wyck wrote:
| Its pretty easy to from a tech perspective to tumble and swap
| coins or use a combination of both. Not only that but you can
| swap into different blockchains which have fully anonymous
| layers. So tracing a path is completely impossible. But there
| is one significant problem, tumbling and swapping 7.5 Billion
| is hard to do without creating huge market waves and that
| will be noticed. So you would spread it over 3-4 years and
| use a variety of swap/tumblers and it can be done. Eventually
| you have to cash it out and some off ramps might raise some
| flags.
| sekai wrote:
| It's possible to swap into monero without using any KYC
| exchange, but that requires liquidity. So it could take years.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > swap into monero without using any KYC exchange
|
| How? Links on this being done?
| hi5eyes wrote:
| https://bisq.network/markets/?currency=xmr_btc
| csomar wrote:
| Atomic swaps were possible way before Uniswap and the DeFi
| craze. Liquidity is another issue for 7.5bn though.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| Isn't Uniswap doing a swap within the same chain?
| jcims wrote:
| Will be interesting to see what effect this has on the price,
| might extend into all of the risk conversations around Satoshi's
| stockpile.
| Ceezy wrote:
| Well it was stolen not lost...
| arcticbull wrote:
| Not your keys, not your coins. The keys own the coins - you're
| ancillary. The keys just found a new home. Sounds legit to me.
| kjrose wrote:
| You see. This is what bitcoin so fascinating... it is absolutely
| impossible to hide a transaction.
|
| So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone
| used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of
| wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would
| be able to have their funds more or less locked up.
|
| So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we
| know the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners
| will be caught. However in the future I could easily see a
| government watch money that some undesired element has move and
| no one will want it because the moment they get it they are
| connected to an undesirable and their wallet becomes tainted.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I think this seems to be main reason crypto wasn't shut down by
| government when it was relatively easy to do ( now there are
| real players entering the fray ). There is already a small
| cottage industry based on selling insights from BTC nodes to
| FinCEN and banks ( but I do not know whether they are buying ).
| qeternity wrote:
| "Stolen"
|
| This is Bitfinex we're talking about. It's a company run by
| criminals.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Fun little reminder that when Bitfinex was "hacked" they took a
| 36% haircut, if memory serves, from all account holders, in all
| assets -- not just Bitcoin. [1]
|
| Except for one account. _Coinbase_. [2]
|
| They then issued tokens to all the accounts they skimmed,
| valued at $1 each redeemable for shares in Bitfinex. They
| effectively converted a $72 million dollar theft (at the time)
| into a $72 million dollar valuation for Bitfinex.
|
| One of their executives, Giancarlo, was recorded telling token
| holders the best way to get their money back was to sell their
| shares to other people before they realized. [3]
|
| > "The fastest way to get paid back, is to convert debt to
| shares and then sell your shares to another shareholder".
|
| These people run Tether.
|
| This is the true magic of cryptocurrency.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bitfinex-hacked-
| hongkong-...
|
| [2] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/10/28/tether-and-bitfinex/
|
| [3] https://medium.com/@bitfinexed/bitfinex-never-repaid-
| their-t...
| plebianRube wrote:
| Seems to me the root problem is when people decide to use
| Bitcoin outside of it's original intended use, and centralize
| it.
| ConcernedCoder wrote:
| Maybe someone took them up on the $400,000,000 reward offered...
| https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/494
| j_walter wrote:
| That would be a lot more today...it was $400M in August last
| year. That 30% fee is now worth $2.3B.
| throwaway888abc wrote:
| They can gift some Teslas
| leke wrote:
| Or make a donation 1GVR2qbKgT4uVUQMYVgPhQxFcKRJBVYMo4
|
| I actually wonder what would happen to me, if I suddenly
| received some of that stolen bitcoin.
| ur-whale wrote:
| >1GVR2qbKgT4uVUQMYVgPhQxFcKRJBVYMo4
|
| A 1xxx addie?
|
| In 2021?
|
| Come on dude.
| csomar wrote:
| leke only trusts Bitcoin Core.
| SilasX wrote:
| What's wrong with 1-prefixed addresses?
| liorn wrote:
| https://www.ledger.com/academy/difference-between-segwit-
| and...
| etaioinshrdlu wrote:
| From https://bitcoinbriefly.com/practical-guide-bitcoin-
| addresses... :
|
| "Legacy addresses start with the digit "1". These Pay-to-
| Public-Key-Hash (P2PKH) addresses were once the standard
| address type up until August 2017. Many now advise
| against using them. Why?
|
| Legacy addresses incur the most expensive transaction
| fees when sending payments. They also limit the Bitcoin
| network's ability to scale. And their case-sensitive
| nature often causes unwanted errors."
| [deleted]
| fuzzybear3965 wrote:
| Or bc1qtl0s05gxxnv9xskkyzrd7k5epwr4esqdhpcvfx
|
| :pray: :)
| dcolkitt wrote:
| Memorize your private keys. Destroy any physical or digital
| copies of the keys in a "boating accident". Tell the
| authorities you can't recover the funds. Wait 25 years or so.
| Move to somewhere outside jurisdiction or extradition from
| the relevant authorities. Cash out.
| thysultan wrote:
| or... sell them back to bitfinex at current market price
| like a BOSS!
| myself248 wrote:
| This just popped into my head:
|
| 1: Recipient. Participate in one of those pyramid scams that
| always shows up in @elonmusk's replies and elsewhere.
|
| 2: Sender. Send money to a bunch of people who show up in one
| of those scams.
|
| 3: Recipient. Your plausible explanation for the windfall that
| just landed in your account is that you thought the scam was
| real, and hey, it apparently was!
|
| This leads me to wonder: Are those scams just cover for
| laundering, that happens to also suck in some other gullible
| victims along the way?
| arithmomachist wrote:
| I wonder if this is connected to the Russian military buildup on
| the Ukrainian border.
| DSingularity wrote:
| Why would you think it is ?
| dbg31415 wrote:
| The fact that all these transactions are public is what makes
| Bitcoin so creepy to me.
| vmception wrote:
| The liquid sidechain doesnt have public transactions, uses
| confidential transactions. It has been running for years.
|
| There is a decent amount of bitcoin and assets issued on
| bitcoin over there
|
| A bunch of exchanges and VCs are the validators, so it
| sacrifices some security but not in practice
|
| There are hundreds of billions in crypto assets traded on
| validator networks
| Bluestein wrote:
| Are they tryin' to send some sort of subtle signal, given the
| Coinbase listing today? :)
| myself248 wrote:
| The timing is awfully coincidental.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Considering the whole thing was ... what? 2016? It really
| is.-
|
| (Maybe their are tryin' to get "some" shares ... :)
| wmf wrote:
| The all time high was also earlier today.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-04-14 23:01 UTC)