[HN Gopher] Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow
___________________________________________________________________
Confessions of a Bitcoin Widow
Author : pseudolus
Score : 229 points
Date : 2022-02-15 13:42 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| HashBasher wrote:
| The title is grossly misleading. Bitcoin had nothing to do with
| any of this. It should be `Confessions of a Scammer Widow`.
| Cotton was scamming before bitcoin even existed.
| fatih-erikli wrote:
| The story sounds super fictional to me.
| snarkerson wrote:
| It's a bookvertisement.
| mdasen wrote:
| I'm kinda surprised that police don't get warrants for death
| threats. Sites like Reddit and Facebook collect lots of data.
| Even if someone is trying to be anonymous, they can likely
| connect it to a person. Some people might be able to mask their
| trail, but the vast majority can't.
|
| It just seems surprising that no one seems to actually
| investigate and prosecute those who make death threats online.
| I'm not saying that people should lose anonymity online in the
| vast majority of cases, but when people are making death threats
| and even coordinating and conspiring to harass someone with death
| threats and potential real-world harm, it seems like police
| should be getting warrants for things like IP addresses, device
| IDs, browser fingerprints, phone numbers, and other anti-spam
| information that sites are using.
|
| I know some people know a lot about how they're being tracked
| online, but most people don't. If there are hundreds of people
| posting death threats, most probably aren't hiding who they are
| well. Prosecuting even a few seems like it would deter a lot
| more. How confident are you that you aren't leaving a trail? I'm
| not saying that people should be generally worried about leaving
| a trail, but when it comes to death threats that can turn into
| actual murder people seem oddly confident that no one will track
| them down - despite all we know about how good platforms like
| Facebook are at figuring out who we really are.
|
| It's not like police aren't asking for huge warrants from people
| like Google. Google has said that they're getting a huge number
| of geofence warrants - "hey, give us a list of everyone who has
| been in this geographic area." That seems way more problematic
| than "hey, there has been a criminal assault (death threat) and
| we want all identifying information you have on this account that
| committed the assault." Again, I'm not saying that the person
| behind the account should instantly be found guilty (accounts can
| be hacked and such), but it seems to offer a much more precise
| avenue of getting to bad people than a geofence warrant with a
| lot fewer privacy implications.
|
| > I contacted Facebook. The best the company could suggest was to
| block trolls from future posts
|
| Facebook knows who these people are. They could ban them from
| FB/WhatsApp/Instagram. It's weird because they seem like the type
| of thing you'd want to ban for SPAM/harrassment.
|
| It seems weird that the response from sites and police seems to
| be: there's nothing we can do. These are the same sites that
| figure out things voting rings for anti-spam reasons. These are
| the same police that vigorously want to prosecute someone for
| stealing $20. But when it comes to death threats (that can turn
| into actual murder), they seem to think "that seems like a minor
| inconvenience compared to SPAM or someone stealing $20."
| wmf wrote:
| I wonder if civil lawsuits would be effective here. If you can
| squeeze $10K out of a third of the trolls that should cover the
| legal costs.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| Law enforcement definitely oversteps their boundaries a lot,
| there is misconduct etc., But there is a difference between
| mass surveillance, laws that force companies to provide access
| to information while at the same time not being allowed to
| reveal this has happened, and legitimate requests for
| information relevant to solving a crime. I had a case in my
| broader circle of relatives that made me think about if or
| rather how access to such information should be available to
| law enforcement, and how that could reliably work
| internationally.
|
| It was a French woman who used some app to track her running
| habits that also had a social component, where you could
| interact with people in your area, compare stats, message them
| etc. There was someone on there who messaged her a couple times
| asking if they could run together some time, but apparently in
| a really creepy way, so she declined and later ignored it.
| She'd run in the evenings along the Rhine river, and one
| evening she hears someone catching up to her from behind, and
| next thing she remembers is she's lying in some bushes, a guy
| standing next to her saying he already called the cops as he
| saw from a distance someone knock her out from behind, then
| pulling her off the walkway. The guy started shouting like
| crazy that he'd already called the cops, and the attacker ran
| away immediately. When she made her statement a couple hours
| later at the police station, the suspicious profile on that
| running app was deleted. The French cops then contacted the
| company behind the app to get any information possible about
| that user, some US startup, which denied the request due to
| privacy concerns. And that's the end of the investigation. It's
| the closest they ever got to that guy.
| kinghtown wrote:
| Maybe the government is trying to discourage awareness or
| curiosity into their own back doors, trojan horses, and spyware
| in every computer and phone. Powerful legislation in that
| direction may open doors that the government would remain to
| keep closed.
|
| Taking the tinfoil hat off, I genuinely think that federal
| governments are disinterested in small time, low hanging fruit.
|
| I also consider the police to be first responders at best. Once
| a crime has been completed, the perpetrators are likely to
| straight up just get away with it due to the ineptitude and
| bloat inherent in a police force.
| brightball wrote:
| I've always believed that situations like that happen because
| Facebook would rather be able to keep an eye on those people
| than send them to somewhere they can't.
| anubiskhan wrote:
| Reading this comment makes me wonder, "How long until
| Facebook lobbies for prisons to give inmates access to FB?"
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >I'm kinda surprised that police don't get warrants for death
| threats.
|
| Sounds great until you find out the threat was sent by someone
| in a different country halfway around the world. There's a
| finite amount of police manpower, and I'd be willing to bet
| that most death threats are practically impossible to prosecute
| even with a warrant.
| saurik wrote:
| > It's weird because they seem like the type of thing you'd
| want to ban for SPAM/harrassment.
|
| Social networks show their true colors by way of the decisions
| they make about what to prioritize removal of and what to
| actively ignore even once they are made clearly aware.
| ohlookcake wrote:
| The nuance this misses is scale. FB wouldn't just need to
| block people who are reported, they would need to have a team
| to manually _investigate_ all claims. Otherwise it 's just
| another tool in the harassers' arsenal. Their automated
| systems (which exist) haven't caught this, or they wouldve
| been disabled already. Alternatively, the number of people
| needed to investigate every reported account is absolutely
| massive.
|
| Source: Used to work in this exact team at FB
| ipaddr wrote:
| In China 2 million people work directly on this.
| criddell wrote:
| The police have limited resources and they can't go after
| everything.
|
| Online stuff is hard because it usually requires cooperation of
| multiple police forces in different jurisdictions. I think it
| often just comes down to there being easier things to go after
| closer to home.
|
| I don't know why Facebook does nothing though.
| bastawhiz wrote:
| > The police have limited resources
|
| This is strictly not true. The police choose not to have
| resources dedicated to many kinds of crimes. US police
| funding exceeds what almost all countries spend on defense.
| Police in America act as a significant source of revenue for
| many communities (through tickets, fines, and forfeiture).
| freeopinion wrote:
| True. There are limited resources.
|
| For example, https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/local/art
| icle24376685... documents the purchase for a 90,000 resident
| city in NC of Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected Vehicles for
| $500,000.00 each.
|
| "I'd rather have the armored capability and not need it, than
| to need it and not have it," [Concord Police Chief Gary J.
| Gacek] said in an email to The Charlotte Observer.
|
| Sometimes you just gotta choose what you go after.
| zeepzeep wrote:
| What do you want facebook to do? Helping people without
| monetary gains? Ha!
| ghaff wrote:
| And a lot of people here would probably be screaming if you
| did prosecute some immature 20-something picked at random and
| tossed them in prison for ten years for an ill-considered
| social media post.
| burnished wrote:
| Just to be clear, I think the clear reading of what is
| being discussed is "a specific and targeted death threat,
| either alone or in concert with others", not a hot take
| that fails to age well.
| anthony_r wrote:
| And, so what?
| ghaff wrote:
| Because tossing people in a hole at random to set an
| example is not, in general, policy we want to encourage
| maybe?
| rask17 wrote:
| Having kids intimidating strangers by throwing around
| death threats isn't something we should encourage either.
| ghaff wrote:
| No one is talking about encouraging such behavior. But if
| the FBI undertakes a serious investigation to track them
| down, _when_ they get tracked down, they may well end up
| in a Federal prison for a long time--especially if they
| can 't afford a few hundred thousand dollars for the best
| legal support. Maybe they deserve to have their life
| ruined for probably poorly considered juvenile behavior
| but I'm not sure. There are societal costs associated
| with pursuing and prosecuting every crime to the max.
| ryan_lane wrote:
| Folks aren't asking for people to be locked up forever
| for this. A comment in the thread mentioned about first
| offenders getting no jail time, but needing to publicly
| apologize, do community service, etc. Repeat offenders
| should likely serve some jail time, with each offense
| bringing stronger punishment.
|
| Doing nothing about this does encourage its behavior,
| especially since there's entire communities around doing
| it (kiwi farms being one of the worst).
| w-j-w wrote:
| titzer wrote:
| It's the kind of stuff they did to "hackers" back in the
| 80s and 90s who were just phreaking phone lines.
| erentz wrote:
| In many countries the first time offender 20-something
| would spend a night in jail, be arraigned the next day, and
| likely enter a diversionary process where they need to face
| up to what they did. Perhaps a conference with the victim.
| Do some community service. Etc. 9/10 this will give someone
| the chance to seriously rethink their behavior.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Many countries they would be beaten or killed. It really
| depends on what many countries means to you.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Change how you view police. They don't do very much crime
| prevention. Think of them as the people who come to clean up
| after the crime already happened.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| I can't stress how true this is. I've never seen the police
| solve any crime they were called for. They just show up and
| shrug.
|
| However I recently saw the police raid my neighbor in full
| swat gear cause someone on Nextdoor said they saw a guy
| walking down the street with a gun (it turned out to be a
| cane). About 15 out of shape suburban dads playing operator
| terrifying children and high fiving each other after
| literally doing nothing. I don't value this institution very
| much anymore.
| jldl805 wrote:
| Cynical view. I called the police for a theft, they found
| the guy and brought my goods back within 24 hours. I
| expressed amazement and they said "yeah this is our job we
| are pretty good at it."
| stock_toaster wrote:
| Maybe it is regional? Where do you live that the police
| do a good job?
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Buddy got his bike stolen. Granted, it was a very nice
| bike. Cops called 3 months later to say they found it for
| him. Didn't even arrest the kid riding it, because it was
| obvious he "inherited" it, and he didn't give them a
| hassle turning it over. Most of them are pretty good at
| their jobs. IME, barely most, but most nonetheless.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You have the most uncommon outcome. Count yourself lucky.
| toiletfuneral wrote:
| somehnacct3757 wrote:
| Maybe depends on where you live. GP's experience rings
| true after living in SF for a decade. I've had a friend
| get punched in broad daylight by a homeless person, black
| eye and everything, and the cops responded "what do you
| want me to do?" Also know many startups with offices
| broken into, laptops stolen. Cops show up 4 hours later
| and say they probably won't recover the goods. When asked
| if camera footage would have helped, the answer is no -
| but you can stick up some fake ones as a deterrent.
| [deleted]
| strangesongs wrote:
| I was the victim of a home robbery a few years ago in
| Cleveland. Thieves hit multiple homes on my block in a few
| hours, TRASHED my house looking for valuables and stole
| about $1000 worth of stuff from my home (an easily
| identifiable bike, cash)
|
| Cleveland PD showed up, shrugged their shoulders, gave me a
| police report for my home insurance claim (which covered
| nothing that was stolen) and said there was no chance the
| crime would be solved.
|
| A few weeks later I had to contact the same CPD district
| office because someone I sold something to online
| threatened me with physical violence and showed up at my
| house at 11 PM to "settle the matter." I went to the police
| station and was again told directly by the police there was
| nothing they could do, even though the man was parked
| outside of my home at the time, waiting for me to engage.
|
| Absolutely worthless institution.
| [deleted]
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| Right, also how does crime prevention make sense? I mean
| someone is innocent until he commits crime right? So it would
| mean arresting innocent people because "they were going to
| commit a crime".
|
| This is a slippery slope, I can see it being abused real
| quick. So I tend to think that police isn't meant to directly
| prevent me from getting killed. Police is meant for arresting
| the culprits, and that would indirectly prevent me from
| getting killed because it's not worth the risk.
| santoshalper wrote:
| That's exactly what police are. "Law Enforcement", not
| "Crime Prevention".
| strangesongs wrote:
| To add another comment, pro-police commentators should look
| at clearance rates for crime in their areas. Police are
| generally very very bad at their jobs! I looked up SFPD
| clearance rates for the last year -- they solved about 10% of
| all bulgaries and less than 21% of robberies. 10%!
|
| These organizations have enormous budgets and they can't
| solve simple, non-violent crimes. Why do they need more
| funding and resources? Is all of that double OT going to
| finally stop those "brazen" CVS pickpockets?
| multjoy wrote:
| What's your definition of 'solve'?
|
| I mean I could tell you who did a robbery, but proving it
| to the criminal standard of proof is a very different
| proposition.
|
| Burglary isn't getting solved without a) CCTV _and_ a
| subsequent ID or b) DNA or fingerprints.
|
| I work on a busy (and I mean busy) robbery squad. An 11%
| detection rate puts us head and shoulders above the rest of
| the organisation.
| qsdf38100 wrote:
| It could be incompetence, it could be lack of ressources,
| it could be that it's just very hard to find the culprits
| and prove with high certainty they are guilty.
| notahacker wrote:
| Also, excessive focus on proportions of crimes solved
| results in the worst sort of policing, where they push
| clearance rates by trying to pin lots of charges on one
| weak individual, decline to record minor crimes that
| probably won't be solved, and boost their overall
| clearance rates with easy charges for drug possession.
| lupire wrote:
| Police don't prosecute. Police drive/walk around town grabbing
| people they don't like or can shake down for money.
|
| Police are local, and have no effective jurisdiction online,
| excxept when they have a local victim and local suspect.
|
| You need the FBI.
|
| and for every murder with an online threat, there are a million
| "free speech" death threats with no murder.
| mindslight wrote:
| You're right, but your comment got me thinking. Police don't
| investigate online threats because there's nothing for them
| to gain, but that is not a given. Like if you were some
| prolific web personality, wouldn't you want to move somewhere
| you could report threatening comments to the local police,
| have them issue requests for information, track who is making
| repeated nasty comments etc? Either through higher taxes,
| direct user fees for police investigation, quid pro quo, etc.
|
| Online forums generally don't adjudicate whether subpoenas
| meet some objective standard of jurisdiction. It's not so
| much that police cannot investigate a crime for a local
| victim when the suspect could be in another jurisdiction,
| it's just that it likely won't lead to a prosecution. But I'd
| bet that a nastygram on a police department letterhead would
| go a long way towards discouraging most internet haters.
|
| I'm not pointing this out as a desirable state of affairs
| (it's essentially government-capital synergy aka fascism),
| but rather a possibility of where things might head.
| Burbclaves applying their customary/statutory powers to
| interactions in the interconnected world, and offering their
| services up as a point of competition.
| quinnjh wrote:
| My brother who has an intellectual disability recently
| called the police because he was being prolifically
| harassed on instagram. Being sent stuff with death threats
| / necrophilia etc. The cop had to explain to him that they
| cant do anything about it and that he is worried for his
| daughter who is online as well.
|
| Then i remembered the geofencing warrants and surveillance
| platforms they have access to. I remembered nearly going
| deaf when the police fired a flashbang at my head for
| getting too close to a group of nazis that myself and other
| locals wanted to shoo back to the state they came from.
|
| I remembered the police arent here to protect the
| vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech.
|
| Dont worry i grew out of my juvenile delusion that i have
| any ability to influence or refuse to tolerate certain
| discourse in my city.
|
| Nazis rallying in your city is just a sign of how well
| protected and safe you are i guess. Ill make sure to stay
| home next time.
| ipaddr wrote:
| mindslight wrote:
| I'm sorry for your experience.
|
| > _I remembered the police arent here to protect the
| vulnerable, they are here to protect freedom of speech._
|
| The police, like every entrenched power structure, are
| "there to" serve their own interests. Sometimes that's
| expressed in terms of lofty ideals, but it's
| fundamentally about power relationships - for instance
| their casually attacking you with an explosive.
|
| If you were someone "important" - politically connected,
| rich and looking like it, or even just upper-middle but
| persistent, it's likely they would have responded to your
| brother's issue with more attention. And if they
| mistakenly judged you and didn't, you would escalate to
| their superiors. That dynamic isn't a free pass, but it
| informally goes a long way.
|
| My point was this attention could very well shift to
| putting a priority on policing online threats, perhaps
| even to the detriment of investigating physical crime.
| quinnjh wrote:
| Well put, and as you say theres a tradeoff somewhere in
| what they can pay attention to. I dont deny that and i
| also dont really know how they "should" be handling
| things. Its just pretty bizarre when you and your friends
| have no expectation of privacy, the police have palantir,
| and the munitions are for defending nazis.
|
| Strangely enough am family friends with the person likely
| to become chief. I doubt ill ever raise the issue because
| i dont think he would be able to have any positive effect
| without losing the position.
|
| Entrenched.
| 8note wrote:
| Regardless of whether the police care, you could hire
| private investigators to look into each threat
| moralestapia wrote:
| Well ... she's not a "Bitcoin Widow", she's a Fraudster's Widow,
| so I don't know what she expected.
|
| Also, I find it quite disingenuous for close relatives to claim
| ignorance when rackets like this fall apart (like Madoff's wife
| purported innocence). I don't think anyone in the world knows you
| better than your husband/wife, not even your parents/kids.
| nwah1 wrote:
| That is merely the difference between someone involved in a
| ponzi scheme and someone who started one.
| vmception wrote:
| Funds are Sifu
|
| Anyone here following the drama with Wonderland where a cofounder
| of was doxxed as a QuadrigaCX cofounder when the team applied for
| an exchange listing and did KYC?
|
| Nobody is ever going to doxx again at this rate.
| JohnJamesRambo wrote:
| People need some backstory on this one. We aren't even sure he is
| really dead and I wouldn't be surprised that this book and story
| is a way for her to distance herself from the very reasonable
| suspicions on her.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50751899
|
| https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/11/the-strange-tale-of-...
| dangerface wrote:
| The bbc article is eye opening her objection to an
| investigation is very telling, she has those peoples money and
| she is not giving it back willingly. I think the walrus article
| could be a paid promotion considering its missing this or any
| push back.
| danuker wrote:
| The guy could have bribed the doctors and the wife might not be
| in on it.
| runjake wrote:
| You should read the article and the backstory. She did some
| very peculiar things with shifting assets around shortly
| before he "died".
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| The impression I get reading her statements is that they
| belong to a lawyer-constructed narrative which makes it
| difficult to form an accurate opinion.
| mindslight wrote:
| I read the post's article, and the two articles in the top-
| level comment. Transferring real estate into a trust isn't
| a viable way to keep ill gotten gains from a bankruptcy
| court. Selling assets would only be sketchy if she
| attempted to divert some of that money, which isn't
| mentioned (and I'm sure those transactions received intense
| scrutiny). What other peculiar things did she do?
|
| It seems like for the "mastermind theory", the last thing
| one would ever want to do is bring someone into the fold
| who would stay behind and knowingly shoulder all the legal
| trouble. And from her perspective, getting married and
| being named executor would be a terrible idea drastically
| increasing her involvement - an unmarried "girlfriend"
| could passively walk away while the legal system did its
| thing.
|
| If this was an exit scam, it seems highly likely that
| Robertson was an unwitting patsy. Granted, encouraging this
| conclusion is a large part of why she'd write a book. But I
| just don't see how the alternative would make sense in the
| slightest.
| runjake wrote:
| > Transferring real estate into a trust isn't a viable
| way to keep ill gotten gains from a bankruptcy court.
| Selling assets would only be sketchy if she attempted to
| divert some of that money, which isn't mentioned (and I'm
| sure those transactions received intense scrutiny).
|
| I get the sense from the various posts and book excerpts
| and her podcast appearance that she isn't the sharpest
| tool in the shed nor a criminal mastermind, so to speak.
| mindslight wrote:
| How does that support what you implied in your earlier
| comment? From what I see the incentives are just all
| wrong. Based on my limited reading, she appears as
| someone working within the legal system to keep her (ill
| gotten) wealth. You can condemn her for that, but it's a
| far cry from being in on some larger plan of faking her
| husband's death. And her not being "the sharpest tool in
| the shed" is even more evidence against her knowingly
| being part of a larger plan.
| astoor wrote:
| Just a thought: could Gerald Cotten have also been a stolen
| identity, as his co-founder Michael Patryn was (Michael Patryn
| was actually "Omar Dhanani who was convicted on identity theft
| charges in the U.S. and served 18 months in Federal
| prison"[0])? It would be much easier to fake the death of a
| stolen identity and reassume your real identity, rather than
| fake the death of your real identity and assume a stolen one
| for the rest of your life.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions
| csomar wrote:
| How can you steal an identity and travel in today's world?
| There are only a few countries that still make passport which
| are not biometric.
| mrsuprawsm wrote:
| Apparently it's quite easy if you have a passport from a
| country considered wealthy (e.g. EU).
|
| >According to document sellers, it is impossible to fake a
| working biometric chip, but at many border crossings
| officials checking passports simply ignore those that don't
| work, waving the passport holder through.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/31/revealed-
| how-f...
| csomar wrote:
| Wow. So they collected all this data and complicated all
| these lives and in the end... the system doesn't work?
| mindslight wrote:
| Obviously. The authoritarian impulse is rooted in
| control, not ultimate effectiveness.
| donnythecroc wrote:
| He has a pilots licence. There is a podcast about this that
| explains it well but basically it's not hard with that kind
| of money.
| rosndo wrote:
| "Identity theft" hardly ever refers to actually assuming
| someone else's identity.
| btilly wrote:
| It is rare relative to stolen credit cards. But I wouldn't
| call in excess of 700,000 cases/year to be "hardly ever".
|
| See https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/vit14.pdf for
| comparative numbers for 2012 and 2014.
| rosndo wrote:
| That 700k is not referring to someone actually assuming
| someone elses identity. A tiny fraction of them might be,
| but tax return fraud or unemployment fraud seem like far
| more likely options.
| stevbov wrote:
| Yes, identity theft includes things as basic as using
| someone else's credit card. I learned that when I reported
| that someone rifled through our car, took a credit card,
| and tried to use it at a gas station.
|
| It kinda surprised me.
| csomar wrote:
| He stole your money and both your identity (when making
| the transaction, as he is not authorized). Just
| pondering, not a lawyer.
| franga2000 wrote:
| This Mitchell and Webb skit feels relevant
| https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E
| inopinatus wrote:
| Is there some kind of contest to produce the most outlandish
| explanations of this matter?
|
| As an total outsider I'm accustomed to the cryptocurrency
| echobubble blaring like a sackful of unhinged hyenas, but the
| apoplectic conspiracy-mongerong on display seems off the
| scale.
| s5300 wrote:
| This dude is 100% alive.
|
| Death due to Crohns related whatever at that age is _extremely_
| rare, especially when they mention he was otherwise young and
| healthy (if I misread or am misremembering about the otherwise
| healthy part, correct me)
|
| & somebody with that sort of money, that also spends $90k at a
| La Z Boy to furnish a house, would be 9001% on top of any
| possible thing that Crohns _could_ do to him.
|
| Guarantee he's alive & he otherwise would've gotten away with
| it if they went with a story of any other medical condition
| that can lead to sudden death.
|
| (I realize this may sound insensitive to those with or knowing
| somebody with Crohns. I have Crohns :P)
| imroot wrote:
| After pricing furniture at La-Z-Boy recently, I could see
| where 90K could be used to furnish a few rooms in a house. I
| was looking at a new living room set and it was close to 45K
| by the time we had finished customizing the fabric, seat
| fill, and adding options to the furniture.
|
| There are other things that seem weird about this, but, the
| furniture store pricing wasn't one of them.
| andi999 wrote:
| Shouldnt one be able to see if the currency is transfered?
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| I don't know why this is downvoted. I also have Crohn's and
| it is word-for-word true. Sudden death of Crohn's is
| something I cannot imagine and I've been trying for good 5
| minutes now.
| lambic wrote:
| My Crohn's is under control and has always been fairly
| mild, but having spent a week in hospital when it was at
| its worst I can see how this could happen, I lost enough
| blood for the doctors to be very concerned. A severe flare
| can definitely be life threatening.
| kingkawn wrote:
| Does seem plausible that underlying crohn's mixed with a
| vicious antibiotic resistant gut infection could be a
| killer combo
| ILMostro7 wrote:
| Lol maybe because he was over 9000 percent sure...
| idontknowifican wrote:
| IBS person here, my understanding is chrons takes years,
| and is very medically mature. odd
| samhw wrote:
| > chrons takes years, and is very medically mature
|
| Sorry, what does that actually mean?
| bckr wrote:
| There are really good treatments for it these days.
| People live with it relatively comfortably when they can
| get the right medicine, while in the past they would have
| died early painful deaths.
| joshuahedlund wrote:
| Maybe it's downvoted for the "guarantee he's alive" - Even
| if sudden death from Crohn's is unlikely, would suicide
| also be plausible, if the stolen funds were starting to
| catch up with him?
| s5300 wrote:
| Perhaps I should've said "he definitely didn't die of
| Crohns somewhere in India" - yeah, I admit he could be
| dead by this point for various other reasons.
|
| As for some other comments - until you're _very_ old, I
| think the statistics are that you're much more likely to
| die from a surgery that tries to better manage your
| Crohns than of anything Crohns can cause.
|
| Sometimes the surgeries can go very badly very quickly
| for no rhyme or reason & lead to bowel rupture which is
| very not good. Not that this is common - just more common
| than "dying" of Crohns.
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I've seen it stated that he died of "complications from
| Crohn's disease" which in my mind would include a surgery
| gone wrong. I had an unexpected surgery which required
| anesthesia during a trip abroad myself, it's likely the
| chances of death from the surgery or event itself were
| somewhere in the 0.1-1% range.
|
| I'm otherwise young-ish and healthy, and didn't know I
| had Crohn's before this happened, though I've had
| intermittent digestive issues that I thought "weren't a
| big deal" through most of my adulthood. I can only
| imagine someone who already knew they had Crohn's had it
| worse than myself.
| lambic wrote:
| Severity of Crohn's isn't age related, Crohn's is
| actually a young person disease. I was diagnosed in my
| 40s and that was considered a late diagnosis.
|
| Also, the article says he died from complications from
| Crohn's.
| tasha0663 wrote:
| I imagine it's incredibly painful and involves toxic
| megacolon. Took me about 15 seconds the first time I saw
| that the cause of death was Crohn's.
| giarc wrote:
| I'm cherry picking a stat from this article, but it doesn't
| appear totally out of the realm of possibility to die from
| Crohns.
|
| It is well accepted that Crohn's disease is associated with
| a small but real risk of death. Population based reports
| from Sweden,1,2 Denmark,3 and Italy4 indicate that Crohn's
| disease patients have a higher mortality rate than
| expected, although at least one notable exception from the
| UK demonstrated survival similar to the general population
| (table 1 1).
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC1856159/
| Mvandenbergh wrote:
| I'm close to someone who has it, and I have to admit that my
| first response was also: "uh, what?". However it can happen.
|
| I guess my main reason for believing it is that I can think
| of many more plausible sudden death explanations. Drug
| overdose, accident, aneurism, heart defect, these can all
| kill without warning. So why come up with a cover story that
| isn't plausible?
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| I have Crohns also, and basically have no effects from it
| besides occasional bloating and slightly-more-than-normal
| pooping 99% of the time. Strangely, the one massive event
| that occurred happened while traveling (ended up requiring
| surgery, which, which theoretically could have killed me). I
| also travelled in India for a few weeks (where Cotten died)
| and was fine with the food until a flare-up on the plane trip
| home (Delhi belly is a common thing among tourists).
|
| It does sound suspicious, but the idea of someone dying of
| Crohn's in India doesn't sound as _extremely_ unlikely as you
| make it sound. Also, medical care in India is well below the
| standards of what we might be accustomed to in first-world
| countries.
|
| FWIW, I believe it's _more_ likely that something else
| happened (poison /assassination, or faking his death, or
| suicide) based on the information I've seen, but I think a
| sudden, unexpected death due to complications from Crohn's is
| certainly a possibility as well
| beeboop wrote:
| i know, sample size 1, but my roommate in college had Crohns
| and died at 23 from it very suddenly
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Do you mind sharing what happened (if you know)? I recently
| learned I have Crohn's and am trying to learn more about
| the things that can happen.
| lambic wrote:
| The Crohn's related deaths I've read about have been from
| complications from surgery, extreme blood loss and
| suicide (people with extreme cases can't deal with the
| pain).
| tasha0663 wrote:
| > I realize this may sound insensitive to those with or
| knowing somebody with Crohns. I have Crohns :P)
|
| The old "I'm not insensitive about _X_ because I can claim to
| have _X_ in an anonymous forum " defense, deployed
| preemptively at that.
| evan_ wrote:
| Wouldn't he pick a better cause of death, then? A heart valve
| defect or fell off a boat in the ocean?
| stickfigure wrote:
| The best lies are half-truths. Maybe he actually has Crohns
| and there's enough documentation to make this story
| (half-)plausible.
|
| (just offering one possible answer to this question - I
| don't know any facts about this case)
| giarc wrote:
| I think that is why evan__ suggested the heart valve
| defect, a genetic condition that often goes undetected
| until it kills you. You often hear of stories of young,
| athletic people dropping dead and being linked to some
| defect they've had since birth that went undetected.
| yreg wrote:
| Well did the coins on the wallets allegedly belonging to the
| dead man move?
| j_walter wrote:
| Go watch Dead Mans Switch...you'll see it much more complex
| than that and even with some really deep forensic analysis
| they never found where the coins were (if there were really
| any left)
| [deleted]
| tdumitrescu wrote:
| Partnered with the guy from this recent story:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120762 ("Wonderland
| Crypto Co-Founder Revealed to Be Infamous Fraudster, Investors
| Shaken")
|
| Scammers all around
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > So much money rolled in so fast that they occasionally ended up
| with huge piles of cash on their kitchen counter.
|
| Seems like that'd be a red flag, considering it's a _digital_
| currency.
| duxup wrote:
| Yeah I'm a little confused about how that plays out exactly...
| dannyw wrote:
| Lots of ways. For example, say you bought a luxury watch or
| handbag; found its not your thing, and sold it to someone for
| $2k in cash.
|
| I sold my GPU for $2500 yesterday. Cash please. It's
| currently lying on my kitchen counter.
|
| Now, piles may be crazier, but sell a Tesla?
| gwd wrote:
| > Now, piles may be crazier, but sell a Tesla?
|
| I had a friend who was moving country and wanted to sell
| his Porche. Someone offered to buy it for a reasonable
| price, but wanted to pay cash. My friend thought that
| sounded really dodgy; so he agreed on the condition that
| they both physically go to a bank teller and have the bank
| teller deposit the money in his account as he watched. The
| other guy agreed; so that's what they did. He showed up
| with a giant bag full of bills, just like the big drug
| deals in the movies. At that point my friend felt he'd done
| his duty, and that anything dodgy to be Somebody Else's
| Problem to detect / deal with.
|
| Afterwards I heard that Travelers prefer dealing in cash;
| so there wasn't necessarily anything dodgy going on (other
| than presumably the general effort to avoid scrutiny).
| ryan_lane wrote:
| Just because the money itself was legitimate, doesn't
| mean something shady wasn't going on. The buyer could
| have been laundering money, with your friend actively
| helping him. For his sake, I hope he verified the other
| person's details and saved them, because if he deposited
| >$10k cash, it was reported to the government, and he'd
| be responsible for saying where it came from, and they
| may not like the answer.
| gwd wrote:
| Well for one, in the UK, when you sell a car, the seller
| fills out a little chit and mails it to the government,
| who then mail a new title to the buyer. So at least
| there'd be record of the sale, and an address to start to
| track where the money came from. In addition I think he
| thought the bank's security cameras would add critical
| information about the seller. Not sure what other
| verification he may have done.
| duxup wrote:
| Do people who buy luxury goods often just sell them for
| cash if they don't like them?
|
| That seems strange.
| lupire wrote:
| People who don't like attention from law enforcement do.
| duxup wrote:
| If you have a lot of money coming in ... not sure you
| NEED to sell good for cash.
|
| It's just a weird choice IMO.
|
| I certainly have items that I could sell but don't want
| to deal with the time actually selling it.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| Interestingly, cash is the most interesting thing for law
| enforcement because they can legally steal it.
| jaguar1878 wrote:
| Yes. And for many other reasons.
|
| Some luxury brands intentionally limit production of
| popular items and only sell them to their best customers.
| Since everyone wants the limited things, they buy lots of
| the lower tier, unlimited stuff to become a VIP customer
| and get offered a slot to buy a limited item. Ferrari is
| famous for limiting sales of their highest end cars to
| certain clients. High end hand bag producers limit sales
| of their most popular models to approved clients only.
| High end watches are similar as well.
|
| If you can't afford all the extra stuff you had to buy
| along the way, you can try to resell it and get some of
| the cash back. If you need more cash, you can resell the
| limited availability items as well, often for a
| significant profit over the MSRP, even after the
| middleman's cut.
|
| Fashionphile, The Real Real, Ann's Fabulous Finds, Yugi's
| Closet are all active companies in this space.
| csomar wrote:
| Many people use luxury goods as a medium to transport
| significant wealth around. You'll get questioned for
| bringing more than $10.000 in cash in or out of the UK or
| most of the western world. But you get an expensive watch
| and it'll likely slip.
| onion2k wrote:
| At the beginning one of Quadriga's products was an ATM that
| people could use to deposit cash and get BTC in return. It's
| _just about_ plausible that they emptied the ATMs and took the
| money home occasionally.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions
| coldtea wrote:
| > _It 's just about plausible that they emptied the ATMs and
| took the money home occasionally._
|
| What kind of business with ATMs "takes the money home"?
|
| Even if it's totally legit, it's also totally insecure - they
| could be robbed at any time.
|
| Money in such quantities are not takes to the home and
| stacked the kitchen top, they are deposited to banks - by
| armored guards in vans.
| trynewideas wrote:
| A lot of folks in this thread would find reading up on (or
| especially working in) the US cannabiz and sex-work spaces
| incredibly enlightening.
| donnythecroc wrote:
| Can you say more?
| lupire wrote:
| a Crypto company whose founding principle is "not banking"
| ska wrote:
| > What kind of business with ATMs "takes the money home"?
|
| Unbanked businesses? Some of them because they are illicit,
| but others exist because banks don't want the association.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> What kind of business with ATMs "takes the money
| home"?_
|
| The kind where $200M of customers' money "goes missing" and
| the ceo "suddenly dies" on a holiday to a country famous
| for its scam artists?
| coldtea wrote:
| Yes, which is my sentiment exactly.
|
| Whereas the parent commented that "they might had simply
| taken the money from the ATMs home" as an excuse for them
| being a legit business while having stacks of cash on
| their kitchen tops.
| allannienhuis wrote:
| I know some people that used to run a number of those
| 'private' atms you'd find in gas stations, etc. They
| regularly drove to the various machines to fill them up
| with cash, driving an old pickup truck and carrying around
| 30-50k in 20$ bills in a brown paper bag. Security by
| obscurity I guess.
| WrtCdEvrydy wrote:
| From my time in the Bitcoin ATM space, it was difficult to
| get a bank to accept a large amount of cash from a Bitcoin
| ATM.
|
| The issues at the beginning was use of non-standard sized
| bill receptors and non-digital vaults at the ATMs but that
| has been solved recently. At the time, we used two ideas:
| provide a regular ATM right next to the Bitcoin ATM to
| dispense bills out (so we'd get ACH) and regular pickups
| and drop-offs to a bank.
| onion2k wrote:
| It's undoubtedly completely stupid, that's a given, but if
| your husband runs a company that deals in large amounts of
| cash (like one that runs ATMs), then it's plausible that
| seeing piles of cash on the kitchen counter might _not_ be
| an immediate red flag.
| spelunker wrote:
| I mean, poorly-run ones is the obvious answer.
| astoor wrote:
| It seems like withdrawals were in cash: "Quadriga used an
| unusual teller-window system for customers to withdraw their
| money. Rather than pay customers via bank wires, they were told
| to come to a nondescript building in Laval, Quebec to pick up
| the cash."[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions
| ceejayoz wrote:
| That's both _sort of_ an explanation - even my local grocery
| store uses armored cars to transport money to /from a bank,
| not holding piles of it at home - and more red flags.
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| It's important to remember that Quadriga wasn't able to get
| banking services in Canada. Canadian banks were refusing to
| do business with any cryptocurrency-related businesses.
|
| Keeping the cash at home wasn't a good idea, but being
| blocked from using traditional solutions necessitated that
| they build their own.
| alexpotato wrote:
| Something similar happened with cannabis related
| businesses in the US.
|
| Since essentially ALL banks are FDIC insured, taking
| money from a business selling cannabis, which is illegal
| under Federal law, is prohibited. There have been
| multiple documentary/news show episodes about this.
|
| Interesting side fact, NPR Planet Money did a special
| where they tried to find a bank that was NOT FDIC
| insured. They picked the smallest single physical
| location bank they could find but even that bank was FDIC
| insured.
| [deleted]
| giarc wrote:
| These statements seem to counter each other.
|
| >They acquired property, bought yachts and planes, travelled to
| exotic destinations.
|
| >Robertson, online posters insisted, was conspiring with Cotten,
| who'd faked his own death and was hiding in some extradition-free
| backwater until they could rendezvous and live happily ever
| after.
|
| Seems like they already lived the good life, why fake your own
| death which only complicates things more.
| samhw wrote:
| Because it was a Ponzi scheme, according to that theory. If
| you're running a Ponzi scheme - as Madoff demonstrates - your
| good luck and your good life tend to run out. The theory is
| that he faked his death when the music was about to stop.
| michaelt wrote:
| Imagine you've stolen $200M and you're living the good life,
| but cops and victims are starting to catch up with you.
|
| If they catch you, you'll lose all the money _and_ get sent to
| jail.
|
| If you fake your death, you can keep all the cash you haven't
| spent, and avoid jail.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > Cotten possessed the only key to the online vaults where his
| customers' investments were supposedly stored.
|
| This is very important. Due to strong cryptography it's safe to
| assume the cryptocurrencies can't be moved without the secret
| key. What happens if the owner of the key dies? My father asked
| me about this once and I had no answer. Something to really think
| about.
|
| We currently think of secret keys as expendable. Compromised or
| lost? Just make a new one. Nobody shares or inherits keys,
| everyone has their own set. The dead won't be encrypting or
| signing any messages and there is generally no reason for anyone
| to retain the ability to impersonate them.
|
| Traditional key discipline relies on the assumption keys are
| worth nothing. All this goes out the window when these are the
| keys to assets worth thousands, millions. A new key discipline
| needs to be developed.
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| There are also key escrow solutions like
|
| https://keys.casa/
|
| (i'm sure there are many many others, please add yours as a
| reply!)
| lordnacho wrote:
| Smart contract with a dead man switch?
| laumars wrote:
| There's already a practice of businesses storing a paper copy
| of a critical infrastructure password in a safe for
| emergencies. I don't see why the same concept couldn't be used
| here.
| astoor wrote:
| Note that this wasn't a case of the money being lost because
| the key was lost when the owner died as per the initial
| headlines - in this case the money simply wasn't there in the
| first place: "Quadriga likely never invested the funds
| entrusted to it, according to Chainalysis, ... Either the funds
| were never received or quickly went missing" and "Ernst & Young
| found five Quadriga cold wallet addresses, but they were empty,
| containing no cryptocurrency since April 2018."[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions
| PowerfulWizard wrote:
| One solution is to have the key on paper in a safe, and then
| let the lawyer know the key is in the safe. If you die they can
| drill the safe. The nature of the private key makes digital
| solutions possible, but they aren't necessary. It doesn't have
| to be handled differently from any highly valuable small
| object.
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| That seems like owning small valuable objects with extra
| steps
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Or (somewhat ironically) a bank safe deposit box.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This isn't that ironic, as there are often safe deposit
| boxes with contents more valuable than the cash on hand of
| the bank branch itself.
|
| Yes, ironic that digital currency is being protected by
| physical bank, but that's really stretching for something
| to be haha. It's SOP for banks really.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| I was more referring to the (somewhat fair) crusade
| against big banks in the crypto community in general.
| Tweeting against banks all day and talking about "code is
| law" while paying a safe deposit box fee and leaning on
| the traditional legal system (wills, etc) and banks (the
| box) scales somewhere from ironic to hypocritical.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| No it doesn't, at least in a sensible understanding of
| the crusade. (I'm not sure cryptographic Byzantine
| consensus is the panacea it is touted to be, but agree
| with its proponents as to whether many of the things they
| call problems with the traditional system are in fact
| problems.) It's nice to have a technical solution to
| things that do not actually need human interpretation,
| and it's nice to expand the set of these things. Whether
| you actually want human interpretation for the act of
| transferring money is questionable.
|
| Fiat money is uniquely susceptible to repressive
| governments in a way that nothing was when people
| actually thought about countering those in a practical
| way, and bank transfers are even more so--see today's
| news from Canada for an example that's chilling whether
| or not you agree with the actual politics in play. That
| needs to be fixed, I think. It could be fixed by making
| money more resilient to government intervention or by
| making governments less likely to make malicious
| interventions, probably both. These approaches, and even
| approaches to these approaches, have different
| implications, so history will have to find the balance,
| but I'd be loath to just dismiss the former out of hand.
|
| But death _is_ a thing that needs human interpretation,
| at least for the foreseeable future, and thus those
| arguments don't apply here. The current banking and
| actuarial system isn't _that_ insane for the most part,
| for a system that has to operate under the constraint of
| needing human interpretation. It's just that I refuse to
| stop thinking about the extent to which such a constraint
| is actually present in any particular situation. In
| strongbox rental, it is. Great! And I say that as someone
| with an experience of withdrawing the contents of a safe
| deposit box from a branch of a failing bank, on the day
| before the doors of said branch were locked and tagged.
|
| (Nothing about a strongbox rental business even needs to
| be connected with loans or securities in any way, it's
| just that banks sort of organically grew both functions.
| No problem with that, but also no problem with somebody
| dissatisfied with any aspect of modern macroeconomics
| having no gripes against safe deposit boxes.)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I think the parent was pointing out at the irony that
| every hour of effort spent on the crypto space so far has
| only made banks and other institutions even more critical
| in the end, because the death rate will be 100% for the
| forseeable future, like it always has been.
|
| It's effectively backloading risk onto the very things
| claimed to be outmoded and replaceable.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Not ironic at all. It's a fact that banks have great
| physical security, no reason to not take advantage of
| that. If you have a cryptocurrency paper wallet in the
| bank, they don't know about it, it's not on their books,
| they can't lend it out without your knowledge and inflate
| the economy with it.
| mlac wrote:
| Depending on the amount, split the key across paper across
| multiple bank vaults and lawyers, with direction to contact
| all of them and bring the key together at your death.
|
| But good luck finding someone you can trust to actually
| handle the money once they have the key.
| rozab wrote:
| One cool aspect of Shamir's Secret Sharing is you can set
| any threshold for how many fragments are required to
| recover the secret. This reduces the risk of one losing the
| secret due to fragments being lost. The scheme also has
| perfect secrecy, so gaining a few fragments, but not the
| threshold amount, gives an attacker no information about
| the secret.
|
| https://francoisbest.com/horcrux
| sudobash1 wrote:
| I wouldn't split the key because as another comment noted,
| you don't need all the pieces to brute-force the rest.
| Rather I would have several "keys" that when you XOR them
| all together, you get the real key. That way, any piece is
| useless without all the rest.
|
| Unless, this is what you meant by "split" in which case I
| agree.
| titzer wrote:
| Even just putting half the key on paper and _not_ putting
| the rest could make brute-forcing the rest feasible. Even
| knowing just 1 bit makes brute-forcing 2x as easy. 8 bits?
| 256x easier, etc.
| _ihaque wrote:
| One would use a scheme like Shamir's secret sharing [1],
| not literally cutting the exact bits of the key into
| strips.
|
| > To unlock the secret via Shamir's secret sharing, a
| minimum number of shares are needed. This is called the
| threshold, and is used to denote the minimum number of
| shares needed to unlock the secret. An adversary who
| discovers any number of shares less than the threshold
| will not have any additional information about the
| secured secret-- this is called perfect secrecy. In this
| sense, SSS is a generalisation of the one-time pad (which
| is effectively SSS with a two-share threshold and two
| shares in total).
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shamir%27s_Secret_Sharing
| titzer wrote:
| Oh yeah, I know about that. I meant to intentionally
| release only part of the key specifically to make brute-
| forcing easier for your heirs. I mean, hey, they gotta
| work for it, you just give them a leg up! :)
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| (Shamir's scheme is delightfully straightforward, but if
| polynomial interpolation over finite fields isn't a thing
| you feel in your bones, try inventing an n-of-n-shares
| scheme that only uses xor and a random-number generator.
| Gb nyy ohg bar bs gur cnegvpvcnagf, tvir n puhax bs
| enaqbz qngn nf ybat nf gur frperg; gb gur ynfg bar, tvir
| gur kbe bs gur frperg naq gur enaqbz puhaxf. You probably
| don't want that in production, but it's nice to figure it
| out and even utterly simple to prove it secure, provided
| you understand the proof for one-time pads.)
| tejohnso wrote:
| This immediately came to mind as a possible tactic
| because polynomial interpolation is covered nicely in A
| Programmer's Introduction To Mathematics[1] which I
| started reading recently. Highly recommended.
|
| [1]: https://pimbook.org/
| kangaroozach wrote:
| Crypto dead mans switch like sarcophagus.io.
|
| You can connect to obituary oracle on chainlink and release
| data to prespecified law firm upon proof of death. Then make
| sure the law firm validates the death before opening. Wallets
| and Keys inside. Or secret pass phrases inside.
| plorg wrote:
| When all you have is a crypto hammer, everything you see is
| blockchain nails.
| pmlamotte wrote:
| Key management is definitely difficult and is full of tradeoffs
| depending on the risks you want to protect against. There are
| some nice guides out there that go into some of the
| details[1][2] as well as inheritance plans, and it typically
| involves multisig wallets (2 of 3, 3 of 5, etc) with some of
| the keys stored with a lawyer or other trusted party. Some
| commercial solutions exist like Casa which can make it
| seemingly easier, but has increased risk as a result. If you
| don't plan ahead, it's likely gone, but the setup time/cost of
| these solutions really only makes sense for large amounts.
|
| I recall reading at one point about future support for time
| locked multisig in Bitcoin that could maybe help with that but
| don't know the status of that capability or how it works, or
| how difficult it is to set up.
|
| [1] https://github.com/fresheneesz/TordlWalletProtocols
|
| [2] https://glacierprotocol.org/docs/overview/
| throw123123123 wrote:
| There are so many options!
|
| My favorite conceptually is a dead-man switch. For example,
| something will have a password only you have, as long as you
| input you are alive every x days. If you die, eventually it
| switches to another password someone else might have.
|
| It really is amazing to think how hard it is to keep something
| safe, once you are tasked with it.
| ls15 wrote:
| > This is very important. Due to strong cryptography it's safe
| to assume the cryptocurrencies can't be moved without the
| secret key. What happens if the owner of the key dies? My
| father asked me about this once and I had no answer. Something
| to really think about.
|
| One option would be to create a multi-signature wallet, where
| for example three keys exist, while two keys are needed for
| transactions. This would allow scenarios where the widow and
| the notary can access a wallet after the owner died. At the
| same time, no single party would be able to run with the money
| with only one key.
| camillomiller wrote:
| would it be possible to program a smart contract tied to the
| key owner's death in some provable way, in order to release a
| key retrieval mechanism to their heir?
| notreallyserio wrote:
| I suppose you could surgically implant a private key inside
| your body that could be used to decrypt a cache of your other
| or private keys. It'd have to be somewhere that can't be
| accessed without killing you, though.
| csomar wrote:
| Torture you to reveal the secret location and in the
| process kill you to get the private key. Nice idea.
| sircastor wrote:
| 7 or so years ago, a friend of mine passed away. He had setup
| and explained a complicated encryption scheme to his wife that
| stored all their digital stuff. She didn't remember any of
| that, and then it was permanently inaccessible to her.
|
| Seeing the challenge in this, I made a note for my wife which
| is "All of our nerd stuff, if I die" It contains instructions
| on how our network works, how to handle domain names, how our
| backup system works, etc. Passwords and such belong to our
| shared BitWarden, but for all the other "What now?" stuff, I
| feel better having given her at least some explanation.
| thesausageking wrote:
| This is a solved problem. Entities that have to custody large
| amounts of crypto use multi-sig wallets where N of M keys are
| needed to unlock them. The keys are given to a N people and
| kept in different locations. If someone dies, N of the
| remaining people can move the assets to a new wallet.
| jll29 wrote:
| That's how Ethereum founder V. Buterin manages his online
| assets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XW0QZmtbjvs&list=RDCM
| UCSHZKy...
| dylan604 wrote:
| So what happens to these digital coins in the face of loss of
| keys? Actually, what do banks do as well? If someone dies with
| a large sum in an account, how is it different than a digital
| currency at that point? There's no physical tangible good that
| has value. It's just a number in a digital ledger for crypto or
| typical bank. Is the only difference in this case the
| encryption, otherwise typical banking rules would apply?
| saalweachter wrote:
| > Actually, what do banks do as well?
|
| The short answer is inheritance happens. If there's no co-
| signers, named beneficiaries, will or heirs, the state will
| eventually appoint an executor who will settle any
| outstanding debts of the estate against the account, and then
| I think the state itself is the ultimate inheritor.
|
| Most states have a notion of "unclaimed funds", and you can
| check to see if you have any money sitting in the state
| coffers from a dead relative or a settlement.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I'll add to that the issue that it's extremely unlikely for
| there to be no heirs, as even if you made no family and
| your parents are dead, there's still likely to be e.g. some
| third-degree cousins. There are some cases (e.g. related to
| the Holocaust or immigrants where all the local family is
| dead and there are no contacts with the overseas relatives)
| but generally there's quite some time for distant relatives
| to apply until eventually the state (i.e. the general
| public) takes it over.
| egypturnash wrote:
| _What do banks do?_
|
| Look up "unclaimed property", there is a whole complicated
| bureaucracy dedicated to tracking this stuff and letting
| heirs claim it. Each state of the US has a separate web site
| where you can search for anything left in a dead relative's
| accounts.
|
| Claiming it is easy for small values. It gets more
| complicated as the value rises, I have enough left in this
| situation from a grandparent that I am putting off getting
| something called a "judgement of possession" to acquire some
| funds.
|
| This bureaucracy does not, of course, exist for cryptobucks;
| creating one probably _will_ be mandatory if it is to become
| an actual part of the financial system instead of a cascading
| pile of scams, and it will involve a whole lot of things that
| are anathema to the anti-government attitudes a lot of crypto
| true believers have.
| nathias wrote:
| you make a paper wallet and you can pass it on as inheritance
| janekm wrote:
| The challenges are similar to those involved in signing the
| root keys for DNSsec (or certificate authorities). Root signing
| ceremonies make for an interesting read:
| https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/dns/dnssec/root-signing-cer...
| scotty79 wrote:
| On the other hand ... What's wrong, if your wealth distilled to
| the limits of abstraction dies with you?
|
| If you haven't shared it with anyone, why would anyone get it?
|
| If you didn't trust anyone with the keys to it while you were
| alive, why should anyone have it?
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| > If you haven't shared it with anyone, why would anyone get
| it?
|
| This is the wrong model, technically it causes micro
| deflation that would be similar to distributing it to
| everyone weighted by their current amount. The rich get
| richer-er (in an absolute sense, but not in a proportional
| sense).
|
| The effect is probably minuscule on a case by case basis, but
| if it were happening on nation scale it might make a
| difference.
| zwirbl wrote:
| Most people don't trust their adult children with access to
| their wealth, and yet they leave it as an inheritance to them
| when they die. Often even accompanied by a will
| snek_case wrote:
| People sometimes die pretty suddenly, with no planning for
| what should happen after.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tshaddox wrote:
| I mean, another way to look at this is that wealth, assuming
| it's reasonably liquid, can be exchanged for other goods
| (that is, after all, the only real point of wealth in the
| first place).
|
| Surely you wouldn't think it's absurd to expect that if
| someone dies with some extra food, that other people ought to
| make use of that food, even if they hadn't made a formal last
| will.
| brigandish wrote:
| On the other hand, if money is destroyed and not replaced
| that then makes everyone else's money more valuable as no
| one else's wealth (and hence overall wealth) has been
| affected.
| tshaddox wrote:
| I doubt that's true in any meaningful sense. You could
| say the same thing for food: if you make it more scarce
| at some point you will probably observe an increase in
| price of existing food. And yet you could have eaten the
| food instead of destroyed it.
| neilknowsbest wrote:
| I believe the parent here is making a distinction between
| "capital" and "money"; "money" being a claim against real
| physical "capital".
|
| When a pile of "capital" is destroyed (i.e. a bushel of
| wheat spoils, or a factory burns to the ground, or the
| lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody are somehow lost forever)
| then this is a loss to society in general and to the
| owner of that "capital" in particular. If a pile of
| "money" is destroyed (i.e. Pablo Escobar burns $2MM in
| currency, private key to crypto wallet is lost) there is
| no corresponding loss of real physical "capital". There
| is simply a reduction in aggregate outstanding claims
| against the unchanged real physical "capital". So the
| unaffected holders of the other claims see their
| purchasing power increase, i.e. they no longer have to
| outbid the person whose "money" was destroyed, they have
| now "cut out" the loser from claims against "capital".
| nybble41 wrote:
| > When a pile of "capital" is destroyed (i.e. a bushel of
| wheat spoils, or a factory burns to the ground, or the
| lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody are somehow lost forever)...
|
| Well, at least _one_ of these examples is actually
| capital (the factory). Of the remainder, one is just
| plain property, not a capital good, and the other is
| information. Capital is property which serves as a means
| of production. Sometimes the term is used loosely to
| include highly marketable goods (money) which can stand
| in for the means of production (e.g. "raising capital"),
| or even more loosely as in "human capital" (referring to
| the capacity for labor as a means of production), but it
| does not include commodities consumed in the production
| process, such as the wheat; nor information, which is
| non-rivalrous and thus not property, much less capital.
|
| With that said, you're basically correct about the
| difference between currency other forms of property--
| goods with utility beyond their use in trade. For the
| most part there is no advantage to society in having a
| larger or smaller amount of currency (in aggregate). For
| economic calculation it's best if the supply just remains
| constant; any variation will temporarily affect the
| allocation of other resources, but eventually the value
| of the currency will adjust so that the total purchasing
| power of the currency equals all the goods available for
| purchase. It can cause problems if the supply changes too
| rapidly, making prices unstable, or if so much currency
| is lost that it starts to impact divisibility. For
| example, if bitcoins grew in value to the point where one
| satoshi was worth a month of labor we would need to
| modify the protocol to add more significant digits, or
| introduce a parallel system for day-to-day transactions,
| much like silver vs. gold.
| tshaddox wrote:
| This is why I added "assuming it's reasonably liquid" to
| my initial comment. If one's wealth is reasonably liquid,
| then I don't think it makes much sense to make a
| distinction between whether it's "capital" or "money."
| For the vast majority of people, I think this is a
| reasonable assumption. If you could liquidate the
| deceased person's estate and exchange it for consumables
| or capital and donate those to a good cause, is that
| really worse for society than the nebulous idea of
| increasing the value of everyone's money by destroying
| the deceased person's money? I guess I'm having trouble
| seeing the distinction between "destroying existing
| capital is bad" and "destroying money that could have
| been exchanged for capital or used to create capital is
| good."
| nybble41 wrote:
| > If you could liquidate the deceased person's estate and
| exchange it for consumables or capital and donate those
| to a good cause, is that really worse for society than
| the nebulous idea of increasing the value of everyone's
| money by destroying the deceased person's money?
|
| That would depend on who gets to decide what counts as "a
| good cause". I can think of worse ways the purchasing
| power could be employed than distributing it widely among
| other users of the currency. Even assuming the best of
| intentions, you're still directing resources rather
| arbitrarily away from other goals in favor of the
| selected cause, which is not necessarily a net benefit to
| society.
|
| In general it makes sense to follow the wishes of the
| deceased, if they are known--it serves no good purpose to
| distinguish between gifts made just before death vs. ones
| made at the time of death via a will, and doing so
| penalizes those who die unexpectedly before making their
| bequests. Beyond that, I see no reason why relatives of
| the deceased should have an automatic claim in the
| absence of a will--but their claim is stronger at least
| than any the state might make, so given the choice I'd
| rather see the property go to the heirs than the state.
| Personally, though, in the absence of a will I would just
| consider the property abandoned and available for anyone
| to freely use and thus claim for themselves via
| homesteading. In some cases that process may have already
| begun--for example, if the owner of a house dies without
| leaving a will then anyone else who was already living
| there (presumably the deceased's family) would have
| priority to assume ownership once the deceased's claim
| was abandoned. Their prior investment in the home didn't
| matter as long as it had an owner, but with that owner
| gone it should count in their favor for the homesteading
| process.
| pjc50 wrote:
| In this case, it wasn't his money! It was the Quadriga
| customer wallet!
|
| Besides, "how do I ensure my wife and/or children get my
| wealth when I die" is a question humans have been addressing
| for thousands of years. Only a bitcoiner could be so nihilist
| to not care.
| scotty79 wrote:
| > Besides, "how do I ensure my wife and/or children get my
| wealth when I die" ...
|
| ... but can't rip me off a second earlier.
| wbobeirne wrote:
| > Only a bitcoiner could be so nihilist to not care.
|
| I feel like the people I know who are most enthusiastic
| about Bitcoin are the ones who care most about generational
| wealth and the long-term mindset. There are tons of ways to
| establish backups for family members (multi signature
| wallets, time locked wallets.)
| helen___keller wrote:
| > If you didn't trust anyone with the keys to it while you
| were alive, why should anyone have it?
|
| Wills and inheritance have been a part of human society since
| the beginning of civilization, I think it's more likely we
| will need to find a way to make new technology adapt to
| society and not the other way around
| carlob wrote:
| Yeah, but inheritance law has changed a lot over the
| centuries: before the French revolution only the first
| child (possibly son, I don't recall right now) could
| inherit, then the revolutionary government made a big deal
| of splitting properties equally among siblings in order to
| break up large estates. After WWII most Western countries
| had very punishing inheritance taxes, and that's been
| dialed back in the 70s. Some economists (Piketty and co)
| make a big deal of bringing back high inheritance taxes and
| using them to finance a universal basic capital to be
| disbursed at a young age.
|
| In a sense, due to the deflationary nature of most crypto,
| dying without telling anyone what the key to your wallet
| is, is equivalent to redistributing all your funds to
| everyone in a way that is proportional to the amount
| everybody already owns. So it's kinda regressive, which
| seems to align well with the current crypto political
| climate...
| slyrus wrote:
| Then again maybe this addresses the inheritance tax issue.
| Instead of debating how much money goes to heirs vs the
| state, folks net worth could just "evaporate" on death,
| thereby slightly (presumably) reducing the supply of
| whatever currency was held at the time of death.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| > What's wrong, if your wealth distilled to the limits of
| abstraction dies with you?
|
| What do you mean, what's wrong? Everything is wrong.
|
| If I have children, I absolutely want them to inherit
| everything I own when I die. I want them to use it all to
| reach even further than I have and be more successful and
| richer than I was. This is how wealth is built across
| generations.
|
| I don't want my money to be forever lost in the unimaginably
| large cryptographic search space. I certainly don't want my
| money to go to anyone other than my children, especially the
| government.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Why don't you give them your stuff now?
| wbobeirne wrote:
| Taxes.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| I don't have children yet.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Many do but even then you have to drip feed it extremely
| slowly.
| gbasin wrote:
| You need social key recovery or multi-sig with other trusted
| parties (lawyers, business partners, etc)
| vvpan wrote:
| Yeah only reasonable UX options. Saw somebody praise the
| wonders of seed phrase wallets on Twitter and could not
| believe my eyes.
| louloulou wrote:
| Use multisig.
|
| Just to add to this, we haven't even scratched the surface of
| what's possible with shared/collaborative custody and
| timelocks.
| dangerface wrote:
| TLDR, spent all the money not caring where it came from now that
| she knows she still doesn't care about anyone but herself. She
| has three houses with scammed money no interest in selling them
| and returning the money.
| webkike wrote:
| What are you talking about it? She returned nearly all of it
| languagehacker wrote:
| There's a great podcast about Cotten called Exit Scam. I'm not
| entirely convinced that Robertson is an unwitting party to this.
| My guess is that the author did what she could to endear herself
| to Robertson to gain exclusivity on certain aspects of the story,
| but it comes off as more of an apology than it probably needs to
| be.
| Victerius wrote:
| This is only tangentially related to the headline, but do you
| think divorce courts in the future will grant divorcing spouses
| half of their partner's cryptocurrency holdings? Certainly, if
| someone were to transfer the bulk of their investments into
| crypto to avoid sharing, that's an evasion mechanism the courts
| would be interested in countering.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| This will be very interesting (but likely not). People have
| tried to hide assets from tax authorities, spouses, creditors,
| etc for thousands of years.
|
| I'm a little surprised (or not) at the naivete of the
| cryptocurrency community "It's digital" "It's anonymous" "It
| can't be seized or controlled by the government". Sure, as
| though these extremely experienced professionals and very
| powerful institutions are going to read a tweet from one of the
| crypto maxis and just throw their hands up and say "It's on the
| internet, I guess there's nothing we can do about it".
|
| These groups are very, very good at what they do. They've seen
| it all and even if it's XMR (or whatever) with the proper
| motivation they will find it (and you). Very, very few people
| and organizations have the full skill set required to evade
| these authorities.
| dogman144 wrote:
| Fwiw, the FBI couldn't recover the XMR it paid as part of
| entrapping a Navy nuke officer who was leaking sub secrets.
| Source is the indictment.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Even before crypto "if you're good you're good". People
| have always gotten away with these things. It's just
| usually because they either didn't make a mistake (very
| rare) or the authorities didn't care enough (very common).
| yanmaani wrote:
| Yes, but new technology makes it easier. Think of all the
| logistics associated with burying $10,000 in a hole in
| the ground and the skills you need to do it properly, and
| compare to the relative ease of acquiring and stashing
| $10,000 in cryptocurrency.
| pseudolus wrote:
| The New York Times just ran a story about this very issue -
| "Divorcing Couples Fight Over the Kids, the House and Now the
| Crypto". [0].
|
| [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/13/technology/divorce-
| bitcoi...
| adrianmsmith wrote:
| This is already the case. I mean you can't hide your cash by
| buying houses or yachts or shares in a company. So crypto is no
| different - it's an asset owned by you.
|
| If the courts don't know about the crypto that's another thing,
| but that's just the same as moving your money into an offshore
| account and not telling anyone. It's physically possible, but
| isn't legal as a way to get out of paying what you owe.
| astura wrote:
| Cryptocurrencies are just an asset, they are divided up like
| any other asset in a divorce.
| amelius wrote:
| I didn't read the whole story, but did he just lose the keys that
| gave him access to his property? How is that a "facade"?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Quadriga was doing more than just shitty key handling.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadriga_Fintech_Solutions
| sva_ wrote:
| > According to Jennifer Robertson, Cotten's widow, he died on
| 9 December 2018 while travelling in India.
|
| > Cotten's will was signed 27 November 2018, twelve days
| before he allegedly died. It left Robertson the entire
| C$9.6-million estate and named her as the trustee.
|
| Yeah, that seems slightly fishy.
|
| > A C$100,000 trust fund will provide lifelong care for
| Cotten's two chihuahuas in case of Robertson's death.
|
| That's heart-warming.
| conductr wrote:
| > Yeah, that seems slightly fishy.
|
| Updating your will before a big trip to the other side of
| the world just seems responsible. No idea what he was doing
| in India, or what part he was visiting, but it could
| certainly be considered dangerous and sounds like a smart
| trigger/opportunity to update your estate docs. Everything
| else this guy was involved with might seem fishy, but this
| does not
| thebean11 wrote:
| He supposedly died of Crohn's disease though. I can't
| imagine anyone traveling across the world to India of all
| places in the throes of a Crohn's flareup..
| pcthrowaway wrote:
| Presumably the flareup occurred in India, and was
| triggered by the change in diet (see "Delhi belly")
| muglug wrote:
| >> Cotten's will was signed 27 November 2018, twelve days
| before he allegedly died
|
| > Yeah, that seems slightly fishy.
|
| Updating your will right after a major life event (getting
| married) isn't particularly strange.
| nkrisc wrote:
| The story describes what else he was doing and why it was a
| facade.
| reso wrote:
| Keys didn't have anything to do with it, he stole user funds.
|
| Users deposited cash and crypto assets with the exchange in
| order to trade. Gerald sold some of the users' crypto to buy
| nice things for himself. This was theft. When the price of
| bitcoin went up, the dollar value of the crypto he owed to
| users went up, and he could no longer cover it. He may have
| only stolen $10 million or so, but he ended up owing $100s of
| millions.
| ZetaZero wrote:
| He died, and the widow didnt have the keys.
| joshuaheard wrote:
| I have an envelope in a fire safe in my house that says, "Open on
| Death". In it is a list of all my accounts and passwords. My
| computer password, my phone password, everything. I use a
| password manager, so it's an easy thing to print the list of
| passwords. If I were to die, anyone could pick up that envelope
| and have the literal keys to my kingdom.
|
| It also contains all my estate documents, like a will and other
| things. I have emailed my family and told them the location of
| the safe. The fire safe also contains original paper documents
| like deeds and birth certificates.
| ElectronShak wrote:
| eh..this is too much info to reveal online...how bout say, a
| VPS (with your preferred cloud service provider), which if not
| logged into in say 40 days, sends an SMS or Email to your Wife
| or Next of Kin with your secrets, pins, passwords and locations
| to anything physical.
| throw123123123 wrote:
| I would not say this online, my man.
| giarc wrote:
| >I use a password manager, so it's an easy thing to print the
| list of passwords.
|
| Why not just provide the password for your manager? Isn't that
| the whole point?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Or if your house was burgled, and someone took that envelope
| before you died, you'd be in a world of hurt. Especially now
| that anyone that reads HN knows your secret. The amount of
| details some people post online just boggles me.
| anonporridge wrote:
| Seems like there should be a market for N of M key encrypted
| post-death documents.
|
| e.g. have a 3 of 5 key that can decrypt this document with
| all of your personal secrets. 1 key for yourself, 2 with
| loosely connected family members, and 2 with different
| attorneys that have legal obligations to only use the key on
| your verified death and as specified by your cleartext will.
|
| This kind of scheme would be highly resistant to failure,
| since if any one key gets lost, you can discard and
| regenerate the ciphertext with new keys, and possibly change
| the secret information (e.g. passwords) if you're worried
| about future compromise. It's also highly resistant to
| collusion since it would require a malicious family member or
| attorney to collude with at two other parties against your
| will in order to compromise your secrets, all while not
| knowing exactly of what value those secrets are.
| notreallyserio wrote:
| FWIW fire safes only protect their contents for a short period
| of time (IIRC typically under a few hours). You may want to
| make a backup and store it in a bank vault or similar.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| You're saying this online with an username that appears to be
| your real name; this is a real risky way to handle your entire
| financial / technical set-up.
| luciusdomitius wrote:
| I am really curios - how does an exchange never materialise any
| trades and people don't notice? Also, as a fellow Crohnie - how
| do you "suddenly" die of Crohn's?
| reso wrote:
| The trades did clear on the exchange, and withdrawals were
| forthcoming until December 2018 when Gerlad disappeared. Gerald
| didn't steal all the crypto, he just stole some of it, but
| because he stole crypto instead of cash, when the price spiked,
| his debts increased much faster than he could pay them.
| giantg2 wrote:
| giantg2
|
| Has been marked safe from...
|
| Rich people problems.
|
| Why is this a story?
| samhw wrote:
| Please go back to Reddit with your semi-literate blurtings -
| we're trying to have an interesting conversation here
| giantg2 wrote:
| And my question is why is this a story? How is this
| interesting?
|
| It's seems the problem in the article doesn't apply to most
| people, even in this community. Nor is it new.
| knorker wrote:
| Very interesting article. This kind of thorough investigation
| really shows how math was never the missing component in monetary
| policy and economic exchange.
|
| The idea that we could replace Ernst & Young (for example) in
| this saga with math is pretty clearly wrong, since they were
| needed even though this already was cryptocurrency.
|
| So if you replace banks, courts, auditors, and all this "old
| money" with math, but you still need the banks, courts, auditors,
| and all the "old money" companies, what was the point?
| eimrine wrote:
| Very long (close to unreadable) story about how I have lost few
| hundred bux on QuadrigaCX
| pseudolus wrote:
| It's an excerpt from the book "Bitcoin Widow: Love, Betrayal
| and the Missing Millions" by Jennifer Robertson with Stephen
| Kimber [0]. The CBC ran a story that provides an overview of
| the whole debacle [1].
|
| [0] https://www.amazon.com/Bitcoin-Widow-Betrayal-Missing-
| Millio...
|
| [1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/quadriga-widow-
| je...
| nathias wrote:
| the funds are sifu
| ngc248 wrote:
| Funds are SAFU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE
| nativeit wrote:
| For the last seven years, I've run a tiny one-man I.T.
| consultancy with barely a dozen consistent clients--they're all
| great clients, but I am in no way the pinnacle of dynamism--and
| even I have a "hit by a bus" insurance where I assigned a friend
| and local I.T. professional with the responsibility and
| capability to take over if anything happens to me. He would have
| access to my I.T. documentation platform, password manager, and
| has met each of my clients' principal contacts. To think someone
| could run a financial institution in this way with anything less
| than bad intentions is laughable.
| JimWestergren wrote:
| It was not clear in the article. Is there cold wallets that
| belonged to Quadriga with a lot of value with lost passwords?
| PavleMiha wrote:
| The article seems to state there _wasn 't_ a lot of value in
| the cold wallets.
| JimWestergren wrote:
| Yes: "Ernst and Young had managed to identify six Quadriga
| cold wallets so far but had found almost nothing inside any
| of them."
|
| But could it be possible that there exist other unknown cold
| wallets with a lot of value with lost passwords?
| bredren wrote:
| If this condensed version of the Harper Collins Canada book is
| genuinely intended to create sympathy for this person, it fails.
| [deleted]
| GamerUncle wrote:
| >The walrus defending people that seem to be quite obviously
| criminal Colour me surprised This is a hit piece on crypto
| written with the facade of trying to defend a "widow"
| chasing wrote:
| Summary: "I knew the money was stolen, and all I wanted to do was
| press 'reset' and keep all of it. But they wouldn't let me. I
| didn't like giving the money back, but I did learn a valuable
| lesson about how I enjoyed being rich."
| [deleted]
| keithalewis wrote:
| There is no "i" in denial.
| 3vidence wrote:
| "i" not in "denial" -> False.
| fknorangesite wrote:
| I heard "gullible" isn't in the dictionary, either.
| [deleted]
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