[HN Gopher] Silk Road Bitcoins worth $1B transferred after seven...
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Silk Road Bitcoins worth $1B transferred after seven years
Author : bloat
Score : 154 points
Date : 2020-11-04 16:05 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| m1sta_ wrote:
| Election timing?/
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Some speculate that it was a good day to get diluted in the
| news. I'd say they were right.
| [deleted]
| patriksvensson wrote:
| The wallet address is: 1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRytPCq5fGG8Hbhx
|
| More information on the wallet found here:
| https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1HQ3Go3ggs8pFnXuHVHRy...
| Element_ wrote:
| If you had access to this wallet how would you actually convert
| that many bitcoins to hard currency anonymously?
| [deleted]
| unnouinceput wrote:
| Prepare crapload of wallets on different exchanges for monero
| cryptocurrency. Prepare same amount of crapload of wallets for
| bitcoin as well. Split this new wallet into those bitcoins
| wallets. Use them to exchange to monero on your most convenient
| exchanges - preferably outside US so coindesk/Coinbase is out
| of question here. Use monero mules to mix them with other
| cryptocurrencies - this is the point where you lose your
| FBI/NSA tail. Get them out on crapload of hard currency bank
| around the world. By the time somebody will finish tracking to
| a single person a century would've passed and you're dead. End
| of game.
| buryat wrote:
| every exchange is going to ask verification if you want to
| deal with more than $1k
| lawn wrote:
| There are a bunch of shady exchanges that don't.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Can you name any? I've seen this claim repeatedly but
| never been able to find one myself.
| hndamien wrote:
| Bisq
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| The ones secretly controlled by the FBI.
| gruez wrote:
| >so coindesk/Coinbase is out of question here
|
| coindesk is a blog, not an exchange.
| agilob wrote:
| Yes, he said it's out of question :D
| bawolff wrote:
| Lol, this is one of the funniest "technically the truth"
| posts i've seen in a while.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| One needs to track only one such conversions, and investigate
| each involved party.
|
| There is a limit here, because there are not that many
| cryptocurrency transactions. So each transaction chain must
| be small, or the number of chains must be small. Anyway, the
| restrictions on international investigations are probably a
| much larger issue than any splitting and washing that one can
| effectively do.
| bowmessage wrote:
| > monero
| sp332 wrote:
| Private auction. You wouldn't be anonymous to your broker, but
| no one else needs to know who you are.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Sucks for the buyer to get such tainted coins!
| kobalsky wrote:
| someone who buys millions in crypto in a private auction at
| a fraction of its price knows what they are getting
| nmlnn wrote:
| They went from being worth $350K to $1B. What currency could
| you possibly convert them to that is harder than that?
| ojnabieoot wrote:
| If the commodity in question was anything other than Bitcoin
| nobody would be saying something like that with a straight
| face. I think "Beanie Baby" is too strong a term for Bitcoin
| since they are much more "inherently" valuable ($5 of Bitcoin
| is much more useful than a $5 stuffed animal). Bitcoin will
| very likely never be worthless.
|
| But a large chunk of Bitcoin's 2020 wealth comes from it
| being a speculative instrument - as your comment indicates! I
| hope this dies down eventually but obviously Bitcoin is
| objectively high-risk. We are still in the first year of a
| serious recession, and significant political turbulence, and
| a pandemic. It's not irrational to put that money into
| dollars / euros / etc.
| nmlnn wrote:
| Speculation about the (unknowable) future is how we
| allocate all resources in the present. A lot of people on
| HN seem to lump the "buy because price is rising"
| speculators in with the "buy because Bitcoin will become
| the foundation of the financial internet" speculators.
|
| Investors who understand Bitcoin's potential do it an
| indispensable service. They inform the public (through
| price information) of that which most of the public is
| unable or unwilling to figure out on their own: that
| Bitcoin has tremendous potential to change the world and
| warrants serious attention, both currently for certain
| people as a hideable, unconfiscateable, transportable, no-
| third-party-risk store of wealth and in the future for
| everyone as a transactional currency (and as the
| cornerstone of the financial internet).
| jfrunyon wrote:
| What can you buy with your Bitcoins? Can you pay your
| rent with them? Can you pay your electric bill, or
| internet? Can you buy gas? Can you buy groceries?
| gbear605 wrote:
| I don't own any Bitcoins and I never have, but if I did,
| I could at least buy some goods with them. Not most of
| those, but I have in fact seen real life stores that
| accept Bitcoin as currency.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| I have as well, but not many. Certainly not enough to
| call it a "hard currency" (of which the entire point is
| that it's widely, almost universally, accepted).
| hndamien wrote:
| You can pay rent with it if your landlord accepts it. I'm
| a landlord and accept it.
| toyg wrote:
| Are you declaring that in your taxes? And tax authorities
| are cool with it? What exchange rate do you apply, giving
| the volatility? In which country?
| nmlnn wrote:
| Sigh.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| I'll take that as a no. So how is it "hard currency" if
| you can't buy the things you want with it?
| ponker wrote:
| Buy a container load of heroin, place it with the local
| kingpin.
| sp332 wrote:
| If you're going for the full amount at once, it doesn't even
| require an on-network transaction. Just send a thumb drive
| with the wallet on it.
| aserafini wrote:
| But then the recipient doesn't know if the original owner
| has made a copy of the key.
| nerdwaller wrote:
| There can be options, the OpenDime[0] is one that's
| intriguing. The owner seeds the entropy before it can be
| used and the only way to get the private key is to
| physically (and visibly) alter it.
|
| [0] https://opendime.com/
| jfrunyon wrote:
| I wonder how difficult it would be to extract the key
| from the device. Probably not very.
|
| I also like how they say "no trust", but in reality, you
| have to trust them (and their entire supply chain).
|
| Edit: from their FAQ: "Can I re-seal after breaking the
| seal? No. A permanent change is made inside the flash
| memory of the processor." Oof. Big oof.
| dyingkneepad wrote:
| That won't matter anymore after they transfer it to a
| wallet they control, like they did today. Will it?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| That requires a lot of trust. What if the sender or
| recipient gets compromised? Gonna be a murdery dispute to
| save $12.
| neom wrote:
| Very very very very very slowly using a series of off-shore
| bank accounts.
| nijave wrote:
| Money laundering which people are describing various ways of
| doing
| Devils-Avocado wrote:
| Negotiate with the Russian Government to cash out in return for
| anonymity, citizenship and them taking an 80% commission.
| zdkl wrote:
| What could possibly go wrong trying to negotiate with <any
| country>'s intelligence/ops departement while being a very
| disappearable private person!
| root_axis wrote:
| Trade it for a cryptocurrency with stronger anonymity
| properties and then slowly launder that through a self-owned
| digital service that ostensibly accepts cryptocurrency payments
| or donations.
| Darvon wrote:
| bisq
| kache_ wrote:
| monero
| sbierwagen wrote:
| You couldn't. An easy guess is that every bitcoin mixer is
| compromised. You could maybe withdraw $100 at a time from
| bitcoin ATMs, until KYC/AML forces ATM operators to maintain a
| coin/address blacklist.
| gmadsen wrote:
| exchanging to Monaro solves this problem.
| gruez wrote:
| >An easy guess is that every bitcoin mixer is compromised
|
| there are trustless mixer networks[1]. The bigger problem is
| that you're going to run out of liquidity. You preferably
| want to exchange 1B of "dirty" bitcoin for 1B of "clean"
| bitcoin, not tumble the 1B of bitcoin and get back the same
| dirty coins.
|
| [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/CoinJoin
| square90 wrote:
| With $1B you could start your own mixers and hire people to
| run them. Or even start your own exchange.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > Simply guessing the private key of a bitcoin wallet is
| functionally impossible
|
| Well, a private key is only as good as your (P)RNG.
| Consultant32452 wrote:
| For $1 Billion I can generate a LOT of random numbers.
| gruez wrote:
| but nowhere near 2^160[1] random numbers.
|
| [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction#Pay-to-PubkeyHash
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| You can't win if you don't play. Could get it right on the
| first go!
| xtracto wrote:
| Yeah, I also have https://privatekeys.pw/bitcoin/random.
| as my homepage. Every day I reload it a couple of
| times... it's like playing a [very shitty] lottery every
| day.
| bottled_poe wrote:
| Put it this way: you could spend $1B on energy costs
| testing random numbers and still have practically 0%
| chance of hitting the right number.
| twinkletwinkle_ wrote:
| Better off just playing Powerball. Order of 1 in 10 __9
| stOneskull wrote:
| how sweet that would be
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Pales in comparison to money laundering with US real estate.
|
| https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/03/how-kle...
| forgotmypw17 wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this article.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Real estate is designed for people to live in. Money laundering
| through real estate is ancillary -- a bug -- and attempts are
| made to stop it. Regularly. Up to and including Vancouver
| instituting a 15% tax on foreign buyers and New Zealand banning
| non-residents from buying real estate.
|
| Cryptocurrency is designed specifically, by virtue of its
| decentralized and trustless nature, to facilitate money
| laundering. It was a design goal. This is what it's _for_. That
| and of course, collecting the proceeds of ransomware. Another
| way of describing 'money laundering' is transferring value,
| without the permission of a centralized government authority,
| with the intent to conceal the source of funds (hey it's your
| money right?).
|
| That it has yet to achieve the same scale is not relevant.
|
| All sorts of illegal activities aren't done at scale, that
| doesn't mean they shouldn't be policed. Otherwise you'll be
| pointing to the small scale right up until the moment it's not
| small anymore, and then it's too late.
| baybal2 wrote:
| _> Cryptocurrency is designed specifically, by virtue of its
| decentralized and trustless nature, to facilitate money
| laundering. It was a design goal._
|
| If it was its designed goal, it would've also included
| provisions to provide proofs anonymously, and reduce physical
| traceability.
|
| I very much see some cryptocurrencies tried, and some are
| moderately successful with it, but none have progressed much
| on the former other than by using crypto signing by some
| centralised, or semi-decentralised entity which processes the
| ledger, or does proof of work. So, none of the popular
| cryptocurrencies have achieved a true "non-chain" way of
| working, which does not rely on a continuous record of the
| global state of the ledger.
|
| The cryptographic trust in such mechanism would be much less
| than in a non-anonymous ledger, where the state of all
| wallets is recorded for everybody to see, and check for signs
| of something weird.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| [laughs in Monero]
| javert wrote:
| > Cryptocurrency is designed specifically, by virtue of its
| decentralized and trustless nature, to facilitate money
| laundering. It was a design goal. This is what it's for. That
| and of course, collecting the proceeds of ransomware.
|
| You probably have some good points to make, but saying
| something like this is just willfully _not_ engaging in
| communication with the other side of the argument. That is an
| egregious strawman which obscures whatever valid points you
| actually have.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| > Cryptocurrency is designed specifically, by virtue of its
| decentralized and trustless nature, to facilitate money
| laundering. It was a design goal. ... with the intent to
| conceal the source of funds
|
| That is simply false. Virtually every cryptocurrency is 100%
| traceable.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Not, obviously, Monero and Zcash. Pseudonymity is often
| sufficient, money laundering doesn't require anonymity.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| Pseudonymity is almost never sufficient, as Ross Ulbricht
| proves.
|
| Yes, there are a few cryptocurrencies for whom
| untraceability is a design goal. Obviously this does not
| include Bitcoin (which is the subject of this thread),
| and in general it doesn't include the vast majority of
| cryptocurrencies.
| selectodude wrote:
| He got nicked for selling drugs, not using Bitcoin. The
| dealers on the site probably didn't face the same
| consequences.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| He got nicked because he was pseudonymous, not anonymous.
| It's a lot easier to track one guy named DPR than
| hundreds of guys named random things.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Tumblers seemed to work just fine.
|
| One single counter-example of someone who failed to take
| necessary precautions when committing a crime doesn't
| mean the tens of thousands of people you never heard of
| haven't been very successful.
| jfrunyon wrote:
| Is that the same as a mixer? If so: sure, they work just
| fine, except that you've introduced a SPOF who can tell
| everyone who you are/where it came from/where it went,
| etc. It's also tough to call something that arose long
| after BTC itself a "design goal" of BTC.
|
| Maintaining proper opsec for any length of time is
| extremely difficult, nigh impossible. Almost everyone
| will fail at some point. With pseudonymity, a single
| failure ever means everything is lost. With anonymity,
| only that single failure is lost.
| vmception wrote:
| Despite you being incorrect, its not even worth debating
| because the common denominator is that it looks like the
| state should just quit using public resources on trying to
| whitelist transactions since that seems to be the real waste,
| and find a new tool to curb whatever activity they were
| actually trying to stop.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Wrong in what way? I made three fairly factual statements.
|
| 1. Houses are meant for you to live in. Not super
| contentious I wager.
|
| 2. Trustless and decentralized means you can transfer value
| without the permission of a centralized authority. I
| believe that's frequently touted.
|
| 3. Money laundering is transferring money without the
| permission of a centralized authority with the intent to
| conceal the original source of funds.
| vmception wrote:
| > [Money Laundering] is what [cryptocurrency's] for. That
| and of course, collecting the proceeds of ransomware.
|
| That's the wrong part, even if it was just hyperbole for
| literary effect then you are conflating legal terms you
| don't really understand then. Money laundering is a legal
| term that requires an illicit origin, not merely
| circumventing the permission of a centralized authority.
| You were correct that it is designed to ignore the
| concept of centralized authorities, the rest was either a
| completely incorrect extrapolation of that, or hyperbole
| that did not give the effect you thought it did as it
| just undermines your point and the strength of your
| argument.
| arcticbull wrote:
| Depends, I maintain that Paul Le Roux is the most likely
| Satoshi, and of course -- if true -- that would be why
| Paul Le Roux created it. [1]
|
| > Money laundering is a legal term that requires an
| illicit origin.
|
| I'm not 100% sure if it requires both an illicit source
| and intent to conceal or not. It might, but it sounds
| like we both have half the definition.
|
| For instance, structuring -- breaking apart large
| transactions into smaller ones to avoid a currency
| transaction report -- is illegal regardless of whether
| the source of funds is criminal or not.
|
| [1] https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-
| this-inte...
| vmception wrote:
| > Depends, I maintain that Paul Le Roux is the most
| likely Satoshi, and of course -- if true -- that would be
| why Paul Le Roux created it. [1]
|
| Okay. And that's partially why I'm open to the idea of
| the government ceasing to use public resources on
| whitelisting all transactions, instead of debating you
| over whether something is or isn't money laundering.
|
| Structuring is a different crime than money laundering,
| which is actually another exhibit on why I want the
| government to cease using bothering using public money
| and resources on whitelisting all transactions. I read
| enough court cases on Google Scholar about paranoid
| people doing legal things convicted for _only_
| structuring on Google Scholar to make this opinion, and
| this was before HSBC got a slap on the wrist for
| literally accepting cash deposits from the literal cartel
| and getting caught, undermining the whole point of
| whitelisting transactions to begin with.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| >"For instance, structuring -- breaking apart large
| transactions into smaller ones to avoid a currency
| transaction report -- is illegal regardless of whether
| the source of funds is criminal or not."//
|
| I assume you mean according to USC (ie USA law), could
| you cite which section please?
| vmception wrote:
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5324
|
| https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-
| manual...
|
| and pretty much trying to avoid any monetary reporting
| threshold is a criminal charge whether you intended to or
| not.
|
| so this one is funny because almost every fairly poor
| person I know, the kind of people that would rarely have
| over $10,000 at once ever, are the exact people that
| would harbor some belief about doing X, Y and Z to "avoid
| transferring over $10,000"
|
| believe it or not, jail, right away.
| jcranmer wrote:
| 31 USC SS 5324 seems to be the main one:
|
| https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/31/5324
| ballenf wrote:
| I don't think 3 provides a very robust definition.
| Otherwise cash, if introduced today, would meet the
| definition way better than Bitcoin.
|
| Or maybe that's intentional.
| arcticbull wrote:
| I suspect, like someone attempting to introduce
| cigarettes as a new product into today's market, that's
| quite intentional.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Cash does work pretty well for money laundering, except
| that it's bulky. The $1 billion mentioned in this article
| would weigh 10,000 kilos and would require a semitrailer
| to move. And the big problem is that now you have to do
| something with it. You can't buy anything worth more than
| $10k with it, without the government getting paperwork on
| it, so you're kind of stuck with it.
| freeone3000 wrote:
| (3) is a sufficient component in the US to be money
| laundering, so it's a sufficient working definition. cash
| is tracked fairly extensively, as anyone who's
| transferred large sums can attest to.
| eli wrote:
| I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here.
| xvector wrote:
| The point is that the media gets up in arms about criminal
| activity and money laundering with cryptocurrency but rarely
| ever reports crimes of a much greater magnitude made by
| "legitimate" institutions like banks.
|
| Someone money launders with crypto and it's on the front
| page. A bank launders hundreds of times more and it's just
| another day. Perhaps you could say it's because of the
| novelty of crypto, but I suspect the motives run deeper -
| crypto is a threat to modern financial institutions and
| turning public interest against crypto is in the best
| interests of the establishment.
| eli wrote:
| "The media" didn't vote this article to the front page of
| HN.
| xvector wrote:
| HN is not immune to propaganda.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Also, HN inexplicably hates Bitcoin. Also why this comment
| will be removed.
| labster wrote:
| If you'd like me to explain why I hate Bitcoin, look no
| further than the Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index[0],
| which currently has Bitcoin using the same energy
| consumption as the nation of Chile. It provides less
| utility than a credit card, all while using 779092 times
| the energy needed per transaction.
|
| I don't think it's inexplicable that we hate an ongoing
| environmental disaster.
|
| [0]: https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
| javert wrote:
| Saying bitcoin provides less utility than a credit card
| is missing the point the bitcoin people are making.
|
| You can still hold that bitcoin is bad, but that
| particular argument is not viable and comes from ignoring
| what the other side is saying.
| ahallock wrote:
| You're not wrong. HN seems heavily biased against
| anything crypto. With Paypal, Square, MicroStrategy, and
| even JPMorgan adpoting/investing in Bitcoin, I think it's
| becoming legitimate.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| OK, but the real economy is about 10,000,000x larger than
| the crypto economy.
|
| The point is that a huge fraction of the crypto economy is
| outright extortion or fraud, not that it's the source of
| all evil in the world.
| javert wrote:
| > a huge fraction of the crypto economy is outright
| extortion or fraud
|
| I'm not sure that's true. Do you have a citation?
|
| What _is_ clear is that a huge portion of the crypto
| economy is based around cryptocurrencies (particularly
| bitcoin) being financial assets.
| xapata wrote:
| > citation
|
| While it's good to check sources, keep in mind that
| original research is also valid.
|
| After all, you made a similarly uncited assertion.
| javert wrote:
| I don't think there is any point to saying something like
| that.
| xapata wrote:
| Because you don't think I'll change anyone's behavior or
| opinion? I'm holding out hope.
| crtasm wrote:
| I don't know what media you read but I see stories in The
| Guardian about banks laundering money when it comes to
| light.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Money laundering in traditional finance is a problem of
| scale: there's far too much of it and we don't police it
| well enough. The problem is tractable given enough
| enforcement tools and resources. Bitcoin's different - it
| has little AML control so it's super easy to write money
| laundering tools. Monero is even worse. Money laundering is
| built into the protocol, to the point where being able to
| determine the chain-of-custody over some funds is
| computationally infeasible. Cryptocurrency is designed to
| increase the scope of money laundering rather than just the
| scale, because it makes money laundering the default.
|
| Think about how difficult it was to enforce copyright law
| in 1970 versus 2010. In the former, copyright enforcement
| was a matter of having enough lawyers to sue enough
| enterprises. In 2010, everyone has a commercial-scale
| copyright infringement device in their pocket. You
| practically can't enforce the law to the same level purely
| because the targets are too small and numerous and going
| after them is a PR nightmare. This is why the music
| industry fought against consumer-grade recording technology
| for so long (and lost). Regulating large businesses is a
| fundamentally more tractable form of law enforcement than
| individuals.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| > They were clearly biding their time and waiting for a busy news
| day in order to do this without it getting too much attention.
|
| Nooooo, they were Biden their time! Good choice of day though.
| Who would have expected this level of chaos.
| mrlala wrote:
| >Who would have expected this level of chaos.
|
| Anyone who has been breathing for the past four years..
| 1996 wrote:
| Some people are richer than you. New at 11.
| ur-whale wrote:
| txid or it didn't happen
|
| [EDIT1]: Looks like this one:
|
| https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/transaction/3f036ff88bb851b57...
|
| [EDIT2]: and since these coins existed pre BCH fork, it's worth
| looking at the BCH coins ... TL;DR: they have moved as well:
| https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/transaction/00082718d96f...
| Scoundreller wrote:
| But but but, what about the Bitcoin Gold???
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Given that these were worth $350k at the time 8+ years ago, my
| guess is on a vendor that got out of prison and was carefully
| planning for a day to move it around.
| bromonkey wrote:
| Hard to get out of jail when you're serving a double life
| sentence...
| trhway wrote:
| may be the transfer of that $1B is exactly the way out of
| jail. Giving that the fed agents in the case so easily
| succumbed to the sub-$1M temptation, one can only imagine
| what $1B can buy you there.
| eternalban wrote:
| I missed this. I can not believe ths kid got 2 life sentences
| + 40 and no appeal. It's like something out of a 19th century
| novel
|
| There is a petition for Ross:
|
| https://www.change.org/p/clemency-for-ross-ulbricht-
| condemne...
| asdfasgasdgasdg wrote:
| Let's not infantalize him. Twenty six years old is not a
| "kid." He was a grown ass man who attempted to have someone
| killed. That being said, a double life sentence is extreme,
| considering many actual murderers get out after less than
| twenty years. Our draconian drug punishment escalations are
| not good.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I think you should presume innocent until proven guilty,
| if you're a fan of our court system. And he was not
| convicted of attempting to have anyone killed.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Please stop repeating lies about a man who can't defend
| himself.
|
| Those charges were dropped and there is no reason to
| believe that the state was not lying when they laid them
| on him.
| part1of2 wrote:
| > Those charges were dropped
|
| Dropping charges doesn't mean it's not true, just that
| the prosecutor did not want to pursue the case, in light
| of other prosecution available.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| I didn't realize people were sentenced based off dropped
| charges?
| bawolff wrote:
| Regardless, we don't punish people on the basis of
| dropped charges.
|
| If he wasn't convicted, then we shouldn't talk about the
| punishment he deserves to get for those charges.
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Courts do not. We however can express opinions as we see
| fit.
| hndamien wrote:
| I thought we were presumed innocent until proven guilty?
| Or should I just allege some charges against you?
| Scoundreller wrote:
| The operator didn't stash every Bitcoin that came in. A few
| vendors here or there may have withdrawn their funds. These
| were withdrawn from the main account, but who knows who owns
| it.
| baybal2 wrote:
| _> "Either way, the funds are now on the move, and whoever now
| controls the bitcoins may want to cash them out," Robinson said.
| As for whether it was an insider or a hacker, his guess it's as
| likely either way. "I'd say I'm 50 /50 right now, perhaps leaning
| towards a Silk Roader. They were clearly biding their time and
| waiting for a busy news day in order to do this without it
| getting too much attention."_
|
| Busy news day... which means... today?
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| Yes. The US elections make it a busy news day.
| agotterer wrote:
| Why couldn't this be the government transferring to another
| wallet?
| screaminghawk wrote:
| It can, why would they though?
| shoshino wrote:
| To be certain that they are the only entity that controls the
| coins.
| wmf wrote:
| The US government sold their Silk Road BTC long ago. I don't
| know why they'd hold onto any for this long.
| appleflaxen wrote:
| it can
| lawn wrote:
| The title is a bit misleading as we don't know if the coins have
| changed hands. They probably just transferred them to a new
| address that they also control.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Can just be keyrotation
| gruez wrote:
| but why would you need to rotate a cold wallet (presumably)
| key? Key rotating makes sense for your password or tls keys,
| because they're used on a regular basis on networked
| computers that can possibly be compromised. But if the
| private key is stored on an airgapped computer (or paper
| wallet) there would be no advantage. If anything pulling the
| computer out to do the signing presents more danger because
| there's opportunity for your house to be raided (by police or
| rival criminals) while you're doing the signing.
| Robelius wrote:
| Could you explain what key rotation is? First time I've
| seen this term.
| benburleson wrote:
| In general, just generating a new key to access the
| secure data.
| _jal wrote:
| Very briefly, secrets should have maximum lifetimes. This
| is for multiple reasons - someone could be brute-forcing
| it; algorithms are regularly found to be less secure than
| initially thought; keys leak over time.
|
| Any secret protecting anything you care about should be
| rotated. The schedule is dictated by specifics.
| vmception wrote:
| many people have the encrypted key pair and have been
| trying to brute force access for years.
|
| so either someone succeeded, or it got rotated by simply
| moving the coins to literally any other address. of course,
| both of these outcomes are indistinguishable which is part
| of the beauty of the system, especially if someone was
| actually trying to ride out statute of limitations or
| something else.
|
| they can still obfuscate their destination either way. if
| the source is illicit its money laundering, if the source
| is not illicit its just obfuscation, if done right the
| illicit source is never discovered having been replaced
| with a licit source.
| simias wrote:
| How did the encrypted keys leak?
| vmception wrote:
| I don't know
|
| from this article and other articles I've seen:
|
| > A file that some claimed was an encrypted bitcoin
| wallet containing the keys to the funds has been
| circulated in cryptocurrency communities for the past
| year, and - if it is what it was claimed to be - then a
| combination of brute computing power and good luck could
| have successfully decrypted the wallet.
| robocat wrote:
| > Key rotating makes sense for your password or tls keys,
| because they're used on a regular basis on networked
| computers that can possibly be compromised.
|
| Surely key rotation only makes sense if the time between
| each rotation is much much less than the expected time
| between compromise and theft.
|
| In high value situations, an attacker is highly motivated
| to ensure they steal Bitcoin very quickly after compromise.
| Especially becaus the clock is ticking until the compromise
| is discovered and mitigated.
| whyrusleeping wrote:
| Someone might want to take more precautions generating keys
| for $1 billion vs $1 million. I'm betting this person (or
| persons) generated keys in a more secure manner
| (potentially a sharded key, or using hardware wallets) than
| the original keys, which may have been generated on a non-
| airgapped device.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| Iunno, if I had $1b sitting around, I'd like it to be in
| 1000 different wallets each containing $1m.
|
| With $1b, I'd rather risk losing 10% than having a 10%
| chance of losing all of it.
| gchokov wrote:
| Well, but you don't.
| dang wrote:
| Thanks--we've modified the title above to leave that undecided.
| Scoundreller wrote:
| And now we have to watch the Bitcoin Cash and other forks too.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Arguably (by me) Bitcoin Cash is MUCH closer to "Bitcoin"
| than the current "BTC" chain. Bitcoin Cash coins were moved
| too though. It will be VERY interesting to see if they try
| and use Cash Fusion to effectively mix the coins on the BCH
| chain though.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| What is the significance of the _seven years_ specifically? Is
| there a statute of limitations?
| tyingq wrote:
| Could be a SilkRoad vendor just getting out of prison.
| URSpider94 wrote:
| Just that it's a long time for a billion dollars to sit around.
| dzmien wrote:
| Maybe the private keys were behind an encryption scheme that
| took roughly seven years to be cracked with brute force. I
| can't say I envy the owner(s) of these coins. Maybe a billion
| dollars worth of closely watched bitcoins it is a good
| problem though. Who knows? I certainly don't.
| koreanguy wrote:
| they cant cash out, they had to update into new chain. they got
| nowhere to cash out. every exchange knows this block.
|
| even if they have trillions, they cant cash it out because its so
| large. to many eyes. and bitcoin is not anonymous
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| How would one even "cash out" $1B? The more likely scenario is
| they eat away at it slowly over the next 40 years.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| For coins on the BCH chain he has Cash Fusion. A pretty great
| way to mix the coins.
| bluedevil2k wrote:
| Ulbricht is paying off Trump for clemency. Sounds crazy, but
| anything is believable right now.
| tofuahdude wrote:
| Of all the conspiracy theories this is the most hilarious
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