Live data from Hacker News

Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

businessinsider.com

131–140 of 345 posts

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#131
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a mod for r/CrohnsDisease, it really sucks that this is how most people are first hearing about the disease. Those with IBD already have a difficult time with people not believing they’re sick or that symptoms aren’t that bad since they’re not visible. Now Crohn’s will be associated with this fool using it as an excuse to steal a bunch of money... such a huge disappointment.

For rare diseases there is no such thing as bad publicity. This might even lead to someone with IBD being curious enough to get checked out.

It's not that rare, especially when viewed as a subtype of overall IBD. All in all Autoimmune diseases affect between 20 and 50 million people in the US alone

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#132
post #48

My take on this is that they probably were insolvent for a long time already due to previous hacks/theft. The CEO just decided to lie about the supposedly 137M in funds 'safely' stored on his laptop. This is also what happened at MtGox, except that at MtGox they 'lost' wel over a million BTC. Edit: relevant listening: https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/9/

And this is the problem. These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control. When we find out, it is always too late. Every "cryptocurrency bank" is a potential Enron. I fear both the involvement of Central Banks and at the same time the lack of it. If EY (or anyone else serious about this) 'follows the money' then that would be a very interesting report to rea…

> These guys are not regulated. There is no transparency. There are no external auditors. There is no control.

But that's a feature, not a bug, at least according to the crypto people. But, so far, all they have managed to do is rediscover lessons about the need for regulation, oversight and accountability that the financial industry has learnt decades or even centuries ago.

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#133
post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can still commit fraud and die of Crohn's Disease. I'd still call this a conspiracy theory (I'll also say that "conspiracy theory" doesn't mean untrue, though we tend to use it as a substitute for "crack pot"). But to quote Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." I do agree with this part: > It's clear there's a massive fraud But that doesn't mean he's alive or that there was a coverup in his…

Definitely still a conspiracy theory. But I think that all the circumstances bring it out if range of "crackpot". A will being created right before the trip also adds to the suspicions.

Wasn’t the trip his honeymoon? Will creation at marriage is not suspicious

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s important to note that it’s not just splitting up your own transactions, it’s that it’s actually other people’s coins that end up in your destination wallets. As such, it becomes very difficult to trace: techniques for doing this are similar to large scale deanonimization of Tor traffic, and involve large scale pattern analysis.

> It’s important to note that it’s not just splitting up your own transactions, it’s that it’s actually other people’s coins that end up in your destination wallets. As such, it becomes very difficult to trace It was my basically uninformed impression that the bitcoin blockchain consists of a series of transaction records that look like this: - Address xxxxx1x sends 10 bitcoins to address xxxxx2x; address xxxxx7x min…

Not accurate. You can trace the life of a particular 'coin' value -- which is generated in the coinbase reward in a block and spent later on in a UTXO (unclaimed transaction output). We like to pretend that bitcoin is fungible, but it strictly is not; You can trace the life of every 50, 25 and now 12.5 Bitcoin from birth to currently unspent. They all get mixed, so it can be difficult.

Also, what you are describing is the so called 'account' model -- used by Ethereum, EOS, etc. Bitcoin is a 'utxo' model, which allows specific inputs/outputs to be traced.

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point is even if someone has your password there are legal routes where you can go recover your money. The bank will then do that. The blockchain is distributed. Who do you go complain to?

That's the whole point of the blockchain. Your money is sovereign. There is nobody to call when it gets stolen, but this also means that no government or bank or agency can take your money or prevent you from being paid (see Visa/Mastercard vs Wikileaks etc)

There are governments that can knock you over the head and take your wallet right after you unlock it.

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#136
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(The fact that you can divide one bitcoin into 100,000,000 satoshi also suggests that there's no such thing as an individual bitcoin...) Wouldn't it rather say "there is such a thing as a satoshi" ?

No, because my first argument still applies in full to satoshi. There are balances of satoshi, but no individual satoshi.

every satoshi can be traced from birth until unspent. There are most certainly individual satoshi. they live in UTXO's.

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#137
post #71
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> at MtGox they 'lost' wel over a million BTC. The initial report was 850 000 lost BTC which later was brought down to 650 000. Scroll to the end of https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20140320-btc-announce.pdf

Before/after the 850k/650k hack there were numerous other hacks, the total number of stolen BTC is still not clear, new proof of other hacks is still being discovered. Apparently Karpeles also found a 'forgotten' wallet of 200k BTC, which he still seems to own. It's a mess.

No, the found wallet is under the control of the trustee overseeing the bankruptcy of MtGox. We know this for certain because he sold 35,000BTC when BTC was around 10,000USD, ensuring the creditors will get their full investment back.

Doesn't make us whole of course, but it is nice.

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#138
post #3

For some reason this sounds like the plot of a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. CEO of Crypto Company... 1) Takes time off to build orphanage in region noted for fake deaths. 2) Subsequently dies unexpectedly. 3) Is immediately cremated. 4) Wife waits a month before saying "oh by the way he is dead" 5) Wife claims all keys on encrypted laptop 6) World watches as wallets mysteriously empty 7) Experts crack laptop 8)…

> region noted for fake deaths There is a place that is known for this specifically? Where can I read more about this?

Google for "fake death mafia". You can add in the name of the CEO if you like, but for me articles about his "death" are already the top hits

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#139
post #38

I think it might pay off to spread the mugshot of this character far and wide. There is a non zero chance that he's not dead at all.

Yes, to make it easier for vigilante justice to find, and kill someone some unlucky sap who looks like Gerald.

Does this happen frequently?

Re: Experts cracked laptop of crypto CEO who died with $137M, but the money was gone

#140
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are several documentaries on YouTube exploring how easy it is to fake death certificates in, say, Delhi. Search for ‘quacks’

didn't initially get in hits for that search term that were relevant, what am I looking for?

Google for "fake death mafia"
Post reply on HN