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

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

#171

Post by Carpetsmoker »

icebraining wrote: post #168
this_user wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Considering 2008, what's the point of those lessons? Might as well save a few tax dollars on "regulators".

The banking crisis happened in large part due to lack of regulation, not because of them.

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

#172

Post by noobermin »

deepspace wrote: post #35

Why is nobody talking about the convicted felon, Omar Dhanani aka Michael Patryn, who is a co-founder and majority shareholder of Quadriga? Dhanani is very much alive, and is known to have been involved in money laundering schemes. If I were an investigator in this case, that is the first door I would go knocking at.

I get the tech around crypto is interesting, but if your whole space is inhabited with such people, isn't it time for you to wonder if something's wrong?

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

#173

Post by tha_nose »

HenryBemis wrote: post #125
LeonM wrote: 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…

The Central Bank isn't regulated, isn't transparent and certainly doesn't have any external auditors either. I don't think you understand how cryptocurrencies, central banks and regulations work. Also, regulations doesn't protect against hacks or theft or shady practices.

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

#174

Post by godzillabrennus »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #54
maxander wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps blockchains’ lasting impact will be as an overused plot device in future period pieces set in the early 21st century.

And making blockchain to SQL Server migration consultants wealthy too.

Not enough working blockchain implementations for this to exist.

I wonder what all the white paper consultants are doing now that their profession is over?

Probably working on a cannabis company.

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

#175

Post by erobbins »

noobermin wrote: post #172
deepspace wrote: post #35

Why is nobody talking about the convicted felon, Omar Dhanani aka Michael Patryn, who is a co-founder and majority shareholder of Quadriga? Dhanani is very much alive, and is known to have been involved in money laundering schemes. If I were an investigator in this case, that is the first door I would go knocking at.

I get the tech around crypto is interesting, but if your whole space is inhabited with such people, isn't it time for you to wonder if something's wrong?

Unregulated financial markets draw crooks like moths to a flame. Forex used to be just as bad.

I wonder if there's anything to be learned from this? Perhaps deregulating markets driven by greed, margin, and leverage is a bad idea? LeT tHe FrEe mArKeT DeciDe?

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

#176

Post by roywiggins »

Scoundreller wrote: post #93
roywiggins wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are actually whole cryptographic schemes people have written to prove you have control over the money you say you do. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7277865

But how do you prove how much you owe? If an exchange can prove it controls 10 BTC, great. But what if it owes 20 people 1 BTC each?

I believe the scheme lets depositors prove that their own coins were included in the liabilities calculation. If some depositors never check, the exchange could steal their funds, but if it was a regular part of using an exchange, it would put a pretty strict limit on how much could be looted before it was noticed.

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

#177

Post by [deleted] »

gamblor956 wrote: post #111
eyezick wrote: post #92

This article is innaccurate. Here is the tracking by Ernst & Young (court-appointed) providing all the public information about these developments. The latest report on 1 March 2019 mentions nothing about a cracked laptop. https://documentcentre.eycan.com/Pages/Main.aspx?SID=1445

There's nothing wrong with the article. The March Report merely says they were able to recover the cold storage wallets and discovered they were empty; it doesn't go into how they got access to those wallets since that isn't relevant to the report. Per the company and prior news reporting, those cold storage wallets discussed in the March Report were only stored on the owner's laptop, which was previously inaccessibl…

[deleted]

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

#178

Post by mirimir »

dwighttk wrote: post #135
glitch003 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They can only do that if they know who you are.

So make sure that they don't!

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

#180

Post by lolc »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #165
lolc wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not true. Say I have a wallet with two Satoshi, and I transfer one each to two different wallets. Then I transfer two Satoshi from those wallets to a new wallet. Which way did each Satoshi take? You can't say!

It looks like it is true in a technical sense; a bitcoin transaction record specifies a prior transaction as its input, rather than specifying a source address. So as a purely formal matter, your example records will look like this in relevant part: T0885: 100 Satoshi from T0002 to address xxxxx0x # 1 wallet, 2 Satoshi T1001: 1 Satoshi from T0885 to address xxxxx1x T1104: 1 Satoshi from T0885 to address xxxxx2x # Eac…

The transaction sequence in your example is not possible. A transaction output can only be used once as an input. To me, the operation would rather look like these three transactions:

    100 Satoshi from A1
        2 Satoshi to A2
        98 Satoshi to Ax

    2 Satoshi from A2
        1 Satoshi to A3
        1 Satoshi to A4

    1 Satoshi from A3
    1 Satoshi from A4
        2 Satoshi to A5
Edit: Sorry I referred to "wallets" in my previous comment. This allows a scenario where the Satoshis are kept in separate transactions all the time. But I'm not interested in those scenarios. I'm talking about scenarios with multiple inputs and outputs. Where you can't say which of the inputs went which way. In this transaction:

    1 Satoshi from A1
    1 Satoshi from A2
        1 Satoshi to A3
        1 Satoshi to A4
You can't tell which Satoshi went where.
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