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In my simple world there must be a way to trace them to their ultimate origins?
Given that blockchain is supposed to be a public ledger, can someone explain why they cannot trace where the coins were transferred to when they were moved out of the cold wallets? In my simple world there must be a way to trace them to their ultimate origins?
Laundry / tumbler services exist to do this at scale.
Given that blockchain is supposed to be a public ledger, can someone explain why they cannot trace where the coins were transferred to when they were moved out of the cold wallets? In my simple world there must be a way to trace them to their ultimate origins?
Given that blockchain is supposed to be a public ledger, can someone explain why they cannot trace where the coins were transferred to when they were moved out of the cold wallets? In my simple world there must be a way to trace them to their ultimate origins?
You can know where they went from the cold wallet. You can't know for sure where the coins went after that, once they've been mixed with other coins. Laundry / tumbler services exist to do this at scale.
legit question
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But would they even risk raising suspicion?
I'm confused why anyone in this thread chain would think a firm like Ernst and Young would have access to zero-days?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can know where they went from the cold wallet. You can't know for sure where the coins went after that, once they've been mixed with other coins. Laundry / tumbler services exist to do this at scale.
what does "mixed with other coins" mean exactly? If I own a wallet, and someone steals coins and "mix" their coins with mine in my wallet, they eventually have to get those coins back right? So I probably know them and can found and interrogated? legit question
On Monday, all three addresses send all their BTC to address #4. The next day, address #4 sends the coins back to addresses #5 through #7.
Which address out of #5, #6 or #7 has the original BTC you were interested in?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can know where they went from the cold wallet. You can't know for sure where the coins went after that, once they've been mixed with other coins. Laundry / tumbler services exist to do this at scale.
what does "mixed with other coins" mean exactly? If I own a wallet, and someone steals coins and "mix" their coins with mine in my wallet, they eventually have to get those coins back right? So I probably know them and can found and interrogated? legit question
The mixer then transfers 37, 185, 205, 1002, and other random amounts to other accounts, which in turn transfers it to other accounts, and at some point they get funneled to one or more accounts owned by the person who originally transferred the money into the mixer.
Couple this with a lot of other people doing the same at the same time for the same mixer service, and you cannot say who owns the coins being transferred between the accounts. It is public what money was transferred back and forth, but without some serious analysis it's practically impossible to track who is likely to own the accounts where the money end up.
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)…
And the widow is left with just the 17 properties, 2 cars, yacht and plane that he earned through honest hard work. Another thing you could work into the plot is $9m appears to be with WB21 "Banking Redefined" which claimed a million users but was discovered to only have 135 downloads of its app (now removed), is run by a convicted fraudster and was awarded "Global Banker Award 2018" in a black tie ceremony that they…
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what does "mixed with other coins" mean exactly? If I own a wallet, and someone steals coins and "mix" their coins with mine in my wallet, they eventually have to get those coins back right? So I probably know them and can found and interrogated? legit question
Let's say there are three BTC addresses in the world, #1 to #3. Let's say address #1 has 1 BTC that you're interested in. On Monday, all three addresses send all their BTC to address #4. The next day, address #4 sends the coins back to addresses #5 through #7. Which address out of #5, #6 or #7 has the original BTC you were interested in?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can know where they went from the cold wallet. You can't know for sure where the coins went after that, once they've been mixed with other coins. Laundry / tumbler services exist to do this at scale.
what does "mixed with other coins" mean exactly? If I own a wallet, and someone steals coins and "mix" their coins with mine in my wallet, they eventually have to get those coins back right? So I probably know them and can found and interrogated? legit question
So if you send (part of) your balance to another account, that can be seen. If that account sends on a similar amount, that also can be tracked. (Even if you split it between multiple accounts by sending to multiples of them.) The only way you can lose sight of the money if goes to an account that has a (relatively) large number of incoming and outgoing transactions. That can be a person actively paying and earning in BTC (and then you caught whoever stole the money) or a mix. It collects incoming transactions from a large number of addressess (accounts) and then sends these out to a large (but differing) number of other addresses. All you see is constant incoming and outgoing transactions of different values, that add up to (almost) 0 over a long period of time. But you won't be able to correlate them (and no coins exist that could have an identity, just balances).
EDIT: Side note - the way actually BTC works, they don't store your balance (as, I think, ETH does), i.e. the balance of an address (account), only the transactions. The balance can be calculated from the sum of all the transactions for that specific address (incoming ones add, outgoing ones subtract from it).