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94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

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Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#151
post #12

I can count maybe 5 people in the crypto space that would have that much BTC, but none of them would be dumb enough to put it all in one wallet. Most likely some large institutional investor decided to re-key their cold storage wallet.

Wouldn’t a bank or institutional investor also spread this up into multiple wallets? Doesn’t take a genius to diversify risk of a wallet breach.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but afaik there is no "eventual" invalidation in bitcoin: either the destination address fails the checksum (so nodes immediately reject the transaction), or you send the funds to an (unused) address where they'll sit forever.

If the transaction doesn’t end up in the canonical version of the blockchain (ie the nlockchain still says its unspent), then surely you can transfer it again, no? Of course if the blockchain does say it was transferred to a nonexistant address then its gone forever. I guess if it passes checksum, this is the likely scenario?

A tx will go from your client (which should reject an invalid tx to start with) to a node (which will verify and reject an invalid tx) to many other nodes (which will all verify and reject an invalid tx) to the node that's publishing the next block (which will verify and reject an invalid tx). I guess a broken client could think a tx is valid when it's not and not let you re-spend it, but it'll be rejected pretty much immediately after that.

Technically there is no such thing as a nonexistent address. There are used and unused addresses -- an unused address is just an address with no history, but there's no way to tell if anyone has the private keys for it or not. I guess it's possible accidentally typo an address that somehow passes checksum (let's pretend that people actually type in addresses... nobody does that, copy/paste or QR code) but it's very very unlikely.

For the checksum tech details: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding#Creating_a_B...

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#154
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's meant to be anonymous Unfortunately, Bitcoin (BTC) is not anonymous, as you pointed out. It never was; and with tax laws requiring copious transaction information, it is particularly easily traceable. That's the idea behind Monero & Co., which tries to mix things up a bit (literally). The anonymity is still not perfect, especially against state-level actors.

>The anonymity is still not perfect, especially against state-level actors. With PirateChain it is, but true anonymity brings with it other technical challenges.

I haven't heard of PirateChain. However, the state-level threat model includes things like taxes, where (e.g.) people in the US have to report every transaction they make.

If most people report their PirateChain transactions, amount in, amount out, then the problem is that unreported transactions would stick out and would probably be associable with wallets. Am I getting this wrong?

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#155

From the top twitter comment: > 0.06BTC in fees? Why so expensive? Just gotta say, its pretty amazing we live in a world where 1 billion dollars can get transferred pseudo-anonymously in a reasonable time frame, only costing the transfer party $600. As a really stupid, non-real-world comparison, Western Union has a transfer limit of $2500 per transaction, and a $20 fee per transaction. If you were to initiate a $1,00…

I’ve seen $1B wires. Not accounting for FX spread, the cost is the same as sending a $50 wire.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#156
post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you actually transfer 1B in one transaction?

Why not? Are you implying that it would technically break some sort of system or something like that? If I legally own a billion dollars in a Swiss bank, and I want to move it to a Cayman Islands bank, there is certainly a room full of well-paid men in fancy suits that will gladly accommodate that. Or, perhaps more similar to the topic, if I wanted to move a billion dollars from one UBS account to a new UBS account,…

Not technical obstacles, more like regulatory or legal obstacles. I imagine there is a lot of paperwork and legwork involved in moving 1B fiat

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation No idea about the billionaires, but I can shift £5k from a current account to another current account with another bank for the princely sum of £0.00

but with bitcoin it's borderless. there are no free int'l wire services.

There are in Europe in the euro zone.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#158
post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important qualifier on that that's missed for most "the very rich". The "rich" are often quite penny pinchers. My grandfather is "rich" (several millions, and in a very cheap place to live in the midwest) but he lived his entire life being extremely strict on spending and controlled personal finances very carefully. He still complains when there's large money to be spent on something that should be cheap.

From what I understand, that penny pinching is often why the rich are rich (excluding those born into more wealth than they can spend). Edit: I'm getting the impression that a large subset of people replying ignored my parenthetical comment.

Penny Pinching does not make people rich and is not "often" why they're rich. This is a horrible misconception.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#159

another way to read: someone just gave someone else a billion dollars tax free. that is a major problem.

Not necessarily, it could be moving coins to a different wallet of the same owner.

Edit: also, that assumes that, even if this is an exchange between owners, neither party has/will report it to the relevant tax authorities.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#160

According to tokenanalist.io, this is a funds consolidation associated with Huobi exchange: https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244...

or not: https://cryptonews.com/news/huobi-confirms-that-usd-1b-trans...
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