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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

#551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It all depends on who is doing the attacking. If the attacker is a state government or someone with billions of dollars and compute to spare, ASICs aren't going to fight this losing battle. Heck, you can buy off the ASIC miners for a few million dollars (all we have to cover is their net profit, which is pretty low)

State governments have simpler and more reliable ways to attack the system. Like armies. Buying off the miners would require at least a few hundred million dollars—you'd need to buy the hardware to pull off an attack like that, not just rent it for a while. And you still wouldn't manage to get anywhere near the full market cap by shorting Bitcoin while you do it. You'd never find anyone crazy enough to loan you that…

You're ignoring diplomacy. An army is a very unsubtle attack that might have unwanted geopolitical consequences.

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

#552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those numbers are pretty inaccurate, though, for cases where the NiceHash capacity is well below what is needed to mount an attack. I.e. the $768k for an hour of bitcoin attack actually vastly under estimates the cost, because to mount that attack you would need to purchase the hashing power large enough to mount that attack.

Yes. Also, an attack would be fairly obvious and miners invested in the future of the blockchain (i.e. everyone using ASICS, which is everyone that matters) would increase their hashrate to mount a defense, increasing the cost by some hard-to-predict but significant amount.

How can anyone increase their hash rate? They're dependent on getting supply from ASIC manufacturers. That takes time.

Or are ASICs capital expense cheap and available and already over provisioned compared to operational costs, like dark fiber optics?

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

#553
post #111

I'd take issue on two points. First, "wallets' don't exist in the Bitcoin protocol. Second, the tool being used is not sophisticated enough to list the inputs and outputs, giving the false impression that something unusual is "unknown." Try this link to get details: https://blockstream.info/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7... There are numerous inputs and a single pay-to-script-hash (P2SH) output. The relatively h…

What do you mean by "a single coin"? Do you mean a single transaction?

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

#554

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Penny pinching and then dying a millionaire sounds awful, because what's even the point of having all those millions if you lived like you had nothing the whole time? Building generational wealth for your progeny. GP said their grandfather died a multimillionaire. That money can go to his children; managed well over their lifetime it will double several times over. And learned frugality on their part means they hav…

>GP said their grandfather died a multimillionaire. That money can go to his children; managed well over their lifetime it will double several times over. The point is, is it worth it if you do not get to enjoy even a part of that at all? What if you don't have children? Assuming there is nothing after death, the personal result of being a penny pinching millionaire vs. just not having that much money at all would be…

Your assumption is that cheap living equals unhappiness/misery/etc whereas most unhappiness is caused by the uncertainty of not knowing where your next meal is coming from.

Presumably he had a good family/friends, which is what matters, no?

Investing in your family's future is an incredibly noble/selfless thing to do, it takes real character.

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

#555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the liquidity is enough, 1) Short Bitcoin to the tune of several Billion dollars. 2) Do a 51% attack and essentially prove it's worthlessness. 3) Profit

Are the sort of places willing to sell options on BTC the sort of places that would honor such a contract if the price went to 0?

Such is Bitcoin's continuing rediscovery of all of finance, now including the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

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

#556
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.

> I can count maybe 5 How could you possibly know?

Not for sure, but it’s not uncommon knowledge who the bitcoin early adopters who held their coins are.

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

#557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like most things in life, I feel like it is all about the right balance. Penny pinching and then dying a millionaire sounds awful, because what's even the point of having all those millions if you lived like you had nothing the whole time? Just a number on some imaginary scorecard? Wasting away all your earnings and living a life of "luxury" with nothing in your savings is at least just as bad, because if someth…

> Penny pinching and then dying a millionaire sounds awful, because what's even the point of having all those millions if you lived like you had nothing the whole time? Building generational wealth for your progeny. GP said their grandfather died a multimillionaire. That money can go to his children; managed well over their lifetime it will double several times over. And learned frugality on their part means they hav…

Lol that money went to my grandmother who liked to gamble and gamble she did for a decade until it was all gone.

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

#558
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be free if done through a bank and you could actually get a lot of free steaks out of it. Once you have a little bit of money banks start treating you well, when you have a lot of bit of money they treat you really well.

I had a casual acquaintance who had a few hundred million dollars managed by a large US bank. His son--who only had single-digit millions--wanted to buy a house, so the dad talked to the bank and they arranged a zero-interest mortgage for him. They were happy to pass on what they might have earned from the mortgage interest (a few hundred thousand dollars, I'd guess) to make this guy a happy client.

Are you sure it was a real mortgage? Many of these stupidly-rich-person ‘mortgages’ are actually loans against collateral (and can go interestingly wrong if the value of the collateral drops rapidly).

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

#559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Also, an attack would be fairly obvious and miners invested in the future of the blockchain (i.e. everyone using ASICS, which is everyone that matters) would increase their hashrate to mount a defense, increasing the cost by some hard-to-predict but significant amount.

How can anyone increase their hash rate? They're dependent on getting supply from ASIC manufacturers. That takes time. Or are ASICs capital expense cheap and available and already over provisioned compared to operational costs, like dark fiber optics?

Kind of. ASICs aren't exactly super available, but the manufacturers are also players, so if the attack is severe enough to be an existential threat to Bitcoin, I expect Bitmain (largest ASIC manufacturer) will fire up their unsold inventory which amounted to more than a billion dollars worth as of last year.

Separate from the manufacturers, relatively easy courses of action I can see are buying hashing power from marketplaces like nicehash, and temporarily concentrating their machines on BTC and not mining BCH. This can only get you so much though since BTC hashrate dwarfs BCH hashrate.

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

#560

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people measure their stuff by its momentary monetary value, rich people measure their assets by their long-term projected intrinsic value. Rich people look for good value, not a good price. The rich man’s mentality can also work for middle class people if every purchase they make is a long-term well-informed decision, rather than flying with the pop culture of what everyone else is currently buying, wearing or v…

Note that this is constrained by IRL effects that middle-class people experience that rich people are much less vulnerable to. With enough money, you can afford to wait for a good deal because you don't need the money right now to live. When you're wealthy, you can brave health issues, accidents, sudden crossings with the law, etc. without ever truly touching the money-in-wait for a good deal. When you're middle-clas…

The rich real estate guys I know phrase this as "you make all the money on the day you buy". That is, they want to buy from desperate owners, so that prices are so low they are guaranteed profits. Lots of businesses are more desperate in recessions.
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