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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

#601

Post by thaumasiotes »

jonknee wrote: post #82
radlad wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks typically have limits on how much you can withdraw or transfer with any given method in a day.

Banks typically treat billionaire customers differently too, it's absolutely ludicrous to think they'd have to use hundreds of thousands of transactions (let alone pay for them!).

In the case of China, hundreds of thousands of transactions is too many, but it is apparently routine for transfers of money outside China to be done in a large number of small transactions due to the legal per-person limit on transferring money outside. (And yes, since it's a per-person limit, not only do you need to do a large number of transactions, you need a new cooperator to put their name on each one.)

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

#602

Post by thaumasiotes »

arcticbull wrote: post #76
farisjarrah wrote: post #25

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…

No dollars were transferred. If you want to convert it to actual things you can spend you have to pay an exchange at least 1% on either end. You're comparing moving around intermediate representation to something you can actually use, like a bank moving bits around in its internal ledger. WU is not a good comparison for large-quantity FOREX, InteractiveBrokers is one of your many options, and they charge a commission…

> No dollars were transferred. If you want to convert it to actual things you can spend you have to pay an exchange at least 1% on either end.

Actually, this isn't true. That's the lowest-cost way of converting the bitcoins to actual things. But if you don't want to interact with an exchange, you have enough BTC that you can easily find someone who will just take your payment in BTC and take on the job of going through the exchange themselves.

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

#603

Post by sam0x17 »

ses1984 wrote: post #204
sam0x17 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if they used a tumbler for years to accrue that sum

The they likely would have lost enormous amounts in tumbling fees.

Not if they own the tumbler. In fact, it would make a lot of sense if this was some tumbler or online gambling site owner.

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

#604

Post by ses1984 »

sam0x17 wrote: post #603
ses1984 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The they likely would have lost enormous amounts in tumbling fees.

Not if they own the tumbler. In fact, it would make a lot of sense if this was some tumbler or online gambling site owner.

I doubt if you ran a tumbler you would choose to execute this transaction.

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

#605

Post by proverbialbunny »

seganddr wrote: post #545
meowface wrote: post #492

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was, though. Vinnik created it as a way to help people launder stolen / illicitly-gained cryptocurrency, perhaps in addition to providing standard exchange services. Cryptocurrency from large hacks appeared in Vinnik's personal BTC-e account on several occasions, for example. BTC-e was perhaps "safe" in that it seemed to be operated competently from a technical standpoint, and it didn't appear to attempt to scam i…

If either you or the posters above linked to primary sources it would help a lot. Anyone can make proclamations but where are the references??

That's a good point.

The court case is starting in a little over a week, so Alexander Vinnik (the one accused of the MtGox hack, who was a technician working at btc-e) has yet to be found guilty or innocent.

>On 25 July 2017, suspected BTC-e operator Alexander Vinnik was arrested at the behest of the United States Justice Department while vacationing with his family in Greece.[8][9] Wanted for money laundering by both France and Russia, in addition to the US[10]. Vinnik agreed to be returned to Russia, where he was charged only with fraud.[11] In October 2017 the extradition request by Russia was approved by one Greek court, but the request by the United States was approved by another.[12] The decision to extradite Vinnik to the United States was upheld by the Greek Supreme Court on December 13, 2017.[11] However, in July 2018 Greece agreed to extradite Vinnik to France instead,[13] giving precendence to the European warrant.[citation needed]A final ruling is scheduled for September 19,[14] though Vinnik's lawyer claims that "the decision on Vinnik's extradition to Russia has been made".[15]

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BTC-e

It's good that he didn't end up going to the US. The US, while legitimate in many ways, has a history of corrupt court practices. If it's in the government's interest to keep the 2 billion, which it is, they will do everything they can to throw him under the bus.

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

#606

Post by lawn »

burnte wrote: post #333
legohead wrote: post #264

Well now that I have a place to ask this question... Could someone explain to me about 51% attacks and if bitcoin is vulnerable to one? Hypothetically, a government decides to put forward enough resources to perform a 51% attack on bitcoin. Is that possible? If not, why? And is this something to actually worry about, or could something be done to combat it?

When you control 51% of the nodes you can make them agree to anything and takeover the network. Yes, BTC is vulnerable. A few years ago China has >50% of the nodes for a bit, making people nervous. The problem there is that then people lose faith in the network, and don't honor transactions, and it collapses in value.

> you can make them agree to anything

No you can't. You have the power to prevent or revert transactions, and that's it. You cannot print unlimited money for yourself or steal coins from an address you don't control.

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

#607

Post by ColanR »

nybble41 wrote: post #498
ColanR wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A counterparty that is willing to swap anonymously acquired and sent altcoins for Bitcoin can provide a privacy conscious individual with anonymous Bitcoins. Not if amounts are tracked, rather than addresses. "oh look, this gal X just lost 5.3876BTC and gained 3.76549ALTCOIN, and this other dude Y just gained 5.3876BTC and lost 3.76549ALTCOIN. Geeze, I wonder if they traded." And with the proper graph theory tools,…

The first problem here is that there is no link between the identities across the two currencies. You don't know that X lost some BTC and gained some altcoin. You just know that some BTC was transferred from X to Y and some altcoins were transferred from Z to W—completely different addresses. You also don't know precisely what exchange rate was used, and a privacy-minded service would round to a small number of signi…

> It's still not immune to tracing, obviously, but it's a much harder problem than just looking for symmetric transactions.

"And with the proper graph theory tools, much more complex interactions could be tracked."

> The simplest system, though, is probably just to spend some BTC renting time on a mining rig. It doesn't have to be profitable, just break even. Newly mined bitcoins have no official history to show who paid for the mining.

That is a good idea.

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

#608

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

JackFr wrote: post #349
JMTQp8lwXL wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fidelity found that only 12 percent of millionaires inherited at least 10 percent of their net worth-- 88% are self-made. https://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/on-retirement/articles/...

But the parent doesn't say that. It says that most people are rich because their parents are rich. Not because they inherited their wealth. Stable home life, good schools, good network, good attitude and a financial backstop in the event of disaster (which allows a higher risk appetite) are all things that correlate positively with becoming rich. Your parents can give these without a penny of inherited wealth.

> It says that most people are rich because their parents are rich. Not because they inherited their wealth.

Fair enough. It's an astute observation, but it's misleading to say the first sentence, yet not imply the second, since most people aren't going to read into it that deeply. You'd just say: "Most people who are wealthy are so due to their stable home life, good schools, good network, good attitude and a financial backstop in the event of disaster". Why would you lead with parent wealth? It pre-supposes inheritance without additional context.

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

#609

Post by proverbialbunny »

hughw wrote: post #130
whyrusleeping wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoin isnt anonymous, and doesn't claim to be. If you want an anonymous currency check out something like Zcash or monero. They use some fancier crypto to obscure transaction inputs and outputs, which gets you a bit farther towards being anonymous.

It's pseudonymous.

Far less anonymous than using a bank.

Bitcoin has and always will be a way to cut down transaction costs, cutting out the middle man ie cutting out the banks. To do that, everyone has to be able to audit every transaction and verify authenticity of a transaction. In this way bitcoin is anti anonymous, always has and always will be.

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

#610

Post by Kiro »

kenneth wrote: post #594

Interesting theory via Twitter: > If you look at BCH and BSV you will see the coins also moved - this looks like someone moved to do a split of forks. The good news (if that is the case) is that this likely will mean sale of BCH and BSV, not BTC! https://twitter.com/shanepicker/status/1170517377441849351 If that's the case, it implies that someone is looking to liquidate the value of their BCH/BSV they got for free i…

> and need to move the BTC too since otherwise the transaction would be valid in all 3 chains.

Care to elaborate? I don't understand how the three chains can have any affliction after they forked.

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