Maybe Jack Ma's final bonus
94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
661–670 of 747 posts
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#662Earlier 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?
Contracts are established between market participants; the issuer is just a facilitator. LedgerX options are fully collateralized so you could certainly reap the entire value if you bought a put and the price dropped to 0. Liquidity is not very deep though, so you wouldn’t be able to buy much. Margined products (such as Deribit’s options) would probably be force-closed long before the price hit 0.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 bot…
Between a Russian court an American one, do you think he'll be safer in a Russian one?
He's being extradited to France, which probably has less bias, but still a bias. I doubt the US will get involved behind the scene in France, because they've phrased their reasoning for the heist as btc-e's users were money laundering, so even if he is found innocent, the US still gets to keep the money and not look bad.
Russia may have a bias, I'm uncertain. I'm not sure how happy Russia was about btc-e. BTC-e may have been in the Ukraine, but Russia implicitly requires neighboring countries to follow Russian law. Did BTC-e break Russian law? I have no idea. But because he is not being extradited to Russia, we'll probably never find out what Russia thinks.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#664From 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…
>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.
I'm quite sure the banking system could do the same, no problem. These are not technical limitations, they are regulatory. It's controversial enough whether any human actually needs a billion dollars, let alone the freedom to move/spend it however they want with zero oversight. But that's just me.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#665Tothemoon
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Contracts are established between market participants; the issuer is just a facilitator. LedgerX options are fully collateralized so you could certainly reap the entire value if you bought a put and the price dropped to 0. Liquidity is not very deep though, so you wouldn’t be able to buy much. Margined products (such as Deribit’s options) would probably be force-closed long before the price hit 0.
I feel like LedgerX bragging that they are both an exchange and a clearing house does not inspire confidence in their risk management department, although I'm sure the bright minds at the SEC have done their due diligence as they always do.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#667Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for posting this. I don't understand how the US can go in and decide BTC-e was a money laundering op and then confiscate bitcoins and put people in jail. Who decides who gets those bitcoins? Surely many other countries have money laundering laws. What makes the US so special that they can go flip a business operating in the Ukraine?
Ostensible justification: some trivial amount of money laundering could be traced to the US (iirc a few thousand dollars worth). Real justification: Extraterritoriality is a thing you get to do when you're an empire.
That's not what extraterritoriality means -- it refers to having your citizens/property be immune to local laws in foreign countries, not applying your laws to foreign citizens/property in foreign countries.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#668Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I've seen this "lose faith" brought up a few times. What I don't understand, is since this vulnerability still exists, why haven't people lost faith already?
the working assumption is that an attack like this is really hard to pull off (financial and technical barriers). Also, the older the blocks in the chain, the harder it is (the more new blocks you have to compute and propagate).
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#669Ok, slightly offtopic and rant, but:
My main problem with Bitcoin, etc. is: it is just too complicated. I mean, I did study CS and do have some knowledge about math and cryptography and I followed Bitcoin from the beginning with curiosity - and I still only have a vague understanding of it all. Now sure, I could invest some days and really study it and things would probably look different. But if it is hard for me, how hard is it for the common person?!
I believe the base of a new money-system should be simple, for (allmost) everyone to understand. Because yes, the current mainstream fiat money banking system ... is not simple at all, either. But if it is so complicated, only some people can understand it, than there is way too much room for fraud ...
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#670Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for posting this. I don't understand how the US can go in and decide BTC-e was a money laundering op and then confiscate bitcoins and put people in jail. Who decides who gets those bitcoins? Surely many other countries have money laundering laws. What makes the US so special that they can go flip a business operating in the Ukraine?
Ostensible justification: some trivial amount of money laundering could be traced to the US (iirc a few thousand dollars worth). Real justification: Extraterritoriality is a thing you get to do when you're an empire.
> Real justification: Extraterritoriality is a thing you get to do when you're an empire.
This is exercise of extraterritorial jurisdiction, which is not the same thing as (though also not unrelated to) extraterritoriality.
And everyone gets to do it, it has nothing to do with being an empire (actual extraterritoriality beyond what is normal for, e.g., diplomats might, but this isn't that.)