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A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

jpkoning.blogspot.com

41–50 of 126 posts

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#41
post #24
post #7

This is why Bitcoin's traceability is a problem for it's money status. If people are actively pursuing the stolen bitcoins, regardless of who's currently holding them, then Bitcoin's fungibility will break as some coins will be worth more than others. The only cryptocurrency that comes close to solving this is Monero, which isn't traceable. If the attackers were smart, this is what they would've done: Send them to Bi…

Greenbacks seem to do fine despite the existence of marked bills.

Money laundering is a thing for this reason.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#42

I know soooo very little about crypto currency, but his idea here makes sense, at least to me, but what do I know. Is it possible to create a registry like this, or is this never going to work? "Given bitcoin traceability and the ease of getting an injunction, one can imagine that it might make sense for insurers, bitcoin exchanges, and over-the-counter traders to build some sort of private "ransom registry". The mom…

The hackers don't even need to add a whole sentence to get around that.

"When we receive our 96 BTC, we'll release your data."

Becomes:

"When we receive our 96 BTC without it being reported to the fraud registry, we'll release your data."

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#43
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where does this stop, legally? (Really asking, I don't know.) If you immediately used these bills to buy a different car, then I imagine that could be reversed. But if you (say) paid your laundromat repair-man his salary with these bills, for the next few years, surely he (and his landlord, and his local grocery store) would be in the clear? Edit: after reading TFA, this is the crucial point (in English law, I gu…

Well there's two ways you can be in trouble. The first is if you knew the money was stolen, then you can go to jail. The second is if you didn't know it was stolen but it's then seized - leaving you with no money. As for your example I'm not sure. Said repairman would unlikely be in legal trouble, but I don't know if the money would be seized or not.

The article states that is not how money (unlike other types of property) works:

> Banknotes, coins, and other highly-liquid paper instruments have a very special legal status. If you unknowingly accept some banknotes from someone who just obtained them illegally (say via ransom or theft), the law can't compel you to give those banknotes back to the original victim. Money, as the great British jurist Lord Mansfield once declared, isn't like regular property: it "can not be recovered after it has passed into currency."

So the key questions are if cryptocurrency qualifies legally as currency and if not, what the legal standards are for who ends up the owner of that property when it gets mixed via various means.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#44
post #11
post #7

This is why Bitcoin's traceability is a problem for it's money status. If people are actively pursuing the stolen bitcoins, regardless of who's currently holding them, then Bitcoin's fungibility will break as some coins will be worth more than others. The only cryptocurrency that comes close to solving this is Monero, which isn't traceable. If the attackers were smart, this is what they would've done: Send them to Bi…

You can write down the serial numbers of paper money you hold, but that's not going to help you recover the money if someone steals the money and spends it at a shop. Traceability doesn't need to be a problem.

Governments are unlikely to give cryptocurrencies the same legal privileges as the currencies they issue.

As such, traceability will remain a risk for anyone receiving cryptocurrency payments. If a chain analysis reveals an illegal transaction as a precursor, it's going to be considered stolen goods, not money, as the article states.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#45
There already is such tracking going on, exchanges do freeze balances sometimes. The problem is that if the stolen coin gets traded before exchanges can freeze them you wind up with a lot of innocent people holding those coins and it's not practical to freeze those later.

Consider these two scenarios: A stolen bike vs a stolen sack of coffee.

In the case of the bike, if you can find it you can take it back from someone else who bought it. You can identify it distinctly as your bike, even if it had been bought and sold multiple times.

Now imagine a stolen sack of coffee that the thief sells to a vendor at a market. The vendor dumps it into a big bin full of more coffee. Other people buy bags of it, some containing the stolen beans, some not, some a mix. Now you can't identify your distinct stolen coffee anymore. It's not practical to go after the coffee vendor or its customers.

Bitcoin works like the coffee example not the bike. Balances move around like so many kilos of coffee. If you were to make the coffee vendors or their customers liable for stolen beans they happen to touch then you can't have a functioning coffee market at all.

Of course that isn't to say the coffee vendor can't do anything. If the stolen coffee or money is still in the hands of the coffee vendor then they should turn it over to the police when informed. If it's already gone they can tell the police which way the thief went and how much money was paid. Hopefully the police can find the thief and take the proceeds of his crime to make the victim as whole as possible. Also, just because coffee beans can't practically be identified distinctly doesn't mean a coffee vendor that is knowingly trafficking in stolen coffee should get off the hook.

This is how it's done now with cryptocurrency and the biggest practical problem seems to be that law enforcement doesn't move fast enough to contact exchanges confirming that the claim of wrongdoing is bona fide.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#46
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But where does this stop, legally? (Really asking, I don't know.) If you immediately used these bills to buy a different car, then I imagine that could be reversed. But if you (say) paid your laundromat repair-man his salary with these bills, for the next few years, surely he (and his landlord, and his local grocery store) would be in the clear? Edit: after reading TFA, this is the crucial point (in English law, I gu…

The limit is practical, not legal. (IANAL). In practice, the law is not trying to 'get' people who innocently receive stolen money or goods. In the example you gave, it would be up to prosecutorial discretion what to do; trying to claw back one salary's worth of already-spent money is probably not worthwhile. But if someone shows up and tries to deposit a couple grand worth of marked bills, they can expect to be take…

Apparently the actual answer (I did say I'm not a lawyer!) is "it depends".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Possession_of_stolen_goods

The state-level standard appears to vary, the most common case is 'should have known', rather than 'knew for a fact'.

With Bitcoin, where all transactions are a matter of public record, I'd hazard that 'should have known' is baked-in. It will be interesting to see what case law is established in this arena.

That said, my statement above is clearly stronger than reality, except in some states where knowledge doesn't need to be proven.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#47
post #18
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not a cryptocurrency expert either but I suspect there will always be someone willing to launder the cryptocoins for a large enough commission.

How can you launder something with a traceable serial/transaction number? I don’t think it’s possible. The best you can do is mix it with enough other transactions that it becomes murky as to the final destinations. Ex: If half of the bitcoins used to buy a car were fraudulent, would you need to return half the car?

The point isn't to make the coins themselves clean, it's to exchange them for something clean.

So a laundering service could specialize in buying tainted coins and to sell them off to other unsuspecting people, pocketing the difference. In return they could provide clean coins for their customers.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#48
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's two ways you can be in trouble. The first is if you knew the money was stolen, then you can go to jail. The second is if you didn't know it was stolen but it's then seized - leaving you with no money. As for your example I'm not sure. Said repairman would unlikely be in legal trouble, but I don't know if the money would be seized or not.

The article states that is not how money (unlike other types of property) works: > Banknotes, coins, and other highly-liquid paper instruments have a very special legal status. If you unknowingly accept some banknotes from someone who just obtained them illegally (say via ransom or theft), the law can't compel you to give those banknotes back to the original victim. Money, as the great British jurist Lord Mansfield o…

The article may state that, but it's pretty clearly not the case in all jurisdictions:

> The penalty for larceny and the crime of receiving and concealing stolen property in Michigan depends upon the value of the substantiated property or money involved.

https://www.cyabdolaw.com/larceny-and-receiving-stolen-prope...

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#49
post #22
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not z-cash?

Because, like with mixing services, ZCash shielded transactions are opt-in and can easily be detected. So exchanges could decide to ban coins with mixing in their history or require extensive KYC information. Yes it's a little different from the problem described in the post, but it's another facet of the fungibility issue.

> So exchanges could decide to ban coins with mixing in their history or require extensive KYC information.

The same way they could decide to ban Monero... seems like what you describe with z-cash is more complex to support in an exchange than simply removing a whole cryptocurrency, thus is less likely to happen.

Re: A 96 Bitcoin ransom payment ends up on Bitfinex

#50
post #45

There already is such tracking going on, exchanges do freeze balances sometimes. The problem is that if the stolen coin gets traded before exchanges can freeze them you wind up with a lot of innocent people holding those coins and it's not practical to freeze those later. Consider these two scenarios: A stolen bike vs a stolen sack of coffee. In the case of the bike, if you can find it you can take it back from someo…

> If you were to make the coffee vendors or their customers liable for stolen beans they happen to touch then you can't have a functioning coffee market at all.

That's not true. It just means that reputation, verification and insurance become critical to the coffee market and that friction makes the coffee market way less liquid.

Now, legislatures and courts may choose to provide indemnity to all unknowing parties to reduce that friction, but it is hardly the only course this can go. The coffee vendor could also be held liable for recieving and mixing that stolen property.

With the increasing amounts of money being lost by large insurance companies as a result of this issue and extortion claims, I would not be surprised to see laws in the not too distant future that move that liability off of the insurance companies and onto exchanges and indivuals. Large insurance companies haveich better lobbyists than cryptocurrency exchanges and the government doesn't seem to benefit from making sure cryptocurrency markets have minimal friction.

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