Live data from Hacker News

The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

decrypt.co

81–90 of 369 posts

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#81
post #59

How many times would you double check the address before hitting send? I would think to minimize risk, would slice this up into a few transactions...

Probably just twice. Bitcoin addresses are check summed so it's nearly impossible to fat finger a mistake.

And yet it happens - as does putting the value in the "fee" box!

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#82

https://decrypt.co/31956/an-ethereum-user-lost-5-2-million-i... And if you fat-fingered the transaction, you could have transferred $0.48 for $1B in fees with no way to reverse that.

There's a 1 in 4 billion chance of fat fingering it. https://learnmeabitcoin.com/guide/checksum The thing to be really aware about is insidious malware that detects valid bitcoin addresses being copied and modifies them in place, sometimes even to the point of including the same first/last alphanumerics to a certain degree. You'd hopefully be using a bootable linux distro and multisig for transferring such amounts.

Doesn't stop you from making a UI error and entering the wrong value in the wrong box.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#83

For all of the talk about how Bitcoin is not truly anonymous, this wallet demonstrates otherwise, with the apparent 'anonymity proviso' being that you don't do too much with it, and just let the coins sit.

We're having a discussion on HN about a specific person moving a specific amount of money around. That by itself is basically the opposite of privacy.

We don't know the person though; we know a wallet address. Similar to a bank account number; it's just a number.

I get what you mean, the transaction is public, but that's the point of bitcoin / cryptocurrencies.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They certainly are, just not for 1b.

Transfer 10 Euro to Greece and let me know how much of it will actually get there.

From a Euro bank account all 10 euro should arrive.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#85
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where are you that has a transaction tax on account transfers? Not the US certainly, and not anywhere in the EU.

There's a proposal (not implemented yet) for a 0.1% "Tobin tax" in the EU: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-deepe...

Total aside but I love the train theme to indicate status of the proposal, and showing who is currently "holding up" the bill.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#86

I don't want to sound like a narc, but it seems like a really good idea to have some degree of oversight and safeguards on financial transactions of that magnitude.

I agree, and banks + the government do just that; large transactions, or 'pattern' transactions flag up in fraud and money laundering departments and are investigated.

But, bitcoin is free of oversight or centralized control, which was the exact point of the system.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#87

If we both join the bitcoin network, we can exchange $1B for $0.48. If we both join set up accounts at a regular bank like RBC, we can exchange $1B for free. The point I'm making is that fees are not bitcoin's strong point. Any financial network can undercut it. What is unique about bitcoin is that not everyone can get an account at RBC, but anyone can join the more expensive bitcoin network.

Are you trying to argue that a financial transaction - a service provided by a bank where THEY take all the risk and responsibility of said transfer - should be free of charge? I mean if I transferred a billion and my bank made a mistake, I would not lose any money. Make a typo in your bitcoin transaction, and you're screwed.

You're just as screwed if you make a typo in your bank transaction, though.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#88

If we both join the bitcoin network, we can exchange $1B for $0.48. If we both join set up accounts at a regular bank like RBC, we can exchange $1B for free. The point I'm making is that fees are not bitcoin's strong point. Any financial network can undercut it. What is unique about bitcoin is that not everyone can get an account at RBC, but anyone can join the more expensive bitcoin network.

Are you trying to argue that a financial transaction - a service provided by a bank where THEY take all the risk and responsibility of said transfer - should be free of charge? I mean if I transferred a billion and my bank made a mistake, I would not lose any money. Make a typo in your bitcoin transaction, and you're screwed.

> Make a typo in your bitcoin transaction, and you're screwed

Not really, bitcoin addresses have checksums.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#89
post #18
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. We have a rough idea of which coins belong to Satoshi, based on when and how they were mined. Satoshi's coins are continuously monitored and have never moved.

I always imagined that Satoshi probably lost the private keys to those early wallets.

And I'm confident that there's people dedicating a lot of processing power to try and determine its private keys (and anyone else's private keys if they happen to stumble across it).

I'm sure it's one of those tasks that'll cost a lot more than all the available energy in the universe kinda scale though.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#90
post #71
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nor can you reverse a transaction when someone steals your Bitcoins. The traditional financial system is far more suitable to people’s needs than Bitcoin is.

>Nor can you reverse a transaction when someone steals your Bitcoins. You're not always able to do that with the traditional banking system. Scammers were able to steal millions from corporations using wire transfers, and they weren't able to reverse them.

Some is still better than none, no?
Post reply on HN