Live data from Hacker News

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

decrypt.co

171–180 of 369 posts

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

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I had my life savings (all funds in my bank account) frozen, without notice, without explanation, and without recourse for 3 weeks. They literally couldn’t tell me why my account was frozen besides “social security has flagged the account.” This was at one of the largest banks in US. I never committed any crime or suspected of one, or had any weird transactions. When I protested at the branch asking how I’m supposed…

I’d argue that with Bitcoin being volatile enough to have double percentage point swings in a single day, that you’re not in full control of your money with Bitcoin either.

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

#173
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The fun bit is that the signer can backdoor transactions, and that part isn't something that can be verified by anybody who doesn't have the private keys. Can you explain this? This is contrary to my knowledge of reviewing the details of a pre-signed transaction.

Sure. The basic idea is that signer can choose a ECDSA nonce (k) that they know, and leak the private key. If I choose a known nonce for my signature, I can recover the private key from the published transaction instantly. With some ECDSA magic, you can even produce a nonce that is only recoverable with another key that you hold. So a hardware wallet for example can backdoor transactions to leak the seed through the…

That requires some sort of malware (or similar) installed on the device/software creating the transactions which has access to the private key to leak it via some predetermined way and is different from what I thought you were saying that a pre-signed transaction could directly send funds to an unwanted address without you knowing by inspecting the signed transaction itself before broadcasting it.

Regardless, whatever job you have where what you've said is a legitimate threat model sounds like the most interesting job in the space.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me when a blockchain-backed remittance service reaches even a small fraction of the customer-base of companies like Transferwise or CurrencyFair. If it was an efficient way to cut on fees, everyone would do it. Yet almost nobody does.

That strikes me as more of an implementation detail. Day-to-day cryptocurrency use still requires a level of technical sophistication my grandma isn't comfortable with.

It is. So why don't remittance services do it behind the scenes?

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

#176

Pretty sure the fund I work for moved several billion dollars for free on Friday...and will do the same thing again this Friday, the Friday after that, and the Friday after that. Cryptocurrency's obsession with fees is baffling. Fees are not why moving money is hard.

I think the crypto community has a complex about it because of how often tx fees are used as a weapon against them.

In reality, intelligent people on both sides of that dichotomy should recognize tx fees (within reason) are mostly beside the point.

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

#177
post #99
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.

You do have to trust yourself to have 100% flawless security because one slip and you lose that $1B to a Chinese hacker with no hope of ever getting it back.

Why do you have to add “Chinese”?

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

#178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First of all, you are not allowed to have a German account if you are not a resident of Germany. Besides that, this is not the point of the conversation. The original comment compared SEPA to Bitcoin, saying that SEPA is better since it is free. It is not. There is no law that mandates it to be free and it is de facto not free everywhere (it might be for your use case but not for everyone). It is many times a lot mor…

> First of all, you are not allowed to have a German account if you are not a resident of Germany. Of course you are! Have you never heard of N26? And even some traditional banks will happily have you as a non-resident customer.

Direktbanken (i.e. purely online Banks) are an exception but they come with their own set of asterisks and are not a blanket solution as you can't open an account from all European countries.

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

#179

Pretty sure the fund I work for moved several billion dollars for free on Friday...and will do the same thing again this Friday, the Friday after that, and the Friday after that. Cryptocurrency's obsession with fees is baffling. Fees are not why moving money is hard.

Building relationships with brokers that allow you to move billions of dollars "for free" is hard and expensive.

In my experience having a billion dollars to move is pretty much all you need to generate those relationships.

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

#180
post #52
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.

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.

Yep... and the more money you have, the more the traditional financial system caters to you.

If you have a billion dollars, you have very little incentive to work outside the system. The system will work for you.

Post reply on HN