81–90 of 369 posts
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The regular reply to that strength is usually the rubber hose threat. Which is pretty much what happened here it seems with the person who had control of the private key in custody of the government.
This is the XKCD you're looking for: https://xkcd.com/538/
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This is the XKCD you're looking for: https://xkcd.com/538/
What does that have to do with a rubber hose?
Seems like HN might be blocked as referrer here... clicked on the link and got a 404. If I go to the link directly it loads.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/smart-referer...
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I simultaneously believe blockchain vastly underperfoms its promises and is a net waste of so much investment (human talent + time + capital) and also believe that bitcoin can be exchanged for real US dollars.
+ energy. Yes, traditional banking requires energy, too, but not nearly as much per transaction/person.
The factor is something like 350,000x more energy required for a bitcoin transaction vs. a transaction on the traditional banking network.
This gives the US government a lot of power over bitcoin... That both gives the government an incentive to let bitcoin thrive (to protect it's holdings), but also an opportunity to substantially manipulate bitcoins market price, possibly down to nearly zero. Or the keys to these bitcoin will sit idly in a filing cabinet forever...
They will auction it off as soon as possible like they did several times before. I'm not sure why the bitcoin price has gone up in response to this news, because it means more supply is coming to the market soonish. These coins might have been presumed lost before. Certainly they would not have been able to be sold on any legitimate exchange. Now they will be washed clean and enter the markets. On the other hand, a b…
I'm ignorant about this. Would they not have been able to be sold because there's some kind of master list of coins related to criminal activity, and exchanges blacklist them? Or would buyers somehow know specifically which coins they'd be buying and their provenance?
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The point of bitcoin is that you can drive across the country "carrying" $1B worth of assets, and if you get pulled over by the cops it won't be found. Try doing that with gold bars or stacks of cash.
I am glad we finally have a solution to this pressing issue.
I'm not the most saavy BTC person, but isn't part of the allure of bitcoin the ability to evade this type of seizure?
>but isn't part of the allure of bitcoin the ability to evade this type of seizure The government didn't crack the wallet address. They 'compelled' the owner to give it to them. Bitcoin was not designed to evade that type of seizure.
I'm not the most saavy BTC person, but isn't part of the allure of bitcoin the ability to evade this type of seizure?
With a bank they don't need your permission, they can just take your money straight from the bank. With cryptocurrencies they have to threaten you. And if you're ok with spending some time in jail (for court contempt), there's nothing they can do.