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U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

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Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#271

Post by loceng »

gruez wrote: post #105
gamblor956 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of rich people drive or fly across the country all the time "carrying" $1b worth of assets. They're called bank accounts, and you can access them with these things called "check books" and "debit cards" that you can use in infinitely more places than you can transact Bitcoin or other crypto.

Sounds all well and good until your bank account gets seized by the authorities.

So what country are your funds in and what are you doing that has lead to the funds being seized? Don't you think we need trusted authorities for enforcement?

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#272

Post by klodolph »

doggosphere wrote: post #270
klodolph wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t understand what point you are trying to make, I guess. What I’m hearing is that you can commit the same crimes, but now you can commit these crimes with Bitcoin, and maybe the law will catch up with you, maybe it won’t. It doesn’t sound much like flexibility and control, it sounds like gambling that you are better at hiding assets in Bitcoin than other types of assets. If you are living in the US and spending…

The point I'm trying to make: Taking someone's assets vs coercing them to hand over their assets, are not the same thing. You can take my gold, my dollars, my factories, my real estate, all by force. You can take my freedom, you can take my life, by force. You cannot take my Bitcoin by force. You might be able to put me through enough pain for me to give it up. But this is not a guarantee. We have been discussing thi…

> We have been discussing this in the context of being a sneaky cyber criminal with a just law system.

If you were assuming that the law was just then you’ve been having a different conversation. I’ve just been assuming that this is the US legal system, nothing more, nothing less. Do not assume that the US legal system is just.

The US law system is reasonably competent, has a global reach, and can out-wait you.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#273

Post by [deleted] »

driverdan wrote: post #199
GhostVII wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty impossible to beat the $5 wrench attack (or in the case of the government, 5 years in prison) unless you have anonymity, which Bitcoin does a very bad job of.

There is no way they were only facing 5 years. Any sane person would do 5 years for a billion dollars.

[deleted]

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#274

Post by monkpit »

nullc wrote: post #116
TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're assuming there actually is an Individual X. It is possible he was fabricated in order to hide that the Feds indeed did gain the password for the wallet.

If they did, they lied to the court. "On November 3, 2020, Individual X signed a Consent and Agreement to Forfeiture with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. In that agreement, Individual X, consented to the forfeiture of the Defendant Property to the United States government."

I don’t think that would exactly be the first time for that to happen.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#275

Post by vmception »

jariel wrote: post #266
vmception wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do it with money you already paid tax on lol. so so many options

No 'lol' because gains/losses on those assets relate to taxation, also, in many regimes you'll have to declare it anyhow.

which you only have to worry about when you have to tap into the rainy day fund, or when the collateral gets liquidated

Because you can borrow against it instead of selling and without touching a financial institution, and this gives you liquidity without a tax event

Welcome to the 2020s

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#276

Post by bloak »

klodolph wrote: post #133
ramenmeal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer, I know very little about bitcoin. If you owe the IRS tax money, they can take the money from your bank account without asking. They just do it. Can the same be done with bitcoin? As far as I know, they aren't able to. If that's the case, there's a difference.

They can "ask" you for your Bitcoin, but the question is phrased, "Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first and give us the Bitcoin later?" It generally requires a court order to get money out of your bank. If it's a Bitcoin wallet, then they can just send the court order to you directly, and put you in jail until you comply (i.e. as many years as it takes). The dif…

I don't believe that in most sane juridictions a court would keep a suspect in prison indefinitely when the suspect claims to have forgotten the passphrase for a bitcoin wallet. I think the court would have to find the suspect guilty and sentence them to an appropriate custodial sentence (which in my personal opinion would be no longer than what they'd get for deliberately forgetting the passphrase).

The only incentive for the suspect to remember the passphrase after being sentenced would be earlier parole.

If the suspect tried to use the bitcoins after being released then another charge could perhaps be brought for perjury.

None of this is specific to bitcoins or totally new. It's roughly the same situation as when the court thinks that the accused knows where the stolen money is hidden, but the accused claims not to know. Courts must have dealt with hundreds of cases like that, so we could look up somewhere how they handle it in different jurisdictions, if we really wanted to know. I'm curious about it, but perhaps not that curious.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#277

Post by TinyRick »

gojomo wrote: post #191
Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the link I dug out in the above comment "According to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road. According to the investigation, Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal acc…

I wonder: could 'Individual X' be DEA agent Carl Force (previously sentenced to prison), Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges (previously sentenced to prison), or some other government agent or informant who had tried to enrich themselves via the investigation? More about Force & Bridges: https://freeross.org/corruption/

Or perhaps Thomas Clark, who has his sentencing scheduled for December.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#278

Post by londons_explore »

carlmr wrote: post #235
doggosphere wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citation?

I didn't post it, but statista [1] says it's 741kWh for one bitcoin transaction vs. 149kWh for 100.000 visa transactions. That's a factor of 741/149 * 100,000 ≈ 497,000. Of course visa is not the whole banking system, but it seems as it would be roughly comparable. What I find horrific about this is that you can power your apartment for a year for the energy consumption of two bitcoin transactions. [1] https://www.st…

It's an example of "arbitrary effort wasted for a bigger slice of a fixed size pie".

An equivalent would be advertising for the US election. If all parties cut their ad budgets by a factor of 10, the result would likely be the same. Yet they all "waste" their ad budgets on yard signs simply to get a bigger share of the vote, and they have to because their competitors do too.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#279

Post by s1artibartfast »

CydeWeys wrote: post #243
driverdan wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way they were only facing 5 years. Any sane person would do 5 years for a billion dollars.

It's stolen property. They're never going to be able to keep it even if they do do some prison time. If their claim is that it's truly lost and they no longer have access, and then the funds ever move again on the blockchain, boom, right back to jail under contempt and other charges.

You can also do the time and leave the US after.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#280

Post by lolc »

jaggirs wrote: post #157
RIMR wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you even do with that much bitcoin realistically? It's dirty, so any attempt to turn it into fiat puts you at risk of being found. Whoever had it refused to touch it for 7 years, likely because they knew it was a fast-track to getting arrested. Giving that money straight to the feds in exchange for immunity might be more attractive than trying to hide the reason you became a billionaire.

Pretty crazy to think about. Its a billion dollars. For that much money, it might almost be worth it to go to jail for it and let your kids try to launder it 50 years later. There are bound to arise opportunities to launder at least part of it right? Even without considering that the bitcoins might become even more valuable, you could set up a dynasty with this money.

It was 70k illiquid Bitcoin. The dollar value was entirely virtual.

What strikes me about these people is how they can't stop and cash out. They risk to lose their life to jail yet don't have an exit plan. They just continue gambling.

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