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$7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

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Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#91
post #38
post #9

They are probably waiting for the Statute of Limitations to expire. For wire fraud that is 10 years.

Fencing stolen property is a fresh crime with a new countdown.

It would be easy to use satellites to find the person with hundreds of Tesla's in their front yard.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#92
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You cannot refuse a BTC transaction. You could return it in a subsequent transaction, and pay the transaction fee, but I would imagine your address would be forever tainted by a number of illicit address/transaction tracking algorithms.

That's an interesting angle to cash out... just start sending to 1,000s of addresses - who's to say which addresses are owned by the criminals, and which are owned by other people? They'd get less than cashing it all out themselves obviously, but it would take forever to unravel what actually happened (if possible ever)

How about universal basic income? Send some to everyone monthly. Would be curious the social implications of elicit money used as a welfare utility.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#93
post #32

Is that money trapped in the system? The moment they sell to USD that account is now linked to a real person no?

I wonder if they could somehow collect interest off it anonymously. I read about certain coins offering staking, but not sure how it works and if it's possible to collect interest without revealing your identity.

No one is going to pay you interest unless they can use your deposit while they are doing so (loaning it out to others at a higher interest rate)

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#94
post #8

Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft? I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills

AFAIK exchanges will not accept certain outputs, this is probably based on taint analysis. I believe the FIFO method [1] is the most accurate and probably used by exchanges

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#95

Funds like this can be frozen when 51% of mining pools start censoring transactions. Pools are now beginning to do this. I expect there will be a lot of BTC like this that starts to realise they need to be trying to dump it / escape into monero as quickly as they can

The price of bitcoin will plunge to 0 if that happens, which is the reason why it won't.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#96
post #8

Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft? I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills

I work at a distributed exchange and we have a blacklist. if funds are sent in from an address that's blacklisted we hold it and don't send them the other half. I don't know what the business does with those coins after that but there is a compliance team so I assume it's properly handled.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#97
post #8

Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft? I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills

Is everyone expected to know the addresses by heart? Does software flag them? If so, where does the list of tainted addresses come from? Total outsider here, asking honestly.

exchanges keep lists of stolen coins and probably use taint analysis https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#98
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That both does, and doesn't solve this problem. If someone pays for services with stolen assets the ideal scenario is that the criminal is apprehended, the service provider doesn't lose money, and the funds can be returned to their rightful owner. Monero protects the service provider, but doesn't solve the other problems.

It's a curious question for the value proposition of blockchain denominated currencies. There is a real possibility that in the future, all stolen assets will eventually be recovered and returned to their owners. There needn't be any limit to recovery given a universal, traceable, and non-fungible transaction log. Pretty soon payment processors/recipients would start maintaining blacklists of stolen coins which they…

That won't handle the case where some coins are stolen and used before they are marked as "bad". Some merchant will be out of luck once the transaction is reversed. Really that is no better than what we already have from credit card payment networks.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#100
post #72
post #8

Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft? I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills

why would I? I mean we still use dollars even though a lot of them are used to buy heroin and hookers

Knowingly receiving then spending stolen money or property is a crime in many jurisdictions. In many cases it may be phrased like "or ought to have known" so wilful ignorance isn't a defence.

Even unknowingly receiving stolen money or property leaves you on the hook, potentially. If the rightful owner tracks it to you they can go "that's mine!" and the courts will order you to give it to them. The loss you incur here is yours; the law treats it as an incentive to be diligent and to not deal in stolen goods.

You can of course then try to recover the value you are owed from the person who sent you the stolen goods/money, if you want/can. And they from whoever sold them the stolen goods/money. And so on, all the way back to the original thief. The whole chain is tainted. (Pun intended, maybe.)

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