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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

#121

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.

The new breed of users doesnt care at all about such things. Usually the price goes up as it becomes less cypherpunk and more of a regulated surveillance instrument - speculators will argue that it increases legitimacy and encourages institutional investment. It will still be a scarce asset that hedges against inflation

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

#122
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think whole bunch of them do, Eric Swalwell accepts like 6 of them.

Wasn't that the one associated with a known CCP spy? https://www.axios.com/china-spy-california-politicians-9d2df...

More like "targeted by."

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

#123
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Send it to 7,500 random wallets, including your own, and you can keep as many millions as wallets you have. Most people will keep the money, making them indistinguishable from your own wallets. IANAL, but if crime prescription is possible, you could transfer to 5,000 wallets and keep the rest for your pirate-themed retirement island.

We’ve done that on a number of projects

Basically communities freak out when they think founder/team is selling any of the project’s tokens no matter how long its been or whether what the stated vesting conditions were

So we just bundle it in monthly distributions in multisend transactions to new addressses, some of the transactions are monthly vesting payments to marketers, some of the payments are to ourselves. Not possible to distinguish.

(This is also possible because communities also demand that issuers put funds and the tokens into liquidity pools, which is not always compatible with having a ton of other tokens just sitting in separate vesting treasuries. So liquidity pool shares are vesting and they can be sent anywhere and unbundled)

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

#124
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, look forward to my $20 check that lasts one month.

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

#125
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I had the same idea, and it would be funny , but investigators wouldn't have to unravel the whole thing. They'd just have to look at anyone unwise enough to use the money instead of turning it over to authorities (or abandoning the wallet).

Most people wouldnt actually know that the money is illicit

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

#126
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

There are a number of ways, you can use a non-custodial bridge like RenVM and receive renBTC which can be used as collateral or just traded in plain sight for something more liquid

Like all blockchain analysis, following the conversion process always assumes that all addresses involved are tainted forever because its also assuming it is under custody of the thief, so if you really want to play along further and think that this is both true and that the thief needs to hide then the thief can just drop all the converted assets into Tornado.cash and take them out later.

Even if you think that cashing out Tornado.cash is hard, they can always just pump the price of some other token that they already bought with clean funds, and those cleans funds just become highly-profitable-trader-clean-funds. While the addresses with tornado.cash sourced funds are just bagholding whatever token they bought.

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

#127
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.

Unless it’s the same owner just rotating addresses

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

#128
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

> if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? It's a crime to spend money you do not own. Like if you would find 500k in paper bills in your car. There is no source of funds it would be your legal asset. You hand it over to police.

Finding money and using miney that your know is stolen are totally different situations.

'finding' is ofcourse situational, but abandoned property can be 'found' and claimed

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

#129
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

I had the same idea, and it would be funny , but investigators wouldn't have to unravel the whole thing. They'd just have to look at anyone unwise enough to use the money instead of turning it over to authorities (or abandoning the wallet).

Almost nobody would turn to authorities, people just think it's their lucky day and spend it, so they would target a lot of innocent people.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, look forward to my $20 check that lasts one month.

I'd take that over still not receiving a stimulus check despite needing them more than ever.
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