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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

#141

Post by londons_explore »

Osiris wrote: post #96
nknealk wrote: 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.

The mere fact a distributed exchange has a central compliance team tells me it isn't very distributed...

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

#142

Post by Someone »

pie420 wrote: post #23
nknealk wrote: 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

You can definitely do this with bills... You realize when a bank gets robbed the serial numbers are tracked and confiscated when they show up, and often lead to the theives

I don’t think the “confiscate” part is categorically true.

If the police arrest suspected criminals and find money that can be traced back to criminal activity, they’ll confiscate it (permanently only after a trial). “Traced back” typically need not even involve checking serial numbers. If you’ve a lot of cash, but no regular job that explains how you could have that much money or why you would keep it in cash, that’s enough to confiscate it.

If, on the other hand, they find John Doe in possession of a banknote that was paid out in a ransom or stolen from a bank, and cannot link John Doe to any crime, John Doe can keep the money (they’ll ask him whether he knows where he got it and may be able to force him to exchange it for untainted money, but that’s it)

(Counterfeit money is different. If the police finds you in possession of it they’ll confiscate it, even if they know that you’re a victim)

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

#144

Post by vmception »

dbg31415 wrote: post #76

The fact that all these transactions are public is what makes Bitcoin so creepy to me.

The liquid sidechain doesnt have public transactions, uses confidential transactions. It has been running for years.

There is a decent amount of bitcoin and assets issued on bitcoin over there

A bunch of exchanges and VCs are the validators, so it sacrifices some security but not in practice

There are hundreds of billions in crypto assets traded on validator networks

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

#147

Post by Someone »

myself248 wrote: post #78
Geeflow wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, some people do. There are tools like EuroBillTracker ( https://en.eurobilltracker.com/ ) where you can enter the serial number of bills that you received and can watch them travel around the world. If someone else tracks them as well, that is. I entered 31 serial numbers over the last 15 years. Those haven't been seen again so far. I guess it's not the right kind of game for me... :)

I played with Where's George? for a few minutes, then got bored. None of these things seem to have enough adoption to make it interesting. If there were money in it, someone would throw OCR at the problem. Say, attach prizes to certain bills, or finding certain patterns of bills (say, two bills whose serial numbers are mathematically related a certain way).

Euro coin tracking was a bit popular in the early days of the euro, as it showed how coins moved around Europe (you can’t identify individual coins, but each country has its own coins that can be used throughout the euro zone. Spanish and Italian coins move to Germany and the Benelux faster in summer than in winter, for example)

You can still play that game with new coins, but it’s less f visible now, as most coins are old and those already are well dispersed throughout the euro zone (and, of course, more and more people pay with a card)

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

#148

Post by kjrose »

You see. This is what bitcoin so fascinating... it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction.

So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would be able to have their funds more or less locked up.

So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we know the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught. However in the future I could easily see a government watch money that some undesired element has move and no one will want it because the moment they get it they are connected to an undesirable and their wallet becomes tainted.

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

#150

Post by plebianRube »

arcticbull wrote: post #120
qeternity wrote: post #116

“Stolen” This is Bitfinex we’re talking about. It’s a company run by criminals.

Fun little reminder that when Bitfinex was "hacked" they took a 36% haircut, if memory serves, from all account holders, in all assets -- not just Bitcoin. [1] Except for one account. Coinbase . [2] They then issued tokens to all the accounts they skimmed, valued at $1 each redeemable for shares in Bitfinex. They effectively converted a $72 million dollar theft (at the time) into a $72 million dollar valuation for Bi…

Seems to me the root problem is when people decide to use Bitcoin outside of it's original intended use, and centralize it.
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