Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

191–200 of 281 posts

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

#191

Post by codethief »

chrisa wrote: post #21
schmichael wrote: post #15

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)

Came here to ask about this… Does anyone know whether this has happened before?

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

#192

Post by Taniwha »

pier25 wrote: post #158
kjrose wrote: post #148

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 m…

> it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction What about tumblers?

You have to find some clean bitcoins to tumble them with .... why would someone with clean coins tumble theirs with dirty ones?

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

#193

Post by thinkmassive »

whimsicalism wrote: post #26
sekai wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible to swap into monero without using any KYC exchange, but that requires liquidity. So it could take years.

> swap into monero without using any KYC exchange How? Links on this being done?

https://comit.network/

https://github.com/comit-network/xmr-btc-swap

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

#194

Post by chii »

retrac wrote: post #100
0xtr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

But in reality, nobody does - and only in some peculiar cases do payments made to a merchant gets confiscated like that (and they usually have no recourse).

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

#195

Post by HNfriend234 »

TrackerFF wrote: post #188
kjrose wrote: post #148

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 m…

Not sure how the scammers and thieves operate, but wouldn't they (likely) be laundering the money the same way they've always been doing it? I.e, exploiting things like identity theft, countries and exchanges with little oversight, mules, gambling, etc.

If they want to launder the funds all they have to do is used a decentralized exchange to convert the bitcoin into something like monero. Monero has an encrypted blockchain and a bunch of other anonymization features. So once you convert it to monero, poof, the funds simply disappear into the ether just like that without a trace. They can then convert it back into bitcoin if they want as well.

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

#196

Post by [deleted] »

schmichael wrote: post #15
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

> 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.

[deleted]

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

#197

Post by nivexous »

schmichael wrote: post #15
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

> 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.

If I send you a stolen iPod in the mail, do I forever taint your home address? Are you forced to accept it? No, of course not. You can return it to the police, throw it out, or return it to the sender. If you keep it and use it, then it becomes your problem. The same is true for Bitcoin. You can refuse any transaction output. You are not your address.

Edit: This post is being downvoted by people who don't want it to be true. Sorry folks, it is. Bitcoin is UTXO-based, and every output sent to your address is a unique piece of mail. If you don't like that, use an account-based system where it all gets mixed together.

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

#198

Post by geoduck14 »

glbrew wrote: post #187
bob33212 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how many bitcoin people understand the history of banking regulations. Banks do not want to be accessory to crimes. They make plenty of money legally. So when the government says we know that you helped someone steal billions of dollars so we are going to shut you down, the banks will quickly offer to track and report and block people.

Banks are the most law breaking entities in the United States. They constantly have to make enormous settlements for the insane number of laws they break. These are just the settlements for Bank of America: https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/10/01/the-comple... A better summary wouldn't be "they make plenty of money legally." It would be they make plenty of money illegally after paying the settlements.

None of these fines are about laundering money.

Also, showing these fines is a long way from "the most law breaking entities".

I do believe Wells Fargo got in trouble for helping launder money - and they spent a LOT of money to help fix it.

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

#199

Post by kelnos »

retrac wrote: post #100
0xtr wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

I don't believe that's true, though this is based on just stuff I've heard, not on any data I can present. In general I hear that if someone steals something, and then sells it to you, and you don't know (and have no reason to believe) it was stolen, not only are you not legally liable, but you cannot be forced to return the property to the original owner.

If this wasn't the case, the act of buying anything through a private sale would in general be pretty risky.

This goes pretty far sometimes: I remember a somewhat bizarre case where someone sold some land to someone, and lied to the buyer about where the property line was. The new owner built on what was technically someone else's land, but later the "true" owner lost in court, and the owner who built on it was given ownership rights, and I don't believe was required to compensate the "true" owner. (I imagine the "true" owner had a strong case against the lying seller, though.)

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

#200

Post by csomar »

whimsicalism wrote: post #181
csomar wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. Alts should be wrapped so that they become swap-able with Uniswap. In that sense, Atomic swaps are superior since you have zero counter-party risk. Who guessed Bitcoin tech is superior to that of Ethereum?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't wrapping require KYC? So how could this be used to convert the BTC to Monero?

Afaik, it's the custodian who requires KYC. The trading happens without. This might become a problem for custodians who now have a bunch of illegal coins. It'll be interesting to see how this will unfold.
Post reply on HN