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Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

cnbc.com

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Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#11

Post by api »

imglorp wrote: post #9
mypastself wrote: post #4

I find it amusing how all the news reports gloss over the fact that the FBI somehow got access to the wallet’s private key. I’m also wondering why the hackers didn’t request payment in a currency that’s more difficult to trace.

People should take care to distinguish pseudo-anonymous chains like btc from anonymous ones like zerocoin. As soon as the ransom payment was transacted, the whole world could watch the chain and see the next step in its travel.

"Wouldn't it be great if we could get criminals to use a 100% public transparent ledger???"

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#12

Post by api »

sosuke wrote: post #8
leugim wrote: post #2

Correlation is not causation.

Indeed. $2.3 million dollars of BTC isn't too much.

A possible causal factor is that much of the crypto world actually thinks BTC is private. It's not. It's the opposite: a 100% public fully replicated ledger.

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#13

Post by vkou »

leugim wrote: post #2

Correlation is not causation.

That is true - it is, after all, entirely possible that the BTC price drops caused the Colonial ransom seizure. [1]

Perhaps people are correctly estimating that as BTC is likely to lose another use case for it (ransomware)[2], there is now less demand for it, thus resulting in the downward price pressure we've seen over the past few weeks.

Perhaps criminals are correctly predicting that 'their' BTC might be taken away from them, thus causing them to liquidate their positions, thus resulting in downward price pressure. [3]

[1] I am, of course, making a joke.

[2] The writing is on the wall, due to the government reaction to the Colonial hack.

[3] No, Monero is not a solution for them, because the FBI is not stupid. XMR:BTC is largely sideways. If ransomware switches to it, it's likely that exchanges transacting in privatecoins will be treated as international money launderers. https://coincodex.com/convert/monero/bitcoin/?amount=1

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#14

Post by PretzelPirate »

jerf wrote: post #5
leugim wrote: post #2

Correlation is not causation.

True, but chanting that at every correlation you see is a great way to never learn from anything. To be honest it's a bit hard to believe this reporting has nothing to do with the price dropping ~10%, given that one of BitCoin's big parts of its value prop is precisely supposed to be that governments can't do this.

Bitcoin says that whoever has the private key controls the funds. In this case, whoever was in custody before the FBI took the funds was seriously negligent in protecting their private key (which is not that hard to do).

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#17

Post by spoonjim »

sosuke wrote: post #8
leugim wrote: post #2

Correlation is not causation.

Indeed. $2.3 million dollars of BTC isn't too much.

It’s not, but it sets the precedent that the FBI will seize bitcoin without any kind of due process when it is able to recover proceeds from a criminal transaction .

This jeopardizes the use of Bitcoin as a currency for cross-border criminal transactions which is a large if not majority share of its use case.

So it’s easy to see why its value went down — fewer criminals will want to use it.

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#18

Post by satya71 »

vkou wrote: post #13
leugim wrote: post #2

Correlation is not causation.

That is true - it is, after all, entirely possible that the BTC price drops caused the Colonial ransom seizure. [1] Perhaps people are correctly estimating that as BTC is likely to lose another use case for it (ransomware)[2], there is now less demand for it, thus resulting in the downward price pressure we've seen over the past few weeks. Perhaps criminals are correctly predicting that 'their' BTC might be taken awa…

There are other uses of BTC?

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#19

Post by Sparkyte »

imglorp wrote: post #9
mypastself wrote: post #4

I find it amusing how all the news reports gloss over the fact that the FBI somehow got access to the wallet’s private key. I’m also wondering why the hackers didn’t request payment in a currency that’s more difficult to trace.

People should take care to distinguish pseudo-anonymous chains like btc from anonymous ones like zerocoin. As soon as the ransom payment was transacted, the whole world could watch the chain and see the next step in its travel.

Bitcoin is literally about tracing transactions... criminal IQ smol.

Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom

#20

Post by kaliali »

api wrote: post #12
sosuke wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. $2.3 million dollars of BTC isn't too much.

A possible causal factor is that much of the crypto world actually thinks BTC is private. It's not. It's the opposite: a 100% public fully replicated ledger.

So a bunch of hackers were able to hack Colonial Pipeline but they used a known traceable payment for ransom? Bullshit.
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