Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
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Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Governments can simply take the private keys if they wish along with your computer. Come up with smart ways to avoid that (but I'll memorise the private key!) and they'll just lock you up instead.
In the case of coins moving through exchanges, they can simply take the coins instead by threatening the exchange.
In many other cases they can also catch you when you try to use the money by converting it into a currency that people actually use to transact like USD.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>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.
Do criminals seriously expect that bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) is safe against the wallet being hacked? Hardware/cold wallets have been around for years, so this is more of an opsec issue than a technology issue.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#34Correlation 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.
I... genuinely am confused. What is it here that a government isn't supposed to be able to do?
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#35More detail on how they managed to get access to that password/private key? Edit: I found the bitcoin address https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1q7eqww9dmm9p48hx5y...
If it was not hacked then I believe the implication is that the key was cracked.
Presumably, via brute force capability of unknown nature or a weakness in Bitcoin not known at this time.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#36Event 1 as story 2 happens. This always drives me nuts about financial reporting.
Not just financial reporting. "Portland burns as Trump golfs" type stories were super common as well over the past 4 years or even "Politician X does Y as covid cases rise" if media wanted to throw shade on Politician X last year
And Portland was never burning to begin with. At least Trump was actually golfing, so there's that.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#37Event 1 as story 2 happens. This always drives me nuts about financial reporting.
All news must be in the format of a 'story'.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
store of value with 50% weekly swings? :)
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#39I 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.
Slightly suspicious. Them wanting to get a message out there that criminals won't get away with far exceeds probability of them retrieving crypto imo.
Re: Bitcoin extends losses after U.S. seizes most of Colonial ransom
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Hell yeah they will, honestly it's about time we did some more aggressive offensive security operations.
But what does crypto have to do with criminals? Criminals just need to up their op sec game, they know that. BTC dropping is only related insofar as this stupid correlation is getting pushed hard in the media right now.