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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

#81

Post by derefr »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #55
derefr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's that BTC is easier to get victims to buy without oversight. There are Bitcoin ATMs. Buying Bitcoin from an ATM is like sending money via Western Union, but without the teller there to spot someone looking like they're under duress. As for anonymity on the receiving end: the BTC can always just be exchanged for a more anonymous currency like Monero. You might think that'd require the criminal to KYC to a…

KYC?

Know Your Customer (KYC) — a compliance process required by Anti-Money Laundering (AML) laws, involving getting a unique government-issued identification document or other similar "identity proof" from your customers, before allowing them to use your service.

Any service that takes deposits or processes payments in certain countries is required to follow those countries' KYC/AML regulations.

The actual AML laws are mostly about noticing when a given person has processed $10k or more through your service in a single day. But note that that's "person", not "account." You have to de-anonymize your accounts, in order to associate them with people, in order to obey the law.

The conventional KYC "compliance" measures — gathering ID documents et al — are actually not part of the law itself, but rather are industry best-practices for following the AML laws. The KYC process gives service-providers the information needed to restrict each person to having only a single account; and therefore allow service-providers to treat each account as a person under the letter of the AML laws.

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

#82

Post by [deleted] »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #55
derefr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's that BTC is easier to get victims to buy without oversight. There are Bitcoin ATMs. Buying Bitcoin from an ATM is like sending money via Western Union, but without the teller there to spot someone looking like they're under duress. As for anonymity on the receiving end: the BTC can always just be exchanged for a more anonymous currency like Monero. You might think that'd require the criminal to KYC to a…

KYC?

[deleted]

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

#83

Post by teachingassist »

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.

As best I can tell, Bitcoin has moved more than [it has so far today, ~6%] on 42 days in the last year, and 38 days the year before that, considering open-to-open values.

10% daily moves happened four times in May: twice in each direction.

Statistically, we should consider it just a normal, unremarkable day for Bitcoin.

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

#84

Post by pembrook »

mmastrac wrote: post #3

Event 1 as story 2 happens. This always drives me nuts about financial reporting.

The news business makes no money if there isn't any news. And financial news has a high value audience for advertisers, so there's huge incentives to create drama where it may not exist.

Much harder to get clicks if your headlines are accurate. This would have to be the headline on most days:

"Millions of People Bought/Sold for Thousands of Competing Reasons Again Today, Short Term Randomness Continues"

Would anybody upvote that article on hacker news?

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

#85

Post by vmception »

lottin wrote: post #30
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.

> I’m also wondering why the hackers didn’t request payment in a currency that’s more difficult to trace. Because they need to cash out somehow? Being crypto-currency rich doesn't mean much if you're unable to exchange the crypto-currency for real money.

No not really

People are content with crypto

They can invest, buy computer games, hardware and acquire general goods and services

There is no “I want to buy this flashy house/yacht how do I get crypto out”

Its easy to launder and easy to use without doing so, but also easy to launder whenever they get around to it

These guys didnt

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

#87

Post by BenoitEssiambre »

BenoitEssiambre wrote: post #48
mmastrac wrote: post #3

Event 1 as story 2 happens. This always drives me nuts about financial reporting.

Now the drop seemed to happen at 2:45am UTC. Is that when the government seizure was revealed? That might give weight to a causal explanation.

If I had to guess, a better explanation might be that there is going to be downward pressure and regular dips of the prices of cryptocurrencies at least til fall as the covid stimulus programs wind down making less cash available for speculation and as things reopen providing more other places to spend money.

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

#88

Post by tome »

jzchang wrote: post #74
baby wrote: post #25

More 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...

Apparently through the FBI docs... Ransom was paid to darkside Darkside tries to launder money on blockchain Through blockchain explorer, the BTC ends up on Coinbase in attempt to liquidate. Coinbase has keys, and hands them over to FBI.

Ah, it's very interesting if they were seized after having been transferred to a different wallet. That is going to reduce trust in Bitcoin considerably. It will be difficult to be sure that the coins you just bought are not subject to seizure by the authorities.

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

#89

Post by dehrmann »

bredren wrote: post #77
dehrmann wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have pointed out in another post, you don't reveal that you've broken an important cryptographic algorithm over $2M.

This was not about $2M. It was a response to what was publicly interpreted as a nation-state cyber attack on infrastructure. This was about principle and demonstration of capability. If it is true the US has the ability to calculate BTC wallet keys as fast as it did, the price should fall.

> This was about principle and demonstration of capability.

Still not worth it if a crpyto function has been broken. If it was because of the encrypted chat app honeypot they ran, it might be different, but even then, only if criminals are moving to something else.

They also don't have the perpetrator.

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

#90

Post by jerf »

PretzelPirate wrote: post #14
jerf wrote: post #5

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).

That it is "easy" to protect private keys is the theory, yes. If it turns out not to be an accurate reflection of reality, that's going to affect the value proposition of BitCoin.

Do not mistake theory with reality.

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