Shouldn't all true crypto believers hate this news? It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
Obvious no-true-scotsman. Believing that the goal of crypto is to circumvent laws regarding possession and theft is at most a fringe belief. The fact that this is at the top of HN demonstrates how devoid of merit crypto discussion here is.
$4 billion has got to buy an awful lot of compute time, but still, how did they decrypt the file?
A fancy (or even basic) dictionary attack has a very high chance of working.
It doesn't unless you chose something stupid like "correct horse battery staple" or "word + word + number". 7 words chosen from 1000 word dictionary password encrypted AES 256 cannot be cracked with existing technology, 8 words impossible with future tech.
In a hypothetical, if the two did not breach Bitfinex servers (unauthorized access to others systems) but instead managed to "guess" the private key to the Bitfinex wallet and transfer the funds, would this also be a crime? Would this be treated the same way?
Yes. If you guess my house key shape, that doesn't give you a right to enter my house, even if you can now unlock the front door.
> “After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein,” the press release said. “Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and rec…
While I do partially agree that some of it may be grandstanding. The whole: "Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter what form it takes.” and suggesting AEC and chain hopping is futile is an effective propaganda tool. I mean its possible something major changed, but I think your thoughts are closer to reality. If true, this is…
...any system appropriate for shluffing around value by definition comes with being able to trace things with enough attention to detail.
While I do partially agree that some of it may be grandstanding. The whole: "Thanks to the meticulous work of law enforcement, the department once again showed how it can and will follow the money, no matter what form it takes.” and suggesting AEC and chain hopping is futile is an effective propaganda tool. I mean its possible something major changed, but I think your thoughts are closer to reality. If true, this is…
I agree. Propaganda is very effective here. And it's actually good - it deters potential criminals. But if someone who knew how crypto works wanted to commit a crime, they can. That's scary.
Sorry, yes. I used the term propaganda, but I briefly forgot its negative connotation. In this particular instance, I meant it more along the lines of 'shock and awe' your adversaries. I am hardly cheering on an alleged hacker/thief/launderer. The point stands, but thank you for pointing the perception issue out.
Probably stupid question: Why not just exchange it to zcash or monero or some other coin that hides transaction details? Then you can send it to a new wallet; theoretically 100% untraceably. Is this not a valid approach?
One possibility is that almost all exchanges require KYC today.
Why anyone would use BTC and not some privacy coin for this kind of scenario escapes me.
Is it practical to convert literal billions of dollars between currencies? And even if you did, wouldn't liquidating it so you can actually spend it on things in the real world prove to be almost impossible? Billions of dollars worth of currency is more than I'd expect most privacy coins to deal with over the course of months.
Shouldn't all true crypto believers hate this news? It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".
Bitcoin is about separating money and state, but having a government is still very important.
I'm much more worried about non crypto believers hating crypto believers for getting rich while their life is getting harder because of the inflation central banks are imposing on most people.
fwiw, it appears one of the named here is a YC Alum: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=il https://www.linkedin.com/in/unrealdutch/
This is just unreal. this guy was living a double life of being the greatest criminal ever. So among our community was a $4 billion hacker, just nonchalantly posting. I don't think he will be commenting anytime soon again if this really is him https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=il like your neighbor being a serial killer or something
He was just a million-dollar hacker, but the power of HODL boosted his illicit fortune to the billion-dollar range.
I was wondering about this. I would think the most obvious path would be to find some other criminals (now you've got new risks) who don't care about the provenance of the coins, will pay cash for some coins at a discount, and you somehow launder that cash.... Could at least get a couple bucks from it, possibly.
On the one hand, the mob would probably be happy to buy them for 10-30% face value. On the other hand, how do you contact a reputable mob boss?