851–860 of 901 posts
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Then it seems pure luck that some conniving sociopath at the top can lead a company to produce useful goods.
That's extremely subjective to your definition of useful. Investing in the best con artist isn't exactly a bad deal so long as you aren't the last mark.
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It would be ironic if the "cloud storage account" the feds accessed was Dropbox. "YC company helped indict YC founder"
They wrote that cloud storage is of the same provider as their email. So I guess Google.
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That's just nitpicking. If Bitfinex is acting as a custodian, the property will be returned to the owners. Whether that return happens via Bitfinex or via the feds looking at Bitfinex's books doesn't really change much. The point is that the feds can't destroy property just because they don't like who it was stolen from.
The feds have no problem seizing and liquidating property. They do it all the time. They even recruit local law enforcement to do it for them. See "equitable sharing"
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.
1. Chinese people using Bitcoin to move money outside of China, thereby bypassing government regulations.
2. People building private marketplaces (even if it isn't drugs), thereby avoiding paying taxes.
3. People doing blackmail and extortion directly and using crypto to try to avoid having the money tracked back to them.
4. People stealing electricity and then laundering that stolen energy by converting it into crypto which is then sold for money.
Really, name me any big crypto-based operation that actually pays sales taxes in all regions in which they operate.
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You can just sell the bitcoin for monero, then sell the monero for btc. also, as time goes on, the proportion of btc that are "dirty" approaches 1, so these chainalysis strategies become less effective, assuming you aren't stupid enough to do some criminal act then cash out at a kyc exchange the next day from the same wallet
But are there any exchanges that swap btc for monero or eth that don’t have KYC requirements? Seems like it’d need to be off-chain somewhat, unlike uniswap.
Morgan and Ilya appear to be the original hackers as well so on top of the money laundering sentencing which is around 10~20 years, they now have to deal with the hacking charge which appears to be a separate trial.
Morgan and Ilya aren't the only ones involved and the rest of the guys will eventually appear on DOJ website.
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
I think you are tad exaggerating here. not the dumbest but not certainly anything close to being competent. leaving keys in a cloud storage and not using OTC crypto exchanges outside US.
It's unbelievable stupid to use mixers on a public ledger because its all traceable and immutable. The really smart "criminals" DO NOT live in the US, especially NEW YORK out of all places, they DO NOT leave stupid social media posts or spend time chasing the vapid social media fame, they DO NOT use mixers because they are all points of surveillance.
I won't detail how one could've gotten away with this loot but there is an obvious hint here, blockchain is simply a means of temporary storage to move dirty money. Tether is largely considered a pipeline for illicit funds from China to move out to the West. They absolutely do not do any of the transactions on the blockchain, it is all done through highly organized criminal networks involving banks, shells, casinos.
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Amounts are not public with Monero outputs created within the last few years.
Equation Group: “Challenge accepted”. You really want to bet that a crypto tumbler won’t have a flaw in it? Most crypto tokens have flaws. I’m short this comment and the bank who gave the author a mortgage.
Feels aside, I get the impression that your knowledge of monero, zero knowledge proofs, and anonymized transaction outputs is lacking. By virtue of the way that monero burns and creates unlinkable transaction outputs with concealed amounts, you cannot discern the amount of any transaction or output unless you're a key party to the transaction. As always the sender is also concealed. Tumblers would be a different and weaker concept all together.
The equation group admits this themselves, and it is proven time and time again every time monero is seized or analyzed.
I do hope you eventually get out of your feelings and get your proverbial shit together, because idolizing your detractors is no way to live. I assure you my ramblings are nowhere near as interesting as the conversations you'll have with your therapist about them.
Also lmao, nobody in this space uses banks, stop it.
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Funny you would say that, because if you read the indictment, these people did actually deposit Monero on one exchange: > VCE 4 Account 2 was entirely funded by approximately 13,200 XMR via approximately 21 transactions that took place between in or around November 2017 and March 2019. > Another account at VCE 4 (“VCE 4 Account 3”) was created on or about November 20, 2017, and was registered in the name of another R…
But the accounts 1 and 2 on VCE 4 (the ones funded by Monero) weren't registered in either Morgan's or Lichtenstein's name. They were created with fake credentials. The feds were able to link them to the couple because bitcoins were moved from VCE 4 to other accounts that also had received bitcoins which were traceable to their alphabay accounts. If they had funneled everything through monero I can't say that they wo…
Nobody knows who Satoshi was, everybody just assumes he isn't the feds themselves. Such scenario would be so catastrophic to organizations that rely on its advertised anonymity and it would be the best investment ever since you could just keep denying you have this capability, always coming up with a cover story (keys in cloud, we traced their keys, they were dumb etc).
This would keep criminals guessing, the economic value of laundering with crypto is too great to give it up but at the end of the day, they can only operate under uncertainty.
> “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…
You have to keep in mind that a lot of those highlighted "trivial" series of mistakes can be just the result of parallel construction, and what evidence really "did them in" can be completely different from what's stated by the prosecution. It is very easy to find tons of small mistakes once you already know what you have to look for thanks to an undisclosed huge exploit/honeypot/technically-illegal-seizures that you…
If you had such capabilities, the moment it is known you have it would immediately neutralize any value you derive from that capability.
What is the logical course of action?
Deny. Deny. Deny.
Disavowing, deception, secrecy of such capability is what gives them the edge.
Again, there is no proof that Satoshi Nakamoto was some good hearted criminal/spook.