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The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

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Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#221

Post by lazide »

yieldcrv wrote: post #213
CoastalCoder wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The worst part IMO? That the suitcase of cash didn’t work. As a parent of young men, I'm glad it didn't work. IMHO it would have been bad for the character development of both parties.

Its silly he lacks this much awareness, it reads like he just wanted to be rid of the burden because he can’t figure anything social out People don’t even need actual bitcoin, they just leave their phone wallet open on a watch address while they “go to the bathroom” on a date, and let their nosy date take the bait and watch the tune change in real time Money still overrides other preferences and exacerbates poor char…

In my experience, someone committing crimes like this has a fundamental issue with their emotional self regulatory ability. Money enables coping mechanisms (well, clearly just sometimes like in this case!) that otherwise wouldn’t be available. It is also a general motivator, as you note, for folks to do all sorts of things for someone besides general emotional coping type stuff. Like get a house, or whatever.

Chances are his social dysfunction really stems from something deep he’s refusing to look at and acknowledge; and it’s feeding all these behaviors maladaptively. He probably had one particular person he wanted the validation he saw as coming from sex with, and that’s why the suitcase.

Especially since, quite frankly, if he just wanted to get laid and had cash, it’s not like it would take that much looking to find someone to help him with that and it wouldn’t involve more than a small handful of bills. If he could get his act somewhat together, anyway.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#222

Post by mrcheesebreeze »

carabiner wrote: post #34
phyzome wrote: post #19

Say it with me: "Bitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous."

Bitcoin is not, and never was, anonymous.

In general maybe, but if you were selling something online and received bitcoin on a wallet not associated with your irl identity you can be anonymous, its just not practical because you need to de-anonymize to get that into actual cash unless you really know what you are doing.

Monero is better.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#223

Post by mbreese »

PaulRobinson wrote: post #175
DangitBobby wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they did give up their rights! Or else! Sorry, but there's no reading of it where a plea deal isn't threatening unreasonable punishment if you refuse to forfeit your rights.

I'm not a lawyer, but I've known people go through the (similar, in the UK), mill of prosecution and read/watched enough about some cases to get a sense of how it might play out behind the scenes. Let's step back, and see if you still think this is "give up your right! Or else!" The prosecutors are 50/50 on getting a conviction. If they win, they're sure they're going to see the defendant go to prison for, say, 10 ye…

As an unaffiliated third party, it’s actually quite the example of game theory in action. Everyone has something to risk and trying to figure out the dance of who gives up what is really interesting.

Until you realize these are peoples actual lives… then it’s also sad.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#224

Post by aaronmdjones »

phillipharr1s wrote: post #172
aaronmdjones wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The statute of limitation for wire fraud is 5 years. How did he get charged under that statute when he stole funds from Silk Road in 2012? This is a very simplistic view and this mistake is made a lot. There are several reasons why the statute of limitations could either be longer than 5 years or not yet expired even though it is 5 years: - Tolling. This is when the suspect exits your jurisdiction, preventing you f…

Just wondering, did you write these bullet points with GPT? Some of the transition words sound GPT-ish.

No. I've stayed far away from all that crap.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#225

Post by aaronmdjones »

hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #169
aaronmdjones wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The statute of limitation for wire fraud is 5 years. How did he get charged under that statute when he stole funds from Silk Road in 2012? This is a very simplistic view and this mistake is made a lot. There are several reasons why the statute of limitations could either be longer than 5 years or not yet expired even though it is 5 years: - Tolling. This is when the suspect exits your jurisdiction, preventing you f…

Is the limitation in relation to being penalised for a crime, or somebody being wanted for a crime? If there was a police report about a crime, if the police were unable to determine who committed the crime but at a later date could do so beyond reasonable doubt? What if the perpetrator evades police for 5 years but remains in-state? What’s your location also, that would be relevant to the laws your referring to.

The clock starts counting upon the completion of the crime. There are exceptions as I explained previously; for example, if your crime involves conspiracy with another person, then all future communications with or actions in consort with that person in furtherance of your crime resets the clock. To give an example, if you collude with someone in accounting to defraud your company and have them sign false financial statements to cover it up, the clock is reset upon each signature they make or each time you ask.

Some district courts have held that the statute of limitations can be tolled while the suspect is actively evading law enforcement even if they remain within their jurisdiction; some haven't.

I'm in England, but I'm talking about United States Federal Law.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#226

Post by miracle2k »

Daviey wrote: post #210
miracle2k wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However, actually running the code to facilitate North Korean hackers launder money and personally profiting off of it? Who is "running" the code? The US government, to this date, has not made an argument that the developers of Tornado Cash, who have deployed the code to the Network, have committed a crime; at least one of them seems to be living in the US. Nor has the government made an argument that operators of…

The validating nodes "run" the code. And the majority of the nodes now won't process a tx to or from Tornado[0]. [0] https://www.trustnodes.com/2022/12/14/70-of-the-ethereum-net...

The number is actually 30% now (and seemingly more like 20% since yesterday's Shanghai for some reason):

https://www.mevwatch.info/

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#228

Post by [deleted] »

inlined wrote: post #108
ETH_start wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sanctions are being challenged in court. A federal agency prohibiting use of what is nothing but software is totally unconstitutional, and amounts to a total abrogation of internet freedom, done without any public process like legislation. It also amounts to a general criminalization of financial privacy. So hopefully the legal challenge succeeds.

What part of the constitution prohibits banning software?

[deleted]

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#229

Post by ETH_start »

acdha wrote: post #211
ETH_start wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tornado cash smart contracts simply encrypt your transaction. When you use it you are not profiting off of it. It would be akin to banning. The use of communication encryption protocol period this is completely unprecedented in the US.

That's not accurate: my choice to encrypt a message does not directly assist you in committing a crime but that is unavoidably true for using a mixer. The guy who was arrested wasn't just arrested because he released something on GitHub but because he operates a service with North Korea used to launder money and received payment for it, and it's the operations part which brings the most risk — that service isn't comp…

1. Your choice to encrypt metadata can in fact make it more difficult to identify criminal correspondents. Your choice to use Tor similarly makes it more difficult to track criminals' web usage. Both of these help criminals to engage in certain nefarious actions.

To generalize, every user of a privacy protocol increases the protocol's anonymity set, and thus its utility to all users.

In other words, Tornado Cash shares this property with every other privacy protocol.

2. The guy who wrote the Tornado Cash code operated no aspect of the Tornado Cash smart contract. That operates entirely autonomously. It's code, deployed to a massively distributed blockchain, that any one can use to encrypt their transaction.

Re: The U.S. cracked a $3.4B crypto heist and Bitcoin’s anonymity

#230

Post by acdha »

ETH_start wrote: post #229
acdha wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not accurate: my choice to encrypt a message does not directly assist you in committing a crime but that is unavoidably true for using a mixer. The guy who was arrested wasn't just arrested because he released something on GitHub but because he operates a service with North Korea used to launder money and received payment for it, and it's the operations part which brings the most risk — that service isn't comp…

1. Your choice to encrypt metadata can in fact make it more difficult to identify criminal correspondents. Your choice to use Tor similarly makes it more difficult to track criminals' web usage. Both of these help criminals to engage in certain nefarious actions. To generalize, every user of a privacy protocol increases the protocol's anonymity set, and thus its utility to all users. In other words, Tornado Cash shar…

Yes, which is why most people do not run Tor exit nodes because it’s inherently riskier to have your equipment directly involved in legal activity. Tor is actually safer than this since the traffic is encrypted so a node operator can quite confidently say they don’t know the contents. Some of the charges in this case will depend on whether these developers were in fact similarly unaware of who their heaviest users were. That doesn’t help with charges related to not following KYC, of course, because unlike an IP network financial services are fairly heavily regulated.

Your belief expressed in #2 is at odds with the charges specifically saying he profited from money laundering activity. We’ll see when that goes to court exactly what that meant and whether there’s evidence suggesting that he knew where those fees were coming from.

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