Richest Bitcoin Addresses • Hacker News Board

The last time this address was touched was 2009, and has an even 8,000 coins (back in the day, this only amounted to 320 mined blocks. You could do that in what?... a few hours/half days?[1]) The owner probably ran his system for a few hours, collected 8000 coins, thought it was a ridiculous concept and deleted everything from his system.

[1]: https://blockchain.info/charts/total-bitcoins?timespan=all&s...

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#24

Post by aqme28 » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

wuschel wrote: post #15

res0nat0r wrote: post #6

Question: How hard/impossible would it be for me as a US citizen to cash in on a large lot like that? Say I want 10 million dollars for some partying I want to do for New Years. It seems some people have mega riches, but is it actually feasible for me to realize that money (in US Dollars, deposited to my Chase bank account)?

IF bitcoin will materialize as common internet currency, these guys/girls will have some jolly good time. Until this happens this list is is nothing but a high-score in a web based game, for there is no way to exchange your BTC into real currency. Of course, anyone who has invested in BTC is highly interested to push the hype button and spread the word of BTC as universal payment system. This is the only way to bring…

What? There are tons of ways to turn BTC into any number of currencies.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#25

Post by otoburb » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:25 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #6

Question: How hard/impossible would it be for me as a US citizen to cash in on a large lot like that? Say I want 10 million dollars for some partying I want to do for New Years. It seems some people have mega riches, but is it actually feasible for me to realize that money (in US Dollars, deposited to my Chase bank account)?

Once you complete the transaction, there are also tax implications. An attorney wrote up a description with some broad strokes: http://www.bitcointax.info/

Useful if you're a US citizen or resident and have bitcoins you want to sell.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#26

Post by cLeEOGPw » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:26 PM UTC

shawabawa3 wrote: post #19

cfontes wrote: post #7

I wonder if Satoshi is amongst those...

afaik 90+% (100%?) of all the blocks mined by satoshi have never been touched. Satoshi's wealth would be in thousands of separate 50BTC wallets, not 1 big one. Can't be bothered to find the source atm but someone did some analysis on the mined blocks in 2009/2010 and found the likely blocks mined by the same person who mined the first block, all unspent.

Either he didn't want to reveal its identity, because he (they) knew well that the history will remain for a long time, or he simply lost access to those bitcoins.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#27

Post by FridayWithJohn » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

Question: How was this list generated, ie: how do you find out which hash number has a lot of bitcoins in it? I thought that was completely hidden.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#28

Post by grey-area » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #17

unethical_ban wrote: post #8

You got hellbanned, saneshark.

And you defeated the purpose of hellbanning by pointing it out to the user. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellbanning

I'm sure anyone using the term hellbanned knows what it means. Sometimes automatic hell banning makes mistakes or is heavy handed (not sure what the algorithms are); some selective civil disobedience corrects the issue and lets the user at least ask admins to find out why.

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#29

Post by tracker1 » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:28 PM UTC

The most surprising thing to me is the number of those addresses that haven't had a transaction in several years now... how many of those people lost their "wallet" so to speak?

Re: Richest Bitcoin Addresses

#30

Post by fat0wl » Fri, Nov 22, 2013, 3:28 PM UTC

res0nat0r wrote: post #6

Question: How hard/impossible would it be for me as a US citizen to cash in on a large lot like that? Say I want 10 million dollars for some partying I want to do for New Years. It seems some people have mega riches, but is it actually feasible for me to realize that money (in US Dollars, deposited to my Chase bank account)?

The whole price of Bitcoin is an illusion that they use to get people to keep buying. It's the result of a bidding war.

There is an article here about that basically explains (this is my interpretation not his words) how the price of BTC is kindof like the sticker price on an item in the store. It doesn't represent the real value, it's simply the value as perceived by consumers and is, in a way, fixed -- http://falkvinge.net/2013/09/13/bitcoins-vast-overvaluation-...

But the fact that early adopters are psychotically rich for doing nothing is... one of the many signs of a flawed system. Basically if everyone started selling the market would destabilize because supply/demand curve would change & I'm pretty sure the value of what they're selling would plummet before they can unload most of their stack.

EDIT: Since I was immediately downvoted, please note that this happens regularly any time you speak ill of Bitcoin's pyramid scheme aspects and is completely expected/anticipated when I post these responses. It's a public service that I will drop eventually, but think about this -- even people who own a ton of BTC (article I linked to) criticize it as being insanely flawed. They only stay with it because as they point out, they believe the price will continue to rise. Speculators love it because they KNOW it's flawed, but still feel confident in a bet that the price will rise. I think it's why ultimately it will take gov intervention or a market catastrophe that screws over all the speculators to finally destroy such interest in Bitcoin and finally give it a chance to start over again... as a currency.