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Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

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Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#161

Post by johnyzee »

mariusz79 wrote: post #108
eof wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i love this this is just another reason why bitcoin will not work 5 years later; several orders of magnitude later, so many arbitrary "milestones" met (parity with dollar, can i buy airplane tickets with it?, well we'll see when the government recognizes it) when do you decide that bitcoin 'works'? i mean; it is absolutely undeniable 100% certainly no-matter-what-you-say currently working RIGHT NOW; the mental disson…

Size of the current bitcoin economy is "just" $8bln. While it sound like a lot of money, comparing to the rest of the economy it does not even qualify as a pocket change.

It is larger than more than half of the world's currencies: http://coinometrics.com/bitcoin/bmix

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#162

Post by tokenadult »

If this was an actual transfer of ownership of Bitcoin at all near that value, this would trigger money-transfer reporting requirements under the laws of most countries,[1] especially if this was an international transfer of ownership. I see that all the other comments here are speculating about what exactly happened here, and one astute comment before this one pointed out that the actual owner of the Bitcoin may still be the same individual person both before and after this blockchain transfer. It will be interesting to see how the regulatory environment keeps up with the implementation of Bitcoin, which so far is a very tiny percentage of the world economy.

There were also statements in some previous comments that this transfer was made for free. It is true enough that a Bitcoin transfer doesn't inherently incur a processing charge from a merchant payment processor, but as merchants learned back in the Middle Ages when charging interest was formally illegal, the price of a transaction can hide financing and processing costs. We don't know what was agreed with whom by whom to make this transfer happen. The transfer may have occurred at a higher than list price for something that was bought, to make up for the ongoing inconvenience of receiving a payment using the new Bitcoin payment mechanism.

[1] One example, among many: http://www.consumerfinance.gov/remittances-transfer-rule-ame...

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#164

Post by gergles »

gorrillamcd wrote: post #139
oijaf888 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often is there a direct transfer of this size? Fedwire moves about 2.7T/day and I believe it would have cost $0.26 to transfer this amount, assuming that its at the upper end of their sliding scale ($0.08 - $0.26/transfer).

Keep in mind though, this transaction was nearly instantaneous. Bank Wire transfers take 3-4 days to complete (at least, as far as I know with normal-person quantities of money). Instant international money transfer is amazing!

No, that's ACH. SWIFT (or even FedWire) transfers happen within a few minutes.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#165

Post by IgorPartola »

sp332 wrote: post #86
lcasela wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we know who these two people are? No? Then it's anonymous.

It's pseudonymous, because if they make a transfer later we'll still know it's the same people.

Can't you just generate a new address for every transaction you conduct and remain anonymous?

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#166

Post by rfugger »

res0nat0r wrote: post #152
fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…

Unfortunately for me right now bitcoin has zero value. Until I can use the millions in coins to pay off my house, buy a car easily, pay my taxes and go out to eat with them, or hassle free convert them to cash in my bank, it is still funny money.

You could say the same for gold, stocks, or bonds. But at least Bitcoin has the ability to be cheaply, easily, and quickly transferred to anyone else in the world, meaning it has the potential to be useful for paying for your house, car, taxes, food, and be easily converted anywhere, once enough people are using it.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#167

Post by dmix »

Keyframe wrote: post #155
dmix wrote: post #143

Whoever owns this wallet used it to gamble on https://letsdice.com/ https://blockchain.info/tx/a80f91549f863ccb58603e45a37980e30...

So much for anonymity of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is pseudonymous by default, not anonymous.

Anonymity is a choice. CoinJoin [1] and other trustless mixing software projects are aiming to make anonymity a push of a button. This is being implemented into DarkWallet [2] where mixing happens automatically in the background.

[1] http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6630/

[2] http://www.indiegogo.com/at/darkwallet

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#168

Post by teraflop »

aminok wrote: post #92
fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…

A slight correction, he paid zero fee. The 0.5 bitcoin is change, that he got back. You can see the fee amount further down the page. If he had paid a fee, 0.0001 BTC, or $0.04 worth of BTC, would have been enough to ensure the transaction was included in the next block.

Isn't it quite possible that the 0.5 BTC is the actual transfer, and the other 194993 BTC is the change?

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#170

Post by codexon »

fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…

While that is true, Bitcoin is far from a bulletproof preserve of wealth. Gold has other uses if it isn't used as a currency anymore.

Bitcoin on the other hand can be made completely useless if some critical flaw is found, or the wealth is too concentrated in a few users and the majority decides to switch to a newer crypto-currency.

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