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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

#231

Post by mpyne »

nadaviv wrote: post #123
jonknee wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And they received $0 worth of assurance that it would be successful. If it were my $150M I would not want to leave it up to the block chain and hope it works.

They received a mathematical assurance that it would work. The relying nodes, blockchain, miners and priority rules are all well-known and straightforward to account for. If you pay enough fees given your transaction priority, it'll get into a block eventually. If you want it to be mined sooner, you can pay higher fees. And even if it won't be mined, the worst case scenario is that you would keep your Bitcoins and ca…

Except for that pesky blockchain split that happened once...

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

#232

Post by dguaraglia »

jganetsk wrote: post #192
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…

Utterly incorrect. They did not transfer a single dollar. For them to turn those Bitcoins into dollars, they will have to pay more than $0.00. Possibly A LOT more. They may not even be able to turn those bitcoins into dollars for a while, and in all likelihood it will not be $150 million dollars.

This is the correct answer. People rave about how "cheap" it is to transfer bitcoin. What about actually buying anything with that 'money'? Sure, you might be able to buy some crap on the internet with bitcoin, but it won't put food in your table anytime soon without you having to pay a good % in fees to convert it to real currency.

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

#233

Post by [deleted] »

indrax wrote: post #210
codexon wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm pretty sure that if we consider only the industrial uses of gold, and the available supply, it would have a low value. Probably even if we count jewelery as a non-currency use. Almost all the value is because it's shiny, yellow, and traditional. Gold asteroid mining isn't too implausible, either.

[deleted]

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

#234

Post by IgorPartola »

dragontamer wrote: post #171
IgorPartola wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How the heck are you going to put new BTCs into this new address? Unless you have some anonymous way of depositing BTCs into random addresses, all transfers into and out of that address will be stored into the BTC Blockchain _for life_. No, seriously. Forever, for the rest of Bitcoin's history, there will be a record that two addresses transferred BTC between each other. This will be timestamped, cryptographically si…

No. I was under the impression that the same wallet can have an arbitrary number of addresses. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address seems to support this idea.

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

#235

Post by bfell »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #208
socillion wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is Bitcoin sent frequently, it's also stolen frequently: http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-hacking-stolen-million-417/ http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/250-000-worth-bitcoins-sto... http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/czech-bitcoi... edit: unrelated, someone should make an index of how many Bitcoin threads hit the front page of HN per day.

Your point stands, but most thefts occur on third party sites/applications where the address of the coins and their private key are stored in a central location. Owners of the bitcoin should transfer their coins to a private wallet. I don't understand how so many sites can't use password hash generation to secure the private keys, or something to keep it more secure. The first link you posted was a site run by an 18…

This is a good point and one that I considered and wish I followed up on. I'm in the "support queue" with Coinbase right now because they absconded with 10% of my bitcoin holdings for no discernible reason. In case you're concerned, I'm not the one with $150M in bitcoin - it was 1 btc that went missing (greatly appreciated in value from when I acquired it).

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

#236

Post by guan »

JackFr wrote: post #140
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).

I believe FedWire has a $50M pert transaction max, thus $1T would cost around $5K.

As far as I can tell, the $50 million limit only applies to the Fedwire Securities Service for transferring Treasury and certain other securities, and there is no such limit for the Fedwire Funds Service that transfers money.

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

#238

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#239

Post by logfromblammo »

ph0rque wrote: post #31
kmfrk wrote: post #14

Should this be regarded as capital gains from currency speculation, when it comes to taxation, or how does something like this look to a tax attorney or accountant?

This might help: http://www.bitcointax.info/

Wow. I had no idea that complying with the tax laws would be so much more difficult than just ignoring them and concealing your Bitcoin activities from anyone beholden to the authorities.

If there is anyone in Congress with even a quarter of a brain, they might want to take a look at how to keep Bitcoin users in the system. Otherwise, as more people read that guide, say "WTF?!", and decide to pay it all as much heed as "use tax" on interstate retail transactions, they will be forced to lean more heavily on debasement of the currency they can control.

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

#240

Post by zwily »

fragsworth wrote: post #185
teraflop wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, but that makes for a very uninteresting story

I'm not sure why he would use that many inputs to transfer 0.5 Btc.
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