Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blockchain.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

301–310 of 474 posts

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

#301

Post by Keyframe »

smtddr wrote: post #272
Keyframe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much for anonymity of Bitcoin.

It's like the AOL search-data leak. It's anonymous until you do a bit of research; then you can narrow it down to general area, maybe gender and perhaps eventually who exactly it is. Now, since one person can have multiple wallets and addresses... I'd recommend this person to never use this address again! ...because people(and authorities) will be watching and gathering clues on it from now on. I'm sure the folks at…

The thing though is that all transactions are available to be seen. So even if you don't use the same wallet ever again, you can follow the trail of the money - FOREVER. This is not something I am comfortable with. This was also primary reason why I never considered bitcoin as serious alternative, but then again I don't see a way around it.

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

#302

Post by Keyframe »

dmix wrote: post #167
Keyframe wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is actually quite interesting. Thanks for sharing. Forever tracking of transactions was what put me off from bitcoin in the first place.

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

#303

Post by gamblor956 »

nwatson wrote: post #154
Codhisattva wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's an exhaustive discussion. +1

Not exhaustive enough. From the link: "Miners of Bitcoin face a host of unique tax issues that are outside the scope of this discussion." If I were mining I'd want to know the tax and legal implications, and there are no good sources out there from what I understand. The most burning questions: (1) for a miner based in the U.S., does the BTC miner realize a short-term gain the moment a bitcoin is awarded? or can they…

1) It depends on whether the mining reward is treated as compensation. It probably should be considered compensation, in which case it is taxable ordinary income when received. However, on a subsequent sale, it should be taxable gain only to the extent that the sales price exceeds the value already taxed as ordinary income.

2) If the value of BC crashes between the time earned and the time the tax is paid....then yes, you're SOL and still owe taxes on the value of the BC when received. However, usually there is a corresponding deduction to help alleviate that.

3) Pool mining almost certainly is taxed differently, since it is more akin to investment income than to compensation income.

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

#304

Post by mml »

INTPenis wrote: post #218
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…

Months ago? I was considering buying some coin when it cost only a few dollars. You can imagine how I'm kicking myself now.

You think you feel bad? I _did_ buy some at $4. 250BTC. Now worth around $120k. Sold at $23.

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

#306

Post by ikawe »

rainmaking wrote: post #289
tokenadult wrote: post #162

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 sti…

Given the transfer of ownership could just as well have occurred by transferring the private key of the address, these requirements are going to get pretty hard to enforce.

I think that scenario is pretty unlikely for large exchanges.

If someone gave me a copy of a private key, corresponding to some bitcoins, I wouldn't consider it payment, as they still have the private key as well (meaning they could still spend the bitcoins at any time).

It's more like a "shared account" at that point.

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

#307

Post by jessedhillon »

giovannibajo1 wrote: post #252
JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry to digress a little, but I'm sensitive on age issues :) Pinkie Pie won his first $50k award by creating a 0-day sandbox escape on Chrome, by chaining 10 different vulnerabilities. He was 19 (now almost 21). Two years before, at 17, he released jailbreakme.com, all by himself, which was a 0-day able to jailbreak all iOS models shipped to date by just visiting a website. Age means nothing by itself, but the point…

Anecdotes don't negate stereotypes, which are themselves generalizations across numerous anecdotes. And stereotyping is not by itself an invalid source of information, just less reliable than, say, a study. Everyone knows one person who negates a stereotype -- any stereotype. The existence of that person doesn't reduce the usefulness of that stereotype.

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

#308

Post by jessedhillon »

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!

Don't BTC transactions take 10-30 minutes to settle?

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

#309

Post by aidenn0 »

Karunamon wrote: post #269
dllthomas wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though I have every expectation of mixing falling afoul of AML laws, if not presently then soon.

The legislators can make whatever they want illegal, but that doesn't make it necessarily enforceable. Thing about mixing is, since any person (or autonomous process) can generate wallets and send BTC to those on the fly, how do you prove that you used a tumbling service and not that you gave coins to a guy who gave coins to a guy who split them up into separate wallets who each gave coins to a guy, etc etc etc. As B…

It's trivial to make it enforcable. Whenever BTC leave the mixed wallet into a regulated area, bust the person doing so for violating money laundering laws if they used mixing. If they didn't use mixing, but received mixed funds you can probably impound some fraction of their funds to.

Either way you now have enough evidence to raid their PC to check for further laundered funds and generally make their lives miserable. When people complain just find a fraction of a BTC that was used at some point in the past to fund the social demon of the day (child porn, terrorism, drugs, sex trafficking, etc.) to justify it.

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

#310

Post by brazzy »

jypepin wrote: post #138
derefr wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's only if the two entities can both interact with the global banking infrastructure (i.e. they hold money in reserve currencies, their accounts aren't frozen, etc.) If someone in Argentina wanted to buy something from anywhere else in the world in 2000, for example, they'd basically have to trade natural resources or gold for access to foreign currency, and then spend that.

Still today in fact. Not sure exactly of all the details, but Argentinians are simply not allowed to change their currency. They need to fill documents to officially ask the government, which will likely refuse you the right if it is for a huge amount (remember, this 'non-change' policy is exactly for that, avoid flights of capitals).

AFAIK, the government does allow the exchange of currency, it just mandates an unrealistic exchange rate at which there is practically no supply. However, there is a lively black market that is tolerated (probably because it's cash based and thus does not scale but serves average people well enough) - newspapers publish the rates, traders operate quite openly.

In an interesting validation of basic economy, the black market rates are much closer to the official ones in rurual tourist hotspots, presumably due to the much bigger supply of foreign currencies.

Post reply on HN