Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer • Hacker News Board

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

#361

Post by bigiain » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 1:56 AM UTC

daemonize wrote: post #327

ikawe wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not if the private key is stored in a secure hardware token.

How does the key get into the token, and how do you know there wasn't a copy made before that?

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

#362

Post by bigiain » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:01 AM UTC

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…

Sure, there are 18 year olds with impressive technical chops.

But do you know _anybody_ who would deposit money in a bank run exclusively by an 18 year old?

Coding skills can be created and honed by highschoolers - business, legal, and commercial experience - very much less so.

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

#363

Post by Florin_Andrei » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:06 AM UTC

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

Owners of pseudonymous accounts can be identified if you're willing and able to do the required correlation legwork.

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

#364

Post by thenmar » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:16 AM UTC

glesica wrote: post #188

latj wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Besides cost there is also risk- a transfer of this size in the light of day would raise a lot of questions- Where did this money come from? Was tax paid? And depending on the reason for the transaction regulators may interfere or freeze the funds.

Yes, because making sure someone isn't buying a nuke on the black market and is paying the taxes they owe is just terrible. Don't get me wrong, the regulatory framework for money transfers seems to suck, but I don't want to go from "shitty regulation" to "zero regulation", I want to go from "shitty regulation" to "smart regulation".

whoa whoa whoa, that would never happen in bitcoin libertarian paradise

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

#365

Post by bigiain » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:19 AM UTC

Noxchi wrote: post #350

CoryG89 wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From where I stand, this seems to be true of Bitcoin as well. I've never had any Bitcoins personally, but don't you have to store them in a wallet, which you're either going to have to worry about backing up, keeping secure, etc on your own. Or you're going to have to trust someone else to do it for you.

You can also store it physically, like on a piece of paper I believe. Or on a USB.

Yep: https://blockchain.info/wallet/paper-tutorial

As with _all_ security, there's a tradeoff between security and convenience. Inline wallets are spectacularly convenient - and guess what that implies security-wise?

Paper wallets are much more hassle. But a paper wallet in a bank vault is arguably up there with the most secure bitcoin storage techniques.

As the stored value of your bitcoin varies - so should your security requirements. If I need to keep under $100USD available to pay for my anonymous vpn or my torrent-box vps - an online wallet (who's operator could make off with my half or quarter of a bitcoin at any time) might be a sensible choice. If I'd been mining bitcoin at a reasonable rate since 2009 and was sitting on a house-worth of bitcoins, I'd make a _very_ different choice.

Consider the value of your wallet(s) - if they were piles of $50 notes, how much would you spend securing that? Would you leave it in your pocket? Hide it under you mattress? Buy a lockbox or a safe for your home? Rent a safe deposit box? At what stage is a never-internet-connected laptop a perfectly sensible expense to incur? I'd suggest a lot of people I see posting in forums about how much they lost in onine-wallet-hack-de-jour who should be kicking themselves for not having a dedicated $300 laptop fr storing their wallets on.

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

#366

Post by andrewflnr » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:25 AM UTC

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…

I'm not sure I see where you're going by mentioning reporting requirements. Isn't the point of Bitcoin that those kind of laws are unenforceable?

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

#367

Post by IgorPartola » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:33 AM UTC

dragontamer wrote: post #336

IgorPartola wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you have no idea if address A and B belong to the same wallet, right? As in, I can create address A, get coins into it, then create addresses B-Z, disburse coins into them, then collect them again? Could I reasonably create enough addresses to create plausible deniability that I actually owned all the coins at all times? Alternatively, could I use a web wallet to bounce coins around to obfuscate ownership?

http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf Researchers can easily track such trivial ways of "attempted anonymization". >>> We found out that there is a huge number of tiny transactions which move only a small fraction of a single bit- coin, but there are also hundreds of transactions which move more than 50,000 bitcoins. We analyzed all these large transactions by following in detail the way these sums were accumulated and…

Got it. I did not properly understand the relationship between wallets and addresses.

That is also a pretty cool paper as well. Thanks for the link.

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

#368

Post by bsandbox » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #89

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…

>between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Err, life isn't a james bond movie. For money transfer like this we use bank wires. We dont buy gold and ship it on gunships anymore.

Reminds me one of Michael Lewis' anecdotes from The Big Short. Something along the lines of one of the big Wall Street banks transferring tens of billions of dollars to the Fed by literally gathering up a set of bonds from their safe, putting them in a briefcase and giving them to a secretary and an armed guard to carry to the building across the street where the Fed had set up an impromptu office.

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

#369

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:40 AM UTC

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…

Solving problems is nice in the abstract, but I can't really get excited that someone has solved the problem "I wanna move $150 million without paying for it." In terms of things that actually make a positive difference in the world, it's right up there with "that breastplate I want for my Warcraft paladin won't drop."

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

#370

Post by nationcrafting » Sat, Nov 23, 2013, 2:42 AM UTC

aortega wrote: post #282

derefr wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chile will probably stop being third-world soon enough, though (I heard something about startup accelerators popping up there?) There should be a term for "third-world country that's probably going to stay third-world for the forseeable future, excepting a revolutionary change of government." Maybe... dystopia ? Argentina is a dystopia.

>Chile will probably stop being third-world soon enough Sorry, I don't think so. Chile is doing good nowadays but basically their only export is copper. Copper is a semi-precious metal right now and thats why that country suddenly has so much wealth, but the difference between rich and poor is abysmal and their economy is tied to the price a single non-renewable resource. Compared to Chile, Argentina still has a huge…

Chile is in the top-10 freest countries in the world right now, alongside Switzerland, Hong Kong, Singapore and other economic successes. Taxes are low, and there are huge incentives for people to start their own businesses. You can register a new business in 3 days, and registering trademarks is one of simplest processes in the world. This is in very sharp contrast to Argentina.

Yes, copper is selling very well, and it takes up a large proportion of the country's exports, but you are mistaken to think that this is the driving cause of the country's increase in wealth over the last 20 years.

The increase in wealth comes from the fact that incentives now exist for people to create wealth. Where wealth is created, there is more wealth. It's the same principle we have seen working throughout history.