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

411–420 of 474 posts

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

#411

Post by gnerd »

mpyne wrote: post #231
nadaviv wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

There have been more than one block chain splits. I think you are talking about the hard fork that happened in May, which was planned for and not an unexpected accident. If you conduct a transaction and it is included in the shorter block chain, then by definition the network doesn't recognize the transaction and you keep your money and just send again.

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

#413

Post by waterlesscloud »

dguaraglia wrote: post #232
jganetsk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Hmm. Buy an Amazon Gift Card via Gyft with bitcoins, use gift card to pay for Amazon Fresh. Mmmm, food on the table.

Assuming I can pay for Amazon Fresh with a gift card. :-)

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

#414

Post by Marazan »

mkramlich wrote: post #129
qnr wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment said direct transfer. Bank wire involves intermediate parties, is subject to various capital limits, account closures, funds freeze etc.

and fees with Bitcoin, fees are optional

And if you don't pay the Bitcoin bribes, sorry fees, your transaction can take hours or even days to be accepted by the benevolent miners.

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

#415

Post by waterlesscloud »

res0nat0r wrote: post #391
rfugger wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I can relatively easily convert large amounts of gold, stocks or bonds to cash currently unlike bitcoin. Also I don't care about potential use in the near future (20 years? 2 months?). Unless you provide me a way to realize bitcoin to actual USD in non trivial amounts with the same amount of effort it would take to convert my stocks or bonds, it is as useful a currency for real life as is my current GTA V Online bank…

"Unless you provide me a way to realize bitcoin to actual USD in non trivial amounts with the same amount of effort it would take to convert my stocks or bonds, it is as useful a currency for real life as is my current GTA V Online bank account."

So it's either as easy as stocks or it's useless?

Hmmmmm.

I think you're overstating your case a wee bit there.

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

#416

Post by XorNot »

jmj4 wrote: post #373
XorNot wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gold is a physical good with actual useful value. It is hugely overvalued right now, and anyone telling you to "buy gold" usually holds gold and benefits a lot from that. Those cable "invest in gold" deals are exactly this but worse - they sell you gold more expensive then the commercial market that can never be redeemed for that price. But it has a real cost of production that represents its relative industrial wort…

Fiat currency is valueless and can only be used because people trust the government issuing it. If Bitcoin can gain the trust of enough people, it can easily become more 'valuable' then many currencies in existence at the moment.

Fiat currency is backed by the legal obligations of the country that issues it that it is a suitable means to extinguish debts.

Bitcoin is not. No one is obliged to accept Bitcoin as a currency for settling debts anywhere in the world, it has to be converted to something else. Similarly to gold - you don't have to accept gold as payment for debt, but you do have to accept USD.

This is where the problem lies: BTC acts like a commodity, not a fiat currency - and people are treating it like one buying into it. The problem is it has no value as a commodity other then being Bitcoin.

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

#417

Post by stretchwithme »

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…

Couldn't it also be done by writing a check?

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

#418

Post by intelliot »

JimmaDaRustla wrote: post #408
bigiain wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because "online wallet" sites are the sort of bad idea that _needs_ to have access to the private keys. If you can spend bitcoin out of an "online wallet", the person in control of the software managing that wallet _does_ have access to your bitcoin. Even if they've tried to set things up "securely", the very best they can do is achieve Lavabit levels of security - if they (or someone coercing them) wants to, they'll…

True. I may be wrong here - but is the private key only required to send the money? So, if the user kept the key and it wasn't recorded on the server...or if they use some type of password hash for encrypting it, then there wouldn't be hundreds or thousands of wallets stolen at once. The user would enter their password when they want to transfer funds, the hash is calculated, private key decrypted, transaction made,…

It's possible to sign transactions offline, so that the private key never touches a device that's connected to the internet. Check out http://www.bitcointrezor.com/

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

#419

Post by stretchwithme »

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…

How about the users keeping the key and supplying each time its need from a separate secure app? And that app wouldn't even contain the complete key, but requires they supply the last three digits each time. And they can tattoo that somewhere on their body.

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

#420

Post by fancyketchup »

valleyer wrote: post #396
mehwoot wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same is true of any foreign currency. I could send $150 million in Russian rubles to my sister, and she wouldn't be able to do jack with it until she finds someone willing to give her dollars for it. With the amount of money involved, getting it all converted at once would be extremely difficult. That's exactly the point. If you had $150 million in rubles, you could transfer it for only a nominal fee ($20 for my…

> If you had $150 million in rubles, you could transfer it for only a nominal fee ($20 for my bank, although you can get a lot cheaper if you regularly did transfers like that) to any account in the world that could hold rubles. I have no counterproof, but I find this hard to believe.

If you had $150 million in rubles, you'd almost certainly have an account with the private banking side of whichever bank you use. Private accounts generally come with perks like free wire transfers.

Source: Someone I trust who works in Private Client Services at JP Morgan (not sure if other banks offer free wires, but I'd be surprised if they don't).

Post reply on HN