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So much easier to crack the box holding the key.
Which is why the key hopefully isn't stored on any system that is remotely accessible.
You only need the internet connection to do something with the coins.
This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
Traditional currency isn't really anonymous. Sure it is theoretically possible to do an anonymous 150 million dollar cash transaction in USD but in practical terms it's basically impossible without a great deal of money laundering. I believe by law in North America banks have to report any cash transactions >= 10k per 24 hour period to the government. Additionally every bill has a traceable serial number on it.
I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining. Edit: got curious and found an answer: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-wou... If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute-forced keys on all addresses in the network.
So much easier to crack the box holding the key.
"I am the administrator of MtGox, I need you to send us a copy of your private key..."
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And this is why I can take Bitcoin seriously. Can you imagine if it were really completely anonymous, and someone could be spending a hundred million dollars on, say, a nuclear bomb, without any record, association, or so much as someonel leaving the house and delivering a suitcase full of cash? Imagine if Russia become a failed state or bribeable - you really want to be able to pay off a hundred million dollars to s…
Your examples are more implausible than they are logical.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4404362 - "Hackers Steal, Encrypt Health Records and Hold Data for Ransom".
and recently https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6567735 - "You’re infected—if you want to see your data again, pay us $300 in Bitcoins"
A top comment on that article said: It actually made my skin crawl reading about it. Never had that reaction to such a story before. Interesting...
You might think this might have been a speculative work of fiction. It wasn't - this is a story that happened.
As for your run of the mill kidnappings for ransom, blackmail, extortion and other things normal people turn to the FBI with, (that you would too, if you got certain very specific threatening letters for example), I think if you come back after 5 minutes of googling the subject you would not consider the general situation to be speculative. We are talking about sources of blackmail, kidnapping and ransom becoming literally completely untraceable, without even a network effect of where the money is going afterward (what pseudonymous addresses).
As for the infrastructural, nuclear and so forth examples, you will observe that placing or turning moles and spies already occurs historically, which shows that the process is possible. You are talking about lowering the barrier to entry and risk profile.
Literally anyone who is in a position to do something, and understands that they could instantly anonymously receive a the digital equivalent of a briefcase full of cash, without it ever showing up anywhere, without needing to hide it as they spend it (except regarding the effect it would have on their visible lifestyle -- hell, they could anonymously transfer it to some fake lottery that pretends they just won it...nothing would ever connect the two, the lottery could be a complete front and seem 100% legitimate. Or even actually be 99% legitimate, with a single person adding another payout while collecting funds for it from the person being paid and making sure the lotteries ledger's add up... you get the idea.)
It would be a disaster to have absolutely zero leads whatsoever in all such cases. Money has a profound effect on the world and a modicum of possible pseudonymous oversight over its movements is quite a bit more than minimally responsible.
Ask yourself, for hte data ransoming story I linked: would you prefer for the btc address to be totally and completely a black box, or the present state of affairs?
Really, the current implementation is an absolute minimum for 'keeping people honest'. It has a very high level of barrier to de-anonymizing users (as far as I understand it), yet given sufficient resources certain leads can at least be put together.
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Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tracking. (coinjoin/zerocoin) A lot of us are investing with the expectation true anonymous transactions eventually happen, because when they do Bitcoin will become even more valuable.
It's not scaremongering. Can you trust the mixing services?
This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.
Please stop with the privacy scaremongering. A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising services that will largely stop this type of tracking. (coinjoin/zerocoin) A lot of us are investing with the expectation true anonymous transactions eventually happen, because when they do Bitcoin will become even more valuable.
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> A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising Call it what it is, money laundering.
It may be, depending on your definition, but the term "money laundering" has a distinctly criminal connotation. Bitcoin mixing is more analogous to paying for something with cash withdrawn from a bank account rather than making a bank transfer directly.
I wonder if it ever becomes viable to try to brute-force the private key of such a valuable address, rather than devoting the brute force power to mining. Edit: got curious and found an answer: http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/2847/how-long-wou... If I understand correctly, it's still not viable even if you tried your brute-forced keys on all addresses in the network.
That's the entire point of asymmetric crypto, the amount of effort you would need to brute force 2^160 keys is staggering. Even if you made billions of ASIC processors and ran them until the end of time, you probably wouldn't find the funds you were looking for. This is constantly suggested, and it's always useless. If you could attack keys like this the system would be broken.
The ECDSA keys used in Bitcoin are much stronger than RSA keys at the same size, and they seem quite safe, but don't make the mistake of looking at the time needed to brute force e.g. a 128-bit AES key and assume that applies to asymmetric algorithms too.
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> A lot of work is currently going into trustless mixing/anonymising Call it what it is, money laundering.
The term "money laundering" originally referred to the practice of concealing the movement of funds involved in a crime. Now they've redefined it so that concealing the movement of funds is itself a crime, even if the funds are entirely legitimate and no other crime is involved.
There are very few legitimate reasons to be concealing where you money came from or is going from the IRS, and they well aware of the intent behind the actions.