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Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

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Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#51

Post by mikeash »

josephagoss wrote: post #7
cheez wrote: post #2

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.

People are supposed to stop stating true facts because people are doing research that everybody hopes will solve the problem?

That's... pretty stupid.

Calling it "privacy scaremongering" would be reasonable if it were simply wrong. But if it's completely correct, and the only reason you disagree is because you're pretty sure it'll eventually be solved, that's crazy.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#52

Post by jasimp »

mdisraeli wrote: post #25
cheez wrote: post #2

This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.

This is why I take bitcoin seriously, the privacy implications are BRILLIANT :P In all seriousness, this is going to come across as a conspiracy theory, but why else would major government organisations be thinking that bitcoin is actually a good thing? Surveillance by design neatly negates all the current NSA privacy issues! It is also a figurative goldmine for economics researchers, who get to study every transacti…

> It is also a figurative goldmine for economics researchers, who get to study every transaction in an economy for once, with full information on how the funds are following.

If you're interested in that than you should look at the economy for Eve Online. It's definitely the closest thing ever created to a real economy which astounding amounts of information available to study. I'll provide some links that talk about Eve's market from economic standpoints, but these really only scratch the surface of what type of analysis is possible.

[NOTE: I am not an author of any of these posts, and I claim no ownership over them]

http://justinandrewjohnson.com/gaming/eve-online-best-game-e...

http://justinandrewjohnson.com/gaming/The-EVE-Online-Monopol...

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#53

Post by maxerickson »

logicallee wrote: post #44
maxerickson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your examples are more implausible than they are logical.

Here are some simple examples from this site, 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 stor…

Data ransom shouldn't ever happen to valuable data. Preventing single points of failure is much more important than chasing around the bad actors that come along and exploit them.

Run of the mill kidnappings are parents violating custody agreements.

Infrastructure needs to be resilient in any case.

I don't mind that bitcoin has a public ledger, but you haven't convinced me it is particularly important.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#54

Post by yxhuvud »

phaer wrote: post #34
rheide wrote: post #14

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.

It might become the lottery of the 21th century. ;)

Or perhaps the tulip.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#55

Post by fhars »

fragsworth wrote: post #31
shock-value wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheez is hardly scaremongering. As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. (I'm not a Bitcoin user so feel free to correct me.) I would say that you are the one who is doing whatever the opposite of scaremongering would be called (hope-mongering?).

> As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. Not true. There are many, many schemes that can be built into the protocol or on top of it to make transactions anonymous. Rather than hastily choosing one, it's probably better to wait for a really good scheme to surface. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=241.0

If we have to wait for a scheme to surface, that does maen that as it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are currently impossible, right?

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#56

Post by [deleted] »

maxerickson wrote: post #53
logicallee wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some simple examples from this site, 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 stor…

Data ransom shouldn't ever happen to valuable data. Preventing single points of failure is much more important than chasing around the bad actors that come along and exploit them. Run of the mill kidnappings are parents violating custody agreements. Infrastructure needs to be resilient in any case. I don't mind that bitcoin has a public ledger, but you haven't convinced me it is particularly important.

[deleted]

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#57

Post by anigbrowl »

josephagoss wrote: post #7
cheez wrote: post #2

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.

You're not investing. You're speculating - a perfectly valid use of your own money, but different nonetheless.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#58

Post by cenhyperion »

cheez wrote: post #2

This is why I can't take Bitcoin seriously. The privacy implications are insane.

Yes, I still don't understand why people assumed it was a safe way to pay for incredibly illegal things.

Unless you take extreme precautions tracking down the individual behind a wallet would be trivial for a government.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#59

Post by cenhyperion »

fragsworth wrote: post #31
shock-value wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

cheez is hardly scaremongering. As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. (I'm not a Bitcoin user so feel free to correct me.) I would say that you are the one who is doing whatever the opposite of scaremongering would be called (hope-mongering?).

> As it stands truly anonymous and private transactions on Bitcoin are apparently impossible. Not true. There are many, many schemes that can be built into the protocol or on top of it to make transactions anonymous. Rather than hastily choosing one, it's probably better to wait for a really good scheme to surface. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=241.0

>There are many, many schemes that can be built into the protocol or on top of it to make transactions anonymous.

So as it stands truly anonymous transactions are impossible. The possibility to make that not true doesn't negate the fact that today bitcoin is in no way a private way of transferring money.

Re: Here’s who probably did that $150 million Bitcoin transaction

#60

Post by Amadou »

consonants wrote: post #49
fexl wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, because the motivations behind money laundering are driven almost exclusively by crime. For purchases you wish to remain private, such as personally embarrassing products, there are 'anonymizing' but traceable services for you to save face with. 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.

The problem isn't the IRS, it is everybody else who wants to know. Especially in the case of bitcoin where all transactions are public record.

Come up with a way for the IRS to investigate (not just get it handed to them on a platter, but something that mathematically requires a level of effort to prevent fishing expeditions by IRS employees) while simultaneously keeping all transactions private from everyone else and then we'll have a solution.

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