31–40 of 205 posts
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC. I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e... . The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address. Here is the transaction where it starts…
Some info here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_a... "MtGox still has at least 200k BTC" Here are the possibilities, as far as I can tell: 1) That information is inaccurate. 2) MtGox lost their private keys. 3) The private keys were kept in a bank vault, which was seized by a foreign entity like the US government at some earlier time. 4) MtGox stole the coins. The management of MtGox knows…
5) they were stolen
Why doesn't Mt. Gox just publish the ID of the wallet(s) from which they were stolen? 1. They weren't stolen - lost in cold storage harddisk failure for example 2. Revealing it would show something extremely embarrassing - they only used a single wallet? 3. They still have them - yay? 4. They were stolen by Mt. Gox - gulp
Though I agree a cold storage failure is still a good possibility, given the poor communication.
With the possibility of getting down voted into oblivion. The BTC lost/stolen are all available within blockchain/public ledger. Depending on who stole them, it would probably be distributed within multiple very smaller transaction. It my be traceable, but likely unrecoverable, because this is a feature of Bitcoin. In other words authorities and forensic enthusiasts can find the BTC but they are most likely lost at t…
I wouldn't be that pessismistic. If people manage to identify people behind the blockchains, I strongly suppose that law enforcements, depending on countries where the theift physically is, can force the thieft to give it back without any modifications to existing laws. I think we can catch him when he is going to want to laundry his bitcoins.
a) Bitcoin is pseudonymous enough that you can safely buy drugs with it
b) Large thefts of bitcoin can be traced; it's not pseudonymous enough for massive frauds
Again, I know very, very little about bitcoin or economics in general.
Some info here: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1z37zw/mt_gox_has_a... "MtGox still has at least 200k BTC" Here are the possibilities, as far as I can tell: 1) That information is inaccurate. 2) MtGox lost their private keys. 3) The private keys were kept in a bank vault, which was seized by a foreign entity like the US government at some earlier time. 4) MtGox stole the coins. The management of MtGox knows…
5) they were stolen
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC. I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e... . The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address. Here is the transaction where it starts…
Can anybody follow one of these "branches" until the very last known transaction on the blockchain? Would that clear anything up?
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC. I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e... . The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address. Here is the transaction where it starts…
I wonder, can this trace be automated?
In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC. I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e... . The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address. Here is the transaction where it starts…
We can construct a graph tree all destinations beginning from that one address, but what good would that be? Where do you make inferences to determine the identity of the recipients? How do you group them together?
At some point your trail becomes so long and so disparate that any effort to continue following that trail would be a pointless endeavor.
Sure the technology is there to follow the trail indefinitely, and (where available) you can easily check all recipient addresses from this "poisoned" tree against regular fiat exchange logs, but within the BTC ecosystem? It's an interesting intellectual challenge, but not useful.