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Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

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Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#61

Post by deweller »

chevreuil wrote: post #48
deweller wrote: post #28

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'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ? Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.

Others have proposed such measure. And it sounds like a good thing on its face.

The problem is that who then decides which coins are "bad"? Does the US Government get to decide? How about coins that fund organizations that the US Government doesn't care for?

My personal opinion is that no bitcoin should ever be tagged as better or worse than any other one. By messing with the fungibility of the currency, we would do way more harm in the long run than good.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#63

Post by INIT_6 »

jnbiche wrote: post #9
fredgrott wrote: post #7

Here s an idea.. Feds sized silk road and the Bitcoin wallets If any was stored or transacted at MTGox this might be some of the amount of losses MTGOX is now showing but NOT ALL OF The lOSSeS obviously

Bingo. The Feds seized their cold wallet somehow. Mark has said repeatedly that Mt. Gox is under investigation and that he can't talk about it. There's a supposed IRC log from two days ago where he let it slip that he's under a gag order, saying two days ago "le gouv US ne veut pas qu'on disclose" (the US gov. doesn't want us to say anything)[0]. And he's said in public that he can't discuss the matter since he's und…

You can't really seize bitcoin. you can think you have. The only thing you need is a private key so if you store this in a encrypted file like you can with wallet.dat you can seize this file.

mean while you can have already split your key into parts and give them to trusted people. setup a dead man switch to email those people to talk and recombine private key, import into wallet and withdrawal funds.

this would have worked beautiful in silkroads case because the private was encrypted.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#64

Post by webkike »

chevreuil wrote: post #48
deweller wrote: post #28

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'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ? Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.

Absolutely impossible. One of the major positives of bitcoin is that accounts cannot be frozen by any authority.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#65

Post by tjaerv »

badman_ting wrote: post #23

Does it matter? Edit: Not "does it matter that they are lost", but rather " since they are lost , does it matter where they are".

There are already reports of two suicides related to the Mt.Gox fiasco, so yes, it does matter.

http://falkvinge.net/2014/02/28/the-gox-crater-crowd-detecti...

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#66

Post by bencxr »

chevreuil wrote: post #48
deweller wrote: post #28

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'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ? Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.

while in theory possible, this approach has not been done because it is said to be a slippery slope down the lines of being against "bitcoin neutrality".

once the feature exists to treat one set of coins different from another, it leaves the protocol open to control by centralized parties - they could ban the use of "unidentified coins", etc.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#67

Post by patio11 »

chevreuil wrote: post #48
deweller wrote: post #28

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'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ? Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.

This is not technically speaking impossible, but the Bitcoin community has a visceral hatred for the idea, because it allows off-blockchain-entities to effectively deprive them of the use of their coins. It also undermines trust in the currency generally, since why accept Bitcoins if there is the possibility that you'd be paid with black Bitcoins instead of white Bitcoins, when you're practically speaking guaranteed that all dollars are green.

Also "Take all the coins that went through Silk Road. Now, floodfill forward." (probably) colors most of the network black.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#68

Post by maxerickson »

loceng wrote: post #21
bushido wrote: post #6

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…

This is the issue. It can become a never-ending wild-goose chase. The thieves can continue to move the funds around until they're no longer tracked, or far enough ahead that from the trackers (assuming there's any enforcement or penalties or laws relating to accepting stolen Bitcoin - which there aren't currently) or just spend them if they're not being tracked or if there's no enforcement in place. The thieves will…

Let's say there are 2 categories of addresses involved with these coins; addresses that have been sufficiently analyzed (so you don't care anymore about tracking them) and addresses that have not been sufficiently analyzed.

Following the second category is roughly instantaneous, it's all on the block chain. So in some ways, the chase gets easier over time.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#69

Post by tensafefrogs »

chevreuil wrote: post #48
deweller wrote: post #28

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'm a bit new to bitcoins, but is it technically possible for the bitcoins community as a whole to make a blacklist of bitcoins addresses and "ban" the stolen bitcoins ? Such blacklist would daunt robbers and enforce public trust in bitcoins.

It would be possible if enough miners started supporting a blacklist, but the real problem is not enforcing it, but who decides which coins are "stolen"?

Bitcoin is decentralized, and that's the benefit of it. Creating a global block list would go against that.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#70

Post by colinbartlett »

jackgavigan wrote: post #52

There have been hints that MtGox's losses were due exploitation of the transaction malleability issue. I don't know if it's possible to identify (from the blockchain) transactions that have been altered in a way that exploits the malleability issue but it should certainly be possible to identify pairs of transactions with identical startpoints, endpoints and sizes (i.e. number of bitcoins). If it turned out that pair…

I would be surprised if that was simply a ploy by Mt. Gox to deflect blame from their own ineptitude.
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