Wouldn't the sheer number of coins involved make tumbling services almost useless. What is the volume that a single tumbler gets per day? If you put in tens of thousands of coins, and there are only a few dozen coins in the Tumblr that day, your coins are going to be most of what comes back.
Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
91–100 of 205 posts
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#92Here 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…
fyi. A US gagging order has no legal power over a Frenchman in Japan.
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Why take 429k and split it into many addresses each containing less than 1,000 BTC each? Ever heard the adage "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"? It's possible that MtGox used to operate everything from a single, large wallet but decided to split it up into lots of smaller wallets, to avoid the risk of suffering a single, catastrophic compromise.
When following the splits-in-2 of this transaction, many accounts still have about 1000 BTC in their final balance according to blockchain. E.g: 1BoGw97oS9L2mU8HTQqpm7yxC72H4LCm6i (Final Balance: 1,000.35 BTC). The question is: who may be the owner of those large amounts of of about 1000 btc? If MtGox did all those splits in 2 smaller accounts, then MtGox could still be the owner?
I can't trace these coins to 1BoGw97oS9L2mU8HTQqpm7yxC72H4LCm6i. Can you share how you did it?
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#94In 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…
It would be interesting to put these transactions, or the whole blockchain, in a graph database like Neo4J. Dealing with it as a graph would make it easier to find the sinks for all the transactions that started from that wallet. It would also be interesting to look at deviations from the historical statistical distribution in the aggregate of these transactions as a function of time, that would show when a single actor moved a lot of bitcoins even if it is allocated among many addresses. I would bet that the thieves didn't bother to match their transactions with the background statistical distribution.
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community really needs to choose one of two messages: 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
Those two messages are not incompatible. It could be pseudonymous enough to buy drugs with it safely because the resources required to actually unravel identities is so much greater than the value of catching the drug purchaser (this assumes there is any value of catching the purchaser over the seller for purposes of argument). At the same time, the value of solving large thefts like this makes expending substantial…
But tracing bitcoins through the blockchain is largely a computational problem. Compute only gets cheaper. Identifying a robber in a ski mask is in a different problem domain.
I had never really thought about the consequences of a public blockchain and the decreasing cost of analyzing that blockchain.
I seem to recall a news story about how people who spied against US in the 40's and 50's were caught later in the 70's and 80's because the intercepted cipher texts had been kept for decades until technology was able to break and decrypt them. Looking at the blockchain reminds me of that feat. Of course, that could have also been a poorly written thriller I'm remembering instead...
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
I like that. "Prove you're not a drug dealer and we'll see if there's still money to return." It kind of gives the middle fingers to 3 somewhat-important US rights: the right to not self-incriminate (being coerced into providing new evidence that might be used against you), being considered innocent until proven guilty (assets seized without an active case against you), and that everyone is equal under the law (unles…
There would be precedent, in the form of cash seizure "civil forfeiture" proceedings at both the State and Federal level:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/08/12/130812fa_fact_...
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#97Things like these are bound to fall. People should have predicted this risk.
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community really needs to choose one of two messages: 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
Those two messages are not incompatible. It could be pseudonymous enough to buy drugs with it safely because the resources required to actually unravel identities is so much greater than the value of catching the drug purchaser (this assumes there is any value of catching the purchaser over the seller for purposes of argument). At the same time, the value of solving large thefts like this makes expending substantial…
The "value" to prosecutors of catching a drug seller could be considerable, especially if they're selling a lot.
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
The community really needs to choose one of two messages: 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
Those two options are not mutually exclusive. If you use it correctly, then bitcoin itself is anonymous.
.. which would imply that fraud was untraceable?
Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
So do you think that these 429k bitcoins were all sent through a tumbler? Now that would be interesting information. Can we verify this? Obviously we can't trace the outputs, but can we look for patterns that suggest the use of tumblers/mixers?
well, that's the whole purpose of a tumbling service. i mean you don't even know how long they will be stuck there. i didn't investigate this, but splitting those into small amounts and then tumbling these around seems like exactly this pattern. if you are interested on how this was done in the maybe now second biggest known btc heist check http://www.newstatesman.com/future-proof/2013/12/theres-£60m...
To be honest, tumbling such large amount of BTC serves no purpose because you overflow the rest of the people tumbling.