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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?

#121

Post by erichurkman »

enraged_camel wrote: post #117
jackgavigan wrote: post #58

Earlier 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.

>>Ever heard the adage "Don't put all your eggs in one basket"? I'm pretty sure the opposite is also true though, as in "don't split all your eggs among thousands of little baskets." I mean, at some point the overhead of managing all of those wallets must outweigh the risk of having everything in one wallet, right?

They should have written a check that runs periodically to check that the sum of all wallets equals their total BTC according to their ledgers. You have to write that process anyway, it shouldn't matter too much if it has to examine 100 wallets or 10,000 wallets.

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

#122

Post by rsiqueira »

deweller wrote: post #93
rsiqueira wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You showed that account 1M1ZkWpHfuQthji2AVsGDvpfY2PrcXQar6 had about 430000 BTC and split coins in 2 other accounts and so on. I followed one of the splits and its subsequents:

14qKyR7b86JVHn5mfm6Dm3G756BgxhMqMP received 203002 BTC.

Then it sent 202658 BTC to 13JAudzPvKYyBtY9XpkhNW3YdDqBsi3c7Q.

Then it sent 108570 BTC to 144rbLnQmwH8MbB5iirSqvaPgXB9NMdcdb.

Then it sent 44505 BTC to 18pGH9G1FtpAkBt1zHTDuYXxPFMXqPG8PU.

Then it sent 23525 BTC to 13kfZQxVC6qi5pDSw56Fi3boTU7qMar8Nf.

Then it sent 23525 BTC to 14EKdT8ENWUY33Vyd7PN4TgLg6mnrwUt4T.

Then it sent 9576 BTC to 7jj6RTpzayiHDeFfCR5ihnDFccK997UNT.

Then it sent 5456 BTC to NRZTrVBQEcQ7EWgEdfUrs9xHjuwazdcuf.

Then it sent 2878 BTC to 2kSAA9HY11xwDi2QvmtZN1TYWuRdZb7Gx.

Then it sent 1241 BTC to 1GKUwZEzMoM92BVjVTNAwoSnUxeANhiawc.

Then it sent 509 BTC to 16hpTHQDWRTDkhgHw2T3RDneJM74XJXDoD.

Then it sent 473 BTC to 1KuNerYrrHiNR6bGgQesUiCyQt5u5qVBVQ.

Then it sent 473 BTC to 1Mu3EwLg85J3sV8No3RKLvwZPu2XZqEE63.

Then it sent 473 BTC to 1PgLdynDGFtsfpj6u442gokuLF1kZPCiRa.

Then it sent 376 BTC to 12yUfwW8DmgkZmAcAYsMzGWGw7LCmiQzXa.

Then it sent 375 BTC to 1CZHLDbrswW6ku8eHEDLLHC8Wr3RxowW3x.

Then it sent 354 BTC to 15robQvbP2Q1rZ9kMADnuv9f6tFhwkzz5z.

Then it sent 305 BTC to 1Jsdgh21hrbRuLuKeyvEGdkBauHiYXm7FN.

Then it sent 286 BTC to 1Q64Rx1tVCNeucdUGLkGdo1asiPHhPjoNW.

Then it sent 260 BTC to 1JWjfsk2tUAE83MtBjNEXP85ArxJuWoqg6.

Then it sent 260 BTC to 1JS9EAFzrjeFrLiPaK57mXeAZLwqHdEbPa.

Then it sent 256 BTC to 1421kfM6sbCXYsSZnvL6Dw1StXW2tbq4gZ.

Then it sent 247 BTC to 12eq3PnDcHLT2xpHevZMmFuVHymULjdoaj.

Then it sent 125 BTC to 12ZWoyaSwj53spGWGt9AtGCA28uLq58SCk.

Then it sent 125 BTC to 1Kf6KQd2oQA3yGPQDw8teCZVK7wj6C7ms7.

Then it sent 78 BTC to 1A3AsuYVsgdKNRDm7SGKkkHD9LQeuuipfe.

Then it sent 49 BTC to 1bu6ZBmksM5sRVEZspDKaXb5zTxZRuhrW.

Then it sent 49 BTC to 1J2HFUhF5xSnDXL3Zw3vCiEdv7eJi4EbM5.

Then it sent 156 BTC to 1JT6L2sT9z3QNitk4a2xiDEuwq3dksPYsb.

Then it sent 3730 BTC to 17C6oanWeXbehGZNL5fpUKsEQfMFya1pVD.

Then it sent 1000 BTC to 1MoUfk2Bow7n9B6ksreCbcyDzXdRTFMpC9 (this seems important address, received more than 117500 BTC).

Then it sent 998.99995 BTC to 1Ky8YXSXGensz2J8BYUprtLJvjcjNN3xbm.

Then it sent 999.99 BTC to 12wjEVECppk1rPBTQXyZ6m8zn4h91AzzSf.

Then it sent 1000 BTC to 1BoGw97oS9L2mU8HTQqpm7yxC72H4LCm6i, who still has 1000.35 BTC in its final balance.

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

#123

Post by rikacomet »

So what happens next?

-The government has no inclination to interfere (even though many US citizens lost their money) as they were against it (if not outright criminalizing it).

- The lost money, even if recovered in full, would not be the same. The time lost is money lost. Besides the emotional shock and pain people had to take.

- Someone somewhere is sitting on that money, and it will have value, because people won't stop trading Bitcoin even now.

I know people are not ready to take any criticism of bitcoin, but here it is, what needs to be fixed about it.

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

#125

Post by pjc50 »

deletes wrote: post #105
pjc50 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

.. which would imply that fraud was untraceable?

It would not imply that.

So, if I am induced into sending bitcoins into an address, and subsequently find out that I'm defrauded (e.g., if I were a gox customer), can I trace the fraudster?

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

#126

Post by negamax »

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 followed until this far

https://blockchain.info/zh-cn/address/1BWxHjJMmfxfu3w9ESDx91...

And it goes back to MtGox address. What?

Following another chain and ended up here

https://blockchain.info/zh-cn/address/1Cz3BkgQ9NJGq5gvPLs5Yr...

Same. Goes back to MtGox.

Edit: Guys, the original address. The one which contains the MtGox coins. If you track any large transaction. > $30k, even the recent ones. They follow the same pattern. Split into two. And they all end up in pretty big wallets.

As much as I want to call it a witch hunt, there seem to be some patterns (I may be biased as I do want this thing to end up in positive). There's still so much information missing.

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

#127

Post by sbierwagen »

mars wrote: post #73
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…

that's common practice to anonymize bitcoins. google 'bitcoin tumbling service'.

Tumbling only works if you're a small fraction of the total. If you put $300 million into a tumbler that only has $1 million of other volume, then it's pretty easy to track you.

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

#128

Post by shakethemonkey »

Spooky23 wrote: post #115
Bootvis wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if I steal a Bitcoin and exchange it directly to USD. If the coin is banned later my counterparty, who acted in good faith, is left with an empty bag.

In that case, it's like any other stolen good. If you accept stolen property, you don't hold title to it, whether or not your intentions were honest.

So now both the BTC and the USD are now stolen? You mean that conversion doubles the number of stolen goods?

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

#129

Post by sciencerobot »

freefrancisco wrote: post #94
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…

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 ac…

this exists: https://github.com/thallium205/BitcoinVisualizer

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

#130

Post by pmorici »

yread wrote: post #22

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

Can anything they say or do be trusted at this point? I mean regardless of exactly how it happened weather it was theft, insider theft, incompetence, or blackmail Gox is not a party worthy of implicit trust any longer.
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