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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?

#141

Post by vladd »

btcfn wrote: post #134
chevreuil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Impossible. You'd have to somehow convince ALL miners to not process them. Fungibility prevents you from simply blacklisting these coins. http://themonetaryfuture.blogspot.it/2013/12/why-bitcoin-fun...

Actually you just need to update the code and push it via the update mechanism.

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

#142

Post by terranstyler »

colinbartlett wrote: post #83
davidw wrote: post #20

"The Lost BitCoins of Mt Gox" sounds like a good Scooby Doo episode. Or Hardy Boys?

Velma yanks off mask. Daphne gasps "Mr. Karpeles!" Fred: "Mark Karpeles was the thief all along!" Karpeles: "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids!"

Velma didn't even say Jinkies yet :(

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

#143

Post by MichaelGG »

the_watcher wrote: post #71
pjc50 wrote: post #34

Earlier 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…

So far, the Silk Road busts have nothing to do with Bitcoin. Everyone should assume that all BTC transactions are trivially traced, forever. Just make sure you aren't tying any identity you care about to dangerous transactions. That's the only (and of course difficult) trick.

If a drug buyer in a BTC transaction got the coins anonymously (say, sent a self-destructing robot to drop off cash in exchange for BTC), then that part is fine. They can go use those coins anonymously. If they ship drugs to their house, well... that alone sort of undoes it all.

The drug sellers that were caught from Silk Road were caught due to things like making a huge amount of trips to post offices, getting the attention of postal workers. That may be a parallel construction, but it seems legitimate enough. Buy drugs from large seller, look at the postmarks for patterns. Then go gumshoeing around and wait 'til you see the same car or people going to the same post offices over and over and over. You can probably pull this attack off without even having government capabilities.

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

#144

Post by saraid216 »

TelmoMenezes wrote: post #44
loceng wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> The problem with Bitcoin is that because there's no fee associated with them, there's no money or resources being made available or directed towards policing and following of these thieves. How do you know that? Given the amount that was stolen, I would be very surprised if some victims are not employing considerable resources to find the thieves. Also given the amount, many layers and private investigators are pro…

The relevant amount lost is the amount lost by the person who is hiring said lawyer/private investigator, not the overall amount.

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

#145

Post by Crito »

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

2a. Revealing it would show that although they did not commit the current theft, they have been running another unrelated scheme.

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

#146

Post by jonknee »

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?

I imagine it was automated (with PHP!). I also imagine that it was a large part of the reason we're all in this thread.

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

#147

Post by galvin »

jneal wrote: post #133
shakethemonkey wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

This is no different from real life scenarios. Suppose someone stole a $5000 ring, sold it for $2500. The ring is still stolen, the police can and will confiscate the ring, so the buyer is out of the $5000 ring and their $2500 paid for the stolen property. The ring is stolen from the owner, the money is stolen from the buyer.

If the police confiscate the ring they will return it to the original owner, they don't just keep it.

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

#148

Post by digikata »

the_watcher wrote: post #60
chevreuil wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well, the supply of BTC is finite, so simply excluding stolen BTC's has some additional problems. May be better than not addressing it, but while BTC provides a mechanism for following them through the transaction chain, it's not that simple to ID what addresses contain "stolen" BTC. What if the thieves are able to launder them through unwitting proxies? For example, steal a bunch of BTC, sell them on another exchang…

Because transactions are recorded in a public blockchain, couldn't that be a big downside for anyone accepting bitcoin whether or not the coins appear on a blacklist/warning list. If a sending wallet address is associated with some contested activity (e.g. someone getting sued, or indited), I could imagine that those BTC could easily get swept up in the legal actions to unwind or resolve the activity.

This vs accepting cash which is fungible, and would need some other evidence associating the buyers money with the contested activity. At least the resolution activity there would likely be stopped at one level from receiving the cash, but with BTC, you happen to be able to track that one specific coin right through multiple layers of transactions. I can see lawyers tracking all the way out to the current holder of a given BTC.

edit: Upon a bit more side reading, I think the tracability of a given BTC is a bit overstated here.

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

#149

Post by saraid216 »

alexeisadeski3 wrote: post #119
gcb0 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expect Reddit and 4Chan to spend weeks tracking the wrong transactions and the finally identifying a poor sap whose only fault was once buying coins from mtgox years ago. Which is not much different than being audited by the irs...

At least Reddit and 4Chan can't haul you off to prison nor freeze your bank accounts.

I think I'd rather be hauled off to prison than be the target of such ire.

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

#150

Post by the_watcher »

digikata wrote: post #148
the_watcher wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the supply of BTC is finite, so simply excluding stolen BTC's has some additional problems. May be better than not addressing it, but while BTC provides a mechanism for following them through the transaction chain, it's not that simple to ID what addresses contain "stolen" BTC. What if the thieves are able to launder them through unwitting proxies? For example, steal a bunch of BTC, sell them on another exchang…

Because transactions are recorded in a public blockchain, couldn't that be a big downside for anyone accepting bitcoin whether or not the coins appear on a blacklist/warning list. If a sending wallet address is associated with some contested activity (e.g. someone getting sued, or indited), I could imagine that those BTC could easily get swept up in the legal actions to unwind or resolve the activity. This vs accepti…

That is assuming you can "blacklist" addresses before the transaction takes place. Or they could just create a new BTC address.
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