Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

usmarshals.gov

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 424 posts

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#391

Post by owenmarshall »

scotty79 wrote: post #366
rayiner wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you asking how the government can prove that the money in Silk Road's accounts are the proceeds of illegal activity? They have digital records all over the place to prove that. The magic of Bitcoin and the internet--where all activity is neatly recorded in server logs with timestamps. They can prove that without proving that Ulbricht is the one that engaged in the illegal activity. Indeed, Ulbricht's contention i…

Does a fee collected for helping with illegal transaction is by itself illegaly obtained money? If you are a cab driver and you have a client that you know is riding your cab to perform illegal trade. Does the police have right to seize your fare? Isn't that something court should determine?

The courts do decide this. They have decided this.

For assets to be forfeited the government literally sues the property[1] and is required to show the item is subject to forfeiture. If the asset is eligible for forfeiture the owner can claim that they are innocent[2] and prevent the property from being forfeited.

In this case DPR is not claiming that the wallet is his. Because if he did he'd likely harm the criminal case against himself.

You can read the order here: http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/Silk...

Note how the government filed suit against "all assets of Silk Road" - not DPR.

This isn't some secret thing that only the government knows about. You can go to http://www.forfeiture.gov right now and read required notices of forfeiture for all sorts of assets.

--

[1] This is how we get court cases with fun names like "United States v. $124,700 in U.S. Currency" and "United States v. Forty Barrels and Twenty Kegs of Coca-Cola"

[2] http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/983

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#392

Post by sillysaurus3 »

tinco wrote: post #298
sillysaurus3 wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this good news or bad news for the market? It's bad of course. This is exactly what I meant by "you'll fool yourself into believing things that aren't true." You cannot reason about the price of bitcoin in terms of fundamentals. Not right now; not when the price is a function of a few hundred people (some of whom are maliciously manipulating the market). I've been closely watching how the price of bitcoin reacts t…

This is exactly what I meant by "you'll fool yourself into believing things that aren't true." You cannot reason about the price of bitcoin in terms of fundamentals. Wherever there is perceived value, you can reason about fundamentals, it is just how the world works. But what fools we were to think our theories mattered back in November, when the price was almost entirely due to Mt. Gox's market manipulation! You inv…

I think you're mistaken about what a "fundamental" is. Bitcoin is speculation. It's also the kind of speculation where you'll never be able to logically deduce the expected outcome, because you'll never have the proper information to make correct decisions (unless you're friends with someone like Karpeles).

Here's an example of a fundamental:

By looking at the economics of a business, the balance sheet, the income statement, management and cash flow, investors are looking at a company's fundamentals, which help determine a company's health as well as its growth prospects. A company with little debt and a lot of cash is considered to have strong fundamentals.

There are more kinds of fundamentals, of course. But all of them have a common theme: publicly available information, or logical reasoning (which depends on having publicly available information).

Bitcoin's market value is determined by insiders who hide all information from you. Therefore, there are no fundamentals right now. Not until the price is determined by something other than people like Karpeles.

You invested in a time of great volatility, and got hurt. That doesn't mean the game is broken. That MtGox manipulated the market is irrelevant.

I doubt most investors would agree. Gamblers, perhaps, since at that point "the game" is literally gambling, not investing.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#393

Post by smackfu »

wyager wrote: post #359
maaku wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with the man accused of being DPR. This is like the police showing up to a drug deal and both the buyer and supplier scattering and miraculously getting away. The police then take the coccaine and cash onto a giant podium and ask "This belong to anyone? No? We're going to claim it if no one does." Now it is legitimately government property.

Except for that people are claiming ownership of some of the SR funds. There was an article posted here recently about a guy in the UK trying to recover his Silk Road funds.

Not according to the order of forfeiture. "WHEREAS, no claims or answers have been filed in this judicial forfeiture as to Silk Road Hidden Website and the Silk Road Server Bitcoins"

http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/January14/Silk...

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#394

Post by smackfu »

rplnt wrote: post #290
orik wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the coins were seized on Silk Road servers they didn't belong to anyone at the time but the Silk Road. We can argue the merits of returning the coins to the last previously associated wallets; but I don't think the U.S. Gov has any intention of returning drug money to drug buyers the same way they wouldn't give gun money back to arms buyers.

A very stretched example follows, be warned: An online shop selling clothing also happens to sell firearms illegally. Its assets are seized. What about money from pending orders for the clothing? It seems to me it's obvious in this case. Couldn't SR users start a class action lawsuit against gov for seizing their assets stored on SR servers? This is assuming not everything sold there was illegal (this might be wrong)…

The government would post a notice of the seized assets on www.forfeiture.gov. If you had a claim to some of those assets, for instance that you had already paid for them and they hadn't been delivered, you can submit a petition to get them back.

In this case, no one submitted petitions.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#395

Post by smackfu »

FireBeyond wrote: post #380
talmand wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do they determine the property is the result of illegal activity if the owner of the property has yet to be convicted of illegal activity? That way of thinking opens up our current problems of police seizing everything within grasp during an arrest or traffic stop claiming the property is the result of illegal activity. "Hello, I pulled you over because it's late at night and I'm wondering if you're okay. Oh, you…

You realize that DPR/Ulbricht is specifically disavowing ownership of that wallet, right? And the government has said, "Hey, if you own this wallet, which we have tied multiple controlled buys to, you're more than welcome to claim it, or we'll sell it. We might want to have a little chat to you about it, though." Ross said "Nope. Not mine." He relinquished all claim to it, so his innocence or conviction is irrelevant…

He also has a much bigger wallet on his personal computer, $82 million or so, so there is no real reason to claim this one.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#396

Post by smackfu »

eyeareque wrote: post #370
marme wrote: post #257

What people should be more concerned with is the fact that the government is selling off someone elses property before they have even been convicted of a crime. Dread pirate roberts plead not guilty and has still not had a trial yet. He has not been convicted of any crime so if these are his coins they are selling them before the trial is even finished

What happens if he is found not guilty, and they've already sold all of his assets?

There's a lot of confusion around this. They are selling the Bitcoins that were on the Silk Road servers. There were other Bitcoins on his computers. He said he owned the ones on his computer, but not the ones on the Silk Road servers (because he denies being involved with Silk Road.) At that point, the DOJ posts a notice saying "hey, anyone who thinks they own these, come forward and make a claim." No one did, so they are now at the "sell them off" stage.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#397

Post by owenmarshall »

stonemetal wrote: post #368
bostonpete wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you hand your local crack dealer a wad of cash to hold for you temporarily. The crack dealer adds it to his bigger wad of cash and promptly gets busted. The drugs and money he's holding are seized. That's what happened here. Would you expect the government to return your wad of cash?

If I was buying a pack of gum or a lighter from him, then yes I would.

Then you should've filed a claim with the court after:

1) the government filed "US v. A Wad of Cash Found in the Pocket of Danny Drugdealer"

2) the wad of cash was found to be subject to forfeiture

3) Danny Drugdealer didn't contest that he was innocent of drug dealin' or he attempted to and lost

4) The government posted that the wad of cash was subject to forfeiture at www.forfeiture.gov.

You'd then be entitled to make the case that ten dollars in Danny Drugdealer's wad of cash actually belonged to you and were not subject to forfeiture. You might've even won!

No one filed a claim to block forfeiture of all or part of the Silk Road bitcoins. Not even DPR. I think everyone knows why that is.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#399

Post by logfromblammo »

nilved wrote: post #377
logfromblammo wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An illegal site... illegal site... Illegal. Site. I'm not sure that I like the sort of thinking that would put those two words together, ever. It would appear as though you think it possible that a flea market should be responsible for the conduct of its buyers and sellers, or that a public bulletin board be responsible for all material posted there. I dislike the idea that a government that nominally prohibits itsel…

> It would appear as though you think it possible that a flea market should be responsible for the conduct of its buyers and sellers, or that a public bulletin board be responsible for all material posted there. You don't find pounds and pounds of cocaine in flea markets. The site was illegal, to the extent that any site can be, because its owners were aware of the illegal activity and, rather than reporting it, acte…

You don't find cocaine at a flea market because cocaine-sellers, not knowing that you are not a cop, do not show it to you. And even if they do show cocaine to pre-screened buyers, that guy could be an undercover cop or an informant. There is nothing inherent to the functioning of any market that makes it illegal.

Silk Road implemented some countermeasures aimed at preventing dragnet-style arrests and mass prosecutions based on casual scraping of the site and analysis of the blockchain, but it was still completely vulnerable to a buyer-informant attack. The real world metaphorical equivalent is that the flea market did not require shoppers to register their real names and addresses, and declare the serial numbers of any cash they might be using to make purchases. I do not know of any flea market that does this, or any that could even survive if it tried.

Was there anything inherent to Silk Road that prevented cops from using exactly the same buyer-informant model to prosecute contraband trafficking that they use for physical street-level buys? No.

And we are not the Stasi. We are not required to inform upon one another. Any duty to report is usually associated with exercising a privilege granted by the state. Actual misprision requires not only that the crime be a felony, the witness be aware that it is occurring, and that they take active steps to conceal it. Misprision itself is only a misdemeanor, and protection against self-incrimination still applies. If reporting the crime would implicate you in a crime, it is not a crime to not report the original crime.

You are suggesting that it is acceptable to seize a person's entire business and sell off its assets before they are duly convicted of their misdemeanor.

Thanks to the decreasing popularity of misprision among Common Law jurisdictions, it is usually only applied to actual agents of the state with some measure of public trust or responsibility. The flea market would likely only be liable for crimes committed by tenant-sellers if the conditions of their business license specified a duty to police and report and they did not.

Silk Road, as a business with no physical premises, could never be subject to such conditions, as there is no one with authority to license it to operate. The fact remains that even if there were tons of cocaine, Silk Road was not selling it, and had no particular interest in the details of the transaction beyond the amount of the commission.

It is very easy to say that Silk Road was a den of criminals, but we expect them to be sleazy and untrustworthy. The cops that we throw at them in the pursuit of law and order must themselves be lawful and orderly. When they steal from suspects, and establish by their attitude that everyone is a suspect, they present an existential threat to the security of private property, independent of any other crimes that may be occurring.

This auction is a slap in the face to anyone at all concerned about police powers.

Re: For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

#400

Post by smsm42 »

talmand wrote: post #337
rayiner wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I think civil forfeiture laws are applied without sufficient discretion in drug cases. And it's troubling that they apply not just to illegally-obtained assets, but those that are "instrumentality of a crime." That said, there's an important wrinkle here that you're glossing over, and that is usually glossed over in discussions about civil forfeiture. Civil forfeiture is not confiscation of your property…

How do they determine the property is the result of illegal activity if the owner of the property has yet to be convicted of illegal activity? That way of thinking opens up our current problems of police seizing everything within grasp during an arrest or traffic stop claiming the property is the result of illegal activity. "Hello, I pulled you over because it's late at night and I'm wondering if you're okay. Oh, you…

In general, civil forfeiture abuse is rampant and blooming in the US, especially given the financial incentive to perpetrate it and the lack of proper safeguards. That way of thinking you describe is already open and that's exactly what happens if the police suspects you are not going to give them a good fight (i.e. is poor or alien or live far away or something of that nature) and/or the money or the property would be worth less to you than the cost of the fight, and they have chance to keep the money (in some jurisdictions, they do not). This is exactly the way the law is interpreted right now. Just google the numerous cases of civil forfeiture abuse and despair.

However, in the case of SR they actually may have a pretty good case that those are money intended to buy drugs, etc. - it's not like SR ever hidden what they're selling and the buyers hid what they are buying, and looks like the law enforcement has these records. So since under the current law drug trade is a crime, and they would have absolutely no trouble proving the money is actually the drug money, in this case it is hard to classify this as abuse, at least without venturing into the whole topic of drug legalization and so on, which is beyond the point.

Post reply on HN