U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
1–10 of 369 posts
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#2Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.)
Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#3Wow, so its movement on election night happened to be a coincidence? (Dunno why DoJ would want to hide this from the public). If anything, every coiner was on their computer and more likely to be seeing something like this.
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#4Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.) Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?
So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control?
I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do.
I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?
It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something.
Theoretically as long as Bitcoin is around anyone who knows the private key can use those coins right? Is there a way to delete coins like a /dev/null address or something?
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#5Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.) Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?
So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…
> I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?
If you wanted to burn the coins you would send them to the zero address as coins in the zero address are guaranteed to never be spendable.
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#6Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.) Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?
So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…
The simple way to do it is to send the btc to an address for which the private key is unknown, thereby making it impossible to spend. Watch them not do this.
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#7Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.) Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?
So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…
> Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?
Why on earth would they do that? Under US law, law enforcement agencies can keep a portion of the proceeds from the sale of any goods they legally seize. This is a massive windfall for them.
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control? I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do. I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash? It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something. Theoretical…
The simple way to do it is to send the btc to an address for which the private key is unknown, thereby making it impossible to spend. Watch them not do this.
How would you verify that the private key is unknown? I guess an auditable process in a black box to confirm the key is ever stored. But with $1B at stake, there’s some serious incentive to measure electrical output or something to snoop the key.
I guess you could send to a random address, but there’s an infinitesimal chance that someone in the future generates a key with that address, right?
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#9TFA says the suit seeks to seize the $1B in coins after an unknown hacker gained access to the funds.
Forfeiture doesn’t mean destroying the coins. If the Fed can gain access to the coins they will auction them off.
But if I understand correctly, this is the Fed basically laying a legal claim to and flagging coins that it doesn’t control therefore making them much more difficult to redeem, after seeing that they moved, which implies a hacker did manage to crack a wallet.
This story is the perfect example for how little privacy is actually afforded by the Bitcoin blockchain.
It’s unlikely the Fed has access to the coins, and that’s why the Bitcoin price just went up 7% because whoever cracked the wallet certainly isn’t going to hand over the coins.
Either those coins will never be spent, or the hacker will have to find a country willing to launder them and somehow keep the Fed at bay (doubt it), or if you’re the Fed maybe you arrange a settlement with the hacker to split the coins.
Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
The simple way to do it is to send the btc to an address for which the private key is unknown, thereby making it impossible to spend. Watch them not do this.
How would you verify that the private key is unknown? I guess an auditable process in a black box to confirm the key is ever stored. But with $1B at stake, there’s some serious incentive to measure electrical output or something to snoop the key. I guess you could send to a random address, but there’s an infinitesimal chance that someone in the future generates a key with that address, right?
This address has no known private key https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressD...
Sure someone could randomly guess it but not likely. You don't need to have or know a private key to generate a valid checksum bitcoin address that can be sent to.