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How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

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Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#11

Post by sillysaurus2 »

sillysaurus2 wrote: post #6

Direct link to PDF: https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/8393... I never know whether it's allowed to tell people they're dead...

Ok, the submission link was originally not a direct link to the PDF. A moderator changed the link, so my comment is now useless, and hence should be deleted. But mysteriously I've lost the ability to edit or delete it, even though it was posted just 16 minutes ago. New HN feature? Maybe the edit time is now reduced from 2 hours to 10 minutes? Not sure.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#12

Post by sillysaurus2 »

TwoBit wrote: post #10
ok_craig wrote: post #8

Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

It's suspected that computer forensics managed to recover the private key of an unencrypted wallet from his disk. The sequence of events would be: He previously used an unencrypted wallet. Then he encrypted it and deleted his old wallet.dat. Then he forgot to zero out his "deleted files" area of his filesystem, so the old wallet.dat was recoverable via forensics.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#13

Post by nwh »

TwoBit wrote: post #10
ok_craig wrote: post #8

Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

Possible he didn't have have a password on his wallet, just his laptop, which was unlocked when they arrested him.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#14

Post by pudquick »

TwoBit wrote: post #10
ok_craig wrote: post #8

Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

They probably have his wallet file, but it's encrypted and he hasn't given them the password.

So in theory it's "seized" ... if they can brute force / guess the password.

But in practice, with access to a computer, DPR could probably transfer the contents from the address to a new wallet.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#16

Post by lazyjones »

TwoBit wrote: post #10
ok_craig wrote: post #8

Two really interesting things to me are (1) that it's now possible to have hundreds of millions of dollars worth of assets and not have them seized when arrested; and (2) there's a lot of speculation that bitcoin was created by a government entity and that that's who Satoshi is - what are the implications of that entity funding DPR?

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

SCNR: http://xkcd.com/538/

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#17

Post by TwoBit »

pudquick wrote: post #14
TwoBit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

They probably have his wallet file, but it's encrypted and he hasn't given them the password. So in theory it's "seized" ... if they can brute force / guess the password. But in practice, with access to a computer, DPR could probably transfer the contents from the address to a new wallet.

Didn't the article specifically state that the FBI transferred coins from his wallet to their own?

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#18

Post by TwoBit »

nwh wrote: post #13
TwoBit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

Possible he didn't have have a password on his wallet, just his laptop, which was unlocked when they arrested him.

I can't imagine DPR would be that stupid.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#19

Post by Xcelerate »

pudquick wrote: post #14
TwoBit wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can somebody explain to me how the FBI could seize his bitcoins without knowing his password? My passwords for such things are long, written nowhere, and I enter them on oddball platforms and applications (e.g. not Windows). Is that not enough?

They probably have his wallet file, but it's encrypted and he hasn't given them the password. So in theory it's "seized" ... if they can brute force / guess the password. But in practice, with access to a computer, DPR could probably transfer the contents from the address to a new wallet.

Does no one think that with that much money in his wallet, he wouldn't have simply memorized the private key in addition to storing it somewhere? The keys aren't really that long or hard to memorize and I would certainly remember mine if I had any significant amount of money tied to it.

Re: How Did Dread Pirate Roberts Acquire and Protect His Bitcoin Wealth? [pdf]

#20

Post by nwh »

TwoBit wrote: post #18
nwh wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Possible he didn't have have a password on his wallet, just his laptop, which was unlocked when they arrested him.

I can't imagine DPR would be that stupid.

• He posted a question on StackOverflow with his real name and the silk road address.

• His first post on Bitcointalk was him introducing the silk road and then again about a job opportunity with his real email address.

• He ordered fake IDs on his own market to his house with his DPR identity and his real face.

You can't get any stupider.

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