The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees • Hacker News Board

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#111

Post by Drip33 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:57 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #81

Drip33 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably just twice. Bitcoin addresses are check summed so it's nearly impossible to fat finger a mistake.

And yet it happens - as does putting the value in the "fee" box!

I've never heard of someone successfully and unintentionally fat fingering a Bitcoin address typo to a valid Bitcoin address nobody owns. Fee box is a different thing, the recent $2.5m ETH headline you saw was not an accident but an attack/blackmail. Bitcoin core itself prevents you from using too high of a fee without an express override in the config.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#112

Post by ed25519FUUU » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

knudsen80 wrote: post #33

How many times would you double check the address before hitting send? I would think to minimize risk, would slice this up into a few transactions...

When it comes to $1 billion, the three day waiting period of ACH doesn’t seem that bad.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#113

Post by misiti3780 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

SRTP wrote: post #10

gitgud wrote: post #3

Are these Satoshi's Bitcoins?

No. We have a rough idea of which coins belong to Satoshi, based on when and how they were mined. Satoshi's coins are continuously monitored and have never moved.

What is the total value of his coins as of today ?

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#114

Post by compiler-guy » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:58 PM UTC

rudolph9 wrote: post #65

orbifold wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also good luck getting 1B converted to dollars without a major head-ache. I feel like 1B in bitcoin is as bad if not even worse than 1B in cash. It isn't super useful in that form.

It’s not useful for small payments but I would happily take the equivalent $1k+ in bitcoin as payment.

“The difference between one million dollars and a billion dollars is about one billion dollars.“

1k transactions and even 1k * 1k transactions are so small relative to this amount that the GP’s point still stands. This is not a very useful way of storing the value.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#115

Post by matthewdgreen » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

Ansil849 wrote: post #57

matthewdgreen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're having a discussion on HN about a specific person moving a specific amount of money around. That by itself is basically the opposite of privacy.

Anonymity ≠ privacy We're having a discussion about an unknown account - which may or may not be an individual person - moving specific amounts of money around anonymously, not privately.

You're describing pseudonymity, not anonymity. We know that a specific user has moved money under a pseudonym. If they do other things with that money, we'll learn more. These are very different concepts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonymity

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#116

Post by whb07 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

joosters wrote: post #91

whb07 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because the poor people can't move $10 around without paying $3 for it. Have you ever tried moving small amounts of money in poor countries ?

Have you not heard of M-Pesa? Very popular mobile phone-based money transfer service, low fees ( far less than $3 or the 30% you claim), you can even pay companies directly with it

Yes I've heard of it. So bitcoin is this but better. I agree with you.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#117

Post by ajkdhcb2 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 2:59 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #14

Ansil849 wrote: post #12

For all of the talk about how Bitcoin is not truly anonymous, this wallet demonstrates otherwise, with the apparent 'anonymity proviso' being that you don't do too much with it, and just let the coins sit.

I can also be anonymous if I never speak or leave my house, but that's not really how it works, is it?

Exactly. A messaging app isnt private just because you never message anyone

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#118

Post by rudolph9 » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

ipython wrote: post #39

Unpopular opinion: why do we care so much about making it cheaper for rich people to move money around? Do we think somehow that will “trickle down” to us mere mortals and put western union and their ilk out of business?

The ship has sailed for bitcoin as an everyday currency and it has turned more into a store of value than a currency. However, the crypto world is diverse, still infant, and has many applications beyond currency. Look at IPFS (libp2p, IPLD, Multiformats); it’s open source free software that allows user to view content without it being censored.

Filecoin (the currency) exists on top but is completely independent and unnecessary to make use of the underlying utility of IPFS.

While bitcoin is a bit of a monolith even it has utility beyond currency as you can write information along with your transactions. An example is [ION][1] an identity service pegging state to transactions wiring to the blockchain and so long as bitcoin holds value you can have high certainty this information will not go away or be modified.

There are trade-offs to everything but often the benefit of crypto projects is lost when they’re viewed as currency rather than utility. Look at the forest not the trees.

[1]: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/azure-active-director...

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#119

Post by gruez » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 3:00 PM UTC

erfgh wrote: post #99

grubles wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.

You do have to trust yourself to have 100% flawless security because one slip and you lose that $1B to a Chinese hacker with no hope of ever getting it back.

It's not limited to cryptocurrency. eg. companies losing millions from phishing https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/27/phishing-email-scam-stole-10...

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#120

Post by matthewdgreen » Tue, Jun 30, 2020, 3:01 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #83

matthewdgreen wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We're having a discussion on HN about a specific person moving a specific amount of money around. That by itself is basically the opposite of privacy.

We don't know the person though; we know a wallet address. Similar to a bank account number; it's just a number. I get what you mean, the transaction is public, but that's the point of bitcoin / cryptocurrencies.

Publishing the value and timing of specific transactions isn't actually the point of Bitcoin and specific cryptocurrencies, nor is it necessary to preserve the total amount of the currency. Satoshi specifically called the privacy issues in Bitcoin out as a weakness to be improved upon, and several projects inside and outside of Bitcoin have been doing this.