As pointed out on Reddit, this wallet has made several large transactions since September: https://blockchain.info/address/1HBa5ABXb5Yx1YcQsppqwKtaAGFP...
Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
131–140 of 474 posts
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do we know who these two people are? No? Then it's anonymous.
It's pseudonymous, because if they make a transfer later we'll still know it's the same people.
You can't know that for sure. I could pay you 2 BTC by giving the private key to a wallet holding 2 BTC. You could even return change in the same way.
The physical Bitcoins (like those by Casascius) work exactly like this: physical coins containing a private key hidden behind a seal.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#133Hardly. If you tried to sell 195,000 coins you'd wipe out all the exchanges and cause a crash.
Talking numbers, you could sell them all on BTC-E right now, bagging you just $7M, and take the price down to ~$36. You can spread that around the exchanges of course, if you're quick, but you're still nowhere near $147M at current market depth.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#134Should this be regarded as capital gains from currency speculation, when it comes to taxation, or how does something like this look to a tax attorney or accountant?
Probably capital gains, like striking it big in the stock-market. e.g., someone selling a bunch of Apple stock they purchased back before iPods became popular.
Can you even imagine trying to file this on your taxes? Unless you're a mega-corp, the first thing that will happen is that within 24hrs of the deposit, your bank would call you to say how much they appreciate you using $BANK_NAME for your banking needs and assign you a personal banker that you can reach at anytime to answer any questions. You'll probably also be sent flowers & a mug & all kinds of swag. They'll send you a birthday & holiday cards too..... then a few days later the police will show up....
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#135Should this be regarded as capital gains from currency speculation, when it comes to taxation, or how does something like this look to a tax attorney or accountant?
It should be noted that all we can know about an arbitrary transfer like this is BTC was moved. We do not know if ownership of said BTC changed; people can own many bitcoin addresses.
Agreed.
One of the many wonderful elegant qualities of Bitcoin.
It's actually a very public way of transferring value between endpoints but in a way that lets you "tune" the tradeoffs to just the right mix between privacy/anonymity and full-disclosure, to taste. You can't do that with government/bank/fiat systems.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#136Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's only if the two entities can both interact with the global banking infrastructure (i.e. they hold money in reserve currencies, their accounts aren't frozen, etc.) If someone in Argentina wanted to buy something from anywhere else in the world in 2000, for example, they'd basically have to trade natural resources or gold for access to foreign currency, and then spend that.
In 2000...
Yes, in 2000, because that was during the period Argentina's currency was collapsed. Any other country's currency could collapse at any time, putting some other group in the same situation.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#137Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…
>between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Err, life isn't a james bond movie. For money transfer like this we use bank wires. We dont buy gold and ship it on gunships anymore.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#138Earlier quoted context omitted.
>between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Err, life isn't a james bond movie. For money transfer like this we use bank wires. We dont buy gold and ship it on gunships anymore.
That's only if the two entities can both interact with the global banking infrastructure (i.e. they hold money in reserve currencies, their accounts aren't frozen, etc.) If someone in Argentina wanted to buy something from anywhere else in the world in 2000, for example, they'd basically have to trade natural resources or gold for access to foreign currency, and then spend that.
Still today in fact. Not sure exactly of all the details, but Argentinians are simply not allowed to change their currency.
They need to fill documents to officially ask the government, which will likely refuse you the right if it is for a huge amount (remember, this 'non-change' policy is exactly for that, avoid flights of capitals).
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#139Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…
How often is there a direct transfer of this size? Fedwire moves about 2.7T/day and I believe it would have cost $0.26 to transfer this amount, assuming that its at the upper end of their sliding scale ($0.08 - $0.26/transfer).
Keep in mind though, this transaction was nearly instantaneous. Bank Wire transfers take 3-4 days to complete (at least, as far as I know with normal-person quantities of money). Instant international money transfer is amazing!
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#140Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars. A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can cost hundreds of thousands to million…
How often is there a direct transfer of this size? Fedwire moves about 2.7T/day and I believe it would have cost $0.26 to transfer this amount, assuming that its at the upper end of their sliding scale ($0.08 - $0.26/transfer).
I believe FedWire has a $50M pert transaction max, thus $1T would cost around $5K.