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$7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

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Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#161
post #148

You see. This is what bitcoin so fascinating... it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction. So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would be able to have their funds more or less locked up. So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we know the m…

> the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught Is that how it works? Won't there be, say banking institutions that simply won't keep a record of who converted the bitcoin to money similar to how VPN providers are claiming to not log user's IP addresses?

I'm pretty sure there's no bank in the world that would be willing to make a transaction in the billions and not keep a record of it.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd take that over still not receiving a stimulus check despite needing them more than ever.

Yea, my comment was more that $7.5B is $1 per person in the world or $20 for people in the US. Nowhere near something to be considered UBI. I hope you get the assistance you need.

Okay so I was actually thinking based on wallet counts (64 million currently) I agree it still doesn’t go too far

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#163
post #96
post #8

Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft? I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills

I work at a distributed exchange and we have a blacklist. if funds are sent in from an address that's blacklisted we hold it and don't send them the other half. I don't know what the business does with those coins after that but there is a compliance team so I assume it's properly handled.

Whats the point of a distributed exchange if you can just deny any exchanges at will? Doesn’t that defeat the core idea of an distributed exchange?

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#164
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught Is that how it works? Won't there be, say banking institutions that simply won't keep a record of who converted the bitcoin to money similar to how VPN providers are claiming to not log user's IP addresses?

I'm pretty sure there's no bank in the world that would be willing to make a transaction in the billions and not keep a record of it.

that's about 750,000 times what banks have to track. I think anything over $10k must be tracked or groups of transactions that are linked that are at/over that.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#165
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught Is that how it works? Won't there be, say banking institutions that simply won't keep a record of who converted the bitcoin to money similar to how VPN providers are claiming to not log user's IP addresses?

I'm pretty sure there's no bank in the world that would be willing to make a transaction in the billions and not keep a record of it.

You're probably right. I was thinking of the usual suspects when it comes to offshore accounts but also Switzerland with historically very strong privacy laws. But I'm know nothing about the banking industry so I could be totally off here.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#166
post #148

You see. This is what bitcoin so fascinating... it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction. So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would be able to have their funds more or less locked up. So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we know the m…

> the moment it gets converted to anything real, the owners will be caught Is that how it works? Won't there be, say banking institutions that simply won't keep a record of who converted the bitcoin to money similar to how VPN providers are claiming to not log user's IP addresses?

The US has regulations around banks knowing their customers and being responsible about things like this. For better or worse, those regulations have in many ways "leaked" into the regulations of other countries, because the US makes many of them mandatory in order to get access to the US financial system, which most countries see as essential.

Sure, there might be places where you could convert that Bitcoin into a local fiat currency, but then what? You have US$7.5B denominated in some random fiat currency that is likely mostly cut off from the "main" transactable currencies of the world. You'd have to find ways to slowly launder it and convert it into something else. Doable, I guess, and maybe worth the time and effort considering you can't do anything with the money otherwise, at least not without getting caught. But doing all that is risky as well... make a mistake and you could get caught.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#167
post #158
post #148

You see. This is what bitcoin so fascinating... it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction. So imagine the field day the irs would have with this if everyone used it. They basically would be able to send bills to owners of wallets. And anyone ever caught working with an undesirable would be able to have their funds more or less locked up. So now, we all watch as billions of stolen money moves and we know the m…

> it is absolutely impossible to hide a transaction What about tumblers?

They just shuffle coins around. Still possible to track. It's also obvious to everyone watching that the shuffling service was used. Exchanges have already started to refuse coins that passed through these services. They might as well be tainted.

The real solution is to drop bitcoin and use better technology. Monero looks like the best option right now. Private transactions, concealed amounts, fungibility, low fees and fast transaction processing. It's everything bitcoin was meant to be.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#168
post #9

They are probably waiting for the Statute of Limitations to expire. For wire fraud that is 10 years.

Does the limitation resets if you move the funds publicly?

Case law on Bitcoin is still new. No guarantees depending on the jurisdiction, but I would figure most common law regions would not see it that way. The obvious analogy is moving the stolen funds between your accounts and publishing info about that. The limitation period on the fraud would still be from when the fraud was initially discovered by its rightful owner.

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#169
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure there's no bank in the world that would be willing to make a transaction in the billions and not keep a record of it.

You're probably right. I was thinking of the usual suspects when it comes to offshore accounts but also Switzerland with historically very strong privacy laws. But I'm know nothing about the banking industry so I could be totally off here.

Even Switzerland eventually bent to pressure from the United States:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10000872396390443713704577601...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324412604578512...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-MBB-23415

Re: $7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved

#170
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That both does, and doesn't solve this problem. If someone pays for services with stolen assets the ideal scenario is that the criminal is apprehended, the service provider doesn't lose money, and the funds can be returned to their rightful owner. Monero protects the service provider, but doesn't solve the other problems.

It's a curious question for the value proposition of blockchain denominated currencies. There is a real possibility that in the future, all stolen assets will eventually be recovered and returned to their owners. There needn't be any limit to recovery given a universal, traceable, and non-fungible transaction log. Pretty soon payment processors/recipients would start maintaining blacklists of stolen coins which they…

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