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94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

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Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#181

Post by jorvi »

graton wrote: post #132
mlindner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important qualifier on that that's missed for most "the very rich". The "rich" are often quite penny pinchers. My grandfather is "rich" (several millions, and in a very cheap place to live in the midwest) but he lived his entire life being extremely strict on spending and controlled personal finances very carefully. He still complains when there's large money to be spent on something that should be cheap.

Reminds me of the book, "The Millionaire Next Door". Seems like many of the people who have accumulated wealth tend to be fairly frugal.

Reminds me of a German saying I can't quite remember (something like 'erber, gerber, versterber'). Basically the first rich generation is very frugal because they had to work hard to attain it. The second generation maintains it, not really adding more but not frittering it away either, and the third generation throws it away on ski resorts and fancy cars.

That's also one of the few things I do respect about 'old money': they really drill it into their kids to not be ostentatious and wasteful with the familial wealth, thus escaping the aforementioned trap.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#182

Post by bdcravens »

hurrdurr2 wrote: post #115
umvi wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found out that my grandfather was a multimillionaire later in life as well, but I would never have guessed because he lives in an inconspicuous house in a middle class neighborhood and drives an inconspicuous car (Honda CR-V). He complains about milk and gas prices like most people and basically just doesn't telegraph his wealth at all (except by buying exclusively Wheaties as his breakfast cereal). He grew up duri…

Maybe this is just me, but I don't actually consider having a couple million dollars as "rich", I know a couple folks worth hundreds of millions, and the way they behave are certainly different.

From the sounds of it, they're relatively rich for the part of the country they live in.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#183

Post by AlexCoventry »

ColanR wrote: post #154
Lordarminius wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The anonymity is still not perfect, especially against state-level actors. With PirateChain it is, but true anonymity brings with it other technical challenges.

I haven't heard of PirateChain. However, the state-level threat model includes things like taxes, where (e.g.) people in the US have to report every transaction they make. If most people report their PirateChain transactions, amount in, amount out, then the problem is that unreported transactions would stick out and would probably be associable with wallets. Am I getting this wrong?

What are the laws requiring reporting of every transaction?

I know it's necessary to report transactions which establish the cost basis for capital gains, but doesn't mandate report of all transactions.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#184

Post by antpls »

donalhunt wrote: post #120
isostatic wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation No idea about the billionaires, but I can shift £5k from a current account to another current account with another bank for the princely sum of £0.00

Try doing 100K in EUR/USD/GBP... It's likely not free (but probably not outrageous either)... Last time I did something like that the transaction cost was small ( On the flip side, I saw a payment go through for one our suppliers today. $50 invoice. > $25 processing fee because it was a european bank processing a USD transaction. :/

> Anti-money laundering processes cost money and many of the crypto-currencies ignore this for now / pass the problem to the fiat ⇆ crypto exchange operators.

As I understood, traceability is included by-design in Bitcoin. Maybe you didn't see the other comments, but all the bitcoins of this wallet can be traced back to one or several entities. All history of all transactions is available to everyone, so could you explain what do you mean by "ignored"?

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#185

Post by cptskippy »

Smithalicious wrote: post #161
compiler-guy wrote: post #81

As far as the fees being so cheap, and every one else guessing about how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation, F. Scott Fitzgerald is relevant: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is…

This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". People with greater wealth having access to certain services and procedures that normal people don't is unrelated to all rich people supposedly looking down on everyone else.

> a ... quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil"

But that isn't at all what the quote says, that's what you attributed to it.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#186

Post by riffraff »

esmi wrote: post #168
mlindner wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Important qualifier on that that's missed for most "the very rich". The "rich" are often quite penny pinchers. My grandfather is "rich" (several millions, and in a very cheap place to live in the midwest) but he lived his entire life being extremely strict on spending and controlled personal finances very carefully. He still complains when there's large money to be spent on something that should be cheap.

A time proven way to get rich by old age is to not spend money. It's a decent way to stay rich too. P.S. If it "should be" cheap doesn't it make sense to complain when it's expensive?

my dad used to tell a story of him working at gas station in italy in the 60's as a small kid, a guy with a Ferrari came by and asked to fill his tank, and when paying there was some not-insignificant amount of change, so my dad asked "so, I'll keep the change, ok?" and the guy replied "You know kid, I have a lot of money, really a lot. You know how I made them? I never gifted anyone anything. Now, hand over that change.."

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#187

Post by diminoten »

Smithalicious wrote: post #161
compiler-guy wrote: post #81

As far as the fees being so cheap, and every one else guessing about how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation, F. Scott Fitzgerald is relevant: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is…

This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". People with greater wealth having access to certain services and procedures that normal people don't is unrelated to all rich people supposedly looking down on everyone else.

The point of the quote is to demonstrate that using poor-folk calculations to try and figure out what things cost for rich folk is pointless, and has been for the past ~100 years.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#188

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

aazaa wrote: post #111

I'd take issue on two points. First, "wallets' don't exist in the Bitcoin protocol. Second, the tool being used is not sophisticated enough to list the inputs and outputs, giving the false impression that something unusual is "unknown." Try this link to get details: https://blockstream.info/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7... There are numerous inputs and a single pay-to-script-hash (P2SH) output. The relatively h…

> It effectively establishes a billion dollar bounty for any party who can rewrite enough blocks to erase it.

I don't really agree with that statement. Yes, someone could mount a 51% attack to rewrite that block. However, it would be pretty straightforward to see what was happening (and which nodes were the malicious actors). If that did happen, the possible outcomes would be:

1. The value of bitcoin would fall to basically 0. The reason bitcoin has any value at all really has to do with trust - belief that the protocol is secure and can't be broken. In this case, an easily detectable spending "override" would cause faith in the protocol to evaporate.

2. Note I don't believe #1 would happen. The response would be all the other miners who do have a vested interest in bitcoins success would put all their resources in ensuring the original block was maintained.

I.e. the options aren't between one address getting the billion+ dollars or another address getting a billion+ dollars. The options are one address getting a billion+ dollars or everyone's bitcoin going to 0.

Edit: Another likely possible outcome is you could get what happened to Ethereum when the DAO was hacked: a fork to Ethereum vs. Ethereum Classic. But it's still important to note Ethereum Classic is worth a teeny fraction of what Ethereum is.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#189

Post by CrazyStat »

jonknee wrote: post #56
ulzeraj wrote: post #9

Probably related to Bakkt. The interesting thing here is how inexpensive was the transaction fee. How does banks transfer this kind of sum and how much would it cost?

It would be free if done through a bank and you could actually get a lot of free steaks out of it. Once you have a little bit of money banks start treating you well, when you have a lot of bit of money they treat you really well.

I had a casual acquaintance who had a few hundred million dollars managed by a large US bank.

His son--who only had single-digit millions--wanted to buy a house, so the dad talked to the bank and they arranged a zero-interest mortgage for him. They were happy to pass on what they might have earned from the mortgage interest (a few hundred thousand dollars, I'd guess) to make this guy a happy client.

Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

#190

Post by sk5t »

Smithalicious wrote: post #161
compiler-guy wrote: post #81

As far as the fees being so cheap, and every one else guessing about how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation, F. Scott Fitzgerald is relevant: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is…

This post appears to me like two paragraphs of correct and important information, cut in two by a seemingly unrelated quote that summarizes to nothing more than "rich people are evil". People with greater wealth having access to certain services and procedures that normal people don't is unrelated to all rich people supposedly looking down on everyone else.

In fact, it's merely an irrelevant usage of a very famous quotation.
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