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Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

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Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#191

Post by smackfu »

JackFr wrote: post #137
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #89

Earlier 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.

Not true: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/venezuela-receives-... http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/01/16/germany...

True but these are both transferring gold so that the gold is in a different physical location, not transferring gold to pay someone. I'm sure both cases would much rather sell the gold in place A and buy it in place B, but that's just not possible at this quantity of gold.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#192

Post by jganetsk »

fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider 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…

Utterly incorrect. They did not transfer a single dollar. For them to turn those Bitcoins into dollars, they will have to pay more than $0.00. Possibly A LOT more. They may not even be able to turn those bitcoins into dollars for a while, and in all likelihood it will not be $150 million dollars.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#193

Post by gwern »

glesica wrote: post #181
fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider 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…

So maybe I'm ignorant here, but did they do the transfer over the Internet, or was it a thumb drive taken out of "cold storage" and handed off to someone else. Do we even know? Don't you think there are vulnerabilities in the system for transferring Bitcoins just like there are vulnerabilities in the system for transferring other valuable things?

> So maybe I'm ignorant here, but did they do the transfer over the Internet, or was it a thumb drive taken out of "cold storage" and handed off to someone else.

Every bitcoin is controlled by a private key. The private key can be put in 'cold storage', but if I hand you the USB key with a private key stored in a text file on it, you have no way of being sure that I didn't keep a copy elsewhere and in a few minutes will make a transaction sending it to some other private key (which you don't have). So unless you trusted me an extraordinary amount, you would immediately want to make a transaction transferring from the private key on the USB to a new private key you generated just that moment.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#194

Post by tokenizer »

nwatson wrote: post #154
Codhisattva wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's an exhaustive discussion. +1

Not exhaustive enough. From the link: "Miners of Bitcoin face a host of unique tax issues that are outside the scope of this discussion." If I were mining I'd want to know the tax and legal implications, and there are no good sources out there from what I understand. The most burning questions: (1) for a miner based in the U.S., does the BTC miner realize a short-term gain the moment a bitcoin is awarded? or can they…

I am not an expert, and am definitely bias, but I think (1) is that all gains are deferred until market.

If you're paying a 15% tax on bitcoins mined, then it would stand to reason they would tax you at market, aka, when you exchange that bitcoin for USD.

This is me thinking in terms as bitcoin being a commodity however. If this isn't the case, I'd imagine they could structure it like the structure it like reserves and resources, (http://goo.gl/MkDFNX).

I'm a webmaster for hundreds of mining companies in Canada, and any of them who choose to trade on the TSX or TSX.V need to post this information. I don't know what the tax situation on that is however.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#195

Post by jpmc »

aortega wrote: post #174
muzzamike wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2000...

2013 Argentinian here. To buy a house right now you usually have to pay dollars cash because nobody accepts a currency that devaluates 25% per year. The political class here is crazy corrupt and rich like in every third world country, and they are known for using piles of 500 euros bills to stay out of the bank system because euros have more wealth density than dollars.

The other big issue is how hard it is to exchange pesos for dollars. The government is doing all they can to make it nearly impossible for the average Argentinian to avoid the massive devaluation.

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#196

Post by throwaway1979 »

localhorse wrote: post #175
throwaway1979 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a naysayer until recently. After the senate hearing, I ate crow. Too late to profit at this point though :(

I'm not sure that's true.

What is your price target, if I may ask?

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#197

Post by breischl »

JonFish85 wrote: post #9
stephanerangaya wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. There is no way to know if they paid using cash or tomatoes.

If a cash transaction was made, that would pop up all over the place. $150m doesn't just show up out of nowhere.

Let's see, there are approximately 1.22 trillion US dollars in circulation [1], so that would amount to a massive .001% of outstanding dollars. It may not come from "nowhere", but neither is it such a massively huge amount of money that it would necessarily register. Heck, that hedge fund (Knight Capital?) lost that in about 3 minutes a few years ago...

[1] - http://www.federalreserve.gov/faqs/currency_12773.htm

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#198

Post by BlackDeath3 »

res0nat0r wrote: post #152
fragsworth wrote: post #64

Consider 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…

Unfortunately for me right now bitcoin has zero value. Until I can use the millions in coins to pay off my house, buy a car easily, pay my taxes and go out to eat with them, or hassle free convert them to cash in my bank, it is still funny money.

But which is the cause, and which the effect?

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#199

Post by acchow »

gorrillamcd wrote: post #139
oijaf888 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

> this transaction was nearly instantaneous

Aren't Bitcoin transaction times generally in minutes?

Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer

#200

Post by numbsafari »

fragsworth wrote: post #145
gfodor wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Call me crazy but if I am ever in a position to transfer $150M I'd probably also want a third party involved to make sure the transaction goes smoothly, like a bank. Like we do today. With wire transfers.

Well, you can still have a 3rd party provide oversight for a bitcoin transfer and insurance against failure. Because bitcoin is simple and reliable, these 3rd party fees would be very cheap.

Those third party fees having nothing to do with bitcoin's simplicity or reliability, but with the amount of the insured transfer, the perceived risk of the failure, and the expected costs and complexity of recovering any losses from either party involved.

Whether it is in bitcoin, CHF, EUR, USD, gold, platinum, Amazon Coins, Zorkmids, yams or sheep skins, insuring a transaction will depend on those factors.

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