Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#201

Post by runeks » Tue, Mar 04, 2014, 6:49 AM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #193

runeks wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Traditionally, this is not the case with money. The money asset is different from all other assets in this respect. This matter was settled in Scotland over 300 years ago. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2260952 The result is that even if you can prove that someone else holds a dollar bill that was stolen from you at some point, you do not necessarily have the right to get it back. See also the Wik…

Until Bitcoin is legal tender, it's more like a commodity than money.

I'm not sure what happens if stolen Euros or gold are accepted as payment. These aren't legal tender in the US, so if they are exempt from the aforementioned rule, then bitcoins might be as well.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#202

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 10:45 AM UTC

psquid wrote: post #182

jsmeaton wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Couldn't find a single download link or pricing/buy link.

It's under Pricing in the FAQ page (the gist: contact them via the contact link to discuss a price, because it's apparently too complicated to estimate), but yeah, the FAQ seems like rather an odd place to relegate such an important aspect to.

A quick translation: "pricing not on the front page, because contact us" -> "we have an enterprise sales model, which means that if you won't pay six figure prices, forget you ever saw this product".

Not always literally true, but a good rule of thumb; you can't really sell $100-$1000 products that way, the cost/time of salespeople doesn't work out in that case.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#203

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 10:52 AM UTC

TophWells wrote: post #169

azinman2 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are coins able to be differentiated from a wallet?

Sometimes, yes. Not always - it depends on how the transactions inside the wallet are organised, which is not usually displayed unless you go looking for it. Not that it matters - if 100BTC go into a wallet, and an hour later 100BTC comes out of that wallet, it's fairly irrelevant whether or not they're the same coins.

Well, it does matter - if 100 stolen BTC go into a wallet that has 900 BTC already, and then 1000 deals of 1BTC go out to different wallets... then you blacklist and seize all 1000 outgoing BTC or some arbitrary 100 BTC or some specific (how) 100 BTC?

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#204

Post by PeterisP » Sat, Mar 08, 2014, 10:58 AM UTC

mars wrote: post #73

deweller wrote: post #28

In November of 2011 Mt. Gox demonstrated control of 500k BTC. I followed the 500,000 BTC for a bit beginning at https://blockchain.info/tx/b269bf1b82dae8a61f7f91dbf7a9d807e... . The coins move around and small amounts are sent away, but the majority ends up back in Mt. Gox's main (hot) wallet. This repeats a few times until the majority is paid back to the main Mt.Gox address. Here is the transaction where it starts…

that's common practice to anonymize bitcoins. google 'bitcoin tumbling service'.

If any scenario that 'blacklists' some bitcoins is implemented (IMHO it won't, but if we're discussing it..), then any bitcoins 'tumbled together' with blacklisted bitcoins would be blacklisted as well.

Which would mean that either people would stop using tumbling services (since the process would turn 'good' bitcoins into 'tainted' bitcoins as soon as a single participant wanted to anonymize stolen BTC), or tumbling services would disallow tumbling any blacklisted bitcoins, or both.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the 750k Bitcoins lost by Mt. Gox?

#205

Post by dTal » Thu, Mar 13, 2014, 7:50 PM UTC

tommo123 wrote: post #16

hartator wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't be that pessismistic. If people manage to identify people behind the blockchains, I strongly suppose that law enforcements, depending on countries where the theift physically is, can force the thieft to give it back without any modifications to existing laws. I think we can catch him when he is going to want to laundry his bitcoins.

Don't bitcoin tumbling services pretty much make it logistically impossible to follow the path of bitcoins if they cycle it enough? Also I wouldn't rely on the governments to do much to return people's investments in a currency they already distrust. In fact, considering the historic and contemporary roles the US and the IMF have had in deliberately destabilising and undermining international economies/currencies, yo…

>I don't think there's anyone foolish enough to pretend that the US/UK/etc governments haven't already been in this ethical sphere of operations for decades.

You underestimate fools.