231–240 of 480 posts
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Can you really not follow the trail from the mixers?
CipherTrace says they lost the trail on the twitter hackers when they threw the btc they scammed into mixers. On the other hand, the Feds arrested a kid in Florida, so my question is... how did they find him?
What are the chances this is a $4.5m transfer to North Korea?
Low. The hackers are likely European, since there are telltales like European number formatting ("10.000.000$") and awkward phrases like "make a step forward" (perhaps Italian fare un passo avanti ?).
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That's because you live in a country with a functioning currency.
I keep hearing that, but I am not familiar with any data that shows actual widespread use by common people* in those countries without a functional currency. Most of these countries barely have a stable internet connection or even stable electrical power, so I wouldn't surprised if these 'currencies' aren't so helpful in practice. * Note that use by corrupt politicians to launder their ill-gotten gains is not a posit…
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>Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. >This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era.... Instead democratizing currency, we're democratizing large scale crime. Just wanted to make this same point - right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society. Perhaps this is a justification for banning the current impleme…
We need to make laws in western countries that paying off these kinds of ransoms is illegal. It gives money to criminal elements and only encourages this. I also thought it would be possible for powerful law enforcement groups to follow the bitcoins even through exchanges. Why does this not run into the worldwide hunt for the perpetrators?
In practice, though, it's not clear what exactly are the capabilities of each branch of law enforcement.
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>Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. >This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era.... Instead democratizing currency, we're democratizing large scale crime. Just wanted to make this same point - right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society. Perhaps this is a justification for banning the current impleme…
Banning... how?
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Low. The hackers are likely European, since there are telltales like European number formatting ("10.000.000$") and awkward phrases like "make a step forward" (perhaps Italian fare un passo avanti ?).
it seemed weird to me that the hacker's messages were right-justified, maybe from a country with RTL input method?
Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…
>Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. >This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era.... Instead democratizing currency, we're democratizing large scale crime. Just wanted to make this same point - right now, cryptocurrency has negative value for society. Perhaps this is a justification for banning the current impleme…
Let this be a lesson to those that say bitcoin and other cryptocurrency has no real value outside of speculation. This kind of attack would be almost impossible in the pre-bitcoin era. The difficulty of receiving that volume of money in that short of a period of time in a difficult to trace manner is a new thing. We are entering a new era where crime can pay in very large sums with orders of magnitude less complexity…
More people can do this but I think "almost anyone" is something of an exaggeration.
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>it is increasing difficult to cash out in a large way It is actually difficult to cash out?
I imagine you'd get caught on the off-ramps, since you'd most certainly be reported (by the exchange and/or your bank) to FinCEN. At that point you'd have to contend with the "the money came from bags of cash that just landed in my back yard" problem if federal agents come knocking. As for whether the federal agents will show up at all, I'm not sure. There probably aren't too many criminals who would openly admit tha…