$7.5B In Stolen Bitcoin from 2016 Bitfinex Hack has just been moved • Hacker News Board

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

#241

Post by sjtindell » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:05 AM UTC

g00gler wrote: post #213

HNfriend234 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to launder the funds all they have to do is used a decentralized exchange to convert the bitcoin into something like monero. Monero has an encrypted blockchain and a bunch of other anonymization features. So once you convert it to monero, poof, the funds simply disappear into the ether just like that without a trace. They can then convert it back into bitcoin if they want as well.

Wouldn’t they have some trouble getting it into an exchange to change it to XMR? I assume that even if they moved some portion of it, say 10 BTC, to N different wallets, those transactions would be traceable to the exchange? I’m not sure how XMR works but then the exchange would know at least which wallet the XMR was sent to. I’m also not sure of the law surrounding a P2P transfer (IE receiving stolen property) but I…

Defi exchanges can help with this. You essentially give your money to a smart contract and receive whichever other token you’d like.

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

#242

Post by atat7024 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:16 AM UTC

dheera wrote: post #235

backtoyoujim wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not meaningless for taxes

How so? If I bought a Tesla with Bitcoin apparently I'd be forced to pay short-term capital gains even though I'm using it as just a payment currency. Doesn't sound like a good deal tax-wise. If Tesla gave me an equivalent discount on the BTC price though, that would change the game.

They want BTC.

They don't want you to buy BTC and spend it with them. That's not what they're incentivizing.

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

#243

Post by seattledev » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:43 AM UTC

geoduck14 wrote: post #237

glbrew wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-05/ubs-may-u... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/apr/03/us-bank-mexico... https://www.bbc.com/news/business-54597256 I could keep Googling but that should cover your complaints about laundering money.

Forgive my vagueness- I wasn't complaining that banks don't launder money - only that the original links didn't support that thesis. You have rectified that. Do you also claim that banks are the biggest thieves?

Biggest source of theft in the US is wage theft by employers.

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

#244

Post by mekster » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

deckard1 wrote: post #182

matheusmoreira wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> The real solution is to drop bitcoin and use better technology. Walk into WalMart with cash and buy a prepaid gift card. Voilà. And the best part: it works literally everywhere. Both the buying and the using. Unlike flavor-of-the-week crypto. Though, let's be real for a second, the ways to screw up from this point are many and varied. Accidentally use your home IP address to make the purchase? Oops. Did the naughty…

So, you're saying a hacker controlling an innocent person's machine can easily get away with it because law enforcement would catch the innocent person instead?

Or letting someone else to do that in Starbucks by buying him off would be quite easy.

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

#245

Post by pfundstein » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:13 AM UTC

cyberpunk wrote: post #118

Osiris wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What stops them from just sending it to an intermediate address first?

Nothing, and I'm curious about how any source addresses are traced backwards before permitting a transaction.

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

#246

Post by spurdoman77 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:29 AM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #212

HNfriend234 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to launder the funds all they have to do is used a decentralized exchange to convert the bitcoin into something like monero. Monero has an encrypted blockchain and a bunch of other anonymization features. So once you convert it to monero, poof, the funds simply disappear into the ether just like that without a trace. They can then convert it back into bitcoin if they want as well.

But what exchange (in its right mind) would take those bitcoins? They're permanently tainted, and are likely very hard to convert into fiat currency, and therefore have, I expect, near zero value.

The exchange taking it wont be knowingly taking it, it is likely just a exchange that doesnt have system for detecting it.

There are thousands of btc exchanges all around the world. For sure there are some where they dont even know about bitfinex.

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

#247

Post by patatino » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 5:50 AM UTC

j_walter wrote: post #4

ConcernedCoder wrote: post #2

Maybe someone took them up on the $400,000,000 reward offered... https://www.bitfinex.com/posts/494

That would be a lot more today...it was $400M in August last year. That 30% fee is now worth $2.3B.

This seems to be the best solutions for the hackers?

"In order to confirm the identity of the hackers, we will request that 1 Satoshi is sent from the wallet address responsible for the hack to a wallet address specified by Bitfinex. We will work to ensure this can be done safely, thereby protecting the identities of all parties, and Bitfinex reserves the right to impose conditions on any transfers in order to verify claims and ensure a secure process."

Get $2.3B, no jail

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

#248

Post by Salgat » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:10 AM UTC

Gaelan wrote: post #212

HNfriend234 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they want to launder the funds all they have to do is used a decentralized exchange to convert the bitcoin into something like monero. Monero has an encrypted blockchain and a bunch of other anonymization features. So once you convert it to monero, poof, the funds simply disappear into the ether just like that without a trace. They can then convert it back into bitcoin if they want as well.

But what exchange (in its right mind) would take those bitcoins? They're permanently tainted, and are likely very hard to convert into fiat currency, and therefore have, I expect, near zero value.

All it takes is one country like Switzerland legalizing cryptocoin tumbling. You send your bitcoin to a single address along with millions of others, and it sends out to millions of addresses different values, with no traceability between the sender and receiver (if done correctly, such as batching all transactions over a month into a single event). It would be used by many legal entities also in order to hide their activity (rich people don't want their financial activity known to the public even if it's completely legal).

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

#249

Post by Salgat » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:14 AM UTC

not_kurt_godel wrote: post #160

pier25 wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Tumblers don't hide transactions, they just obfuscate them. Afaik the coins can still be easily traced programmatically.

That depends on how the tumbler is implemented. If the transaction from sender to receiver is instant and from a single address to another single address, well then yeah it's obvious. But if you batch the transactions of thousands of users over the course of a day for example, and make sure to split the amount to send to multiple addresses with random values, now the only thing that you can correlate is that one of the thousands of senders might also be one of the seemingly tens of thousands of receivers. If the tumbler is allowed to spread it out over multiple days or weeks or even months, well then good luck ever correlating the sender and receiver.

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

#250

Post by spurdoman77 » Thu, Apr 15, 2021, 6:16 AM UTC

fireland wrote: post #115

lancepioch wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could just setup their own Bitcoin tumbler

Tumbling on bitcoin doesn't work like it used to a few years ago. There are now multiple companies dedicated to blockchain tracking and analysis. All coins coming from tumblers are flagged. It's possible because the bitcoin blockchain is public and every balance and transaction is visible to the whole world. Many exchanges refuse to accept coins that have passed through a tumbler. If you attempt to deposit these coin…

If tumblers are a problem, why wouldnt monero be? You could view it just as a BTC that has built-in tumbler. I dont really follow this logic of Monero shills. Exchanges can ban both tumblers AND monero.