Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

blockchain.info

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

281–290 of 474 posts

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

#281

Post by apw »

fragsworth wrote: post #202
socillion wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is Bitcoin sent frequently, it's also stolen frequently: http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-hacking-stolen-million-417/ http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/250-000-worth-bitcoins-sto... http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/czech-bitcoi... edit: unrelated, someone should make an index of how many Bitcoin threads hit the front page of HN per day.

It's well-known that you can at least secure your bitcoins as well as you can secure gold, if you use cold wallets. The advantage, however, is you don't have to worry nearly as much about the security of a transaction (moving it from one place to another)

Good point, the minimum security of Bitcoin is that of gold; i.e. a safe guarded by people with weapons.

But since Bitcoin is digital, its maximum security is far, far higher. Your private keys can be encrypted and safely stored with any desired level of redundancy. Paper wallets are a big step backwards.

Also, if secret sharing is used, Bitcoins cannot be stolen unless the attacker gets to k of the n involved parties.

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

#282

Post by aortega »

derefr wrote: post #248
nico wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little offended by the "like in every third world country" statement. Chile is not like that at all, and we are a third world country. In fact, here we are ranked right under (20th) the US (19th) in terms of transparency: http://www.transparency.org/country#CHL http://www.transparency.org/country#USA_DataResearch Argentina is ranked 102: http://www.transparency.org/country#ARG_DataResearch In all of Latin Ameri…

Chile will probably stop being third-world soon enough, though (I heard something about startup accelerators popping up there?) There should be a term for "third-world country that's probably going to stay third-world for the forseeable future, excepting a revolutionary change of government." Maybe... dystopia ? Argentina is a dystopia.

>Chile will probably stop being third-world soon enough

Sorry, I don't think so. Chile is doing good nowadays but basically their only export is copper. Copper is a semi-precious metal right now and thats why that country suddenly has so much wealth, but the difference between rich and poor is abysmal and their economy is tied to the price a single non-renewable resource.

Compared to Chile, Argentina still has a huge tech industry capable of exporting value-added products like cars.

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

#283

Post by atmosx »

tedunangst wrote: post #96
atmosx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You clearly don't have a clue about how bitcoin works. If two parties want to make their transactions totally untraceable it is possible. As far as I can tell, this transfer could be made by the same wallet, from generated address to the other in order to initiate speculations and show that BTC can actually be used for big un-taxed, non-stoppable money transfer, or it was just a way to show to the IRS what money is m…

Please clarify how the IRS is missing money.

Bitcoin is in Washington[1]. Washington will try to tax bitcoin if it gets accepted as an asset/currency. Moving the discussed amount of money, means that maybe someone (inside?) the USA has a huge amount of money not taxed. This is something regulatory authorities might want to change, as soon as possible.

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/video/can-the-senate-help-to-legiti...

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

#284

Post by dragonwriter »

foobarqux wrote: post #250
fragsworth wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's well-known that you can at least secure your bitcoins as well as you can secure gold, if you use cold wallets. The advantage, however, is you don't have to worry nearly as much about the security of a transaction (moving it from one place to another)

Not really. It is much easier to lose or make illegible a piece of paper or data than it is to lose large heavy gold or to damage the gold to a degree that severely reduces its value.

OTOH, its hard to make redundant copies of a gold bar that retain the full value of the original so that if the original is damaged, nothing is lost.

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

#285

Post by iSnow »

socillion wrote: post #172
fragsworth wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not only is gold shipped frequently, it's also stolen frequently: http://rt.com/news/gold-shipment-stolen-france-304/ http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/us-usa-miami-gold-...

Not only is Bitcoin sent frequently, it's also stolen frequently: http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-hacking-stolen-million-417/ http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/250-000-worth-bitcoins-sto... http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/czech-bitcoi... edit: unrelated, someone should make an index of how many Bitcoin threads hit the front page of HN per day.

>someone should make an index of how many Bitcoin threads hit the front page of HN per day

Something like that: http://influxdb.org/blog/visualizing_bitcoin_post_frequency_... ?

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

#286

Post by jrochkind1 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #239
ph0rque wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might help: http://www.bitcointax.info/

Wow. I had no idea that complying with the tax laws would be so much more difficult than just ignoring them and concealing your Bitcoin activities from anyone beholden to the authorities. If there is anyone in Congress with even a quarter of a brain, they might want to take a look at how to keep Bitcoin users in the system. Otherwise, as more people read that guide, say "WTF?!", and decide to pay it all as much heed…

Hint: Complying with tax laws is much more difficult than just ignoring them and concealing your activities from anyone beholden to the authorities without bitcoin too.

That's not unique to bitcoin, I'm surprised you were surprised. Ask any small business owner around tax time whether filing your taxes is more 'difficult' than simply... not filing your taxes.

At least unless-until you get caught and prosecuted, then you might re-evaluate which path involved more 'difficulty', depending on how difficult you find fines, hearings, trials, jail, etc.

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

#287

Post by D9u »

dguaraglia wrote: post #232
jganetsk wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is the correct answer. People rave about how "cheap" it is to transfer bitcoin. What about actually buying anything with that 'money'? Sure, you might be able to buy some crap on the internet with bitcoin, but it won't put food in your table anytime soon without you having to pay a good % in fees to convert it to real currency.

How about buying gold with BTC?

http://www.amagimetals.com/gold

http://www.coinabul.com/index.php/gold-bars-bitcoin.html?a=8...

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

#288

Post by nly »

mortehu wrote: post #243
nly wrote: post #133

Hardly. If you tried to sell 195,000 coins you'd wipe out all the exchanges and cause a crash. Talking numbers, you could sell them all on BTC-E right now, bagging you just $7M, and take the price down to ~$36. You can spread that around the exchanges of course, if you're quick, but you're still nowhere near $147M at current market depth.

Why do you seem to think that selling them all at once is the only way to sell them?

Even in 10,000 BTC chunks you're looking at dents in the market price of ~30% at most exchanges. How long would you plan on selling off these coins if you chose to do so?

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

#289

Post by rainmaking »

tokenadult wrote: post #162

If this was an actual transfer of ownership of Bitcoin at all near that value, this would trigger money-transfer reporting requirements under the laws of most countries,[1] especially if this was an international transfer of ownership. I see that all the other comments here are speculating about what exactly happened here, and one astute comment before this one pointed out that the actual owner of the Bitcoin may sti…

Given the transfer of ownership could just as well have occurred by transferring the private key of the address, these requirements are going to get pretty hard to enforce.

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

#290

Post by [deleted] »

Sambdala wrote: post #241
glesica wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, because making sure someone isn't buying a nuke on the black market and is paying the taxes they owe is just terrible. Don't get me wrong, the regulatory framework for money transfers seems to suck, but I don't want to go from "shitty regulation" to "zero regulation", I want to go from "shitty regulation" to "smart regulation".

>I want to go from "shitty regulation" to "smart regulation". I'm tempted to conclude this is something that happens so rarely you may as well count the times it happens as a rounding error. It's a bit like saying government will just work if we only vote for the right candidate.

[deleted]
Post reply on HN