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U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

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Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#301

Post by ag56 »

modeless wrote: post #42
londons_explore wrote: post #39

This gives the US government a lot of power over bitcoin... That both gives the government an incentive to let bitcoin thrive (to protect it's holdings), but also an opportunity to substantially manipulate bitcoins market price, possibly down to nearly zero. Or the keys to these bitcoin will sit idly in a filing cabinet forever...

They will auction it off as soon as possible like they did several times before. I'm not sure why the bitcoin price has gone up in response to this news, because it means more supply is coming to the market soonish. These coins might have been presumed lost before. Certainly they would not have been able to be sold on any legitimate exchange. Now they will be washed clean and enter the markets. On the other hand, a b…

> Certainly they would not have been able to be sold on any legitimate exchange.

May I ask why? (Genuine, not a crypto expert). Do exchanges by default trace any bitcoins back and see if they were connected with illegality? Is there a list of tainted bitcoin addresses that are effectively worthless?

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#302

Post by ineedasername »

modeless wrote: post #128
ineedasername wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MtGox might be able to pay people the dollar value of their investment at the time, but still not the actual # of bitcoins.

True, but by essentially forcing creditors to hold their bitcoins instead of allowing them to sell, it's likely that MtGox has actually done most of their creditors a perverse favor, and they will end up with more money than if they had received their full bitcoin balance in 2014 and sold some of it since then. Assuming they are actually allowed to distribute the full value to creditors in the end, either as bitcoin…

But bitcoin is a currency. If I lost $100,000 to something like this and it took a few years to resolve, I would expect to get back $100,000, not some other form of currency that was worth $100,000 at the time. What I'm saying is that MtGox can't claim they're making people "whole" from their losses by giving them what their money was worth at the time. Plenty of those people would have held on to the bitcoins and had their full value.

Sure, I don't expect MtGox to be able to make everyone whole. I just don't think it's accurate to say they're doing so by giving them their 2014 dollar equivalents.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#303

Post by Scoundreller »

Pick-A-Hill2019 wrote: post #13
wmf wrote: post #2

Discussion from yesterday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24990233 (This is not a dupe since the Bloomberg story has new information.) Has anyone found any official information from the DOJ about this?

Nothing so far on https://www.justice.gov/news but a bit of google-fu turned up this link https://www.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.cand.368440... (via https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/18607888/united-states-... )

> Claimants of the above-described property which is the subject of this action shall file their claims with [blah] [blah] [blah]

I wonder if claims like this ever go anywhere.

At least a couple blokes sent token amounts, as they state:

> Individuals will often send minimal amounts of Bitcoin to these addresses for unknown reasons. For example, on November 3, 2020, 1HQ3 received 0.00010999 bitcoin (approximately $1.51) from an unknown individual.

I think some people who lost money when Payza/Alertpay got seized were given a very nicely worded letter saying who to contact for their seized funds, but those calls/emails/etc never went anywhere. Almost made it sound like you could get your money back.

Here's that claim notice page: https://www.justice.gov/usao-dc/victim-witness-assistance/ob...

and one case of a guy trying to get his money back for years: https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/7p6v3w/funds_s...

> I have called, & emailed everyone multiple times, and get a response back once every 4 months from people who don't understand whats going on.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#304

Post by denkmoon »

strgcmc wrote: post #246
CydeWeys wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really think that someone with $1B of Bitcoin could buy their way out of the kinds of serious felony criminal charges mentioned in the linked article through campaign contributions and similar? I doubt it.

IMO the short answer is, yes pardons can seemingly be bought in the Trumpian era of American politics. Whether $1B is enough, I don't necessarily know, but I don't see why the likelihood is something to dismiss out of hand.

Just having $1B isn't enough.

1B gets you in the door. You still need to know the right people to pay off. You can't just google it. This is why you see all the billionaires at their billionaire parties, good old networking.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#305

Post by nullc »

aarong11 wrote: post #197
nullc wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they did, they lied to the court. "On November 3, 2020, Individual X signed a Consent and Agreement to Forfeiture with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. In that agreement, Individual X, consented to the forfeiture of the Defendant Property to the United States government."

Nothing there about "Individual X" being Ross Ulbritcht

It wouldn't have been. They claim "Individual X" robbed silk road. My understanding based on the documents from Ross' arrest is that X exploited a bug in the site to get the user list then extorted the operator.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#306

Post by nullc »

hemloc_io wrote: post #151
nullc wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and stayed out of Federal prison. I'm a little confused there, because both the hacking and money laundering should have been beyond the statute of limitations.

If I had to guess it's probably because those transactions originally come from the Silk Road. So while the hacking and money laundering aren't criminally liable, the coins themselves are proceeds from a criminal enterprise, and if you stand in the way of the government trying to get them you could be hit with obstruction(?). Realistically regardless of the technical level of criminality I doubt that the FBI would le…

Right, but if they had nothing else on Person X, I'm a little surprised that they were able to get these coins from them-- to forfeit the assets they'd have to get possession of them.

Because all they could have traded (assuming there were no other viable criminal charges) would be keeping their identity secret.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#307

Post by modeless »

ineedasername wrote: post #302
modeless wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but by essentially forcing creditors to hold their bitcoins instead of allowing them to sell, it's likely that MtGox has actually done most of their creditors a perverse favor, and they will end up with more money than if they had received their full bitcoin balance in 2014 and sold some of it since then. Assuming they are actually allowed to distribute the full value to creditors in the end, either as bitcoin…

But bitcoin is a currency. If I lost $100,000 to something like this and it took a few years to resolve, I would expect to get back $100,000, not some other form of currency that was worth $100,000 at the time. What I'm saying is that MtGox can't claim they're making people "whole" from their losses by giving them what their money was worth at the time. Plenty of those people would have held on to the bitcoins and ha…

The creditors' claims were converted to yen at the time of bankruptcy by court. MtGox has no say in the matter. Neither I nor MtGox are claiming that they are going to make people 'whole' in terms of the bitcoin balances they had. But MtGox (Mark Karpeles) is trying to get the court to allow them to pay creditors a whole lot more than their claim value, instead of distributing the excess to shareholders, and to do it in bitcoin instead of yen.

All I'm saying is if you compare a hypothetical scenario where the bitcoin was distributed to creditors in 2014 to the hypothetical scenario where they receive it today, it's practically certain that creditors' aggregate wealth is astronomically higher in the latter scenario, because very few would have held the bitcoin long enough or sold at the right time to realize all of the 15x+ appreciation that has happened in that time.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#308

Post by mcfly1985 »

kickopotomus wrote: post #221
driverdan wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way they were only facing 5 years. Any sane person would do 5 years for a billion dollars.

It's worth a billion dollars today. But in 5 years, who knows? Could be worth $10B. Could be worth $0.

Ooo so brave, saying Bitcoin will go to 0! No one has heard that before!

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#309

Post by wmeredith »

wil421 wrote: post #248
aazaa wrote: post #69

I find it extremely amusing that the US government has over the last several years become one of the world's largest traders in bitcoin. It's not quite the path many were predicting back in the early 2010s, but Bitcoin has been full of surprises. If history is any guide, the bitcoin will be auctioned off sooner rather than later.

Wait until you learn how many cars, guns, cash, and expensive valuables the feds seize a year. Not to mention businesses, land, and homes. I just found a multimillion dollar SF condo and land in Liberia, Costa Rica on the US Marshalls website.

Also drugs.

Re: U.S. Feds Seized Nearly $1B in Bitcoin from Wallet Linked to Silk Road

#310

Post by thinkloop »

doggosphere wrote: post #223
NationalPark wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that the judge won't say, "Aha! You got me!", the judge will say, "Cute trick, now back to jail."

What grounds does a judge have to send the person to jail if they complied with the order to decrypt a wallet? There can be any number of reasons the coin was moved: - hacked by some 3rd party - corruption by officers ( https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-ste... ) - partner in crime moved them, with or without consent from suspect.

That seems fishy tho, you'll probably have to prove that, one of the core pruposes of judges is choosing who to believe, there is no such thing as a 100% fact.
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