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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

#321

Post by doggosphere »

jacques_chester wrote: post #289
doggosphere wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a cyber criminal. One day I get arrested and the court demands I decrypt my wallets. I refuse and get hit with contempt. My wife flees to Russia and moves the coin to another wallet, without my knowledge. Or maybe it was an agreed plan. Who can prove otherwise. Eventually I give up and decrypt the wallets. What are your legal grounds for prosecuting me for this further action? What can you prove? How are you goi…

You'd be fairly well boned on obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Any brilliant plan you think up in the course of a few seconds will be likely to run into the fact that the common law has a thousand years of collective experience.

I didn't know we have thousands of years of breaking encryption and concepts like zero knowledge proofs.

There's no brilliant plan, there's just mathematics.

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

#322

Post by at-fates-hands »

ramenmeal wrote: post #118
LiquidSky wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>mutual cooperation This is some quality spin, so kudos for that. You make it sound like the government and the individual in question came to a friendly agreement, when what happened was the government discovered the person's identity and used the powers available to them to get a consent to forfeiture out of them. >Very different than any random judge or municipal police freezing anything they want. Not at all. Jus…

Disclaimer, I know very little about bitcoin. If you owe the IRS tax money, they can take the money from your bank account without asking. They just do it. Can the same be done with bitcoin? As far as I know, they aren't able to. If that's the case, there's a difference.

Her's some actual legal information about the seizing of BTC by the FBI:

In June 2014, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (‘UNODC’) published a ‘Basic Manual on the Detection and Investigation of the Laundering of Crime Proceeds Using Virtual Currencies’ (hereinafter ‘Manual’) providing a guide as to how the Bitcoin can be located and seized.

The advantage of locating and seizing the Bitcoin wallet is that the potential complex jurisdictional issues that the use of virtual currencies creates, (as it operates in the online environment that blurs the national borders) can be avoided. The physical location of the instrument containing the Bitcoin wallet will in most cases be considered as the rightful jurisdiction for the purposes of freezing, seizure and confiscation.

Despite the technological difficulty in the early detection of illegitimate use of Bitcoins, it is nevertheless possible although difficult for Bitcoins to be seized as proceeds of crime. The most effective way law enforcement authorities can seize Bitcoins is by obtaining the private keys which are linked to the Bitcoins or physically confiscating the ‘Bitcoin wallet’.

Essentially once they have court approval and know where the wallet is - hard drive, USB drive, digital wallet. They will confiscate the wallet (similar to physical property seizures from a drug dealer) then just transfer the BTC to an account or wallet they control.

The above article is from Australia, but the manual is used internationally so I'm assuming it would be the same for the US:

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=40d618a0-89e0...

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

#323

Post by gamblor956 »

doggosphere wrote: post #237
gamblor956 wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In China or Venezuela, if your bank account is seized by the government, it's because you're already in prison, so not having access to money will be the least of your concerns. Rather, you will be worried about whether you'll ever get to leave prison, or more immediately, what form of mistreatment you will receive from the guards and whether the rest of your family was rounded up as accomplices for whatever alleged…

And amongst that, the property remains out the hands of the government. Perhaps it will be one day be moved and utilized by family descendants, whom have had time to find themselves in safer conditions. That's the difference.

True, but you can do that far easier with existing assets.

Authoritarian countries can always simply block their citizens' access to exchanges, and even just outlaw crypto ownership.

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

#324

Post by at-fates-hands »

overkalix wrote: post #145
ramenmeal wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer, I know very little about bitcoin. If you owe the IRS tax money, they can take the money from your bank account without asking. They just do it. Can the same be done with bitcoin? As far as I know, they aren't able to. If that's the case, there's a difference.

PPPSS. (Previous Poster's Point Still Stands). You could have cash buried in the desert and the IRS wouldn't be able to take it. Bitcoin is a way with both advantages and disadvantages to hide money, but it doesn't teleport you to another plane of reality where you're immune to the violence of the state.

That's happened in several high profile bank robberies. In one robbery (I think it was a robbery on a airport hanger where they robbed an armored car company) they guys went to jail and they have some $18 million or so split between four dudes.

Even after trial, conviction and sentencing, the court reporter said the Feds still weren't able to recover around $5 million of the total money and have no idea what happened to it.

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

#325

Post by raziel2701 »

duxup wrote: post #66
seibelj wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You honestly don't see one valuable use-case for bitcoin? And if serious mainstream investors start buying it as an inflation hedge, they are just idiots?

Is that a valuable use case? Just another instrument to try to use as a hedge? That really doesn't seem like what Bitcoin or the community is all about.

Also bitcoin seems mighty volatile to be useful for hedging. I think bitcoin is a speculation tool and for buying illicit things.

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

#326

Post by doggosphere »

gamblor956 wrote: post #323
doggosphere wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And amongst that, the property remains out the hands of the government. Perhaps it will be one day be moved and utilized by family descendants, whom have had time to find themselves in safer conditions. That's the difference.

True, but you can do that far easier with existing assets. Authoritarian countries can always simply block their citizens' access to exchanges, and even just outlaw crypto ownership.

In a near future, we might not even need exchanges. Pay your rent with crypto. Buy groceries with it.

Even if its outlawed, that only slows it down at scale. People will still accept it if it has value. Drugs/prostitution/contraband can be traded even in the places where it is most strictly punished, outlawing it does nothing.

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

#327

Post by gruez »

loceng wrote: post #271
gruez wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds all well and good until your bank account gets seized by the authorities.

So what country are your funds in and what are you doing that has lead to the funds being seized? Don't you think we need trusted authorities for enforcement?

>So what country are your funds in and what are you doing that has lead to the funds being seized?

The US? Random example: https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/the-dea-seized-her...

>Don't you think we need trusted authorities for enforcement?

Perhaps, but not everyone is lucky to live in a low corruption country.

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

#328

Post by kickopotomus »

mcfly1985 wrote: post #308
kickopotomus wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Is there a particular reason for the snark? We are talking about essentially a 5-year blind trust in a historically volatile asset.

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

#330

Post by 55555 »

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.

Let's not make Trump seem responsible for our incredibly overtly corrupt country. Bill Clinton was a democrat, was president before Trump, and is notorious for his seemingly-corrupt pardons. I'm no history buff so I can't go back further than my own lifespan for further examples but I bet America has been this way for a long, long time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controvers... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_by_Bil...

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