My ignorant BTC question is this - does knowing that this 'address' has this much money make it a target for people to crack its key?
Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
441–450 of 474 posts
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#442Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
To chime in here, one of the largest sites for ordering out in Germany, lieferservice.de, accepts Bitcoin. They have hundreds of participating restaurants. Here's a picture of the food on our table, paid with Bitcoin: https://twitter.com/epaga/status/399221499749343232
My guess: Bitcoin is just facilitating the transaction. Restaurants are likely settled in Euros. I wonder how they hedge the volatility. There needs to be a BTC hedging market.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#443Should this be regarded as capital gains from currency speculation, when it comes to taxation, or how does something like this look to a tax attorney or accountant?
Probably capital gains, like striking it big in the stock-market. e.g., someone selling a bunch of Apple stock they purchased back before iPods became popular. Can you even imagine trying to file this on your taxes? Unless you're a mega-corp, the first thing that will happen is that within 24hrs of the deposit, your bank would call you to say how much they appreciate you using $BANK_NAME for your banking needs and as…
Yes the police do show up asking you where you got the money from. And if you can't say, they take the money off you.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#444Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or why it would be ideal to be used by the government - so we could track how they move money around, prevent corruption and generally keep an eye on the untrustworthy ones.
Or why it was created by the government. We still have no idea who Satoshi is, and bitcoin is obviously robust enough that it had to have been peer reviewed. It's the perfect honeypot.
If Bitcoin was created by the government, how can they tax it?
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#445My ignorant BTC question is this - does knowing that this 'address' has this much money make it a target for people to crack its key?
If the key was randomly generated (not derived form a passphrase), it is impossible to crack the key. Usually when people talk about cracking a "key", they refer to brute forcing a passphrase that either protects the real key (encrypted wallet), or is used to derive the key (brainwallet).
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#446Russian mobs.
Or Heisenberg.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#447Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Actually, you could--you could irradiate the gold to the point where decontamination would cost on the order of the worth of the gold itself.
No one said it was impossible to damage gold (there are easier wayd than to make it radioactive).
It's just much harder compared to doing comparable or greater value destruction to a bitcoin address, especially accidentally.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#448Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY difficult to figure out who was involved.
When it is such a large amount of money, it is not all that difficult. Just look for the guy who is $147M richer. In other words, the only way you get to have the money is if you never spend it, except in minuscule amounts.
Case in point: Supposedly the money from a lot of cases of major Bitcoin theft is still sitting in the same wallets. Implication: The thieves are having a hard time figuring out how to spend the money without outing themselves.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#449Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can relatively easily convert large amounts of gold, stocks or bonds to cash currently unlike bitcoin. Also I don't care about potential use in the near future (20 years? 2 months?). Unless you provide me a way to realize bitcoin to actual USD in non trivial amounts with the same amount of effort it would take to convert my stocks or bonds, it is as useful a currency for real life as is my current GTA V Online bank…
"Unless you provide me a way to realize bitcoin to actual USD in non trivial amounts with the same amount of effort it would take to convert my stocks or bonds, it is as useful a currency for real life as is my current GTA V Online bank account." So it's either as easy as stocks or it's useless? Hmmmmm. I think you're overstating your case a wee bit there.
Yes. If I can't get a million bucks out of my wallet so I can actually use it in the real world, then it is pretty useless to me.
Re: Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer
#450Earlier quoted context omitted.
It might be harder for authorities to monitor bitcoin transactions. But, as the very fact that this HN article exists illustrates, the blockchain is a public record that's available for anyone to monitor, analyze, cross-reference with other sources of data, etc. Particularly for large movements like this, I'm inclined to say that it would be downright foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous.
It might be foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY difficult to figure out who was involved.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6786416 from 30 minutes ago.
Here’s who (probably) did that massive $150,000,000 Bitcoin transaction (washingtonpost.com)
From the article: "Who was responsible for the transaction? I asked Sarah Meiklejohn, a computer scientist at the University of California, San Diego, for her thoughts. She's the author of a recent paper demonstrating that sophisticated analysis can reveal a lot of information about who is responsible for Bitcoin transactions. She has combined a large database of Bitcoin addresses tagged with their likely owners."
Link to the paper is provided.