another way to read:
someone just gave someone else a billion dollars tax free.
that is a major problem.
94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
71–80 of 747 posts
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#72Watching things like this, I think bitcoin could eventually replace the government-backed currency. Everyone can watch them move. If you spend 1$ from that wallet to buy even a mars bar, your identity will be known to others. How CLEAN and clear is that?
A billion was moved and we don’t know the identity of the person. Not sure what you are describing.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#73I can count maybe 5 people in the crypto space that would have that much BTC, but none of them would be dumb enough to put it all in one wallet. Most likely some large institutional investor decided to re-key their cold storage wallet.
This is the part which confuses me about Bitcoin the most. It's meant to be anonymous, yet with some diligent data mining, it can become pretty clear who's who from their spending patterns by observing the ledger. How is that remotely anonymous?
I don't think it was really "meant to be anonymous". The original whitepaper at https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf has a section on privacy, which mentions that public keys can be kept anonymous but acknowledges that all transactions are announced publicly:
> The traditional banking model achieves a level of privacy by limiting access to information to the parties involved and the trusted third party. The necessity to announce all transactions publicly precludes this method, but privacy can still be maintained by breaking the flow of information in another place: by keeping public keys anonymous. The public can see that someone is sending an amount to someone else, but without information linking the transaction to anyone. This is similar to the level of information released by stock exchanges, where the time and size of individual trades, the "tape", is made public, but without telling who the parties were.
> As an additional firewall, a new key pair should be used for each transaction to keep them from being linked to a common owner. Some linking is still unavoidable with multi-input transactions, which necessarily reveal that their inputs were owned by the same owner. The risk is that if the owner of a key is revealed, linking could reveal other transactions that belonged to the same owner.
Recently there are newer cryptocurrencies like Monero and ZCash that focus specifically on anonymity/privacy.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#74Probably something like an exchange consolidating their funds into a single (multisig) wallet. Interestingly, transfer feeds were around 700 USD.
The key was probably compromised. Even if I realized the vulnerability a day later, for that amount of money I'd still pay 700 to make sure I don't come in a couple seconds late.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#75From the top twitter comment: > 0.06BTC in fees? Why so expensive? Just gotta say, its pretty amazing we live in a world where 1 billion dollars can get transferred pseudo-anonymously in a reasonable time frame, only costing the transfer party $600. As a really stupid, non-real-world comparison, Western Union has a transfer limit of $2500 per transaction, and a $20 fee per transaction. If you were to initiate a $1,00…
No human being would ever transfer 1B through 'Western Union'. I am sorry, but that's not a legit comparison.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#76From the top twitter comment: > 0.06BTC in fees? Why so expensive? Just gotta say, its pretty amazing we live in a world where 1 billion dollars can get transferred pseudo-anonymously in a reasonable time frame, only costing the transfer party $600. As a really stupid, non-real-world comparison, Western Union has a transfer limit of $2500 per transaction, and a $20 fee per transaction. If you were to initiate a $1,00…
No dollars were transferred. If you want to convert it to actual things you can spend you have to pay an exchange at least 1% on either end. You're comparing moving around intermediate representation to something you can actually use, like a bank moving bits around in its internal ledger. WU is not a good comparison for large-quantity FOREX, InteractiveBrokers is one of your many options, and they charge a commission of $20 per million, which is at most a $20K fee not an $8M fee.
With that in mind you seem to be conflating a FOREX transfer with a bank-to-bank transfer which you can use a $30 (or as cheap as free) wire to more the whole billion instantly.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
My US bank account has zero transaction fees and if I had this kind of money I do not see why I could not transfer for zero fees (don't see a limit anywhere). And if making smaller transactions, apps like Venmo can transfer money both instantly and free (unlike Bitcoin).
Banks typically have limits on how much you can withdraw or transfer with any given method in a day.
Well if I were to show up at the bank wanting to transfer $1bn I am sure I would get all kind of stares, but can not see a technical reason why they would not be able to do it. Difference with Bitcoin is you can do it completely anonymously, for all the good and bad things that go with that.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#78I can count maybe 5 people in the crypto space that would have that much BTC, but none of them would be dumb enough to put it all in one wallet. Most likely some large institutional investor decided to re-key their cold storage wallet.
This is the part which confuses me about Bitcoin the most. It's meant to be anonymous, yet with some diligent data mining, it can become pretty clear who's who from their spending patterns by observing the ledger. How is that remotely anonymous?
Bitcoin was never meant to be anonymous. It was designed to be stateful. The only information that is visible is the wallet address. And if you work at it long enough you can tie that back to the owner. It’s more anonymous through obscurity.
Now, there true anonymous cryptocurrency but bitcoin isn’t one of them.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#79I can count maybe 5 people in the crypto space that would have that much BTC, but none of them would be dumb enough to put it all in one wallet. Most likely some large institutional investor decided to re-key their cold storage wallet.
This is the part which confuses me about Bitcoin the most. It's meant to be anonymous, yet with some diligent data mining, it can become pretty clear who's who from their spending patterns by observing the ledger. How is that remotely anonymous?
It isn't anonymous.
Having a public transaction record makes it possible, even easy to identify and track behaviors of anyone.
Everyone you give money to knows exactly where all of that money has been and presumably who you are.
You can make it more anonymous by doing some things, but then it's just ordinary money laundering, but honestly, more difficult.
Re: 94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet
#80Watching things like this, I think bitcoin could eventually replace the government-backed currency. Everyone can watch them move. If you spend 1$ from that wallet to buy even a mars bar, your identity will be known to others. How CLEAN and clear is that?
But why? I don't understand why "account transaction visibility" is the thing that will negate the need for government-backed currency?
Because governments could regulate this currency. With improving blockchain analysis technologies, they can watch, audit and impose tax.
The only thing lacking is the control by the government.