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Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

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Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying it [criteria from my previous statement] would convince me to change my mind, was that not the question you asked? Allow me to rewrite since it wasn't understand I was replying to your question: I would be convinced to change my mind if you could cite prohibition against inanimate data that maintains the 4th amendment protections in US while simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate…

What is your current belief and what new belief would you have if supplied with that evidence. We never really spelled out exactly what the claim was. My understanding so far is that "I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect." edit: also under what criteria would be used to judge wheth…

>What is your current belief

My current belief is that attempting prohibition against inanimate data (sharing and manipulating) while maintaining the 4th amendment protections in US and simultaneously thwarting those determined to share and manipulate that data, will be minimally effective and will not significantly impact the ability of those determined to violate the prohibition.

My new belief is immaterial to whether I have changed my mind, other than it must be different somehow (otherwise the mind wasn't changed). Changing your mind just means it changed, so the only requirement is the belief is different. Without evidence, I can't possibly predict what my new belief would be. Therefore I refuse to box in what my new belief would be, and I think it would be ignorant of me to make such a presupposition.

Bear in mind 'change your mind' was a notion introduced by you not me, I can't possibly speak for what you meant there when you brought this phrase into the conversation.

>I currently believe prohibition of inanimate objects has no effect. If supplied with this evidence, then I would believe prohibition of inanimate objects would have an effect."

That's actually not my belief. Clearly there is an effect, and the criteria I think crypto meets is much stricter than merely an inanimate object but rather it drills down to just being sharing and manipulating data. You can memorize a seed phrase that resides entirely in your mind, and other than chemical storage in your brain there is no physical manifestation to seize at a national or individual level that would effectively destroy that wealth.

I think prohibition on inanimate objects has an effect, just not usually the intended effect.

The only data that can even comparably be viewed as a candidate for what prohibition of (strictest case) crypto data can look like I think again is CP. It is universally detested, the criminal penalties can be devastating, fellow prisoners may straight up kill you, and the community will virtually always back the jailing for as long as anyone cares to jail the people engaged in sharing it. I think that puts a decent ceiling for what is possible to impose on crypto, because the public will to impose prohibition on crypto surely can't be as high as it is for the prohibition of sharing data of the abuse of children. Given that even this effort has been essentially futile, I'm not seeing much of a prayer of crypto prohibition being effective at thwarting anyone but the undetermined.

There may be prisoners this moment mining some crypto on their phone, smuggled up someone's ass into prison. If they're not, they trivially could be. That's how hard it is to get rid of.

>also under what criteria would be used to judge whether a prohibition "maintains the 4th amendment protections in US"

The criteria would be not to violate the 4th amendment.

>If I go hunting for evidence, I want to make sure the goalposts are not moved.

That's really up to you, you don't owe me anything and I don't owe you anything either.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#742

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just sell the bitcoin for monero, then sell the monero for btc. also, as time goes on, the proportion of btc that are "dirty" approaches 1, so these chainalysis strategies become less effective, assuming you aren't stupid enough to do some criminal act then cash out at a kyc exchange the next day from the same wallet

But are there any exchanges that swap btc for monero or eth that don’t have KYC requirements? Seems like it’d need to be off-chain somewhat, unlike uniswap.

fixedfloat.com does exactly that.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they found a file listing private keys, after gaining access to the suspect's cloud storage That's backwards. It's how they wrapped it all up. The real trail is pretty clearly AlphaBay 2016/2017 transactions (under gov control around that timeframe), to KYC-flagged accounts at an exchange, with a web of accounts with real info linked together past there.

If he instead started to draw NFTs, and sell it from his KYC account to his dirty wallet, could he still be convicted? What if only one out of every 100 NFTs his dirty wallet purchased was from his KYC account? Or what if he decided to create his own crypto-currency and it just so happened that his dirty wallet was an early investor of ETH to his fund. Seems like he could have done more to distance himself.

Start a PAC for the decriminalization of money laundering, accept donations at a Bitcoin address, pay yourself a million a year to run it.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#744
post #552
post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it me or should he have literally just gotten a hardware wallet, transferred everything to that account, then burned the old key? Of course that txn would show up on-chain, but if you don't have possession of the private key for the first account, and no digital device has ever "seen" the hardware account then he would've been fine. This is assuming the key piece of evidence was his private key, and he wouldn't ha…

Yeah, a hardware wallet is good, although for a billion dollars, 100 hardware wallets would be better. Could even go so far as to split a private key into seven horcruxes using Shamir's Secret Sharing and bury them in locations around the world. Memorizing a seed phrase leaves you vulnerable to a $5 wrench attack, I wouldn't recommend it.

You don’t need splitting the private key. Bitcoin has multisig setup. For example, you can setup your wallet such that 6 out of 10 private keys need to sign in order to transfer funds. Spread that 10 private keys out. Or 3 out of 10. Or 2 out of 5. Any n out of m.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a crypto unbeliever I hate this too. Legal enforcement legitimizes crypto as property. It expands the definition of property by institutionally conferring the status of "owned" to a functional configuration of bits distributed over thousands of computers. Do we have this concept for other things? yes. But I'd rather like to contract the space of property rather than expand it.

Human society is rapidly moving more and more "things" in the electronic realm. By necessity of technology (we're on HN for goodness sake!) the realm of property absolutely must expand into electronic representations. Ironically, Bitcoin enables ownership to be established (at least as far as knowing the private keys = proof of ownership), in addition to the transaction path the electronic bits and bytes took in orde…

What is a necessity of technology?

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#747
post #722

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hedging against inflation due to manipulation by the government is a very compelling reason.

That is one of the goofiest reasons I’ve heard when I look at the volatility of crypto. Definitely not a compelling reason.

It might take time, but the fact that the government can't print free bitcoins as it does with fiat to pay off its usurious debt and devalue everyone's hard work is a compelling basis.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simply that people who begin thought experiments with one island, two people, and three cows tend to reach absolutely unhinged conclusions about how the society should work. Not wanting to live in a world governed by those systems is why I intent to frame them as such. Before we get to the part where some responder concludes, "you should go live in the woods then", I'd rather they did. Another way of putting it…

> consequently expansions in the dominion of the state. So your concerns are about restriction of liberties? or society moving away from small government? Are you a supporter of cryptocurrencies?

I'm saying that state legitimation of crypto conferring ownership status is an expansion of state power. State power should not be expanded.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#749
post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the standard for our criminal justice system, not for us as individuals. It sounds from the release that the justice department has a boatload of compelling evidence against them.

There's a reason why the criminal justice system operates like that though. The system has been designed like that because it turned that it is a very good idea not to go on witch hunts or to assume guilt if you want a functional society. I'm not defending the person involved here, but it's important to remember that the presumption of innocence isn't just an abstract legal concept instead of a very important part of…

The reason is that the criminal justice system imposes heavy penalties for those convicted and therefore they have to be extra careful. My words have no real effect so I can convict anyone I like.

Re: Feds arrest couple, seize $3.6B in hacked Bitcoin funds

#750

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One route would probably be to start with a warrant to search their house in hopes of finding some passwords written down somewhere

Under what premise are they getting the warrant? This absolutely sounds like parallel construction.

I assume they’d get it on roughly the same basis as the warrant they got for the cloud storage.

I’m also curious what here looks like parallel construction to you - I thought the statement of facts was surprisingly mundane, but perhaps I missed some red flags?

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