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How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

nytimes.com

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Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#81

Post by DonHopkins »

marcus0x62 wrote: post #79
DonHopkins wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that he works his bitcoin shilling scam remotely. Read the article: section 13.

>>> I'd politely disagree, for most of the points yes, it's achievable for folks with disposable income, however I don't think the average reader (NYT or HN) can afford to buy 2 new homes and 1 new vehicle all in cash. >> People living in NC and TX generally have a lot more disposable income than people in CA at the same gross income level. (In that sense, those other places are more free.) > Sure, it's just more dif…

I think the only take-away from this article is "Don't Shill Bitcoin".

And of course, step 16 of your not-so-easy plan to vanish to avoid the consequences of your actions should not be contacting the New York Times and having them write an article about you.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#82

Post by veb »

mdtancsa wrote: post #51

One of my fav Wired articles was about this... https://www.wired.com/2009/08/gone-forever-what-does-it-take...

Wonderful article... but incredibly selfish. I'm pretty sure if I'd faked my death and then later on reached out to my wife, she would murder me and nobody would know.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#83

Post by compuguy »

mLuby wrote: post #34
chris_va wrote: post #17

> To make sure his phone wasn’t keeping a record of everywhere he’d been — and potentially transmitting it to apps he was using — he turned off all its geolocation services. ... Of course, IMEI tracking (from tower registration) can get you pretty much all of this data anyway. This article is more about how to partially obfuscate your identity to private actors. It would be interesting to know how fast a professional…

Satellite phone + satellite GPS would be better, right? Since money is apparently no object…

Satellite phones can be tracked..

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#84

Post by marcus0x62 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #81
marcus0x62 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>> I'd politely disagree, for most of the points yes, it's achievable for folks with disposable income, however I don't think the average reader (NYT or HN) can afford to buy 2 new homes and 1 new vehicle all in cash. >> People living in NC and TX generally have a lot more disposable income than people in CA at the same gross income level. (In that sense, those other places are more free.) > Sure, it's just more dif…

I think the only take-away from this article is "Don't Shill Bitcoin". And of course, step 16 of your not-so-easy plan to vanish to avoid the consequences of your actions should not be contacting the New York Times and having them write an article about you.

> I think the only take-away from this article is "Don't Shill Bitcoin".

That's a pretty limited reading of the article. Another lesson might be about the difficulty ordinary people have in staying private in modern society. I can think of many reasons why a person might desire (or need) the sort of privacy outlined in the article that don't have anything to do with "shilling bitcoin."

> And of course, step 16 of your not-so-easy plan to vanish to avoid the consequences of your actions should not be contacting the New York Times and having them write an article about you.

Sure. This whole thing appears to be little more than a publicity stunt.

I still think it is harder to earn $100k per year in a place like North Carolina than, say, California.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#85

Post by josu »

mnw21cam wrote: post #6

Bitcoin is the very opposite of anonymous. Permanently recorded for posterity would be a better description. The best you can get is pseudonymous, and that's if you never actually spend any of the coin.

Literally from the Bitcoin white paper:

"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."

That Bitcoin wasn't private was clear since day 0.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#86

Post by elliekelly »

gubbrora wrote: post #54
stuntkite wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A revocable trust can own an LLC. In that situation your name only exists on a piece of paper at your house. It's extremely common to get a Nevada or Delaware LLC with a revocable trust to protect identity. There are tons of libertarian companies that will sell you kits to set it all up.

That's fascinating. How and why?

I'm an attorney and used to work for a bank. One of the hats I wore there was Anti-Money Laundering Officer. We had a potential client with this type of arrangement that went through several countries so I insisted on getting more and more information because it seemed suspicious that someone would go through all of that trouble unless they were doing something illegal. It turned out the gentleman traveled internationally quite a lot for business... and had accumulated three different families on three different continents. His revocable trust owned several LLCs as part of a complex plan to facilitate payments to all of his wives and children upon his death without them finding out about one another.

I regret that I wasn't privy to his plans for keeping them apart at his funeral.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#87

Post by stcredzero »

labster wrote: post #68
stcredzero wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yes, it's achievable for folks with disposable income People living in NC and TX generally have a lot more disposable income than people in CA at the same gross income level. (In that sense, those other places are more free.) pay for the house in full. A mortgage was not going to be possible. It's entirely possible for an LLC to lease property. I also know for a fact that there are people in Chinatown who, for a vari…

As someone who was a target of harassment just to reveal the identity of a friend, I can assure you that using friends is not a good way to secure information in the digital age.

The friend or the friendly organization needs to be prepared for the heat, and should have volunteered to face it. Volunteering a friend without their knowing what they're in for is pretty bad, of course.

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#88

Post by byset »

DonHopkins wrote: post #80
stcredzero wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Will this protect him against a slightly funded and half motivated actor? Probably not. There is a large contingent of online craptivists who won't be bright enough or motivated enough to get to him, and the ones who are bright enough and motivated enough will probably be more interested in other people. just follow him or grab him there At least he's crossed the threshold of people having to do that. "I don't need t…

Maybe as a bitcoin shill, he should not have crossed the threshold of people WANTING to do that to him in the first place. Then at least he could still stay in touch with his friends and family, and so many people wouldn't be so motivated to extract their revenge on him. But no, running his illegal get-rich-quick pyramid scheme and fooling and exploiting other people was more important to him than his own and his dog…

So your theory is that Lopp is taking these steps to protect himself from people who want to hurt him because he talks about Bitcoin publicly and the Bitcoin price has come down? That is wacky.

And you also claim he is a criminal who profited from an “illegal pyramid scheme”? Does this apply to anyone who has sold Bitcoin for more than they bought it for?

Re: How a Bitcoin Evangelist Made Himself Vanish, in 15 Not So Easy Steps

#90

Post by Newtonip »

_7fvc wrote: post #60

It's weird to see someone publishing info about how he's concealing. I'm hiding, here's how I did it. Perhaps, he sees an opportunity in concealing identity business.

Maybe the article is a decoy and what he said is not how he did it.
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