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

washingtonpost.com

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

#811

Post by checkyoursudo »

shp0ngle wrote: post #801
bostonsre wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why he wouldn't move to somewhere that doesn't have an extradition policy with the US. If you go down that path, it seems like you should probably be willing to abandon your life. It's the same with Ross Ulbricht, seems like it would be terrifying living with that sword of damocles hanging over your head absolutely constantly.

Well, then you need to move to Russia or Venesuela or Iran or such. Goodbuy to the luxurious live you enjoy in SV. Part of being a financial criminal is to post about "hustle culture" on linkedin and doing LSD with VC buddies or something

People with a lot of money live luxuriously in Russia. Not sure about the other countries. Just gotta be sure you didn't hijack any of Putin's bitcoins tho ...

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

#812

Post by wesleywt »

fxtentacle wrote: post #4

Shouldn't all true crypto believers hate this news? It's the government trying to enforce their opinion of who should own those Bitcoins, thereby taking power away from the owner that the network has decided on, which would be "whoever has the cryptographic keys".

Should the anti-cryto haters hate this news. It means a big point of it being a haven for criminals is now moot.

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

#813

Post by jerrre »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #565
pshc wrote: post #552

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Memorizing a seed phrase leaves you vulnerable to a $5 wrench attack, I wouldn't recommend it. Of course the problem is the attacker may not know what method you used and resort to the $5 wrench attack anyway :) Not stealing $3.6B might be an even safer bet.

still: physical threat + seed phrase cracked > physical threat

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

#814

Post by herodoturtle »

raducu wrote: post #804
digianarchist wrote: post #585

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly don’t know why people don’t AES/GPG encrypt the keys and send a message to alt.anonymous.messages. That’s 30+ years of storage for free.

Why couldn't they just use a brain wallet on an offline device with no internal storage. Keep a hand written copy of the generated passphrase laminated in some plastic in some fake plaster rock under a tree in a wood or something.

Take it easy Andy Dufrense

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

#815

Post by rosndo »

miohtama wrote: post #277
joshbaptiste wrote: post #118

Why would a Russian national with so much BTC to launder, who hasn't touched it in 6 years suddenly perform the action from New York City of all places from within the USA.

It is explained in the court documents. Please read the PDF.

It really isn’t.

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

#816

Post by david12345 »

benreesman wrote: post #594
tyrfing wrote: post #225

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.

I mean, for a recent example of how this works in practice: Polygon got whacked for like 650MM last August, but all the fiat and even stablecoin exchanges blacklisted the addresses and the guy got like 5MM “bug bounty” or whatever. There might be prestige in some circles for taking down some dumbass Solidity coder, and some people seem to be getting some money out still (e.g. Wormhole). But overall I’m short Trail of…

Or you can short Polygon, and make money from the price falling upon disclosure of bug

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

#817

Post by buran77 »

throwawayboise wrote: post #354
buran77 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is later a disagreement about what was agreed to, a judge sorts it out. Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Computer output doesn't, or at the very least not nearly to the same extent. If your smart contract is itself legal (you are legally allowed to formalize those terms), and produced an output as a function of it's actual internal operation (and not a random, accidental…

I don't know what a smart contract is, but seems to me that if you can convicingly argue that the function output is inconsistent with what the parties agreed to, it would not stand. There are contract disputes all the time over what a word or phrase means, and what a judge will look at is which interpretation best aligns with the broad strokes of what the parties were agreeing to. Nobody agrees to a contract that co…

> if you can convicingly argue that the function output is inconsistent with what the parties agreed to

Talking about (smart) contracts in general, if both parties agree that there was an error they can resolve it without any court. The problem is when only one party disagrees.

Imagine you have a contract with the bank and agree to pay 10% interest on a loan. Later on you try to claim you just weren't paying attention and thought it's 1.0%. That's a hell of a case to prove in front of a judge. And if that were the case the concept of contract would be worthless, invalidated by simply claiming "I didn't mean that".

A smart-contract should be easily reproducible. If that piece of code consistently returns the same result under the specified conditions then it's valid even if the result was because of a mistake the author made while preparing it.

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

#818

Post by buran77 »

lhorie wrote: post #345
buran77 wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If there is later a disagreement about what was agreed to, a judge sorts it out. Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Computer output doesn't, or at the very least not nearly to the same extent. If your smart contract is itself legal (you are legally allowed to formalize those terms), and produced an output as a function of it's actual internal operation (and not a random, accidental…

> Only because human language leaves a lot of room for interpretation Technically no. Many things have intrinsic physical value that cannot be tracked via digital contracts. If I go to amazon and buy a book, but they ship the wrong book due to clerical error, then there's a clear cut violation of expectations with no room for conflicting interpretations. In the crypto world, NFTs are frequently criticized for this ve…

> Technically no

Technically language is very interpretable but in some very simple cases it can be mitigated to the point where it's not a realistic issue. Even your book example isn't simple enough to be completely iron clad in all cases. You can receive a book that matches the criteria you provided (say title) but it's not really the book you were thinking of [0].

For more complex things like contracts and laws you have a lot of reasonably vague points that are up for interpretation. Courts reinterpret laws an contracts all the time, it's (part of) their job. Math is nowhere near as interpretable.

[0] https://www.flavorwire.com/376237/the-doubles-10-pairs-of-gr...

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

#819

Post by dannyw »

vmception wrote: post #270
paulpauper wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this would be trivial to code and could search for one of the bip 39 dictionary words. github key thieves do this already.

Happened to many on dropbox too You would never know if it was somebody employed there or at the data center or at the government agency tapping the servers

Yep, I definitely recall numerous incidents of people putting a private key onto a dropbox file, never sharing it with anyone, have 2FA on their accounts (with no unauthorized activity), and then seeing funds disappear.

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

#820

Post by nikanj »

323 wrote: post #554
AlexanderTheGr8 wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tornado.cash puts your crypto in a completely fresh account (using smart contracts). You can claim that you earned this crypto mining it back in 2010. You can definitely come up with a decent excuse for this. Then you can convert those crypto (in new account) into fiat money. Everyone will know you are lying, but they will never be able to prove it.

If you read the indictment, they claimed they had bitcoin from mining in 2011, the exchange asked for further proof, and they just abandoned the bitcoin (~$150k). The exchange surely notified the authorities, because who abandons $150k of legit bitcoin? So claiming it was from mining didn't work in this particular instance. They don't need to prove you are lying in all instances, it's enough to prove you are lying in…

I'm surprised the exchange notified the authorities. Are they forced by law?
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