38 billion in value was traded in the last 24 hours. So if you had to unload 1 billion, if you did it 10 million at a time over 100 days, it would probably not make much of a blip (especially if you were able to disaggregate it across multiple wallets). I reckon it would be detected by someone, but I don’t know if it’s enough to crash the market.
And then blame the people counting votes in Philadelphia.
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This.
I understand most of Bitcoin, how it works, and how ledgers work. Not 100%, but a general understanding. (I happen to do a lot of financial systems IT work. Including audit work, and occasional internal forensic accounting work.)
I have ever understood why anyone would want to do anything illegal with it since there would be a pseudonymous record of all the financials, which can be de-anon’ed quite easily with the wrench method above (or a subpoena, if you spend anything legally.) even flipping the money between wallets leaves a paper trail that could be analyzed and used against you.
I’ve often wondered if it’s more of a the big guys don’t care, and the little guys don’t understand it…
I mean, a pound of cash can’t be tracked, once it’s transferred you can’t go back 20 years and see who had it since it was created…
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Uncle Sam’s legal eagles hope to get their claws on $1bn in Bitcoin ‘stolen by hacker’ from dark-web souk Silk Road
Uncle Sam’s legal eagles hope to get their claws on $1bn in Bitcoin 'stolen…
‘Individual X’ said to have surrendered the digital dosh
The US Department of Justice on Thursday filed a legal request to formally take control of more than $1bn in Bitcoin (BTC) generated from the sales of illicit goods at Silk Road.
It is believed the crypto-coins were stolen from the dark-web market at some point, and now the Feds want to take ownership of the haul.
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will quantum computing have any applicability to blockchain mining?
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If they know who the hacker is and have some evidence against him that would be their preferred method, but it’s also possible they just receved a mail “I have a lot of bitcoin you want and is too dangerous for me to use. I’ll hand it over for a finders fee and a pardon”. Even if they had evidence against him, they might cut a deal because getting the money was more valuable than nailing a hacker who, after all, only stole from other crooks.
Governments do lots of stuff like that. IRS pays large amounts of money to whistleblowers who expose tax fraud, even if they were part of the fraud in the first place.
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Thanks @Frank_Farmer1 and @TheRizz for the explanations. Bitcoin does not seem like a very ideal mechanism for crime, from my perspective.
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I’ve been to a few discussions around what quantum computers will do to encryption, tldr; some algos are vulnerable, some are not, it isn’t a case of all encryption becoming useless*. I’m not nearly good enough at math to make a comment on bitcoin, it might be worth seeing what algos are on the vulnerable list, and seeing if those are used in the creation of bitcoin, probably someone with those overlapping interests already has…
*Also, quantum computers are still only available to gigantic multinationals and a few large countries, they won’t be “available” for a while at a price even large criminal enterprises can afford, and will probably be highly controlled.
How much can the market swallow without crashng the value of the bitcoin if the Feds want to sell it all?
I wonder that too. It does seem like a practical issue. And even when converted to USD I wonder where the money goes. Is there a way to send it to the general US pot to be used for the federal budget or does it just get stuck in that org?
As far as crashing Bitcoin, I feel like it is a intrinsic problem that it couldn’t be able to withstand just 1 billion dollars coming in and out. There is roughly 286B (in USD) bitcoin value in existence, so this is like 2.86%. Which, is higher than I thought. I would like crypto to be a practical, usable thing and not just an investment product.
For those still on the sidelines, there are only about 2 and a half million bitcoins left. At the current rate, they are supposed to be all gone in about 100 years…until you factor in all of the big companies that are buying up MASSIVE amounts of bitcoin as a hedge. This morning, bitcoin is sitting at $15,500. By this time next year, a single bitcoin will be well north of $100k.
Ah, rubber hose cryptoanalysis.
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Funny how the Feds seem to let actual billionaires slide.
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Or it will be absolutely worthless because major nations have banned them. Or something in between. A stable storage of value, they ain’t.
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