

NY US Attorney: $28M in bitcoins seized - aasarava
http://www.sfgate.com/business/technology/article/NY-US-Attorney-28M-in-bitcoins-seized-4927412.php

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britta
I got curious about what they'll do with the seized bitcoins, and
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-
silk-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-
bitcoin-seizure/) covers it: _" I asked the FBI spokesperson what the plan is
for those cryptocoins. “We will download the Bitcoin and store them,” she
said. “We will hold them until the judicial process is over.” Then what? “This
is kind of new to us,” she said. “We will probably just liquidate them.”"_
That sounds like it'll be an interesting day.

This is also great, from that article: _" Reddit has located what looks to be
the FBI’s Bitcoin wallet...Now members of Reddit are starting to use the
wallet as an email address, sending it tiny amounts of Bitcoins along with
public messages, which can be read here
([http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GN...](http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX?offset=0&filter=0))."_
It's been colonized by spammers now.

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nitrogen
I'm surprised how large some of the transactions are on that list. 134
Bitcoins just dumped into the government's pocket in one transaction? Am I
reading that right?

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tomflack
Is there a way, given consensus among the bitcoin community, to mark these
coins as "bad" and effectively destroy their value?

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jadeddrag
Technically, yes. However it's very unlikely because the consensus does not
want to go down the slippery slope of politics.

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waterlesscloud
There's been chatter from the lead developers about tagging coins as tainted.
Not so much over these coins as for coins that for certainly stolen.

It's something that really would have to be done in the client, and for it to
work everyone would have to agree to use the "official" client (or code
derived from the official client).

My suspicion is that it would actually make client fragmentation more likely
as there would be a clear financial incentive to deviate from the standard.

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kdsudac
Can't wait to hear all the bitcoin fanboys explain how this is in fact a good
thing for bitcoin. :)

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yelnatz
Less BTC in the wild, all other bitcoins value rise.

With Silkroad -> "Oh BTC is only used to buy drugs."

Silkroad shutdown -> "Oh I can't wait until fanboys can explain how this is a
good thing for BTC."

