
Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer - a3voices
https://blockchain.info/tx/1c12443203a48f42cdf7b1acee5b4b1c1fedc144cb909a3bf5edbffafb0cd204
======
fragsworth
Consider this: They paid $0.00 for the transfer of $150 million dollars.

A direct (i.e. not based on third party credit, regulations, etc.) transfer of
wealth of this magnitude between two entities usually consists of a heavily
guarded, insured, physical shipment of cash or gold. Depending how safely you
want to make the transfer, and how far the entities are on the globe, it can
cost hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Bitcoin has _real_ value. It solves problems on an incredible scale. I wish I
realized this months ago.

~~~
drzaiusapelord
>between two entities usually consists of a heavily guarded, insured, physical
shipment of cash or gold.

Err, life isn't a james bond movie. For money transfer like this we use bank
wires. We dont buy gold and ship it on gunships anymore.

~~~
JackFr
Not true:

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/venezuela-
receives-...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-01-31/venezuela-receives-
last-shipment-of-repatriated-gold-bars-1-.html)

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/01/16/germany...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/01/16/germany-
repatriating-gold-from-ny-paris-in-case-of-a-currency-crisis/)

~~~
fragsworth
Not only is gold shipped frequently, it's also stolen frequently:

[http://rt.com/news/gold-shipment-stolen-france-304/](http://rt.com/news/gold-
shipment-stolen-france-304/)

[http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/us-usa-miami-
gold-...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/16/us-usa-miami-gold-
idUSBRE94F0RM20130516)

~~~
socillion
Not only is Bitcoin sent frequently, it's also stolen frequently:

[http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-hacking-stolen-
million-417/](http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-hacking-stolen-million-417/)

[http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/250-000-worth-bitcoins-
sto...](http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/250-000-worth-bitcoins-stolen-net-
heist-980871)

[http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/czech-
bitcoi...](http://www.esecurityplanet.com/network-security/czech-bitcoin-
exchange-bitcash.cz-hacked.html)

edit: unrelated, someone should make an index of how many Bitcoin threads hit
the front page of HN per day.

~~~
JimmaDaRustla
Your point stands, but most thefts occur on third party sites/applications
where the address of the coins and their private key are stored in a central
location. Owners of the bitcoin should transfer their coins to a private
wallet.

I don't understand how so many sites can't use password hash generation to
secure the private keys, or something to keep it more secure. The first link
you posted was a site run by an 18 year old.

~~~
giovannibajo1
Sorry to digress a little, but I'm sensitive on age issues :)

Pinkie Pie won his first $50k award by creating a 0-day sandbox escape on
Chrome, by chaining 10 different vulnerabilities. He was 19 (now almost 21).
Two years before, at 17, he released jailbreakme.com, all by himself, which
was a 0-day able to jailbreak all iOS models shipped to date by just visiting
a website.

Age means nothing by itself, but the point is correct. The problem is that we
don't know how much we can trust bitcoin site owners, as most of them are
relatively new with no history to inspect, closed source, and sometimes even
run by anonymous users whose experience we can't inspect.

~~~
bigiain
Sure, there are 18 year olds with impressive technical chops.

But do you know _anybody_ who would deposit money in a bank run exclusively by
an 18 year old?

Coding skills can be created and honed by highschoolers - business, legal, and
commercial experience - very much less so.

~~~
sejje
I think any skills can be created and honed by highschoolers.

But I think it's extremely rare in the cases you mentioned.

------
tokenadult
If this was an actual transfer of ownership of Bitcoin at all near that value,
this would trigger money-transfer reporting requirements under the laws of
most countries,[1] especially if this was an international transfer of
ownership. I see that all the other comments here are speculating about what
exactly happened here, and one astute comment before this one pointed out that
the actual owner of the Bitcoin may still be the same individual person both
before and after this blockchain transfer. It will be interesting to see how
the regulatory environment keeps up with the implementation of Bitcoin, which
so far is a very tiny percentage of the world economy.

There were also statements in some previous comments that this transfer was
made for free. It is true enough that a Bitcoin transfer doesn't inherently
incur a processing charge from a merchant payment processor, but as merchants
learned back in the Middle Ages when charging interest was formally illegal,
the price of a transaction can hide financing and processing costs. We don't
know what was agreed with whom by whom to make this transfer happen. The
transfer may have occurred at a higher than list price for something that was
bought, to make up for the ongoing inconvenience of receiving a payment using
the new Bitcoin payment mechanism.

[1] One example, among many: [http://www.consumerfinance.gov/remittances-
transfer-rule-ame...](http://www.consumerfinance.gov/remittances-transfer-
rule-amendment-to-regulation-e/)

~~~
andrewflnr
I'm not sure I see where you're going by mentioning reporting requirements.
Isn't the point of Bitcoin that those kind of laws are unenforceable?

~~~
bunderbunder
It might be harder for authorities to monitor bitcoin transactions. But, as
the very fact that this HN article exists illustrates, the blockchain is a
public record that's available for anyone to monitor, analyze, cross-reference
with other sources of data, etc. Particularly for large movements like this,
I'm inclined to say that it would be downright foolhardy to assume that BTC
transactions are anonymous.

~~~
aagha
It might be foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous, but that
doesn't mean that it wouldn't be EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY difficult to
figure out who was involved.

~~~
betterunix
When it is such a large amount of money, it is not all that difficult. Just
look for the guy who is $147M richer.

In other words, the only way you get to have the money is if you never spend
it, except in minuscule amounts.

~~~
bunderbunder
Case in point: Supposedly the money from a lot of cases of major Bitcoin theft
is still sitting in the same wallets. Implication: The thieves are having a
hard time figuring out how to spend the money without outing themselves.

------
aroch
As pointed out on Reddit, this wallet has made several large transactions
since September:
[https://blockchain.info/address/1HBa5ABXb5Yx1YcQsppqwKtaAGFP...](https://blockchain.info/address/1HBa5ABXb5Yx1YcQsppqwKtaAGFPYe5xzY)

~~~
shubb
I wonder if it is an early miner, or a certain black pirate...

~~~
SeanLuke
I'm surprised no one has identified what I think is the most likely situation:
bitcoin theft.

~~~
fragsworth
Are you suggesting that any given transaction is most likely to be a theft?

~~~
hackinthebochs
I think the point is that the only reason to transfer such a large sum of
money is either buying/selling something or stealing. And considering there
probably aren't many (if any) things one can buy with that many bitcoins,
theft seems to be most likely scenario.

~~~
BlackDeath3
>I think the point is that the only reason to transfer such a large sum of
money is either buying/selling something or stealing.

Perhaps you could be a little less specific?

>And considering there probably aren't many (if any) things one can buy with
that many bitcoins, theft seems to be most likely scenario.

You could buy a lot of something from a private entity who really values
Bitcoin.

------
dmix
Whoever owns this wallet used it to gamble on
[https://letsdice.com/](https://letsdice.com/)

[https://blockchain.info/tx/a80f91549f863ccb58603e45a37980e30...](https://blockchain.info/tx/a80f91549f863ccb58603e45a37980e3010a17ba70622c11d024e6cc84fd42d3)

~~~
Keyframe
So much for anonymity of Bitcoin.

~~~
dmix
Bitcoin is pseudonymous by default, not anonymous.

Anonymity is a choice. CoinJoin [1] and other trustless mixing software
projects are aiming to make anonymity a push of a button. This is being
implemented into DarkWallet [2] where mixing happens automatically in the
background.

[1] [http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6630/](http://bitcoinmagazine.com/6630/)

[2]
[http://www.indiegogo.com/at/darkwallet](http://www.indiegogo.com/at/darkwallet)

~~~
dllthomas
Though I have every expectation of mixing falling afoul of AML laws, if not
presently then soon.

~~~
Karunamon
The legislators can make whatever they want illegal, but that doesn't make it
necessarily enforceable.

Thing about mixing is, since any person (or autonomous process) can generate
wallets and send BTC to those on the fly, how do you prove that you used a
tumbling service and not that you gave coins to a guy who gave coins to a guy
who split them up into separate wallets who each gave coins to a guy, etc etc
etc.

As Bitcoin picks up steam, this problem only gets harder. Remember that the
block chain only consists of hashes and signatures. Proving who owns those is
a much more difficult process.

~~~
aidenn0
It's trivial to make it enforcable. Whenever BTC leave the mixed wallet into a
regulated area, bust the person doing so for violating money laundering laws
if they used mixing. If they didn't use mixing, but received mixed funds you
can probably impound some fraction of their funds to.

Either way you now have enough evidence to raid their PC to check for further
laundered funds and generally make their lives miserable. When people complain
just find a fraction of a BTC that was used at some point in the past to fund
the social demon of the day (child porn, terrorism, drugs, sex trafficking,
etc.) to justify it.

~~~
Karunamon
How do you prove that circulated coins are the product of a mixing operation
and not just normal transactional flow?

Someone mines coins and gives coins to a guy who gives coins to a guy who
gives coins to a guy (repeat n times) who gives coins to you, and every link
in the chain is following best practices by generating new wallets for each
transaction, how would the adversary prove that you're doing something
untoward (and since we're discussing law at this point, beyond a reasonable
doubt?)

~~~
dllthomas
This is no different than laundering cash, except that there is more
information about the actual transaction flow.

~~~
Karunamon
You didn't really answer my question. Assume you're in some position of
authority. With the knowledge that bitcoin wallets can be generated out of
thin air, how do you _prove_ that a given transaction chain was the product of
a mixing operation and not the product of normal transactional flow?

~~~
dllthomas
Physical wallets can also be created out of thin air. I'm not a forensic
accountant, so detailing precisely how is not in my area of expertise, but we
successfully prosecute people for laundering cash, and bitcoin only has _more_
information, _more_ accessible than cash. I am not saying it can be done with
just the block chain, but the block chain is a piece of evidence that is far
more easily accessible than a criminal enterprises' individual ledgers.

------
nly
Hardly. If you tried to sell 195,000 coins you'd wipe out all the exchanges
and cause a crash.

Talking numbers, you could sell them all on BTC-E right now, bagging you just
$7M, and take the price down to ~$36. You can spread that around the exchanges
of course, if you're quick, but you're still nowhere near $147M at current
market depth.

~~~
mortehu
Why do you seem to think that selling them all at once is the only way to sell
them?

~~~
crazydoggers
Exactly this! What the heck would you do with $150 million in cash... stick it
in a $250,000 FDIC insured bank?

Most people with this level of wealth diversify their holdings, which makes
the total amount less liquid, but much more secure, as well as providing
protection from inflation or returns on investments. Real wealth often does
not have perfect liquidity, and I would argue in these amounts, almost never
does.

Selling 100s of thousands of dollars worth of bitcoins a year for USD would
hardly put a dent in the markets, and is probably the most anyone would want
to do. The purchase of an asset would instead be made directly with bitcoins
in a transaction such as this.

~~~
skorgu
A redundant array of insured deposits of course.

I'm actually serious, there's a service called CDARS [0] that balances a large
number of individual CD accounts of varying expiration times and maintains the
250k per individual per institution invariant. It acts like as single (albeit
illiquid) bank account.

[0] [http://www.cdars.com/](http://www.cdars.com/)

------
kmfrk
Should this be regarded as capital gains from currency speculation, when it
comes to taxation, or how does something like this look to a tax attorney or
accountant?

~~~
gsharon
The government would have to consider Bitcoins as a currency for it to be
taxed like a currency. Right now it has no status identified for legal
purposes so no way to tax it. I am sure that several governments are looking
in to it as we speak. Death and taxes

~~~
steven2012
The government can tax anything it wants. For example, barter exchanges are
taxable by the government, even if no actual money changed hands. They would
just put a dollar figure on the barter, and then tax it accordingly. Bitcoin
doesn't have to be a currency in order for the government to tax any gains
made on its sale or transfer.

~~~
id_ris
The IRS purposely keeps the definition of income loosely defined so that they
can broadly apply it as new schemes and technologies arise. I am sure the IRS
could bust you for income tax evasion if you didn't declare your bitcoin
appreciation as income.

~~~
saraid216
Oddly enough, the pioneers on this subject are actually game currencies. Look
up Julian Dibbell's _Play Money_.

------
Pxtl
Were any of these previously-thought-lost "dark" bitcoins, or was it all live
bitcoin currency?

------
dcc1
Is that right someone transferred millions with 0 fees? cheapskates :D

~~~
lelf
High priority transactions can be made without fees

~~~
mpg33
Transaction priority are based solely on fee amount..no?

~~~
elliottcarlson

        priority = sum(input_value_in_base_units * input_age) / size_in_bytes
    

A recently received single bitcoin can have a transaction fee, while one that
has aged may not.

~~~
josephagoss
Damn, how do you do quotes?

~~~
elliottcarlson
4 spaces in front of the content - the problem with it is that on larger text,
it puts it in a scrolling div, which is not easy to read.

~~~
rallison
Yeah, it is really meant for code snippets. Asterisks for italic is generally
preferred for quotes.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc](https://news.ycombinator.com/formatdoc)

------
politician
If you look at the tree view, the lump sum has already been broken down into
smaller bits.

[https://blockchain.info/tree/98324324](https://blockchain.info/tree/98324324)

Click the yellow circles to expand the tree nodes.

~~~
klochner
The original transaction was likely made at a discount to someone willing to
peddle the smaller bundles.

------
jluxenberg
Are those editorialized links added by Blockchain.info admins, or are they
part of the block chain itself? ("gotcha" and "shit load of money!")

~~~
nwh
They're added by users of blockchain.info. The actual blockchain does not
store any metadata.

[http://blockchain.info/tags](http://blockchain.info/tags)

~~~
splitbrain
Interesting! Any idea how the verified tags work? Who verifies what and how
there?

~~~
nwh
Nothing by the looks of things. I tried a few and it looks like the target URL
you put in must contain the address somewhere, otherwise it's not verified. I
guess it's to stop people flooding spammy names.

------
davecap1
Must be someone buying a seat on Virgin Galactic

~~~
josephagoss
Isn't a seat 400 Bitcoin? That is a lot of seats, maybe they are buying the
rocket and plane?

------
seabrookmx
> Someone

This is a little misleading. This could be a business etc.

A mining pool or exchange transferring from one wallet to another (ie. to cold
storage)?

You wouldn't want a typo in your address for that amount of cash! I'd probably
break it up into a bunch of smaller transactions just to be safe.

~~~
clarkm
Luckily Bitcoin addresses use Base58 encoding [1] and have built-in checksums,
so any typo you make likely won't be a valid address.

[1]
[https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding)

~~~
mayneack
And a transfer to an invalid address just fails?

~~~
clarkm
Yep - the default client won't let you send to an invalid address. And even if
you used client software that was broken and performed the check incorrectly,
the transaction would still be rejected by the other nodes in the network.

~~~
scintill76
Not necessarily. The protocol itself doesn't use base58 or the typo checksum,
AFAIK. If your client sends out a hash it derived from a typoed base58 string,
nobody on the network will know it was a typo, they just see a 20-byte hash
that could be anything.

------
Titusak
I still dont get how that kind of amount is cashed out. I mean, yeah, there is
some brokers, but I dont think they have this kind of cash available...

~~~
petercooper
It's not hugely different to if you had $150m in Albanian lek or Abkhazian
apsar. You would find it ridiculously hard to convert into an alternative
currency in one go and even if you did you'd probably be getting a bad deal
(and could even devalue the currency in those two examples).

Ultimately, there's always a price that you can convert ("cash out") anything
at. For example, I'd be willing to pay $100 for 100 bitcoins right now.
Eventually a seller and buyer will find a meeting ground, a transaction is
made, and value is defined.

~~~
Titusak
I never saw it like this, but you are right. It's just another currency
exchange.

------
this_user
If the map is correct, the first node that saw the transaction is located
roughly in Frankfurt, Germany which is a major financial centre. The
transaction was made at 5:38 local time which is right around the time the
Frankfurt exchange closes. Might be this transaction was done by a larger
financial institution closing up shop for the week.

~~~
josephagoss
Remember this is the first node that the Blockchain.info website saw. This
relay information is extremely misleading. So that German node could have
relayed the transaction from another node before Blockchain.info became aware
of it. (Blockchain.info is connected to about 1% of all the active Bitcoin
nodes)

~~~
this_user
Well, how does the propagation of transactions in the BTC network work? I
honestly don't know, but I would assume that it is more likely for the
originating node to be near to the relaying node than not.

~~~
nwh
Every peer makes an announcement that they've seen a new transaction to every
one of it's 8+ peers, if a peer doesn't know about the transaction that's
announced, they send back an inventory request to get it for themselves.

There's never really many degrees of separation between nodes, but you're
probably incorrect in that blockchain.info knows anything about the originator
of the transaction. They connect to a large number (abusively) of nodes, but
not enough to do this sort of discovery. There's a reasonable portion that
never expose themselves to the public network at all.

------
tsaoutourpants
FBI clearing out DPR's accounts?

...or DPR associate moving around his money? ;)

------
mariusz79
Well, this is just another reason why bitcoin will not work - you can track
money changing hands.. Certain three letter agencies would have not trouble
tracking most of the transfers, all over the world.

~~~
eof
i love this

    
    
         this is just another reason why bitcoin will not work
    
    

5 years later; several orders of magnitude later, so many arbitrary
"milestones" met (parity with dollar, can i buy airplane tickets with it?,
well we'll see when the government recognizes it)

when do you decide that bitcoin 'works'? i mean; it is absolutely undeniable
100% certainly no-matter-what-you-say currently working RIGHT NOW; the mental
dissonance around bitcoin naysayers is becoming hilarious

~~~
mariusz79
Size of the current bitcoin economy is "just" $8bln. While it sound like a lot
of money, comparing to the rest of the economy it does not even qualify as a
pocket change.

~~~
termain
So it's definitely worked well enough to create an 8 billion dollar economy?

~~~
throwaway1979
I was a naysayer until recently. After the senate hearing, I ate crow. Too
late to profit at this point though :(

~~~
localhorse
I'm not sure that's true.

~~~
throwaway1979
What is your price target, if I may ask?

~~~
pazimzadeh
7,000 USD within five years.

~~~
BrokenPipe
More likely to be within 2014 at this velocity and no reason to think it won't
be S curve adopted.

------
altoz
Someone wanted to be on the bitcoin 100 richest list.

------
mynameishere
About 0.000028 times as big as daily forex trading.

------
shocks
Someone trying to get #1 on
[http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top100](http://bitcoinrichlist.com/top100) ?

Seems very reckless. All your eggs in one basket.

------
mike_esspe
Karl Gray claims the transfer

[https://twitter.com/paradimeshift/status/404043972646932480](https://twitter.com/paradimeshift/status/404043972646932480)

[https://twitter.com/paradimeshift/status/404042739127308289](https://twitter.com/paradimeshift/status/404042739127308289)

------
SuzieFlo
I had some one steal my laptop, which had all of information on it and also
had a wallet with well over $300,000 worth in bitcoins. My laptop was stolen
back in April, right when it was beginning to soar. I had written everything
down on paper and had it in the laptop case which they took too. I looked for
a verification email and it was no where to be found. I am so depressed about
this. Right now I am in a struggle losing my home to foreclosure, never did I
think I would miss out on an opportunity like this. Its like winning the
lottery, but losing your ticket. Sighhhhh......... Now... all Ive got is an
empty wallet. 16syUE7aoGTM6BTvn1N9zf6UUCcUcRaHfL I dont even want to mention
how much time I spent online searching for my wallet. Sucks!

------
ck2
That's nothing, someone owns (owned) six million litecoins:

[http://ltc.block-
explorer.com/address/LTpYZG19YmfvY2bBDYtCKp...](http://ltc.block-
explorer.com/address/LTpYZG19YmfvY2bBDYtCKpunVRw7nVgRHW)

~~~
shawabawa3
that's like $60million isn't it? how is $147million nothing?

~~~
ck2
Imagine if litecoin goes to $100 next year, now calculate.

~~~
matthuggins
$147m is nothing! Imagine what the value of this Nerf dart sitting on my desk
could be next year!

------
RAJB
Everything you need to know about bitcoin is contained in this articlear
[http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2002020751_b...](http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2002020751_beaniebabybubble31.html)

If you don't understand why, then thank God you are not working in a bank.
Banking is one of the most innovative, talent hungry industries in the world,
with the anomaly of (and exception in) the US retail market due to legal
idiosyncratic US regulation..

Mand

------
hkbarton
wow, 7kb data value 150 million dollars, what a crazy world.

------
_prometheus
This stage of BTC growth is lovely. If you have a lot of it, you can issue
transactions that might increase the total value. Not claiming this was the
aim here, but certainly an effect :)

If this same owner splits the holdings up slowly, transfer wallets, and then
recombine it again, it might spike up once more. People will definitely catch
on, but it might bring up the value a couple hundred dollars in the hype.

Might make millions in the confusion.

------
eliben
Is it only me, but such things make Bitcoin seem somwhat... less private...
than real money?

------
spindoctaa
can it be related to this at all?

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54673.1120](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=54673.1120)

can someone do any further checks on the information below as a lot of people
have lost out on a lot of bitcoins, including myself. Please check the magento
company and if possible further info on 50BTC.

[http://myip.ms/info/whois/5.9.245.120/k/1171871757/website/5...](http://myip.ms/info/whois/5.9.245.120/k/1171871757/website/50btc.com)

I don't need any sarky should haves or comments, just advice or routes to
take. We're all on this earth together no??

------
roasbeef
It was Richard Branson..most likely someone paying for their ride to space in
BTC.

------
mkramlich
... and I go right back to building something to help Bitcoin mitigate risks

------
Codhisattva
Is it possible to know the actual amount of money that exchanged hands?

~~~
brokentone
It is possible to know 194,993.50000004 BTC changed between two addresses -
these could be owned by the same individual, could be different accounts for
the same individual. Anything else, USD, goats, Yuan, securities, etc that may
have been traded would not be reported/recorded in the BTC transfer.

edit: corrected by josephagoss, ty

~~~
jMyles
Goats aren't tracked by the blockchain?

~~~
mkramlich
people are building (and/or have already built) systems that allow parties to
transfer both pure-digital-only assets (images, videos, music, ebooks, etc),
and, the rights to RL assets (eg. a goat, a painting, a vehicle), both "on top
of" the Bitcoin network/architecture as well as via completely separate but
Bitcoin-like systems. Systems which are also distributed, anonymity/privacy-
optimized, resilient, globalized, bureaucracy-routing-around, efficient,
automation-friendly, fee-less, built/run by engineers & entrepreneurs rather
than by politicians/lawyers/bankers/aristocracies, etc.

~~~
penguindev
Well, I give that a few years before the government takes those dreams down to
size, just like the NSA did of the entire internet. Keep dreaming.

/ super jaded

------
mswe
Everybody is suddenly a currency expert. Remember the days when everybody was
a real estate investor? Yup. I'm gonna enjoy the show from the sidelines.

------
penguindev
My ignorant BTC question is this - does knowing that this 'address' has this
much money make it a target for people to crack its key?

~~~
keyme
If the key was randomly generated (not derived form a passphrase), it is
impossible to crack the key. Usually when people talk about cracking a "key",
they refer to brute forcing a passphrase that either protects the real key
(encrypted wallet), or is used to derive the key (brainwallet).

------
billions
With a significant number of casual PCs storing bitcoin the virus industry is
about to become WAY more lucrative for the bad guys.

------
Datsundere
Might be the german govt. They've been advocating open source and linux for a
while now. Maybe trying out buttcoins.

------
bvttf
Anyone know of any genius graphics programmers who have had access to lots of
high-end GPUs, who might be retiring soon?

------
bigstueyc22
After recent fluctuations it's very hard to predict what, if any impact this
will have on it's value.

------
fpp
and already on its way back to one of its original wallets
[https://blockchain.info/address/1HBa5ABXb5Yx1YcQsppqwKtaAGFP...](https://blockchain.info/address/1HBa5ABXb5Yx1YcQsppqwKtaAGFPYe5xzY)

------
bhartzer
Is there not a limit to the amount of money that can be transferred via
Bitcoin?

~~~
wmf
In theory a single transaction cannot involve more BTC than exists, but that's
not a practical limit since you couldn't buy all the BTC that exists anyway.

------
neakor
What does the "shit load of money!" mean on the transaction page?

~~~
sp332
It's a link to a reddit thread discussing the transaction.

------
jyf1987
i am worried about sha256

and finally mathematicans could get rid of poor now

------
jedicoffee
This was obviously made by someone with very large botnet.

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squozzer
Wild-ass guesses:

1) Someone at the NSA 2) Barack Hussein Obama 3) Me

I hope the national-security apparati have a handle on this -- wouldn't want
the evidence of a smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud...

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EGreg
They couldn't spare even 0.5 for fees?

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jhhn
OMG... is someone buying a nuke? !!!

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downandout
My guess: Bail money for DPR.

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fat0wl
Doesn't anyone find it odd that the price is quoted in USD and not BTC?

~~~
vidyesh
Nope. Click on the amount.

~~~
fat0wl
Just sayin -- quoting everything related to Bitcoin constantly as if it's USD
in your pocket is so misleading. For a group that loves BTC so much and
eschews the US Dollar, they sure love to quote it.

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rikacomet
Here is my analysis:

Time: 17:30 - 1738

roughly 5pm europe time, past the 9-5 general business hours . If all the
parties or just the reciepients are based in europe, between legal and
illegal.. I would tap this as illegal. It just doesn't make sense.. for
someone doing a legal transfer of this size, after business hours, unless..
senders were based in US.

Going through the direct senders (1 step back), the time with least 1k BTC+
transactions was 0200, 0400, 0500.. while with most big transactions were made
around 1300, 1500, 2100 .. suggesting that these transaction were roughly
either made from US to Europe, if of legal nature.. or within europe..
suggesting something shady. Very very crudely speaking.

Yeah, everything is possible, and the above is not necessarily true, but it
appears so, at least to me.

Amount: 194k bitcoins

Multiple connected accounts who sent to the above address seems to have had
220k+ in total recieved and looking at denomination, it didn't seem like lot
of normal people were involved. Besides, with this kind of money involved it
is wise to have 10 or less people involved who are highly trusted. This appear
so also, with how countable no of bitcoin addresses were used to say "bounce"
the trace of that money. Skill wise, these are not normal people.. but given
__HOW __this ended up in public domain, they could have done slightly better.

I get the feeling you get from govt hired people doing such things, no
offense.. but somewhere below the elite, but above the average joe. It is also
possible that a bigger or equal (more likely) sum was also transferred
elsewhere.

Movement seem to have stopped.. due to attention it has already garnered or is
it the actual resting place? If it would be illegal, one would have had no
problem keeping it in multiple bitcoin wallets in smaller amounts. But if it
is someone, with legal force on side.. say govt agency, it would not have
problem leaving the bitcoins in such limelight, for a long time, as long as
they believe that bitcoin is actually 100% and not 99.9999999% impregnable.

Motive, as discussed slightly above, can be mainly either "convenience of
centrality" > or > "hiding a bigger sum" .. well I at least won't be putting
my money in BTC for my own reasons. I got that feeling today to use it.. but I
resisted.

BTC is genuine, but the currently it seems like a pyramid fraud system which
is perfectly legal strictly speaking. More people putting in money in BTC
system.. already rich getting richer.. tickle down effect :? Well 150
million.. has really left a lot of questions .. or its nature, motive,
ownership, moral, etc. Who would answer? No one.. ironically.. thats a big
problem as well a big benefit of BTC. I'm sorry.. lot of things I said above
are based on feelings, but to tell you the truth, before today, BTC was in a
nutshell somewhat easy to understand.. but 150 million.. is a figure that can
give any guy a lot of different vibes, speculative as well as wild goose chase
type.

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chenster
Russian mobs.

~~~
szatkus
Or Heisenberg.

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dragontamer
OMFG, Bitcoin is so anonymous!

~~~
lcasela
Do we know who these two people are? No? Then it's anonymous.

~~~
sp332
It's pseudonymous, because if they make a transfer later we'll still know it's
the same people.

~~~
Zr40
You can't know that for sure. I could pay you 2 BTC by giving the private key
to a wallet holding 2 BTC. You could even return change in the same way.

The physical Bitcoins (like those by Casascius) work exactly like this:
physical coins containing a private key hidden behind a seal.

~~~
dragontamer
You're so open to scammers that it isn't even funny.

Lets say I give you a "physical" BTC worth 1 million BTC. Is there any way for
me to prove to you that I have erased the private key to this BTC address?

No, there isn't. Anyone who is caught using physical BTC coins is a sucker who
doesn't understand the system. They can be very easily scammed by the very man
who created the "physical BTC coin". After all, all I need to do is keep a
copy of the private address, and transfer the money sometime after I've "sold"
you the BTC.

~~~
shocks
Read the FAQ.

[https://www.casascius.com/faq.aspx](https://www.casascius.com/faq.aspx)

