
FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk Road founder - spindritf
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht
======
eterm
"At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all
bitcoins in circulation"

Why would exchange rate affect what percentage of bitcoins 600k are! This is
terribly confused thought from the journalist:

600k bitcoins, that's "almost $80m".

$80m! But at current exchange rates that's "just over 5%!".

When sitting there are the actual numbers of bitcoins in his wallet and
bitcoins in circulation...

~~~
salmonellaeater
> An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth”

The FBI gave the number denominated in USD, so the journalist had to estimate
the true number of BTC. The 600k is almost certainly calculated from that $80m
number.

~~~
cle
I believe the $80mil estimate is from the criminal complaint, which derived
that estimate from the data they collected from the seized server. The
complaint specified that from Feb 6, 2011 to July 23, 2013, Ulbricht collected
614,305 Bitcoins in commission, which is $84,159,785 at today's exchange rate
on Mt. Gox.

So I'm pretty certain that the $80mil estimate is derived from the actual
number of Bitcoins in commission that was logged on SR's server.

~~~
donpdonp
Calculating (volume x last price) can be misleading when the number of coins
traded is large enough to move the market.

Using the freenode/#bitcoin 'gribble' irc bot for some calculations, there are
only 45,000 bitcoins or $5Million for sale over $100USD.

donpdonp> bids 100 gribble> There are currently 45669.225 bitcoins demanded at
or over 100.0 USD, worth 5307618.93329 USD in total.

Selling the remaining 550,000-odd coins would wipe out the market and net only
$6million more.

donpdonp> market sell 600000 gribble> A market order to sell 600000 bitcoins
right now would net 11853320.3682 USD and would take the last price down to
0.0100 USD, resulting in an average price of 19.7555 USD/BTC.

~~~
theklub
So if the FBI decided to sell them all...

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Then it would be time to buy (after the sell went through).

------
300bps
If Ross Ulbricht is really the guy who ran this site, why in the world was he
doing his work from San Francisco? His alleged job was the pinnacle of "work
anywhere". He took so many precautions to keep his identity secret that he
must've known that his activities would at some point gather focused attention
from the authorities.

Living in San Francisco allowed the feds to pick them up on their lunch hour.
Even just hopping the border to Mexico would've required them to get
international cooperation and extradite him.

He'd likely be a free man if he were in Croatia or Kazakhstan.

~~~
bsullivan01
_He 'd likely be a free man if he were in Croatia or Kazakhstan._

In small countries with no culture of westerners living there long term he'd
stand out like a sore thumb. In dictatorial countries they'd think he was a
CIA operative and be tailed. Oh, and upon capture he'd be beaten until he told
them every little secret, bitcoin passwords included.

So good old USA was better and SF is probably the best way for a guy "acting
weird" and staying online all the time to hide. He should have retired a year
ago. It's a like playing in a casino, you're bound to lose long term

~~~
ravingraven
Croatia is pretty nice actually. But the "no extradition" days are over now
that it joined the EU.

~~~
eCa
Ecuador could have worked..

~~~
LandoCalrissian
I think Ecuador still has extradition treaties with the US, the cases with
Snowden and Assange are asylum cases which are regarded a little differently.

It does however look like you have a pretty big list to work with:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extradition_law_in_the_United_States#International_extradition)

------
appleflaxen
Right after the DPR bust there was a lot of discussion about how it was a
death knell for bitcoin, but this is exactly why it's such a revolutionary
type of technology: if DPR had any currency in a paper wallet, he could simply
print it out, put it in a safe deposit box, and pick it up once he is out of
prison.

For a currency to be so secure that a state cannot seize it from a citizen is
unprecedented.

It will be fascinating to see how this plays out.

~~~
CompelTechnic
If he uses a brain wallet, it would be even more secure. The ONLY possible way
to seize the bitcoins would require him to comply. Another interesting bit is
the fact that this might make him a billionaire by the time he's released from
prison- just from the appreciation of bitcoin's value.

I have another curiosity about the FBI's intent to seize his bitcoins- is it
fair to seize all of them? If half of these bitcoins were earned while
bitcoins were only worth 1/10 of current value, should only 10% of that half
be seized? This might be arguable in court.

~~~
pflats
If he had done the deal in a foreign currency, in gold, or for modern art,
they'd still seize all of that, regardless of its current value. Bitcoins are
no different, even if you're considering them a proxy for real dollars.

~~~
kd0amg
_Bitcoins are no different, even if you 're considering them a proxy for real
dollars._

As mentioned in the article, even after acquiring the wallet file, the FBI is
still unable to perform transactions with that BTC. There's no bank they can
order to transfer it into their account, no briefcase full of cash they can
deposit, etc. As I understand it, the only way they're able to deprive
Ulbricht of them is by not letting him keep a copy of the file. With the
"brain wallet" strategy (not sure how viable that really is), they wouldn't
even have been able to get this far.

~~~
gigq
I would think it's a pretty safe assumption he already had multiple copies of
the wallet/private keys stored before he got arrested.

Just from a redundancy standpoint you don't want one copy of your wallet in
one location as it could get corrupted or destroyed in a disaster.

------
kybernetyk
> Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession
> of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent.

Yes ... if no backups exist.

~~~
gambiting
And as soon as someone spends any amount of bitcoins from one of these backups
the copy held by FBI becomes invalid.

~~~
colkassad
The thought exercises are fascinating. Say he has a completely trustworthy
friend somewhere that the FBI is unaware of. Could he have that person spend a
little, back up that copy again, and effectively keep that FBI from ever
getting that money?

Also, surely a backup exists. What is an effective way to backup the wallet so
that it can survive decades of prison time? Particularly if a trustworthy
friend does not exist?

~~~
VMG
> Also, surely a backup exists. What is an effective way to backup the wallet
> so that it can survive decades of prison time?

A piece of paper:
[http://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/](http://bitcoinpaperwallet.com/)

You should only print it from a secure system though.

------
rayiner
The asset seizure issue with regards to bitcoin is interesting, but not
unprecedented. A lot of the same issues that come up here come up in the more
traditional context of seizing assets stashed in Bermuda, etc. You have
Bermudan banks that won't allow access to assets without consent from the
owner, and the question is whether giving that the owner can be forced to sign
the consent form or whatever.

~~~
hippich
AFAIK, if money stored in USD in the Bermuda bank account, when you wire
these, it goes through US bank anyway and can be stopped there. And leaving
country with $80 mil in cash would be hard.

------
Ellipsis753
"Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession
of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent."

Isn't this totally false? He could have easily made backups of the wallet and
even given copies of it to others. I'd expect there's a whole bunch of ways
that these bitcoins could still get spent?

~~~
drcode
The beauty is that NOT spending the 600K BTC is economically equivalent to
giving a 600K gift to all other bitcoin owners. If the news ever came out that
these coins are lost for all times, the exchange price for BTCs would most
likely increase 600K/11M or about 5.5% in an instant.

(Of course, there's no way this could happen since we don't know what private
keys are stored in Ross' head. Also this is based on the efficient market
hypothesis and real world results have other complecting factors.)

~~~
nimble
This line of reasoning works when you have a fixed number of shares that
represent ownership in something real, but I don't see how it works with
bitcoins that have no intrinsic value. Bitcoins only hold value by inertia.
People think they have value because they're accepted by other people because
other people think they have value. I see no rational mechanism by which this
feedback loop should jump 5% when 5% of bitcoins are lost.

~~~
drcode
The mechanism: Prices of any commodity are determined by supply and demand. If
supply goes down, prices go up.

~~~
nimble
Again, flawed reasoning. If all bitcoins were destroyed except for one, how
much do you think it would be worth? There is no intrinsic demand for
bitcoins, only inertia behind perceived value. And it looks to me that the
inertia is mostly behind the price per bitcoin rather than total value of all
bitcoins.

~~~
drcode
The current bitcoin economy is worth about 1.5 billion, so that one coin would
be worth about 1.5 billion, if that were to happen. Where is my flawed
reasoning?

~~~
shasta
Fiat currencies (which bitcoin is in one sense) are largely rooted in
psychology. Recall this story:
[http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-
fake...](http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/10/04/130329523/how-fake-money-
saved-brazil)

------
yason
This is interesting as a more generic case: before criminals had to stash
their money in a hide in case they got caught and into prison. Now they can
convert the money into bitcoins and simply arrange that they can't unlock the
wallet. Things that help:

\- you can make indefinite copies of your locked wallet so TLA basically can't
confiscate it

\- you can protect your wallet with a secret (passphrase and/or a key) so that
they can't unlock it

\- you can distribute the secret among several people using one of the secret
sharing protocols

\- or hide it steganographically in an ordinary file while the TLA in question
still can't prove it's there

~~~
fab13n
A noteworthy side-effects is that it dramatically increases the incentive to
reform the 5th amendment (or reinterpret it, which is the usual cowardly way
to achieve the same result).

From a strictly technical PoV, the concept of having several copies of the
wallet, all equivalent, where whichever is spent first cancels the others, is
very interesting and novel. It has a funny quantum physics vibe, too.

~~~
debacle
The government can't even pass a budget. Good luck passing an amendment.

~~~
xux
You don't need Congress to re-interpret the 5th. The Supreme Court does.

------
stcredzero
So, one additional way to secure your bitcoins would be to have a "deadman's
switch" machine with a copy of your wallet. If you don't enter a passphrase
into the machine by a certain date, then it will transfer your wallet's
contents to another "bugout" wallet. This invalidates the seized copy of your
wallet. Companies that offer this service should also offer a feature that
causes "anonymous donations" to appear in your legal defense fund.

~~~
flopunctro
> Companies that offer this service

You can't possibly trust any company with this kind of service. This is
something you need to [learn how to] build yourself.

The concept of "deadman's switch" has an implicit component of "trust no one",
IMHO.

~~~
stcredzero
_> You can't possibly trust any company with this kind of service._

That's a good point. However, the Swiss made a lot of money offering
comparable services for many years. (Numbered bank accounts.) Also, there's a
big difference between simply building such a service and having such a
service that is well tested and reliably and securely hosted. It's also a
relatively simple matter to test such a service with a small amount of money.

Such services seem highly valuable, but may require practical homomorphic
encryption/computation schemes to be themselves practical.

------
27182818284
I've had a question that I"m curious to hear the community's reaction on:
Doesn't the FBI wanting to seize the bitcoins do more to legitimize the
currency than anything thus far? Isn't it tantamount to saying "Yes, this is
like dollars, francs, or another legitimate currency that we need to seize."

I'm wondering if that conversation has come up among management at FBI and
what the outcome has been.

~~~
racbart
If he had a $1m car and the FBI wanted to seize it, would it legitimize cars
as a currency?

~~~
Cthulhu_
It definitely wouldn't if it was $80 m in cocaine; the FBI would confiscate it
and have to hand it over to the DEA to have it destroyed.

Whether or not the FBI wants to seize it and spend it in some way, or just to
seize it so it can't be spent by DPR or anyone anymore is up for debate. I'm
not actually sure what the laws are regarding money or possessions seized from
criminals over there.

~~~
OvidNaso
Cocaine is a different story as it is illegal in and of itself. As far as I
know there is no momentum to outlaw Bitcoin itself. Other seized forms of
property are routinely auctioned off at public auctions which is presumably a
possibly avenue for Bitcoins as well.

------
danielweber
_Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession
of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent._

Ugh, no. Having the file means you can transfer out the bitcoins. _Anyone_
having the file can transfer out the bitcoins, so the FBI securing that wallet
doesn't lock down those bitcoins.

The FBI cannot properly "seize" the bitcoins unless they use the wallet to
transfer the coins to a fresh address they make and control. And I'm not sure
that traditional seizure laws allow that, because AFAIK we've never had this
scenario before.

------
whyleyc
It's surely only a matter of time in this situation before the FBI start using
rubber-hose cryptanalysis [1]

[1] Obligatory XKCD [http://xkcd.com/538/](http://xkcd.com/538/)

~~~
sp332
That's actually illegal.

~~~
oleganza
Killing citizens without court order is also illegal. And waterboarding in
gitmo. And starting wars based on lies. And lying to congress by NSA. So many
things are illegal, but those who are in charge of enforcing justice are doing
them anyway.

~~~
smoyer
I hope that killing citizens _WITH_ a court order is also illegal. A death-
sentence requires a conviction, then a sentencing.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Not if you just brand them the label 'Enemy combatants' \- laws no longer
apply then, apparently. I'm still waiting for someone to accuse and convict
the US of war crimes and the violations of the rights of prisoners of war.

------
nwh
I can't imagine they would let a password get in the way of this. Even with an
encrypted wallet, the balances of the content addresses are available for
viewing for convenience sake.

The reference client (I's not mentioned which wallet software) uses hundreds
of thousands of rounds of key stretching, enough that on a GPU you're only
getting a few attempts at the key. Might irritate them enough to crack out a
good sized farm.

~~~
chiph
Passwords are protected under his 5th amendment rights. The government would
have to come up with a much stronger reason to force the password from him
other than "we want it"

The interesting part is if he does have a backup, and if he does access the
funds in there for his legal defense. Would his attorney consider that money
to be tainted, and thus refuse to accept it?

~~~
IgorPartola
Passwords are controversial under the 5th, but from the cases I followed, they
are typically interpreted as a key to a safe, not as admission of guilt. As
in, if your password is"YesITotallyDidIt", that is not an admission and is
there fore not protected. The only things the 5th protects seem to be things
you can say that can be directly used to convict you. Not giving the
authorities with a warrant in hand your password seem to land you in jail
indefinitely for contempt of court, which is likely as bad as what you will
get if convicted.

Edit: I am not a lawyer.

~~~
AnIrishDuck
My understanding (also not a lawyer) is that passwords are protected under the
5th amendment when the very act of giving them is testimonial. Two cases where
this appears true:

1) Your password is "ITotallyKilledThoseTwentyPeople", e.g. the password
contains testimonial evidence. This can probably be circumvented by allowing
the defendant to enter their password privately.

2) Your lawyer successfully argues that the very admission of knowing the
password to a thing is testimonial. In other words, let's say the feds find an
encrypted hard drive labelled "child pornography" under the couch at your
apartment. If your argument is that a friend left it there, and the feds can't
prove otherwise, then the very act of decrypting that drive would be an
admission that it's yours, and hence a violation of the fifth.

It'll be interesting to see where law settles in this area. One thing that
seems certain: if the gov't can prove you know a password, they can force you
to use it (assuming use is possible without disclosure).

~~~
IgorPartola
I think your second example makes sense, but I have seen a lot of discussion
of the first and the conclusion is mostly that your passwords is not protected
then. Basically, you could either enter the password, or you could even give
it to the court and the password itself would not be able to be used as
evidence.

~~~
AnIrishDuck
Right, that's what I meant when I said "This can probably be circumvented by
allowing the defendant to enter their password privately."

------
rdl
Big question is whether turning over the passphrase would be "testimonial". I
could see it being argued that it's a forgone conclusion he owns these
bitcoins -- enough evidence to tie him to silk road, and evidence in the block
chain showing those coins came from silk road.

(This is relevant due to the fifth amendment to the constitution. In many
cases, turning over a password or combination is considered self incrimination
and thus cannot be compelled by the state.)

------
Synaesthesia
Good encryption is still uncrackable, unless you induce the owner to give up
his passphrase.

~~~
nachteilig
How much leverage does giving up $80 million in BTC give one in a plea deal?

~~~
betterunix
None at all. You'll be held in prison until you release the money, or else
they will just ignore the money and convict you anyway.

------
SeanDav
I don't understand why possession of the wallet file means the FBI have seized
his bitcoins (even if they can't access them yet)?

Surely you can make copies of your wallet and keep them in various secure
locations?

~~~
fab13n
You understood; the journalist didn't.

It's scary to see how clueless mainstream journalists are, as soon as they
touch a subject we're mildly knowledgeable about. Imagine the amount of BS
they spread when talking about complex stuff such as macro-economics...

------
thoughtsimple
Why would anyone trust bitcoin values? If the US government wanted to crash
the bitcoin market couldn't they just generate a few million bitcoins
themselves and then dump them?

I don't think the NSA is going to care about spending a few 10's of millions
of dollars on custom bitcoin hashing hardware. Unless people don't think the
NSA can outdo some fly-by-night ASIC developers.

If the US government is truly concerned about bitcoin, it won't survive long.

~~~
gigq
There are only 3600 BTC per day being generated. They can't just generate a
few million bitcoins. At best they could do a 51% attack and double spend
bitcoin, which would cause problems but it's been done in other digital
currencies and the currencies have still survived.

If they did amass a large volume of bitcoins and dumped them on the market the
market would drop but like every other drop it would probably be temporary as
people love buying cheap BTC when the market crashes (look at the crash after
DPR was arrested, bounced back in hours).

~~~
ars
> There are only 3600 BTC per day being generated. They can't just generate a
> few million bitcoins.

They actually can. Generation speed is not adjusted real time, but only every
few days. If you generate a mass very fast you can go over it. (And in fact
historically it's always been over the expected number.)

~~~
Dylan16807
No, they can't. Generation speed is adjusted every 2016 blocks, up to 4x
change. Let's say the NSA outcompetes the entire network by a factor of
400000%. This gets them about 8 weeks of bitcoins in a few days, before things
are slowed back down to normal rates. Not nearly enough bitcoins to cause
problems with.

That much power will let them mess around with what transactions get accepted,
but that's an entirely separate issue. 51% attack is child's play at this
point. What do you do against an adversary that publishes 500 different block
chains designed to be easily confused with the 'correct' chain?

------
noarchy
If the FBI cannot manage to successfully steal these Bitcoins, then it might
be _quite_ the advertisement for the overall security of Bitcoins, no?

------
llamataboot
What's overwhelmingly clear from this article is that either the feds, or at
least the people they are sending to talk to the media, have really no idea
how bitcoin works.

Saying "The Bureau is in a position equivalent to having seized a safe
belonging to a suspect with no idea of the combination – and no hope of
forcing it open any other way." is completely incorrect.

~~~
drcode
I'm not sure who said it first but the old dictum still holds: "It's easier to
turn lead into gold than to steal a properly configured bitcoin wallet."

------
gedrap
What's is rather shocking is the kinds of mistakes he made.

Not some subtle but plain simple. Like using personal email to register on
forums and promote SR and recruit people.

Using stackoverflow with personal email, again... Yes they are not some solid
evidences, but made the FBIs life, to get the guy, much easier. You might say
that it's easy for me to point out those mistakes but they are so basic and
it's not that he was running some Nigerian type of scam, he must have been way
more careful.

Or keep messages about the 'murder-for-hire'. Yeah it's rather obvious that no
one got hired but good luck explaining this negotiation tactics to the judge.
Plus he mentions $80k for other 'murder-for-hire'. I'm really curious how the
thing with this 'murder' will end up. I mean he could have just simply deleted
them just in case. It's not FB that it would stay forever...

~~~
drcode
Ross was a San Fran "startup" guy. Hey created an MVP product with the usual
"fake it till you make it" attitude that is part of this culture. PG himself
will happily tell you not to worry about lawyers and other distractions until
your MVP is out the door.

This may work for a typical startup, but Ross was foolish enough to apply this
advice to a criminal enterprise.

~~~
triplepoint217
Amusing anecdote: I was at a pg talk last week, and afterwards someone in the
audience came up and asked if SR being gone meant there was a market niche for
a new startup.

pg's answer was that it was in no way worth the risk, there are lots of other
things you can try without the large risk of ending up in jail.

------
rarw
The more interesting question regarding this seizure is whether the FBI can
compell the creators of BitCoin to assist in decrypting what they have just
seized. For example, there are a number of statutes that require those
operating communications networks maintain the ability for the governemnt to
access them regardless of the encryption or other security features being
used. I don't know the corresponding baking law as well but it would not
surprise me if the same laws that require banks to comply with seizing fund,
blocking wire transfers, and tracking where money goes in the course of a
criminal investigation could kick in here.

Certainly something like this would have a big effect on the BitCoin market.
I'm interested to see what happens in the future.

------
ChuckMcM
Well if they are unable to seize them, then bitcoin will become more valuable
to the black market. If they are, then some of its patina as a 'safe' stash
will be lost. Of course even if they don't get them, they will be able to see
if they are ever used right?

~~~
Swannie
Yea. That's what I'm thinking too. If you receive bitcoins from those address
you're effectively doing the same as if you were collecting cash from watched
boxes in a bank vault, and the cash was radio-actively tagged. (And therefore
easily tracked.) Anyone handling a large quantity of those coins is suspect

But if someone got their hands on them and performed a huge laundry so that
everyone has tainted coin history, then you might be ok.

------
javiercr
It's funny that both DPR and Walter White made the same amount of money ($80M
[1]).

[1] [https://medium.com/p/fed0d03ab4c0](https://medium.com/p/fed0d03ab4c0)

------
tomflack
Partially related: Is it technically possible to "blacklist" the bitcoins that
the FBI seized given a great enough consensus, to make their value effectively
worthless?

------
TausAmmer
Biggest thieves of the block, what else can be said.

------
lettergram
The author doesn't really seem to understand what a Bitcoin Wallet is. First,
I HIGHLY doubt that 600,000 Bitcoins would be in one Wallet. More likely, the
bit coins would be spread between several thousand wallets. Second, even if
the FBI was in possession of "the wallet" couldn't Ulbricht just access his
backups else where?

~~~
alphydan
As far as I can tell the seized address has 27k BTC about $4m USD at the
moment (see
[https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5G...](https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)
)

~~~
querulous
those are apparently user funds that were in escrow or otherwise stored with
silk road at the time of the seizure. his personal commissions are the funds
being discussed here

------
whage
Only I think that all this 'leaving a name here' / 'leaving a stupid trail
there' seems just way too stupid for someone maintaining such a business for
so long? I think there is a decent chance that all of this was staged and Mr.
Ulbricht is just another puppet. All of it just sounds so hilarious.

------
FiloSottile
> A few high-security ways of storing bitcoins, such as a "brainwallet", a way
> of converting a bitcoin address into an easy-to-remember phrase, could still
> bypass their authority, but there is no indication at present that Ulbricht
> has used them.

A simple encrypted wallet would have the same level of security...

------
the_watcher
How can the FBI "seize" his wallet as if it were a safe? Isn't the point of
Bitcoin that it is digital, hence he would be able to access it if he could
get to a computer? Or is there a way to physically control the wallet so that
it can't be accessed elsewhere?

~~~
debacle
They seized a copy of his wallet that they don't have the key for.

If he has a copy and they can't get the keys, this seizure is meaningless. If
he doesn't have a copy, or they can get the keys, the story changes.

------
cphoton
Can't they just use an old version of bitcoin and use the timing attack to
find the passphrase?

EDIT: I mean exploting this bug:
[https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2838](https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2838)

~~~
dlgeek
I'm not a bit coin user, but that appears to be an attack on a "remote
management" password for the client (it's about "RPC" or "remote procedure
call" authentication), not for the wallet.

Wallets use a cryptographic key derivation function, this is against a plain
text and configurable password. This would only be an issue if the wallet was
loaded into the old version of the software at the time they attacked.

------
seniorsassycat
This article makes it sound like all of DPR's bitcoins are in one wallet. If
5% of all bitcoins were being funneled into one bitcoin wallet couldn't people
have discovered that wallet by analyzing all BTC transactions?

------
scottcanoni
Here are the bitcoins they were able to seize:
[http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GN...](http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)

------
joshdance
Will having 5% of Bitcoin out of circulation cause any economic problems with
the currency?

~~~
adventured
No, it'll make all other bitcoins more valuable, so long as the market
believes said bitcoins are permanently out of circulation (not likely though,
as the Feds will auction / sell them off as they do with other seized assets).

------
azsromej
a walk on the lighter side: the bitcoin is inside the computer
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQGX3J6DAGw)

------
ahi
Does it matter? What would the FBI do with them?

~~~
ketralnis
What do they do with seized foreign currencies? Presumably find some way to
convert them to dollars

------
balls187
Sounds like a job for the NSA.

------
bsullivan01
after shuffling Ross from horrible prison to horrible prison and making his
prison life miserable on purpose...

So Ross, how about you tell us the password and instead of 14 life sentences
you get only 20 years?

~~~
mpyne
Yes, poor Ross, the guy only had twice as many people killed as Hans Reiser
did...

~~~
stcredzero
Mr. Reiser was a bit more hands-on in his approach. Does it make sense for
someone who has been fooled into thinking he's had people killed to be as
guilty as someone who actually kills the people? It seems so, but I'm not sure
what US law says about that.

------
avty
They'll just drug him with truth serums.

