
The Internet Trolls the FBI’s “Private” Bitcoin Wallet - aelaguiz
http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/07/as-feds-fumble-with-bitcoin-the-internet-trolls-the-fbis-private-wallet/
======
nwh
Notes that are only visible to people looking at a certain address on a
certain website, nowhere else. I truly do not think this it at all newsworthy.

"Public notes" are a construction of blockchain.info—despite the confusing
name—they are most certainly not part of the actual Bitcoin blockchain.

~~~
gigq
Bitcoin does have the ability to store this kind of information in the actual
blockchain, but blockchain.info decided it was not worth the bloat.

[http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7864/is-a-
public-...](http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7864/is-a-public-
message-at-blockchain-info-embedded-in-the-actual-block-chain)

~~~
nwh
That's incorrect. You can shoehorn your data in, and blockchain.info tried for
a period, but removed it when it drew the ire of almost every core developer.
It just wastes space and bloats the unspent outputs database.

~~~
sliverstorm
Good to hear. Bitcoin already occupied 5-8GB last time I fired my client up,
many moons ago.

~~~
nwh
13GB with indexes now. If it's an issue, just use an SPV client like MultiBit
that doesn't store the blockchain at all.

------
geuis
Just want to point out this bullshit comment at the end, "the currency itself
has fallen from a high of $260 to about $130 this morning".

The author is trying to make it sound like Silk Road dropped the price
drastically. No, 260 was the high point early this year. The value has been
relatively stable between $80 and $140 since then.

~~~
andyakb
No, the author isnt. This is the full quote: "The price after the Silk Road
seizure has remained fairly constant but the currency itself has fallen from a
high of $260 to about $130 this morning."

It is a horrible worded statement as it doesnt specify the time frame within
which the price fell from 260 to 130, but they clearly state it has been
stable since the SR seizure

~~~
ajross
It has to be said: geuis appears to have deliberately doctored that quote to
provoke argument. The first half of the sentence directly contradicts the
claim about the second.

------
qwerty_asdf
If it's possible (seemingly trivial?) to determine that any given individual
is possession of a bitcoin at any given time, then... uh...

How is bitcoin an " _anonymous_ " cryptocurrency?

I mean, I feel kind of stupid for even asking such a question, but given the
circumstances, wouldn't that be an exceptionally important detail?

Based on all these second-hand accounts that I read about, sometimes written
by journalists with an amateurish technical competency (which, by proxy, also
renders me an amateur), it sounds like bitcoins are about as anonymous as an
AOL e-mail addresses, or prepaid cellular phones.

It doesn't seem like they were actually conceived an anonymous system, but
rather that some people devised processes through which they could produce an
effective anonymity with transactions carried this instrument.

The cryptographic aspect of bitcoins seems to be geared only in favor of
authenticity, and not anonymity. Were bitcoins ever conceived with true
anonymity in mind? Are these revelations of identity just, due to elaborate
and highly technical side-channel attacks?

Am I wrong in my perception that bitcoins seem to be an object where it's only
happenstance that you can craft an anonymous position? ...that they are
actually only offer pseudonymity?

~~~
DougWebb
Here's an analogy: every bill in your wallet has a unique serial number on it,
right? Every bank account also has a unique ID number. Imagine that every
wallet and cash register also has a unique ID. Now imagine that there's a
shared database that gets a new entry every time a bill moves from one place
to another where the entry just says "bill #X moved from location #Y to
location #Z."

If you're careful, and you don't let anyone know the ID of your wallet or your
bank account, then it doesn't matter if someone knows the transactions that
involve your bills because no one knows that they're yours. Your anonymity
doesn't break down until someone can tie one of those account numbers to you:
by asking your bank for the owner of the account, for example, or by
confiscating your wallet and looking at its serial number.

So, it's possible to be anonymous with bitcoin, but it's not easy when you
want to actually buy something that has to be delivered to you or convert them
to another currency.

~~~
njharman
Or, you could just use cash which doesn't have a wallet ID to be careful
about.

~~~
DougWebb
True, but to exchange cash you need to either physically hand it over or have
it delivered.

If you exchange in person, then the other person will see you, and that person
or a third party can capture an image of you which can be matched against a
database of facial images. Identity blown, unless you're very careful to hide
your face.

If you exchange by delivery, by whatever method, your package can be tracked
to either endpoint. Even if you use a courier, that courier knows the
endpoints and can be coerced into revealing them, and also might be able to
identify you or capture an identifying image of you. Again, it's very easy to
lose your anonymity.

It's all a matter of degree: the more likely it is that your transactions can
be used as evidence against you (whether they're actually illegal or they're
just being used as an intimidating force against you) the more you need to
care about your anonymity. For most of us, most of the time, so long as we
don't get creepy advertising that specifically references things we've looked
at or purchased recently we don't really care about it.

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dimastopel
to ease the access:
[https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5G...](https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX)

------
robert_foss
The top and bottom notes are a Bill Hicks quote, that's pretty classy as far
as trolling goes.

------
andrewfong
I'd personally be a lot more tolerant of trolls if I got a token amount of
cash every time I was trolled.

~~~
dmd
At current rates, each troll is sending $0.000012 per message. You'd have to
receive more than 80 thousand troll messages to get a single dollar.

Still tolerant?

~~~
plorg
Fair enough, but if I'm reading it correctly, >300 BTC (~$40,000) has been
added to that wallet since the 'trolling' began - in one case 253 BTC was
transferred from someone who strangely claims to support a bunch of things
that are in opposition to U.S. law and FBI practices. At least I think that's
what the comment says - I don't speak Portuguese.

~~~
lewaldman
" Eu sou do Brasil... Eu quero expressar minha opinião sobre a drogas... o
governo prende quem vende drogas só por causa que não da lucro para o
governo... então acaba com com o cigarro com as bebidas alcoólicas..."

It say's: "Im from Brazil... I want to express my opinion about drugs... The
government arest who sell drugs just because it don't bring any profit to the
government... So end up with the cigarrets and the alcoolic beverages..."

Edit: Corrected a typo

------
rarw
I think the seizure of Silk Road absolutly had an impact on the value of
BitCoins. The benefit of using BitCoins is that they provide a way to operate
outside of traditional currency structures. Once BitCoins becomes something
that can be seized, regulated, tracked, it becomes just like regular cash.
That makes them a whole lot less valuable.

------
skc
I actually suspect the joke is on "The Internet"

By now the FBI should be pretty savvy about these things.

------
jedunnigan
If this incident doesn't alert authorities to the traceability of Bitcoin I
don't know what will....

------
RF7803081
The real troll is that people use bitcoins

~~~
lnanek2
Hey, the price was going up like nuts until recently. If you had bought in or
mined early, you'd be rich. Now that everyone sees they can be confiscated
just like real currency, though, the price is half what it was. Would have
been good to have a short position for this.

~~~
Karunamon
Can be confiscated? Not if the owner was paying attention. All that would be
necessary is for an accomplice to have a copy of the wallet.dat file, in any
form. In which case the coins could be moved out from under their noses.

As someone who thinks the feds abuse their forfeiture power on a regular
basis, seeing them have a hard time makes me laugh.

~~~
AJ007
I'm not a big fan of the Wall Street Journal but they've published a steady
stream of articles on asset forfeiture abuse. That is from someone in
government, or even a local law enforcement agency, deciding you've committed
a crime and taking nearly all of your assets before any trial.

One statistic points to $500 million forfeited in 2010. That was a doubling
since 2002, and something that did not even exist roughly 40 years ago.

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190348090457651...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111903480904576512253265073870.html)

There are many different US government agencies that can seize your assets,
without trial, for a large number of reasons. This is not limited to you drugs
or organized crime, but rather someone's belief that your money came from
something that was illegal. In a case going to the Supreme Court next week,
what they are being charged with may not even be illegal. The WSJ
appropriately titles the article "How Prosecutors Rig Trials by Freezing
Assets."

[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732411040457863...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324110404578630561814823892.html)

Unfortunately bitcoin is not the solution. Because, if you attempt to use it
to prevent asset forfeiture now your breaking money laundering laws. So now
you can end up in jail even if you never did anything wrong in the first
place.

Additionally, a judge could put you in prison indefinitely until you disclose
and transfer your bitcoins. Unless you are facing the death penalty, and have
a whole lot of bitcoins, you probably don't have much leverage.

Finally, the public paper trail of bitcoins will make it hard to "hide" them.
I'm going to guess some of these regulators are split between liking and
hating them. I would imagine that they are already piecing together the puzzle
based on subpoenaed data and what is better sent to them from US compliant
exchanges.

What is the solution? Making people aware that they are not free. That anyone
in the state, local, or federal government has the ability to seize all of
their assets at anytime. Making sure they understand that if this happens,
they better have friends who will graciously front them hundreds of thousands
or millions of dollars or else they will be seeing a public defender.

~~~
Karunamon
>Because, if you attempt to use it to prevent asset forfeiture now your
breaking money laundering laws.

That would require intent to be proven.

(Not impossible or unfalsifiable, but it's another hurdle)

>Additionally, a judge could put you in prison indefinitely until you disclose
and transfer your bitcoins.

If a third party spends those coins because they have the wallet file, the
other copy of the wallet file becomes worthless and is no longer in your
control to do anything with.

>Finally, the public paper trail of bitcoins will make it hard to "hide" them.

Not really. Between tumbling services, and the fact that it's _stupidly_ easy
to create a wallet out of thin air, at that point you've broken the ownership
chain. (If wallet 123, known to belong to me, sends coins to wallet 456, you
can't prove whether wallet 456 is under my control unless you happen upon the
file in my possession).

