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archive.md

He used some of the money to buy a username for a videogame, they seized back 7mil.

  • Mother [any]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Isn’t the whole point of buttcoin that it’s untraceable? How is this even possible?

    • Awoo [she/her]
      ·
      3 years ago

      It's not untraceable, it is in fact extremely traceable because 100% of all transactions on the blockchain are public information.

      What you do to launder money is use a thirdparty service that you send the money through. That third party then rotates the money around a bunch of wallets, thousands of them, pooled in with all the other money they get from all the other people laundering money for privacy. This then makes the money in vs money out impossible to verify. You can put 10million in and send that 10million out to 100 different wallets all controlled by the same end person.

      Presumably the kid didn't launder any of the money. They just stole it and got it into a wallet they controlled, then they used it to buy something where they also handed over details that would verify who they are as a person without any laundering. I assume the money isn't all in one wallet though because they only recovered part of it. The keys to that wallet must have been written down or handed over by the kid.

      • Mother [any]
        ·
        3 years ago

        So when people use this to buy meth or whatever they have to do the same thing? Like wouldn’t you have a transaction in the blockchain that says Mother just spent 500 at crack emporium or whatever?

        • unperson [he/him]
          ·
          3 years ago

          There are companies dedicated to tracing and deanonymising cryptocurrency wallets—most famously Chainalysis.com. These companies track all the coins that went through one of these mixers and mark them as suspicious, which makes it difficult to cash them out.

          The reputable Tor marketplaces no longer take bitcoin for this reason. Usually they take Monero or other coins that have a mixing mechanism built-in for every single transaction, along with several other layers of privacy.

        • Awoo [she/her]
          ·
          3 years ago

          The blockchain will say that 1HyxSA1usLNzxUHh7PTaXNrDBFpq9aP4Dz wallet performed a transfer 1Ha5Af4fxUHh7PTaXNrDBFpq9aP4Dz wallet.

          That information is not attached to an identity. The wallets are accessed with a private key that looks something like this: L1ispX5HjXv7wDbqace4um82yq1JZLqjtK6T636EgQ3Kp3LRgiyH

          • Mother [any]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Alright last one if there’s nothing linking an identity to a wallet then how is the blockchain verifying anything? Like if you get possession of a wallet you own it. So how could the feds find you / why is laundering necessary?

            Don’t feel obligated to answer if you’re busy or whatever I’m just curious as to how this all works

            • Awoo [she/her]
              ·
              3 years ago

              The blockchain is just a historical record of transfers. It records that X was sent to Y at Z time. This is verified by other machines and sent to the rest of the blockchain network.

              That's literally all it is. No record of who controls those wallets is needed. You only need to record what is sent from wallet to wallet to have a record of what money is where. The blockchain is a ledger of wallets and transfers verified by a desynchronised network. That's what the miners do, they perform the computing power for verifying the transfers and telling the rest of the network and they do this in exchange for the blocks that they mine for.

              So how could the feds find you / why is laundering necessary?

              It's not. Except for when you actually want to use it for transactions where handing over an address is necessary, or if you want to swap that money from bitcoin to realworld money.

            • NaturalsNotInIt [any]
              ·
              3 years ago

              The block chain verifies that a particular wallet had the funds it's trying to spend. Who controls the wallet doesn't matter.

  • Mizokon [none/use name]
    ·
    3 years ago

    Kirkpatrick wouldn't say the exact age or gender of the youth, or the username that youth bought. He also didn't say whether the youth was acting alone, saying the case is currently in Hamilton court.

    But he said investigators cracked the case after the name was purchased on the gaming network.

    Police said it's the largest individual cryptocurrency theft from one person that's ever been reported in North America.

    "If you use the normal banking system, then the banks are regulated. You can say, 'I didn't mean to do that transaction.' You can contact that bank, get the money back. There is centralization. There is control over it. There's none of that in crypto.

    "There are absolutely zero safeguards to give you the possibility to say, 'Oops.'"

    LMAO, I hope they don't get more of the money back.