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Bitcoin The Almighty Buck

Someone Mysteriously Sent Almost $1 Billion In Bitcoin (vice.com) 147

Posted by BeauHD from the big-money-moves dept.
Someone transferred bitcoins worth close to $1 billion on Tuesday morning, a move that was public for everyone to see while the identities of the sender and receiver remain unknown. Motherboard reports: Big money moves hiding in plain sight tend to be events of some interest among Bitcoiners. Decrypt noted that the sending wallet was recognized as the largest Bitcoin wallet not known to be associated with a business such as an exchange. This means that it could belong to a wealthy private individual, or it could really belong to an exchange, investor, or other business that is simply currently unknown. There's no obligation to publicize which Bitcoin addresses one controls, and if nobody else puts two and two together, one's activities may remain shrouded in pseudonymity.

If the Bitcoin wallet belongs to someone legit, then it's likely the transfer was internal to the business, or it represents a large purchase of goods or services, or the sale of bitcoins. Regardless of what it was, the business would be expected to pay taxes in any relevant circumstances. If the transfer wasn't legit, well, pseudonymity and the ability to freely move money without the pre-approval of an authority is the point of Bitcoin. That being said, law enforcement is certainly aware of Bitcoin at this stage in the game and if I'm talking about this transfer then I'm sure more important people could be, too.
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Someone Mysteriously Sent Almost $1 Billion In Bitcoin More

Someone Mysteriously Sent Almost $1 Billion In Bitcoin

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  • I doubt that money was spent on Nintendos.

    • Re: duck and cover (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Type44Q ( 1233630 )
      It's not "money" and it likely wasn't spent - how are whales supposed to prop-up the appearance of value if they don't shuffle some around from time to time?

      • . . . Why did someone give someone else a billion buckeroo Disney dollars?

        What did they get in exchange for it?

        Unless this was just freely given with not expectation of compensation or exchange for anything, suuuuuuuure, it's not money. But if I was giving someone else 101857.24568009 BTC then I would most certainly expect something in return. You know, LIKE MONEY.

      • The "appearance of value" can cause as much damage as the real thing, if not more.

        This is all fun and games until a malicious actor spooks the market into a disastrous reaction, affecting real money.

        It wouldn't even have to be malicious, it could be some nitwit doing something stupid and triggering a massive overreaction.

    • It was Putin paying the Taliban to kill more US troops.

  • With this amount of money (Score:3)

    by Z00L00K ( 682162 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @07:38PM (#60248610) Homepage Journal

    With this amount of money it may soon be that governments will take real interest into how to track down the parts in such transactions.

    • Re:With this amount of money (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @03:22AM (#60249552)

      What amount of money?

      A billion in bitcoins is like a billion in stock. Do you think you can monetize that? Imagine you held a billion in Facebook stock and threw that onto the market NOW. Do you think you'd get a billion dollars in return?

      • The average *daily* trading volume for FB is ~$6B ($227 * 27M shares traded), so yes, you'd probably get damn near $1B, especially if you spread the sale over hours/days in order to minimize the impact on volume, which is what anyone trading large volume does.

        This is known as liquidity, by the way, and BTC has very high liquidity.

        • How much BTC is traded every day?

        • We aren't talking trading volume, we're talking about conversion to some real currency. $6B in bitcoin is not converted to other currencies daily. In order for that to happen someone must be BUYING $6B in bitcoin daily. The point is simple - in order for $1B to be converted to cash, $1B worth of bitcoin must be purchased using real currency. No exchange can remotely buy up that amount of bitcoin at once, and the public in general is not buying bitcoin at that rate daily.

        • I'm not talking about shuffling crap about, I'm talking about taking that billion and pulling it out of the market. Even if you tried to spread that out over days or even weeks, it would get noticed by the other big traders and they'd immediately get REALLY nervous.

    • With this amount of money it may soon be that governments will take real interest into how to track down the parts in such transactions.

      I sometimes think that when it comes tax time I should mention that I have a Shulker box full of Emerald Blocks (albeit limited to that one server), but the ATO has no detectable sense of humor and wouldn't get the reference.

      (If they did have a sense of humor, they might ask for a bunch of Wither Skulls.)

    • They already know how to track Bitcoin transactions.

    • There are already several companies who do this commercially, using hundreds of ordinary-looking nodes scattered throughout the network to figure out where transactions are initially broadcast from using statistical analysis and timing attacks. Also, a lot of insiders know each other and aren't always careful who they brag/complain to or sleep with.

  • Is it really anonymous ? (Score:5, Informative)

    by 140Mandak262Jamuna ( 970587 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @07:41PM (#60248620) Journal
    All transactions are posted publicly to the miners to calculate the hash. Nothing to stop governments to note down sending/receiving wallets, date and amount and caching it for future use. At some point one of the wallets might eventually be used to buy goods/service that can be tied to the real identify. That person can be interrogated and lots of the wallets that interacted with that wallet can be cracked and tied to real identities. Eventually with enough wallets tagged with real identities other wallets will be cracked. So theoretically a government with law enforcement powers would be able to crack the shield of anonymity.

    These wallets can try to hide their trail, there could be anonymizers willing to transfer funds, but still all it would take is one careless transaction and it can never be undone.

    • Uh ya. Bitcoin isn't anonymous.

      Anyone using it for criminal acts, to avoid taxes or just generally for privacy reasons is simply ignorant and kinda dumb for not learning such a basic fact before seeking privacy in a public ledger system.

      • It can be anonymous...it really depends. Say a guy acquires bitcoins through mining them...there's no real way to tell who mined them besides maybe an IP address, but IP addresses don't lead you to specific people all that well. Then that guy pays a hooker in bitcoin, and the hooker doesn't keep any books. That hooker likes crack, and buys some on silkroad 11.0. The crack dealer doesn't keep any kind of records connecting bitcoins to customer addresses, and he's eventually caught, bitcoins in tow.

        All we kno

    • Re:Is it really anonymous ? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:00PM (#60248666)

      Nothing to stop governments to note down sending/receiving wallets

      There are numerous mixing services that combine bitcoins from many wallets and then transfer them to new or different wallets.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Xenx ( 2211586 )
        Not speaking towards how well it works on a technical level, but they are likely illegal. I know there is the Ohio man that was arrested in Feb for running a mixing service. It wouldn't be impossible to track down some of the paper trail from the people running the services.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Bert64 ( 520050 )

          Depends where the operator of the service is located. Bitcoin is a truly international system, and if someone is operating such a service in a location where it's not illegal to do so then there's really not much that can be done about it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            While that's true, money laundering is one of those things that is widely frowned upon.. legally.

            • While that's true, money laundering is one of those things that is widely frowned upon.. legally.

              And yet so many people go to such great lengths to accomplish it. Criminal gangs launder a LOT of money on a regular basis. This was probably too big of a sum (especially all at once) for it to be a criminal organization though, since they understandably don't like to attract attention.

            • I let you in on a secret: Nope, it's not. It's like conservatives complaining about fags during the day, and during the night you find them cruising the public toilets in the park. Yeah, officially it's a badbadbadbadbad thing, but face it, we need to stash that money somewhere eventually...

        • It's only illegal if it's done to launder money. Other legitimate uses, like privacy, are fine. Where people run into problems running mixing services is usually related to KYC rules. If you're letting people dump $10k into your service without getting their id, you're going to run afoul of the law.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 )
            I agree that there are legitimate uses. It's why I hedged my statements. I just don't believe the governments care all that much about the legitimate uses when they can also be used for laundering. That is to say, they're probably watched closer for if/when they run afoul. They could even decide to implement laws that just make it harder to operate legally.

        • That's why you run such a mixing service in a country the name of which ends in -stan and not in Ohio.

          You do that where the police has real crimes to fight and governments have zero interest to hunt down criminals that only hurt foreigners. For reference, see Nigeria scam.

      • By the very nature of their operation, one of the wallets would be involved in crime, and the court ordered untangling would happen.

    • These wallets can try to hide their trail, there could be anonymizers willing to transfer funds, but still all it would take is one careless transaction and it can never be undone.

      In the banking industry they used to call this "Smurfing" no lie.

    • For small-ish amounts you could use a decentralized bitcoin mixer, (Chaumian CoinJoin), but I doubt that would work with any efficiency for very large amounts.

    • What if the wallet holder is really a government?

  • Why quote irs.gov? Who says any of these people are in the United States and subject to US tax regulations?

    This is absurd.

    Someone transferred their magic numbers from one place to another. If you want to pretend it's worth a billion dollars* then it went from Account A to account Z -- like when you transfer your $50 from Savings to Checking accounts -- and there's still nothing to see here. Nobody "bought" $1B worth of goods and services, lol.

    E
    * If anyone wanted to dump BTC that some idiot thinks is "wor

    • Why would a huge sale deflate value?

      By definition for every seller there is a buyer. If the sale price was at market then nothing happens to general BTC value. If below market, BTC might drop a little and go up if above.

      I've always thought BTC was silly but it still must follow the laws of supply and a demand. A large sale in and of itself will not cause the price to drop if there is a matching buyer.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by gavron ( 1300111 )

        > Why would a huge sale deflate value?

        Well it's like this. If you have 1 BTC for sale, your selling it won't change the asking/bidding price much. It will remove your (top) bid and the next one is not likely that far lower. If you have 100 BTC for sale, almost similar, but enough people bidding to buy 0.0001BTC etc. will be removed from the list and the next lower down then gets it, etc. until now the price is lower.

        For one billion dollars you're going to run through enough buyers that the price would

      • A large sale in and of itself will not cause the price to drop if there is a matching buyer.

        That's a big if. A large sale implies an increase in supply. Why would there be a matching increase in demand?

        This case does look special. It doesn't look like a market sale, but rather some kind of transfer. The recipient of the bitcoin may start selling, which would depress prices.

        • This case does look special. It doesn't look like a market sale, but rather some kind of transfer. The recipient of the bitcoin may start selling, which would depress prices.

          Why do you say it looks special? It was a transaction from one unknown wallet to another. There's not other data to indicate whether it was an internal transfer, or a purchase of goods/services, or a conversion from BTC to some currency, is there? Other than the large size of the transaction, what data makes you say this looks special?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Why would a huge sale deflate value?

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    • Re:Taxes, BTC "value", and account transfers. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @09:00PM (#60248826)

      I did a bunch of transfers at a casino in Vegas once (not going to say which one, or when). I discovered that the machine that takes bills and spits out coins was right next to the machine that takes coins and spits out bills. It was kind of like playing a slot machine where you win every pull, and are even at the end. Fun, until they kicked me out.

      • Re:Taxes, BTC "value", and account transfers. (Score:4, Funny)

        by Falos ( 2905315 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @10:45PM (#60249060)

        I can't be the only one who had a sudden urge to kludgineer a rig for them feeding into each other.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Ambvai ( 1106941 )

        I did something like that on a cruise ship casino for a while, except I bet mine was even more fun and exciting:

        The machine was broken and about 10% of the time, spat out an extra bill. If you put in 100, it would give 3x20, 2x10, 3x5, 5x1... and it was random which bill it would spit out. Contrary to my experience with bill counters though, it seemed to have problems when the bills were really worn out, as opposed to crisp, which weighted it towards 1s.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • totally anonymous.... right (Score:4, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @07:48PM (#60248638)
    If it's an illegal transfer, no way it'll stay under the radar. The taxes on a gigadollar is not something that any country is going to let slide.

    And for anyone who thinks that bitcoin actually gives anonymity..... the truth is that it'll keep your identity a secret right up to the point that a modern tax agency or intelligence agency decides that they want to know who you are. After that, your cherished anonymity will last approximately 10-15 seconds.

    Also....in terms of the agency that I least want to piss off. It's not the CIA, the FBI, the NSA or the FSB. It's the IRS. Learn where the real power lies.....

    • Could have been north Korea transferring money to avoid sanctions

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jrumney ( 197329 )

      Governments don't tax themselves. Quite likely a transaction of this magnitude is a nation state that is unable to use real currency. North Korea has been mentioned already, or Iran.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bert64 ( 520050 )

      What makes it illegal?
      The owners of the source and destination wallet are not known, both wallets could be owned by the same person. There are no taxes due if you move your own assets from one holding location to another.

      The location of the wallet owner(s) is not known, they could be anywhere in the world. Tax laws vary in every country, and you are only required to obey the tax laws of the countries in which you are either resident or doing business in. The wallet owner may be in a country where no taxes a

      • you are only required to obey the tax laws of the countries in which you are either resident or doing business in.

        ...unless you are an American citizen, in which case you are required to pay taxes on all income regardless of residency [irs.gov].... one of the main reasons for relinquishing US citizenship. The IRS is rapacious to the the least.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        Tax laws vary in every country, and you are only required to obey the tax laws of the countries in which you are either resident or doing business in.

        Unless you're American, Hungarian, Eritrean or Myanmarian.

  • ...if I had to put my chips somewhere, I'd say North Korea is behind the transaction [technologyreview.com].

  • I'm curious, at what point would miners become liable for helping process transactions which violate various local laws.

    • I'm curious, at what point would miners become liable for helping process transactions which violate various local laws.

      the same time that Visa and MasterCard are held libel for doing so with prepaid credit cards.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ledow ( 319597 )

        Visa and Mastercard know who their customers are.

        Bitcoin miners literally do not (and most people don't mine, and they are all only dealing with already-anonymised transaction data, not actually processing or facilitating anything).

        It'd be like suing Sage because someone happened to use it when they were fiddling the accounts, or suing GMail because someone used it to send a kidnap ransom demand (even if they co-operated 100% in supplying all the information they had).

        I'm no Bitcoin fan, but it would be lau

      • You don't understand money laundering and financial services laws.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Luthair ( 847766 )
        As another posted you don't seem to understand what the laws are - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

  • You're missing the obvious. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Obviously, this is how the US Government is paying the aliens for faster-than-light drive technology so at least they can escape the star system before the aliens bulldoze it to make room for a new interstellar highway.
  • It's someone buying all the banned Magic: The Gathering cards, I'm just not sure what they plan to *do* with them.

    • They're going to go on a Crusade in order to Invoke Prejudice. They hope to Cleanse the world of Stone-Throwing Devils and Imprison some Pradesh Gypsies. It is a questionable form of Jihad to be certain.

  • Why the fiat currency translation? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kotukunui ( 410332 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:24PM (#60248736)

    Is the point of calling it "$1 Billion" just a sensational headline for clicks? (BTW I assume that $ = USD...)

    More accurately it could have been described as "Someone transferred 101,857 BTC". What's wrong about that?

    • Re:Why the fiat currency translation? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @08:45PM (#60248794) Homepage Journal

      Most of us don't know what 1 BTC is currently worth, and don't care. The element of general interest here is not how many BTC were transferred, but their value in real money that you can use to pay rent or buy munitions.

    • Re:Why the fiat currency translation? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by organgtool ( 966989 ) on Tuesday June 30, 2020 @10:22PM (#60249010)
      Because most people don't know or care what the hell a bitcoin is worth since it's so damn volatile and almost nobody uses it for everyday transactions. Putting it in terms of real money that is actually used to buy shit is way more informative.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        The fact that bitcoin is so volatile means that stating value in another currency is fairly meaningless and likely misleading. So the opposite of informative.

    • Is the point of calling it "$1 Billion" just a sensational headline for clicks? (BTW I assume that $ = USD...)

      More accurately it could have been described as "Someone transferred 101,857 BTC". What's wrong about that?

      Why wouldn't you consider the greater ramifications or equivalent value? It is worth almost a billion dollars, so saying so isn't sensationalism at all, it's simply translating an arcane unit into a more widely understood one. You might also consider that the value of BTC has fluctuated dramatically. I can remember a time when this transaction would have been worth more like a hundred grand. A billion dollars is a lot more interesting to a lot of people than would be $100k, or 100k BTC.

    • Because the value of fiat monies don't change by 50% in 12 hours for no discernible reason. Remember, bitcoin has no actual value because it is backed by nothing at all.

  • ...money wasn't supposed to go out until after the hit...

  • Putin is delivered the ultimate destruction of America. (without ever having fired a single shell)

    Trump finally gets to be a "real boy"

  • Russia to the Taliban? Even better, Russia to Donald Trump? I'm kidding, of course.

  • Who needs to move large sums of money around anonymously? Drug cartels maybe? Or more likely a shady govt. agency funding paramilitary operations in some proxy conflict somewhere. $1 Bn is small change for govt. military budgets. Maybe they're testing the waters? It's probably cheaper than laundering it through the usual private offshore banks.
  • Bitcoin is just stupid. Why would anyone use a transparent blockchain and broadcast their financial details to the entire Internet? Use Monero.
  • Why does one expect taxes on a money transfer?
    I do not see proof of sale of any kind.
    • A) Stop assuming it is a sales tax. It could be some other tax. B) It depends on what the transfer was for as many places tax services as well as puchases.
  • $1 Billion in Bitcoin stolen from exchange via hidden account.

  • ...of wine and women. KISS must have been getting desperate in their old age.

  • Everyone is missing the bigger picture! (Score:4, Informative)

    by _0xd0ad ( 1974778 ) on Wednesday July 01, 2020 @10:55AM (#60250468) Journal

    For the sake of simplicity and readability, I'm calling these wallets A, B, C, etc.

    On 2020-02-25 15:41, wallet A transferred 111857.24579800 BTC, with 5000 BTC going to wallet X and the rest going to wallet B. [blockchain.com]

    On 2020-04-01 13:55, wallet B transferred 106857.24571944 BTC , with 5000 BTC going to wallet Y and the rest going to wallet C. [blockchain.com]

    On 2020-06-26 17:56, wallet C transferred 101857.24568009 BTC, with 5000 BTC going to wallet Z and the rest going to wallet D. [blockchain.com]

    Are you beginning to see that there's a pattern to these transactions? This latest "mysterious" transaction is but a single tree in a forest. Would anyone like to bet me that we won't see wallet D making a similar outgoing transfer sometime around August?

    Allow me to suggest that wallets A, B, C, and D are likely all owned by the same person or entity... if that is the case, then what we actually see is that they've spent 5000 BTC on each of those dates. In fact it's entirely possible that they also own wallets X, Y, and Z, and merely wanted an additional layer of transactions to help insulate themselves from when those bitcoins were actually spent.

  • If a $1B anonymous transfer doesn't worry you at some fundamental level, it should.

  • I wager 100 quatloos on the newcomer.

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