64 ms·

94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to unknown wallet

• Droobfest 7y ago
  Imagine making a typo in the receiving address
  • Stevvo 7y ago
    I've done this for~$500 in ETH, but I received that as payment for code written months ago that never passed review, so I wasn't expecting it anyway. Still a bit of an emotional roller-coaster to receive free money, then inadvertently throw it away within a few minutes.
  • blunte 7y ago
    In which case it’s extremely unlikely that you would name another valid address; so your transaction would eventually be invalidated.
    • parliament32 7y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong, but afaik there is no "eventual" invalidation in bitcoin: either the destination address fails the checksum (so nodes immediately reject the transaction), or you send the funds to an (unused) address where they'll sit forever.
      • dkersten 7y ago
        If the transaction doesn’t end up in the canonical version of the blockchain (ie the nlockchain still says its unspent), then surely you can transfer it again, no? Of course if the blockchain does say it was transferred to a nonexistant address then its gone forever. I guess if it passes checksum, this is the likely scenario?
        • parliament32 7y ago
          A tx will go from your client (which should reject an invalid tx to start with) to a node (which will verify and reject an invalid tx) to many other nodes (which will all verify and reject an invalid tx) to the node that's publishing the next block (which will verify and reject an invalid tx). I guess a broken client could think a tx is valid when it's not and not let you re-spend it, but it'll be rejected pretty much immediately after that. Technically there is no such thing as a nonexistent address. There are used and unused addresses -- an unused address is just an address with no history, but there's no way to tell if anyone has the private keys for it or not. I guess it's possible accidentally typo an address that somehow passes checksum (let's pretend that people actually type in addresses... nobody does that, copy/paste or QR code) but it's very very unlikely. For the checksum tech details: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding#Creating_a_Base58Check_string https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Base58Check_encoding#Creating_a_B...
      • heptathorp 7y ago
        You are mostly correct. Except only your Bitcoin client sees the checksum/address, the raw transaction has just the pubkey hash encoded in the address. So there is no checksum for other nodes to check. If you accidentally crafted a transaction with the wrong hash in the scriptPubKey, the network would happily accept it.
  • otoburb 7y ago
    You could, but you'd also have to modify the checksum built into the bitcoin addresses in order for most (all?) bitcoin clients to broadcast the transaction.[1][2] [1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Address [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1...
  • quotemstr 7y ago
    Yeah. It seems silly to perform this transaction all at once. The size of this transaction magnifies the consequences of any sort of error and attracts what I'm guessing is very unwanted attention.
    • blunte 7y ago
      If you’re a whale and want to someday liquidate this, ideally at higher value, you want the world to see big things like this. It will remind people that bitcoin network is still very much alive despite the repeated death sentences made by supposed financial experts.
      • greiskul 7y ago
        Well, on the other hand you can also look at this and think, I better not put any money into bitcoin, cause there are individuals out there that could single-handedly destroy the price by cashing out. And you might say, it is in their interest not to do that, but I think it is in their interest to be the the first one to do that.
        • blunte 7y ago
          Nah, the smarter plan is to keep the dream of bitcoin alive while you trade your bitcoin for other assets; this is how companies buy other companies with stock-only purchases.
  • murph-almighty 7y ago
    "Life changing amount of money" is an understatement. Imagine trying to launder a billion dollars, surreptitiously.
  • cryptical 7y ago
    It looks like they sent 0.1 BTC as a test before sending the big transaction.
  • X6S1x6Okd1st 7y ago
    Test tx of 0.1 before sending. https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/9895f1e94d0df7fd04e1289f34d82148b8055b5a802ff5964d4d2a7c39cfd7ee https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/9895f1e94d0df7fd04e1289f34... I usually test with 0.00001
    • ianmobbs 7y ago
      Ah yes, just a cool $1,000 test
    • tradertef 7y ago
      That transaction cost 0.00530724 BTC or 55$. Why is it different than the final one?
      • miguelmota 7y ago
        The final transaction is a total of 13611 bytes in size while the test one is 1220 bytes. There is a fee per byte in the Bitcoin UTXO model. An unspent transaction output (UTXO) contains information about who can spend the bitcoin so there is a fee attached to every byte of information in a UTXO because miners spend computing power processing every byte. The final transaction contained 15 UXTOs which made it a lot larger in size than the test one which only contained 4 UTXOs. The final transaction had a fee of 480 satoshis per byte and the test one had a fee of 435 satoshis per byte. 13611 * 480 = 6533280 sats which is 0.06533280 BTC which is ~$675 USD 1220 * 435 = 530700 sats which is 0.00530700 BTC which is ~$55 USD if you're wondering why the fee per byte is not the same for both transactions, it's probably because the recommended fee fluctuates depending on network congestion throughout the day. If you're wondering why the transaction fee per byte is higher than average, well it's probably because the sender is a billionaire who doesn't really care and just wants their transaction processed quickly.
        • bredren 7y ago
          You don't have to be a billionaire to want your btc transaction processed quickly.
• antidaily 7y ago
  Dang
  • braythwayt 7y ago
    No, I don't think our esteemed moderator had anything to do with this.
    • antidaily 7y ago
      At least YOU got it.
• blunte 7y ago
  By “unknown”, does that mean that none of the source addresses that collectively sent the sum to one address did not have previous transactions from sources that were known? I rather doubt it, unless the sources were mining wallets (which would show up as coin bases). On my phone I’m not going to research it :)
  • lucb1e 7y ago
    > On my phone I’m not going to research it :) You don't have to be happy about being unable to do like a single click. I agree the headline was confusingly written but happily stating that you're not going to put any effort in whatsoever... I think that's why you are/were being downvoted, not for the question.
    • blunte 7y ago
      I read the article. I also looked at the transaction. But the transaction was made up of maybe two dozen input addresses, and I didn't feel like walking backwards through each of those on my phone. My question was, has nobody walked them all back to a known address? I find it hard to believe that one of those inputs wasn't downstream of some transactions from a known address. It's not necessary for me to explain this here, and you were being helpful to me; I'm just clarifying what my intent was with that apparently misleading? statement was.
• sudden 7y ago
  That was me.
• ulzeraj 7y ago
  Probably related to Bakkt. The interesting thing here is how inexpensive was the transaction fee. How does banks transfer this kind of sum and how much would it cost?
  • foota 7y ago
    I would imagine it's free? Probably not free in terms of bureaucratic overhead, but I would imagine most the overhead applies here as well.
  • jedberg 7y ago
    It would be free with a bank. If you have that much money with the bank, they will bend over backwards for you. For example with E*Trade I think any wire is free if you have 1 million with them.
    • magashna 7y ago
      Could you actually transfer 1B in one transaction?
      • hbosch 7y ago
        Why not? Are you implying that it would technically break some sort of system or something like that? If I legally own a billion dollars in a Swiss bank, and I want to move it to a Cayman Islands bank, there is certainly a room full of well-paid men in fancy suits that will gladly accommodate that. Or, perhaps more similar to the topic, if I wanted to move a billion dollars from one UBS account to a new UBS account, I certainly could. Some special guy would probably have to turn the key for me, but if I have a billion dollars in a UBS account I surely know that man by name. And also, I would have the benefit of doing it privately, unlike with Bitcoin.
        • magashna 7y ago
          Not technical obstacles, more like regulatory or legal obstacles. I imagine there is a lot of paperwork and legwork involved in moving 1B fiat
• obenn 7y ago
  Does anyone know what the transfer fees amounted to?
  • DJBunnies 7y ago
    Iirc it was like 100 USD.
    • otoburb 7y ago
      At the time of the transaction the fee worked out to about $700 USD.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • camjohnson26 7y ago
      .06 bitcoin, or roughly $600 USD. https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...
  • makkesk8 7y ago
    0.06534852 BTC Source: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...
    • jkingsman 7y ago
      $700
    • FDSGSG 7y ago
      It appears they overpaid by a factor of 20 or so. Anything beyond the first 0.003267426 (33 usd) or so was just charity.
  • simlevesque 7y ago
    0.06BTC
• BluSyn 7y ago
  I can count maybe 5 people in the crypto space that would have that much BTC, but none of them would be dumb enough to put it all in one wallet. Most likely some large institutional investor decided to re-key their cold storage wallet.
  • shorts_theory 7y ago
    This is the part which confuses me about Bitcoin the most. It's meant to be anonymous, yet with some diligent data mining, it can become pretty clear who's who from their spending patterns by observing the ledger. How is that remotely anonymous?
    • vorpalhex 7y ago
      Bitcoin is not anonymous. It does not require a third party to authorize transactions.
    • vtail 7y ago
      it’s a common misconception: bitcoin is NOT supposed to be anonymous (it has a full ledger), but pseudonymous.
    • deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    • whyrusleeping 7y ago
      Bitcoin isnt anonymous, and doesn't claim to be. If you want an anonymous currency check out something like Zcash or monero. They use some fancier crypto to obscure transaction inputs and outputs, which gets you a bit farther towards being anonymous.
      • hughw 7y ago
        It's pseudonymous.
        • proverbialbunny 7y ago
• makkesk8 7y ago
  Unknown just means whale alert doesn't display it? Transaction with addresses: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://www.blockchain.com/btc/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb...
  • intenex 7y ago
    Unknown meaning the owner of the address is unknown
    • makkesk8 7y ago
      Ah thanks :)
      • lucb1e 7y ago
        Yeah this also took me a while. I thought someone found a vulnerability in Bitcoin that, instead of burning coins, actually is a valid transfer but somehow without revealing wallet addresses.
  • agumonkey 7y ago
    oh reminds me that I might have a few microbtc sleeping on a wallet (too small to be transfered it seems ..)
• thedudeabides5 7y ago
  Is this a block of Satoshi mined coins? Anyone know a way to see the origin date of a particular coin easily?
  • wjnc 7y ago
    Not likely since that would have Bitcoin crashing massively due to uncertainty about what will become of the Satoshi Bitcoins.
  • camjohnson26 7y ago
    If these were Satoshi coins that would be a huge story since Satoshi’s private keys are presumed lost.
    • delecti 7y ago
      The identity of Satoshi isn't known. Why should anyone have presumptions about them? I agree it would be a huge story, but "Satoshi's private keys were presumed lost" wouldn't be in the top 10 reasons why.
      • diminoten 7y ago
        Because wealth never spent isn't actually wealth. If Satoshi could have, he would have, by now.
      • camjohnson26 7y ago
        What are you talking about, it would be the number one reason why.
        • delecti 7y ago
          "What happened to the private keys" is only an interesting question if we know something happened to them at all. For all anyone knows, Satoshi is a government biding its time, aliens, a hacker with a messy apartment, dead and their inheritors don't know what they have, already independently wealthy and doesn't care about their wallet, did it all for the lulz and doesn't care about the wallet. It's apparently not, but if this were Satoshi then I find these questions far more interesting: Who is Satoshi? Why was their identity hidden? Why emerge now?
• tempsy 7y ago
  Many analysts suspect it's associated with Bakkt, the new yet to launch cryptocurrency exchange created by the NYSE parent.
  • hannula 7y ago
    I'm curious. Who are these analysts, and how did they come to that conclusion?
  • ur-whale 7y ago
    Source?
    • enjoyyourlife 7y ago
      https://twitter.com/bakkt/status/1171040208105758720?s=12 https://twitter.com/bakkt/status/1171040208105758720?s=12
  • huac 7y ago
    Bakkt just launched their warehouse today: https://news.u.today/news/bakkt-warehouse-is-now-active-for-bitcoin-futures https://news.u.today/news/bakkt-warehouse-is-now-active-for-..., so the timing makes sense
• farisjarrah 7y ago
  From the top twitter comment: > 0.06BTC in fees? Why so expensive? Just gotta say, its pretty amazing we live in a world where 1 billion dollars can get transferred pseudo-anonymously in a reasonable time frame, only costing the transfer party $600. As a really stupid, non-real-world comparison, Western Union has a transfer limit of $2500 per transaction, and a $20 fee per transaction. If you were to initiate a $1,000,000,000 transfer it would take something like 400,000 transactions costing you something like $8 million dollars in fees.
  • jiveturkey 7y ago
    Help me understand, was 1 billion dollars actually transferred? Wouldn't a normal bank wire of the same amount cost less than that, say $25?
    • parliament32 7y ago
      Yes and yes. A bank wire is the opposite of pseudo-anonymous though, especially with this kind of amount you'd have all sorts of eyes on you.
    • freeone3000 7y ago
      My bank charges a percentage for wires over a certain amount.
    • SilasX 7y ago
      Yes, if your time -- needed to provide the thorough documentation for such a huge transfer -- is worth nothing.
    • Daniel_sk 7y ago
      I am not sure how bank handle such large transactions (100 milion+), but transferring millions is very cheap or for free - at least with standard IBAN within EU.
      • djsumdog 7y ago
        A large corp-to-corp (or even person-to-corp) transfer does have a lot of money involved (accounts to figure out taxes, lawyers if it's for buying or selling major assets, possibly international tax experts, maybe even an escrow service if it's between say a EU company and a Chinese company where they might not trust the other nations court systems). And then the bank might charge a fee too, although I suspect with accounts that large, banks would do what they could to minimize fees since that much capital helps them with loads/interest.
• atemerev 7y ago
  According to tokenanalist.io, this is a funds consolidation associated with Huobi exchange: https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/1169929738607124482?s=20 https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244...
  • eddyg 7y ago
    or not: https://cryptonews.com/news/huobi-confirms-that-usd-1b-transaction-did-not-include-their-4607.htm https://cryptonews.com/news/huobi-confirms-that-usd-1b-trans...
• kirstenbirgit 7y ago
  Probably something like an exchange consolidating their funds into a single (multisig) wallet. Interestingly, transfer feeds were around 700 USD.
  • orange-juice 7y ago
    The key was probably compromised. Even if I realized the vulnerability a day later, for that amount of money I'd still pay 700 to make sure I don't come in a couple seconds late.
• bureaucrat 7y ago
  Watching things like this, I think bitcoin could eventually replace the government-backed currency. Everyone can watch them move. If you spend 1$ from that wallet to buy even a mars bar, your identity will be known to others. How CLEAN and clear is that?
  • kim0 7y ago
    Fungibility is the only essential property of money missing, and that's why I have high hopes for Monero.
  • erk__ 7y ago
    But on the other hand it goes against every rule about privacy, why do people know how much I have, or what I buy, the only privacy this give is privacy by obfuscation.
  • lbotos 7y ago
    But why? I don't understand why "account transaction visibility" is the thing that will negate the need for government-backed currency?
    • bureaucrat 7y ago
      Because governments could regulate this currency. With improving blockchain analysis technologies, they can watch, audit and impose tax. The only thing lacking is the control by the government.
  • parliament32 7y ago
    In a way. Washing it is pretty easy though. Send $50 into whatever exchange-du-jour is popular, then withdraw it back out into a clean wallet. Now you can buy all the Mars bars you want.
    • bureaucrat 7y ago
      Washing that little amount is more easy with just cash. You leave all your trace. Unlike cash laundering. That’s what matters.
• trollied 7y ago
  It’d be very interesting if this was part of the court ruling against Craig Wright: https://cointelegraph.com/news/craig-wright-challenges-court-order-requiring-him-to-pay-500k-bitcoin https://cointelegraph.com/news/craig-wright-challenges-court...
  • Finnucane 7y ago
    Probably not. If that guy could show he really had the bitcoin (dubious in itself) and was handing it over as part of a court settlement, that would be news.
  • stale2002 7y ago
    Craig himself has stated, under oath, that he does not have access to the keys that control the original Bitcoin that Satoshi mined. He himself, under oath, has admitted that he does not have access to those keys.
• djsumdog 7y ago
  Interesting. There are 17~18 million BTC in existence[1], so this makes up for about half of a percent of total BTC. (of course a lot of those BTC are lost forever due to forgotten keys, hard drive crashes, thrown out hard drives, etc, so who knows what the actual amount of accessible BTC is). [1]: https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-th...
  • rplnt 7y ago
    Is it possible to see how much moved in some time period?
    • shlant 7y ago
      the @whale_alert twitter handle is what most people keep an eye on
• Justsignedup 7y ago
  another way to read: someone just gave someone else a billion dollars tax free. that is a major problem.
  • kinghajj 7y ago
    Not necessarily, it could be moving coins to a different wallet of the same owner. Edit: also, that assumes that, even if this is an exchange between owners, neither party has/will report it to the relevant tax authorities.
  • knolax 7y ago
    You're assuming that the parties involved are in a jurisdiction with gift tax.
  • behringer 7y ago
    A problem for whom?
  • woah 7y ago
    What?
• compiler-guy 7y ago
  As far as the fees being so cheap, and every one else guessing about how expensive it would be to do it in a normal banking situation, F. Scott Fitzgerald is relevant: "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different." (The Rich Boy, 1926) All of the information normal people--like you and me--use to price transactions like this is completely irrelevant. Rich people have access to many services and price structures that are completely different than normal people. Any guess about what it costs to make a transaction like this via normal channels is likely completely wrong (other than "free", assuming they are doing business with the bank in question).
  • mlindner 7y ago
    Important qualifier on that that's missed for most "the very rich". The "rich" are often quite penny pinchers. My grandfather is "rich" (several millions, and in a very cheap place to live in the midwest) but he lived his entire life being extremely strict on spending and controlled personal finances very carefully. He still complains when there's large money to be spent on something that should be cheap.
    • umvi 7y ago
      I found out that my grandfather was a multimillionaire later in life as well, but I would never have guessed because he lives in an inconspicuous house in a middle class neighborhood and drives an inconspicuous car (Honda CR-V). He complains about milk and gas prices like most people and basically just doesn't telegraph his wealth at all (except by buying exclusively Wheaties as his breakfast cereal). He grew up during the great depression though, so maybe that has something to do with his miserly ways.
      • 7y ago
• airstrike 7y ago
  I'm mostly puzzled by the fact that someone would let $1 billion sit in a wallet without earning interest...
  • RandomBacon 7y ago
    Bitcoin is essentially deflationary. If Bitcoin maintains its utilitarian value, it will only grow in monitary value since less and less coins will be minted until no coins are minted, and also as people lose access to their keys. I speculate that in the future, Bitcoin might become valued so highly, that people don't even bother using it in favor of other coins, and as people don't use it, no one then accepts it, then it loses value, and by then people are accustomed to using other coins, and Bitcoin dies. Who knows, I probably won't live long enough to see it.
    • behringer 7y ago
      No matter how unpopular it becomes, it'll just be lowered in value, eg, deflated, but still usable. It will never fail unless the cryptography underlying it (or a bug in the design) causes it to fail.
    • kamyarg 7y ago
      > I speculate that in the future, Bitcoin might become valued so highly, that people don't even bother using it in favor of other coins, and as people don't use it, no one then accepts it, then it loses value This is similar to Gold with the difference that it still holds value, it is so expensive that usual shops don't accept it though but still has high value, am I missing something?
  • cwkoss 7y ago
    Bitcoin is deflationary relative to USD, so it benefits from inflation without additional issuance. Assuming the demand and(immeasurable) real value of Bitcoin holds constant, we should expect its price to increase at pace with inflation.
    • trias 7y ago
• SlipperySlope 7y ago
  Quite possible that this transaction did not involve an exchange. This is why decentralized cryptocurrencies are a way to bypass anti-money-laundering laws.
• aazaa 7y ago
  I'd take issue on two points. First, "wallets' don't exist in the Bitcoin protocol. Second, the tool being used is not sophisticated enough to list the inputs and outputs, giving the false impression that something unusual is "unknown." Try this link to get details: https://blockstream.info/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7b2422b2d7529afc675208ce2ce09ed7d https://blockstream.info/tx/4410c8d14ff9f87ceeed1d65cb58e7c7... There are numerous inputs and a single pay-to-script-hash (P2SH) output. The relatively high fee is due in part to the large number of inputs. ~400 satoshis/byte is high by today's standard but not too unreasonable as early as 2017. We can't tell anything about the identity of the owner(s) of the new coin from the block chain alone. Making a transaction this large is a security risk. It effectively establishes a billion dollar bounty for any party who can rewrite enough blocks to erase it. Now that the value resides in a single coin, any subsequent transaction faces the same risk. Plunking this much value into a single coin seems like an odd strategy at best. Not to mention the destruction of privacy in combining all those inputs into a single transaction with a single output. I can think of one reason you might want to do this. A consortium/trust has formed in which individuals pay into a common pool of money. That money is then protected with a multi signature script (consistent with the P2SH type). Given a threshold of signatures, the money can be spent, subject to other constraints. These will remain unknown until the first payment is made. At that point we'll know the number and identity of all the eligible keys and the threshold needed to make payment. If so, this transaction can be thought of as a kind of digital charter for the consortium in that it defines how the money can be spent going forward. Edit: to be clear, the "bounty" I'm talking about can't be directly claimed just by mining some blocks. Instead, it would have to be claimed as part of a double spend of either the transaction in question or as subsequent transaction of the now-enormous output. Most likely, there would be collusion of some kind between a miner and the owner of the keys. I'm not saying this will happen, but the bigger the transaction, the greater the risk.
  • hn_throwaway_99 7y ago
    > It effectively establishes a billion dollar bounty for any party who can rewrite enough blocks to erase it. I don't really agree with that statement. Yes, someone could mount a 51% attack to rewrite that block. However, it would be pretty straightforward to see what was happening (and which nodes were the malicious actors). If that did happen, the possible outcomes would be: 1. The value of bitcoin would fall to basically 0. The reason bitcoin has any value at all really has to do with trust - belief that the protocol is secure and can't be broken. In this case, an easily detectable spending "override" would cause faith in the protocol to evaporate. 2. Note I don't believe #1 would happen. The response would be all the other miners who do have a vested interest in bitcoins success would put all their resources in ensuring the original block was maintained. I.e. the options aren't between one address getting the billion+ dollars or another address getting a billion+ dollars. The options are one address getting a billion+ dollars or everyone's bitcoin going to 0. Edit: Another likely possible outcome is you could get what happened to Ethereum when the DAO was hacked: a fork to Ethereum vs. Ethereum Classic. But it's still important to note Ethereum Classic is worth a teeny fraction of what Ethereum is.
• dangoljames 7y ago
  SATOSHI LIVES!!
• logicallee 7y ago
  wow. So if someone has looked, could you summarize the history of the sending address? (When did it have transactions, etc.) Also, if someone wanted to turn this into fiat currency over a short but not instant period of time (such as 1 month for example), could they get close to 1,018,147,922 USD or even over 30 days would that diminish the price too much? (I am thinking for example if an institutional investor early on bought 94,504 bitcoins and "just realized" they have it or something, but only really cared about dollars or their fund is over and they have to pay out the cash or whatever. For whatever reason, if they want cash now.) Thanks for any expert opinions.
  • theWheez 7y ago
    It looks like this twitter account is trying to do just that https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/1169929738607124482 https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244... I am not an expert and this is a very rough estimate, but this data[0] shows 7-day rolling USD trading volume on major exchanges. It's pretty volatile but fluctuates from $300m to $110m daily. I would guess that this is liquid enough to be able to pull out $1b+ over 30 days, perhaps drawing some attention. This is also only for USD. Would love to hear an expert's thoughts as well. [0]: https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume?timespan=60days&daysAverageString=7 https://www.blockchain.com/en/charts/trade-volume?timespan=6...
• joeyspn 7y ago
  Huobi moving funds... https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/1169929738607124482?s=20 https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244...
  • eddyg 7y ago
    Huobi says it's not them: https://cryptonews.com/news/huobi-confirms-that-usd-1b-transaction-did-not-include-their-4607.htm https://cryptonews.com/news/huobi-confirms-that-usd-1b-trans...
    • edf13 7y ago
      No - they say it wasn’t any of “their own” funds... could still well be funds from their exchange
    • Faaak 7y ago
      If I moved 1 billion dollars, I too would say that it was not me, by fear of kidnapping
• rawoke083600 7y ago
  Just getting ready for black Friday..
• captainmuon 7y ago
  Is it a billion dollars, though? I mean, if you started selling them, the market price would likely go down. In other words, are there enough people looking to buy 94504 BTC at current market value?
  • giarc 7y ago
    I'm sure you could sell the wallet to someone bullish on bitcoin for a good sum though.
  • jdashg 7y ago
    This is true of any market cap valuation.
  • twinkletwinkle_ 7y ago
    Sure, but the flip side is that if you had a billion dollars you couldn't acquire this many BTC because the price would move against you the other direction.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • ur-whale 7y ago
    > Is it a billion dollars, though? I mean, if you started selling them, the market price would likely go down It's actually a good question. Very few actors in the Bitcoin space actually know what the "global order book" looks like and how much liquidity there actually is in that market.
• Causality1 7y ago
  The thing about large sums of bitcoin is that they aren't worth what the conversion rate says they are. Trying to spend 95 thousand bitcoins would shatter the market and send the value of a bitcoin way, way down.
• mirimir 7y ago
  Wow. About 1% of the market cap. If they cash out too much, it could tank the price, right?
• miguelmota 7y ago
  The fee is less than a thousand for a BILLION dollar transfer. Cryptocurrencies are amazing.
• dubliner2077 7y ago
  Was that a lot of money 10 minutes ago?
• PavlikPaja 7y ago
  Who the hell owns 1 billion dollars in bitcoin?
  • kupopuffs 7y ago
    well, it likely wasn't worth 1 billion when they acquired most of it.
  • lawn 7y ago
    A large exchange probably.
• legohead 7y ago
  Well now that I have a place to ask this question... Could someone explain to me about 51% attacks and if bitcoin is vulnerable to one? Hypothetically, a government decides to put forward enough resources to perform a 51% attack on bitcoin. Is that possible? If not, why? And is this something to actually worry about, or could something be done to combat it?
  • poyu 7y ago
    Happened to Bitcoin Gold a while back, here's a good explanation https://forum.bitcoingold.org/t/anatomy-of-a-double-spend-51-attack/1398 https://forum.bitcoingold.org/t/anatomy-of-a-double-spend-51... Edit: a word
  • rtkwe 7y ago
    In a degenerate case with enough power a single entity could mine several blocks faster than the main chain can mine one. In that environment they would be able to reverse any given transaction essentially by making a transaction waiting for that to get several confirmations (blocks created after that transaction is included) and waiting for whatever real world purchase went through then releasing the other blocks they had mined without that transaction included. The client is programmed to chose the longest chain available so the old public chain is abandoned in favor of the attackers new chain which doesn't include the initial spend. Now according to the blockchain Alice never sent Bob the BTC so the money is back in Alice's address and Bob is out whatever real world or off chain changes were made. There's two ways to do this either tactically to reverse your own transactions or randomly to essentially screw over everyone and sow FUD in the reliability of BTC transactions. One good note is as far as I know the Lightning network shouldn't really be vulnerable to this (except maybe for channel opening?) because either party can submit the most recent transaction and have it reflect on the BTC chain.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • lawn 7y ago
    I wrote a chapter on how cryptocurrencies work and what a 51% is in a hopefully approachable manner[0]. Basically the security assumption in Bitcoin is that at least 50% of miners are honest and work for a profit. A 51% attacker can recreate the latest blocks and remove all transactions from them, effectively the ability to reverse payments. Hypothetically the government can gain 51% hashrate. For example China could take control of all miners there (currently more than 50%) and use them to attack the chain. This type of attack can be detected. An extreme type of defense is to change the proof-of-work algorithm, making all existing miners worthless. This has been done several times in Monero for example. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/how_do_cryptocurrencies_work.html https://whycryptocurrencies.com/how_do_cryptocurrencies_work...
• aledalgrande 7y ago
  Pablo is still alive!
• aiscapehumanity 7y ago
  The fundu are saifu
• ic4l 7y ago
  Maybe mtgox?
• thecrumb 7y ago
  Checks my unknown wallet. Nope. Damn.
• beaniebabies 7y ago
  Interesting, HN articles about bitcoin typically have a few "tulips", "ponzi" and "obvious scam" comments. But none yet here. Is HN finally warming up to bitcoin, 10 years after it was invented?
• ChrisClark 7y ago
  This was probably an internal transfer, but if it was payment to someone, something interesting then occurs. It then becomes valuable for the original owner to secretly mine a chain, attempting a 51% attack. They could run the attack secretly for up to 40 days and still make a profit. So you'd really need to wait 40 days before you can be sure this transfer is safe. But it gets scarier, if at the end of the 40 days a longer chain is submitted, all transaction since this one would be reverted too. So when giant transfers happen, all transactions are vulnerable to long term 51% attacks. So all transactions sent now on Bitcoin aren't secure until this 40 day window has passed. Of course, I don't think that's the case here, it was probably someone moving his own coins around, not a payment to anyone.
  • LAMike 7y ago
    Every second, the amount of hashes computed on the Bitcoin network is equal to every grain of sand on earth, multiplied by 7. There isn't enough computing power available to 51% attack a chain that comes close to justify the $1 billion dollar "bounty" on this transaction.
    • ChrisClark 7y ago
      It's quite possible, as long as the cost of the current ASICs out there is less than a billion. You can match the current world rate and secretly mine. It would be a combination of buying your own miners and renting hashrate, but mostly it would be renting. Maybe paying a big mine to do it for you. When I saw the initial math, they said 40 days. But that doesn't include the fact that as you buy hash power, it's price would go up. But to secretly mine for a week before reorganizing the chain would be very possible with this amount of money. I wonder if you could put in a checkpoint system. And if that could even be decentralized.
      • lawn 7y ago
        I did some quick math a while ago on the cost to buy 51% [0]. When I did it the network hashrate was 44,000,000 TH/s and if you could buy enough S9i's to the same low price, it would cost you around $650 million. This is excluding any other infrastructure you'd need and of course the power you'd use to perform the attack. And since I did the calculations the hashrate has -doubled-, making it cost quite a bit more than a billion. Now maybe you can get off cheaper if you try to rent the hashrate. Around $18 million of BTC is mined per day, say you can get 50% for $10 million per day. So yes maybe you can do it for 40 days, if you want to risk a large part of that billion. And face the quite massive risk of tanking Bitcoin's value or facing devs who might launch a "protective hard fork". (This is assuming you -can- buy or rent enough hashrate, which is very uncertain). There are checkpoints in BTC, although they haven't been added since 2014. [0]: https://whycryptocurrencies.com/how_do_cryptocurrencies_work.html#economics-of-a-51%-attack https://whycryptocurrencies.com/how_do_cryptocurrencies_work...
• ty2019 7y ago
  Not bad! Got some good market movement!
• tjpaudio 7y ago
  There are what, about ~2,000 billionaires in the world? Of those, I don't believe any of them would hold a billion in BTC. From what I can tell, it has been ruled out that this is from any of the exchanges. Is this a possible nation-state transaction?
  • justaman 7y ago
    Fully agree that billionaires likely wouldn't hold a billion in BTC. Its very possibly CCP.
  • zelly 7y ago
    It's an early adopter. There are still a lot of them around. Someone like Roger Ver but who didn't seek fame.
• brian909 7y ago
  Хорошо кто-то живет)))
• tyxodiwktis 7y ago
  I worked in the trading dept of a large hedge fund and this could easily be them, or someone like them. They regularly traded several billion in bonds, currencies and short rates each day and just aren't used to those trades posting publicly (outside the exchange). I can see them seeing this Twitter thread, scratching their head and wondering, "what's the big deal?"
  • ineedasername 7y ago
    I think the big deal compared to those normal hedge fund trades would have to do with relative volume. Trading in bonds etc., a billion is relatively small and unlikely to move markets very much. In Bitcoin, a billion is a bigger deal, representing a larger chunk of the whole, and buying or selling that much has a much greater potential to move the market.
    • homologate 7y ago
      There are 17 964 063 bitcoin[0] in circulation which means that this transaction accounts for 0,5261% of all Bitcoin. I wonder how common transactions that account for one half a percent of total markets are. [0] https://www.blockchain.com/charts/total-bitcoins https://www.blockchain.com/charts/total-bitcoins
      • parsimo2010 7y ago
        There is how many have been mined, and are an upper bound of that many bitcoin in circulation. Some of it is stuck with forgotten addresses and passwords, so some are just gone- I think bitcoin won't be used by the time we have enough computing power to track down dead addresses and crack the passwords. Also, the short term price sensitivity of bitcoin is related to the depth of the order book and not the total market cap of coins. Someone placing a sell order at market rates for 94k bitcoin would wipe out the order books and the price would go way down, and take quite a while to recover. To sell 94k bitcoin without nuking the price they will have to sell at a slow trickle.
  • JackFr 7y ago
• brzoapp 7y ago
  Damn Gina, that's a lot of coin! but that's less than 1/2 of 1% in existence. There will be many more of these kinds of transactions! https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-there/ https://www.buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoins-are-th...
• hacker_news_acc 7y ago
  .
• Erudite_Genius 7y ago
  The fact that bitcoin even HAS a "dollar value" attached to it is a testament to the FAILURE of bitcoin's original sole objective.
  • Skunkleton 7y ago
    I am not a proponent of crypto currency by any stretch, but I disagree with this. The fact that BTC has dollar value simply indicates that BTC can't be spent everywhere the dollar can. IMO the real failure of BTC is runaway deflation, which leads to it being an "investment" relative to fiat currencies.
  • stusmall 7y ago
    All currencies do. In exchange markets currencies are often measured in reference to each other, just pop open Bloomberg's currency page: https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/currencies https://www.bloomberg.com/markets/currencies How would you rather track its value?
  • bogwog 7y ago
    Today it's pretty much just for launderers, criminals, gamblers, and people who don't know how it works/people looking to take advantage of people who don't know how it works.
    • mruts 7y ago
      Is there something wrong with that? Sounds like freedom to me.
  • mruts 7y ago
    How is that even possible? I can't think of a single thing, material or abstract, that doesn't have a dollar value attached to it.
• akeck 7y ago
  Is there a scenario where systematically concentrating outstanding BTC into a few massive piles can be used to destabilize the whole BTC infrastructure?
• pepepupu 7y ago
  Bitcoin network's transparency is somehow conflict with privacy here, when everyone in the network can see how much money in your pocket, where you send to and receive from. Privacy coin with Mimblewimble solve this!
• gesman 7y ago
  Whats' an excitement? We don't start threads every time Brinks truck passes by with someone else's money
  • pathseeker 7y ago
    A brinks truck with a billion dollars in cash would be worth a thread. :)
    • RandomBacon 7y ago
      Thankfully we can't see inside the Brinks truck as it passes us on the road. Money should be private. I wouldn't want anyone to know how much money I was transfering.
• ponpoko 7y ago
  Is Craig Wright not relevant?
• acoye 7y ago
  dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20896032 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20896032 Went under the radar on HN like 3 days ago
• jorge121971 7y ago
  thankyou
• jean_curtis 7y ago
  Has chainalysis posted any details yet?
• OrgNet 7y ago
  Getting ready for the big crash
• mudlus 7y ago
  Looks like @HuobiGlobal UTXO consolidation (not an individual user). https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/1169929738607124482 https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244...
• alexnewman 7y ago
  I hate 4 btc stolen at the exact same time
• 6nf 7y ago
  Nation state or Speculation fund?
• Efendisiz 7y ago
  great baby! ;)
• alanh 7y ago
  If this were a different kind of forum, I’d have replied with a big image of Dr. Evil captioned “One Billions Dollars”
• rfbrowne 7y ago
  Would be nice if someone transfered 1B to my bitcoin wallet.
• quickthrower2 7y ago
  2009: 94k Bitcoin transferred - "whats Bitcoin? lol those geeks." 2019: 94k Bitcoin transferred - "whooooooooa"
• sp6pe 7y ago
  This shows where the funds came from https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/1169929738607124482 https://twitter.com/thetokenanalyst/status/11699297386071244...
  • snak 7y ago
    Thanks!
• pank5241 7y ago
  I thought all things on the internet could one way or another b tracked so can they really not find out what the wallets are from?
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• ryacko 7y ago
  Most of the comments in this thread are unaware of offline transactions. https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Offline_transactions https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Offline_transactions Furthermore, Bitcoin mining is run by pools. Only the pools have to be hacked for a 51% attack to occur. I haven’t read all 500 comments in this thread, but they all largely seem to be the same.
• JohnJamesRambo 7y ago
  And I get nervous sending small amounts still. I cannot imagine the anxiety from sending one billion no matter how automated.
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
  • ponpoko 7y ago
    i don't know.
• formatb 7y ago
  This wallet is still receiving BTC just now.
• formatb 7y ago
  https://twitter.com/juanbiter/status/1170014648684490757 https://twitter.com/juanbiter/status/1170014648684490757 A few hours ago several #xcoin txs were made consolidating 94.505 #BTC in now the 5th largest address 37XuVSEpWW4trkfmvWzegTHQt7BdktSKUs, they have been accumulated since 2016 Is associated with @BAKKT due to its launch today (deposits and withdrawals) 🧐
  • RoutinePlayer 7y ago
    What are the other 4?
• YaaOongE 7y ago
  to the moon!!! art coin.
• scottlocklin 7y ago
  I thought this was going to be a genesis transaction and Satoshi would ride out of the sun on a flaming chariot of bitcoin. Probably just Elon letting his GF fiddle with his Trezor.
• RichardHeart 7y ago
  Nice Szabo: "Such confidence in Bitcoin is splendid, but a 94,500 BTC tx tempts fate. If recipient can make that much from reversing the tx, they can afford to run a 51% attack for more than 40 days. Big if & very visible, but security here depends more on trust & less on the protocol itself." https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/1169848736819773440 https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/1169848736819773440
• flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
  Imagine how much money you could make by creating a bogeyman bitcoin wallet! Step 1, Consolidate 94,000 BTC into one single address the entire crypto world is now watching. Step 2, Send 1,000 BTC from bogeyman bitcoin wallet to exchange crypto wallet. Step 3, Freak the shit out of the market. Promptly sell the entire lot in one single market sell order. Meanwhile you've got another 50,000 BTC or whatever sitting on contracts leveraged with 100x margin in a short position across multiple accounts... essentially netting you 100,000 BTC profit if you can manage to tank the price just 2% on the 3 funds that Bitmex follows to create their index price... and you totally would selling 1,000 BTC at once from a well known superwallet. Rinse and repeat... Eventually, I imagine you wouldn't even need to sell the coins on the exchange... just moving them there would be enough... (which would probably be illegal at least in the USA, see below) And when the market gets wise... and everybody else starts shorting the price when you move your coins... you BUY 1,000 BTC in a single market order... stop hunting everyone's "sure things" (with mostly tight stops) and probably making you 500% return on a 5% move the opposite way... placed on longs of course. (I am working on an algo bot, I think about this kind of stuff all day long!) I had better start saving! Side question... would this be legal? Moving the coins to exchange, signalling that you were going to sell based on precedent, and then not selling would be illegal by the nature of equities laws on fake bid or ask walls to move the price... like some trader at goldman was just arrested over for doing the same in the gold markets. But just selling a lot of coin while you have another lot of coin in short positions would be perfectly legal, right?
  • i_am_nomad 7y ago
    Whether or not it’s legal, you probably wouldn’t live long enough to enjoy your profits.
    • flyGuyOnTheSly 7y ago
      Why? Bitmex doesn't care how much money you make using their platform. They make money on the fees. And you can use them anonymously.
  • Beltiras 7y ago
    Bitcoin isn't (can't be?) regulated.
• harsimus 7y ago
  It’s crazy how this is happening before bakkt
• harsimus 7y ago
  Also it’s crazy to send that much at once
• miroslav041 7y ago
  Interesting.
• mirror20512 7y ago
  Wallet BAKKT
• kenneth 7y ago
  Interesting theory via Twitter: > If you look at BCH and BSV you will see the coins also moved - this looks like someone moved to do a split of forks. The good news (if that is the case) is that this likely will mean sale of BCH and BSV, not BTC! https://twitter.com/shanepicker/status/1170517377441849351 https://twitter.com/shanepicker/status/1170517377441849351 If that's the case, it implies that someone is looking to liquidate the value of their BCH/BSV they got for free in the forks, and need to move the BTC too since otherwise the transaction would be valid in all 3 chains.
  • lawn 7y ago
    There are other ways to split the coins. The simplest one would probably be to send a small amount of BCH to the address (which only exists on that chain), wait for it to confirm, and then move all the coins including the BCH making the transaction only valid on that chain. You can then do the same on the BSV chain, leaving the BTC chain untouched.
  • Kiro 7y ago
    > and need to move the BTC too since otherwise the transaction would be valid in all 3 chains. Care to elaborate? I don't understand how the three chains can have any affliction after they forked.
    • tinco 7y ago
      The forks are only changes in the rules, the keys and the addresses are the same. So if you've got money that hasn't moved since the fork, then any transaction to that money is valid in all forks. Only if different forks accept different transactions to the same account does this stop working. I haven't looked into how people avoid this, I suppose you could bully people by listening on the fastest chain for transactions and then rebroadcasting those to slower chains, in theory you have some chance of messing up their shit.
• smcl 7y ago
  Tangentially related - a couple of the guys who did the "Mic Dicta" podcast (an interesting and funny legal podcast, sadly now defunct) just recently started another podcast called "ALAB" and put up a brilliant episode going over Craig Wright's recent Bitcoin travails in court: https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-perfect-client https://soundcloud.com/alabpodcast/episode-3-faketoshi-the-p... Sharing as a comment here since it maybe doesn't make sense as a submission on its own, and since there's likely a number of people in the comments of this story who would enjoy it
• zacky777 7y ago
  What do you mean by "a single coin"?
• skaffolder 7y ago
  Plenty of money moves every day, I'm not surprised :-)
• skymoon01 7y ago
  In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with the fact that people want to secure their funds and make certain transactions by transferring money from one wallet to another.
• satyak13 7y ago
  BTC Price hiked by $1000 https://eng.ambcrypto.com/bitcoin-price-premiums-surge-in-argentina-after-president-macris-capital-control-measures/ https://eng.ambcrypto.com/bitcoin-price-premiums-surge-in-ar...
• botphuoc 7y ago
  Hope this is a good sign
• iamzozo 7y ago
  Maybe Jack Ma's final bonus
• aleh1981 7y ago
  Tothemoon
• hutzlibu 7y ago
  Ok, slightly offtopic and rant, but: My main problem with Bitcoin, etc. is: it is just too complicated. I mean, I did study CS and do have some knowledge about math and cryptography and I followed Bitcoin from the beginning with curiosity - and I still only have a vague understanding of it all. Now sure, I could invest some days and really study it and things would probably look different. But if it is hard for me, how hard is it for the common person?! I believe the base of a new money-system should be simple, for (allmost) everyone to understand. Because yes, the current mainstream fiat money banking system ... is not simple at all, either. But if it is so complicated, only some people can understand it, than there is way too much room for fraud ...
  • rolltiide 7y ago
    https://hackernoon.com/everything-wrong-with-bitcoin-in-2019-bl803xp9 https://hackernoon.com/everything-wrong-with-bitcoin-in-2019... 7,000 words but might help you with the current state of things and why its confusing
    • hutzlibu 7y ago
      Oh thanks, seems to be a good article .. but I really could not send it to a non computer guy ...
      • rolltiide 7y ago
        That article was made for people like you and builders in the space, yes still a void for everyone else
• BergUP 7y ago
  It's a Huobi client getting ready for the next bull run.
• Fiqoluska 7y ago
  Wow
• vit0303 7y ago
  Very very nice
• cuttie018 7y ago
  This only means one thing: the system is not as decentralized as it is announced.
• evilksandr 7y ago
  I think this event led to a certain drop in the bitcoin exchange rate, which we have observed just the last 2 days
• sunstone 7y ago
  That's China paying Iran for oil.
• jeffdecola 7y ago
  I'm wondering what our intelligent agencies are doing. I'm not sure what they can do.
• Jesse2219 7y ago
  One of the biggest advantages of investing in digital currencies like BITCOIN is the possibility of making millions overnight. Also, bitcoin makes cross border payments possible, and also provides an easy way for people to escape failed government monetary policy. When some people hear about bitcoin, they think of it as nonsense but it’s simply because they have no knowledge or lack professional guidance/mentorship. Bitcoins can be sent from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. No bank can block payments or close your account. I can go on and on to list the benefits of bitcoin investments but I will pause and let you find out more. Also, If you wish to make profits from bitcoin investments, need consultancy about any digital currency, mining of bitcoin or retrieve stolen wallet, lost passwords. Contact Professor John Hang via his email address ( c r y p t o j a c k i n g [at] g m a i l c o m ) for consultancy and help.
• Jesse2219 7y ago
  Here is a piece of information for beginners and everyone involved in cryptocurrency. One of the biggest advantages of investing in digital currencies like BITCOIN is the possibility of making millions overnight. Also, bitcoin makes cross border payments possible, and also provides an easy way for people to escape failed government monetary policy. When some people hear about bitcoin, they think of it as nonsense but it’s simply because they have no knowledge or lack professional guidance/mentorship. Bitcoins can be sent from anywhere in the world to anywhere else in the world. No bank can block payments or close your account. I can go on and on to list the benefits of bitcoin investments but I will pause and let you find out more. Also, If you wish to make profits from bitcoin investments, need consultancy about any digital currency, mining of bitcoin or retrieve stolen wallet, lost passwords. Contact Professor John Hang via his email address ( c r y p t o j a c k i n g [at] g m a i l c o m ) for consultancy and help.
• marzell 7y ago
  I wonder if this if at all related to the news about Sackler transferring funds to offshore accounts https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/09/13/us/sackler-family-purdue-pharma-case/index.html https://edition-m.cnn.com/2019/09/13/us/sackler-family-purdu...
• soethihatun 7y ago
  What it means? BTC price UP or Down
• earw 7y ago
  good
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