7 ms·

Nope. They're actually getting away with quite a big loot! The number of unconfirmed transactions has catapulted from ~9k to about ~50k right now, which means

Nope. They're actually getting away with quite a big loot! The number of unconfirmed transactions has catapulted from ~9k to about ~50k right now, which means there's large amount of activity. It will take a while for the dust to settle. You can watch them here https://www.blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions https://www.blockchain.com/btc/unconfirmed-transactions chart https://www.blockchain.com/charts/mempool-count https://www.blockchain.com/charts/mempool-count A better graph of the current transactions sitting unconfirmed: https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h https://jochen-hoenicke.de/queue/#0,24h Note: I'm not saying that these are all from the hack, I'm saying that the activity on the Bitcoin blockchain has significantly spiked, and the hack was still ongoing at the time of writing this.

longtom 6y ago
So we're likely talking some 50-100 million of dollars being stolen? Insane.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- admn2 6y ago
  It's only at 12 bitcoin ($120k) right now. (serious question) why do you think it could be as high as $50 to $100 mm? Is there a way to see the total including unconfirmed transactions?
  - schoen 6y ago
    I think longtom read this as 9k-50k BTC rather than as 9k-50k transactions.
- SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
  Hang on... is it “stolen”? If you trick some people into giving their money to you, it’s unethical, but you didn’t force them to hand you their money against their will. I would say “taken” is fair; but “stolen” isn’t exactly right. Plus there is no way it will be that much.
  - manquer 6y ago
    Well in a way it is, the point of the verification check box is authenticity that twitter is supposed to guarantee, this breaks that trust
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
  - chmod775 6y ago
    If I dress myself like a valet and you hand me your car keys in front of a hotel, am I stealing the car when I drive off? Well in this case people intended their money to go one place, but they got tricked and it ended up in another. I'd call that stealing. Whether it got technically stolen from the charity or whatever they meant it to go to or from the original owner, that's debatable.
  - ncallaway 6y ago
    Yep, theft by fraud is still theft.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    For example, historically the UK had "Theft By Deception" a type of theft in which the requirement is that you deceive people, intentionally, in order to permanently deprive them of something of value rather than just taking it. This was replaced by modern Fraud crimes this century. The new crimes reduce what prosecutors need to show somewhat. With "Theft by deception" there can be a problem if the prosecutor struggles to show that the defendant actually permanently deprived the victim of something of value, especially if the victim realised there was a problem in time to use some sort of "claw back" mechanism. With Fraud the prosecutor can show that the defendant intended to gain even if ultimately that didn't work, so long as the deception actually happened the crime was not merely attempted. All these Tweets are Fraud by False Representation under that replacement law, because the tweet deliberately pretends to be from somebody (e.g. Apple or Bill Gates) when it's actually from the perpetrator of the crime and it's clear that they intended to gain from getting Bitcoin sent to this account even if a prosecutor can't prove how much they actually made.
  - 6y ago
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  I'm not saying that these are all from the hack, I'm saying that the activity on the Bitcoin blockchain has significantly spiked, and it looks like a very large number of transactions have yet to be confirmed. So any amount so far is just the beginning - more is sitting in the mempool ready to be confirmed.
- dopamean 6y ago
  No. No one is saying that.
veridies 6y ago
Question (I'm not an expert): can unconfirmed transactions be withdrawn? If so, what's the timeline?
- stjo 6y ago
  There are 2 stages in sending bitcoin: 1) You submit transaction to the mempool. It may take a couple of minutes for a miner that "liked" your transaction to include it in a block. While in this stage, the receiver technically does not have anything yet, thus impossible to use them in any way. 2) The transaction get put inside a block. Generally, most vendors would say the transaction is "unconfirmed", although technically it is now in the ledger. There is a small chance that due to inconsistencies and network latency the block gets orphaned and the replacing block does not include the transaction. If you are a vendor and start shipping products immediately after your money is put into the ledger, you open yourself to a range of possible attacks. For this reason most wait two or three more blocks, just to be sure. To answer your question: After a block gets created and the scammer receives his crypto, albeit still in an unconfirmed (read as "young") block, they can start using it however they decide to. Small chance that their actions get reverted exists tho.
  - reportgunner 6y ago
    You took a lot of effort to be wrong man. Unconfirmed transactions cannot be withdrawn. Transaction that already is in at least one block is confirmed by definition - the act of being included in a block results in a confirmation. Unconfirmed transactions can be "cancelled" by double spending the coins in the unconfirmed transaction.
- bouncycastle 6y ago
  Yes. Some wallets allow you to use "Replace by Fee" protocol, which allows you to do that.
- abrodersen 6y ago
  You could issue a double spend transaction that goes to another wallet you control with a higher fee and the network will probably apply that one first.
icedistilled 6y ago
I'm a little unclear, is the following correct?. So basically rando's are sending famous people bitcoin because the famous people tweeted "send us $$ and we'll send you double back"? And somehow the rando's haven't heard of the hack. Is this what's happening? Like are random people seriously sending them bitcoin? Or is it some weird form of money laundering? Although since that's very weird behavior even if there was no hack, I suppose I'm not too surprised that those people sending the coin haven't heard of the hack.
- nyolfen 6y ago
  receiving bitcoin on a wallet advertised on hacked accounts does not seem like a very effective mode of money laundering, imho
  - jjeaff 6y ago
    It's reverse money laundering! Take legit money and dirty it by faking a scheme where it was stolen due to a scam.
    - gspr 6y ago
      Money smudging? :-)
- flamtap 6y ago
  I find myself confused by this as well, surely people who are sufficiently technically sophisticated to own bitcoin won’t fall for “I’ll send you bitcoin if you send me yours first”?
  - AgentME 6y ago
    I assume the victims aren't technically-sophisticated bitcoin owners. I had previously told a family member that I had a little bit of cryptocurrency, and then a few months ago they messaged me asking how to buy some bitcoin. I prodded them a bit, and it turned out that they had seen a scam somewhat like today's. I was able to stop them and explain the scam. Presumably if they hadn't asked me, they might have figured out how to buy some on their own and then sent it to the scammer.
reportgunner 6y ago
Zoom out and you see that this is normal every ~14 days. Also number of transactions is in no way related to amount of money being transferred.

longtom 6y ago

So we're likely talking some 50-100 million of dollars being stolen? Insane.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
admn2 6y ago
It's only at 12 bitcoin ($120k) right now. (serious question) why do you think it could be as high as $50 to $100 mm? Is there a way to see the total including unconfirmed transactions?
- schoen 6y ago
  I think longtom read this as 9k-50k BTC rather than as 9k-50k transactions.
SV_BubbleTime 6y ago
Hang on... is it “stolen”? If you trick some people into giving their money to you, it’s unethical, but you didn’t force them to hand you their money against their will. I would say “taken” is fair; but “stolen” isn’t exactly right. Plus there is no way it will be that much.
- manquer 6y ago
  Well in a way it is, the point of the verification check box is authenticity that twitter is supposed to guarantee, this breaks that trust
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- chmod775 6y ago
  If I dress myself like a valet and you hand me your car keys in front of a hotel, am I stealing the car when I drive off? Well in this case people intended their money to go one place, but they got tricked and it ended up in another. I'd call that stealing. Whether it got technically stolen from the charity or whatever they meant it to go to or from the original owner, that's debatable.
- ncallaway 6y ago
  Yep, theft by fraud is still theft.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  For example, historically the UK had "Theft By Deception" a type of theft in which the requirement is that you deceive people, intentionally, in order to permanently deprive them of something of value rather than just taking it. This was replaced by modern Fraud crimes this century. The new crimes reduce what prosecutors need to show somewhat. With "Theft by deception" there can be a problem if the prosecutor struggles to show that the defendant actually permanently deprived the victim of something of value, especially if the victim realised there was a problem in time to use some sort of "claw back" mechanism. With Fraud the prosecutor can show that the defendant intended to gain even if ultimately that didn't work, so long as the deception actually happened the crime was not merely attempted. All these Tweets are Fraud by False Representation under that replacement law, because the tweet deliberately pretends to be from somebody (e.g. Apple or Bill Gates) when it's actually from the perpetrator of the crime and it's clear that they intended to gain from getting Bitcoin sent to this account even if a prosecutor can't prove how much they actually made.
- 6y ago
bouncycastle 6y ago
I'm not saying that these are all from the hack, I'm saying that the activity on the Bitcoin blockchain has significantly spiked, and it looks like a very large number of transactions have yet to be confirmed. So any amount so far is just the beginning - more is sitting in the mempool ready to be confirmed.
dopamean 6y ago
No. No one is saying that.

veridies 6y ago

Question (I'm not an expert): can unconfirmed transactions be withdrawn? If so, what's the timeline?

stjo 6y ago
There are 2 stages in sending bitcoin: 1) You submit transaction to the mempool. It may take a couple of minutes for a miner that "liked" your transaction to include it in a block. While in this stage, the receiver technically does not have anything yet, thus impossible to use them in any way. 2) The transaction get put inside a block. Generally, most vendors would say the transaction is "unconfirmed", although technically it is now in the ledger. There is a small chance that due to inconsistencies and network latency the block gets orphaned and the replacing block does not include the transaction. If you are a vendor and start shipping products immediately after your money is put into the ledger, you open yourself to a range of possible attacks. For this reason most wait two or three more blocks, just to be sure. To answer your question: After a block gets created and the scammer receives his crypto, albeit still in an unconfirmed (read as "young") block, they can start using it however they decide to. Small chance that their actions get reverted exists tho.
- reportgunner 6y ago
  You took a lot of effort to be wrong man. Unconfirmed transactions cannot be withdrawn. Transaction that already is in at least one block is confirmed by definition - the act of being included in a block results in a confirmation. Unconfirmed transactions can be "cancelled" by double spending the coins in the unconfirmed transaction.
bouncycastle 6y ago
Yes. Some wallets allow you to use "Replace by Fee" protocol, which allows you to do that.
abrodersen 6y ago
You could issue a double spend transaction that goes to another wallet you control with a higher fee and the network will probably apply that one first.

icedistilled 6y ago

I'm a little unclear, is the following correct?. So basically rando's are sending famous people bitcoin because the famous people tweeted "send us $$ and we'll send you double back"? And somehow the rando's haven't heard of the hack. Is this what's happening? Like are random people seriously sending them bitcoin? Or is it some weird form of money laundering? Although since that's very weird behavior even if there was no hack, I suppose I'm not too surprised that those people sending the coin haven't heard of the hack.

nyolfen 6y ago
receiving bitcoin on a wallet advertised on hacked accounts does not seem like a very effective mode of money laundering, imho
- jjeaff 6y ago
  It's reverse money laundering! Take legit money and dirty it by faking a scheme where it was stolen due to a scam.
  - gspr 6y ago
    Money smudging? :-)
flamtap 6y ago
I find myself confused by this as well, surely people who are sufficiently technically sophisticated to own bitcoin won’t fall for “I’ll send you bitcoin if you send me yours first”?
- AgentME 6y ago
  I assume the victims aren't technically-sophisticated bitcoin owners. I had previously told a family member that I had a little bit of cryptocurrency, and then a few months ago they messaged me asking how to buy some bitcoin. I prodded them a bit, and it turned out that they had seen a scam somewhat like today's. I was able to stop them and explain the scam. Presumably if they hadn't asked me, they might have figured out how to buy some on their own and then sent it to the scammer.

reportgunner 6y ago

Zoom out and you see that this is normal every ~14 days. Also number of transactions is in no way related to amount of money being transferred.