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many people have the encrypted key pair and have been trying to brute force access for years. so either someone succeeded, or it got rotated by simply moving t

many people have the encrypted key pair and have been trying to brute force access for years. so either someone succeeded, or it got rotated by simply moving the coins to literally any other address. of course, both of these outcomes are indistinguishable which is part of the beauty of the system, especially if someone was actually trying to ride out statute of limitations or something else. they can still obfuscate their destination either way. if the source is illicit its money laundering, if the source is not illicit its just obfuscation, if done right the illicit source is never discovered having been replaced with a licit source.

simias 6y ago
How did the encrypted keys leak?
- vmception 6y ago
  I don't know from this article and other articles I've seen: > A file that some claimed was an encrypted bitcoin wallet containing the keys to the funds has been circulated in cryptocurrency communities for the past year, and – if it is what it was claimed to be – then a combination of brute computing power and good luck could have successfully decrypted the wallet.
  - 3ahrbd43 6y ago
    It likely didn’t really leak. It’s a trick/scam they play on the naive. One can replace the cleartext section in the wallet with a unrelated tx reference that doesn’t match the actual encrypted private key. The wallet will act like the real one (it will show the referenced tx in the UI) but even if you could decrypt the encrypted private key, it would be for the wrong pubkey.
    - vmception 6y ago
      that's hilarious
    - WanderPanda 6y ago
      And then claim someone else stole them, when in reality they are just moving it to another address of their own
ineedasername 6y ago
I don't think the statute of limitations applies once you've been found guilty. That applies to the time limit for prosecution, not the time limit for executing asset seizure that was declared forfeit. It is always forfeit, you don't get to protect your ill-gotten gains if you manage (or someone receiving them manages) to hide them long enough. They still have a seizure order on them if, presumably the FBI, can figure out how to get them.
- ineedasername 6y ago
  And now we know that's what happened for certain: The DOJ seized these coins. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdgz8/us-feds-seize-1-billion-in-bitcoin-from-wallet-linked-to-silk-road https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdgz8/us-feds-seize-1-billi...
xenadu02 6y ago
How would you obfuscate anything? The blockchain tracks every transaction. Not only can that money be traced forever the feds can claw it back from anyone who received it if they wanted to do that. Or follow it to the exit points if the owner tries to launder it via other means and apply pressure there.
- angus-prune 6y ago
  There are services called tumblers which take bitcoins from multiple people (often multiple sources per person); mixes them up with bitcoins from lots of other people, transfers them about a lot randomly etc, then at the end spits out a series of transactions which add up to not quite the amount you submitted (different by a random amount). Each of these transactions can be traced, but it can be difficult to track which output bitcoins relate to which input bitcoins.

simias 6y ago

How did the encrypted keys leak?

vmception 6y ago
I don't know from this article and other articles I've seen: > A file that some claimed was an encrypted bitcoin wallet containing the keys to the funds has been circulated in cryptocurrency communities for the past year, and – if it is what it was claimed to be – then a combination of brute computing power and good luck could have successfully decrypted the wallet.
- 3ahrbd43 6y ago
  It likely didn’t really leak. It’s a trick/scam they play on the naive. One can replace the cleartext section in the wallet with a unrelated tx reference that doesn’t match the actual encrypted private key. The wallet will act like the real one (it will show the referenced tx in the UI) but even if you could decrypt the encrypted private key, it would be for the wrong pubkey.
  - vmception 6y ago
    that's hilarious
  - WanderPanda 6y ago
    And then claim someone else stole them, when in reality they are just moving it to another address of their own

ineedasername 6y ago

I don't think the statute of limitations applies once you've been found guilty. That applies to the time limit for prosecution, not the time limit for executing asset seizure that was declared forfeit. It is always forfeit, you don't get to protect your ill-gotten gains if you manage (or someone receiving them manages) to hide them long enough. They still have a seizure order on them if, presumably the FBI, can figure out how to get them.

ineedasername 6y ago
And now we know that's what happened for certain: The DOJ seized these coins. https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdgz8/us-feds-seize-1-billion-in-bitcoin-from-wallet-linked-to-silk-road https://www.vice.com/en/article/akdgz8/us-feds-seize-1-billi...

xenadu02 6y ago

How would you obfuscate anything? The blockchain tracks every transaction. Not only can that money be traced forever the feds can claw it back from anyone who received it if they wanted to do that. Or follow it to the exit points if the owner tries to launder it via other means and apply pressure there.

angus-prune 6y ago
There are services called tumblers which take bitcoins from multiple people (often multiple sources per person); mixes them up with bitcoins from lots of other people, transfers them about a lot randomly etc, then at the end spits out a series of transactions which add up to not quite the amount you submitted (different by a random amount). Each of these transactions can be traced, but it can be difficult to track which output bitcoins relate to which input bitcoins.