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Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might w
by nknealk 6y ago
Here’s an interesting question — if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You know it’s stolen and you might worry someone else who you might pay in the future would be able to track down that it’s stolen, so do you ask for “clean” BTC that isn’t linked to known theft?
I don’t necessarily know the answer here. This is something that you can’t do with paper bills
- schmichael 6y ago> if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? You cannot refuse a BTC transaction. You could return it in a subsequent transaction, and pay the transaction fee, but I would imagine your address would be forever tainted by a number of illicit address/transaction tracking algorithms.
- chrisa 6y agoThat's an interesting angle to cash out... just start sending to 1,000s of addresses - who's to say which addresses are owned by the criminals, and which are owned by other people? They'd get less than cashing it all out themselves obviously, but it would take forever to unravel what actually happened (if possible ever)
- danielrpa 6y agoYou could use also do that to embarrass/blackmail politicians or other prominent people. Imagine the threat "You either do what I want or I'll send you 1 million dollars" :)
- cgb223 6y agoWhat politicians accept Bitcoin as donations?
- wyck 6y agoI think whole bunch of them do, Eric Swalwell accepts like 6 of them.
- canadianfella 6y ago6 bitcoins?
- jimmydorry 6y agoBTC plus five altcoins, I imagine is what he meant.
- saas_sam 6y agoWasn't that the one associated with a known CCP spy? https://www.axios.com/china-spy-california-politicians-9d2dfb99-f839-4e00-8bd8-59dec0daf589.html https://www.axios.com/china-spy-california-politicians-9d2df...
- roywiggins 6y agoMore like "targeted by."
- tamrix 6y agoHow else do you suppose they pay for their crimes?
- ric2b 5y agoJust tell them you're willing to donate them more than $5K and they'll figure it out. Politicians are surprisingly cheap, as I've learned over the years from various reports.
- jbverschoor 6y agoThis is essentially what a tumbler does
- pennaMan 6y agoThe suggestion is a philanthropic variation of a tumbler.
- lancepioch 6y agoThey could just setup their own Bitcoin tumbler
- fireland 6y agoTumbling on bitcoin doesn't work like it used to a few years ago. There are now multiple companies dedicated to blockchain tracking and analysis. All coins coming from tumblers are flagged. It's possible because the bitcoin blockchain is public and every balance and transaction is visible to the whole world. Many exchanges refuse to accept coins that have passed through a tumbler. If you attempt to deposit these coins, the exchange will refuse to credit you unless you provide copious amounts of documentation. Currently they do not seize your coins but will force you to withdraw them. Some exchanges are even going through users' deposit histories and are retroactively flagging deposits from coin mixing services: https://twitter.com/kristapsk/status/1374336620158140419 https://twitter.com/kristapsk/status/1374336620158140419 This is why many criminals are moving away from Bitcoin into Monero, which has anonymized transactions and doesn't suffer from the chain analysis problem.
- atat7024 6y agoSo if someone buys a stick of gum from me after taking rent money from a tainted BTC address, I get flagged?
- o-__-o 6y agoCurrency of the future
- londons_explore 6y agoIt only takes a few exchanges refusing to flag coins and the whole flagging system fails. The bad money gets mixed with the good in the exchanges wallet, and sent to random people...
- chii 6y ago> a few exchanges refusing to flag coins they may not have a choice if the gov't regulation forces them to flag it.
- the_local_host 6y agoI had the same idea, and it would be funny, but investigators wouldn't have to unravel the whole thing. They'd just have to look at anyone unwise enough to use the money instead of turning it over to authorities (or abandoning the wallet).
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoMost people wouldnt actually know that the money is illicit
- mattigames 6y agoAlmost nobody would turn to authorities, people just think it's their lucky day and spend it, so they would target a lot of innocent people.
- social_quotient 6y agoHow about universal basic income? Send some to everyone monthly. Would be curious the social implications of elicit money used as a welfare utility.
- hervature 6y agoYes, look forward to my $20 check that lasts one month.
- issamehh 6y agoI'd take that over still not receiving a stimulus check despite needing them more than ever.
- hervature 6y agoYea, my comment was more that $7.5B is $1 per person in the world or $20 for people in the US. Nowhere near something to be considered UBI. I hope you get the assistance you need.
- social_quotient 6y agoOkay so I was actually thinking based on wallet counts (64 million currently) I agree it still doesn’t go too far
- Johnny555 6y agoYou don't need to start with an entire country, start with a city or state. Then steal more. Not sure how you'd target a geographical area though.
- water8 6y agoDon't worry, the printer is just out of ink. They're coming soon!
- geoduck14 6y agoI know of plenty of people who consider taxes "elicit money", and we spend that money EVERYWHERE
- ASalazarMX 6y agoSend it to 7,500 random wallets, including your own, and you can keep as many millions as wallets you have. Most people will keep the money, making them indistinguishable from your own wallets. IANAL, but if crime prescription is possible, you could transfer to 5,000 wallets and keep the rest for your pirate-themed retirement island.
- vmception 6y agoWe’ve done that on a number of projects Basically communities freak out when they think founder/team is selling any of the project’s tokens no matter how long its been or whether what the stated vesting conditions were So we just bundle it in monthly distributions in multisend transactions to new addressses, some of the transactions are monthly vesting payments to marketers, some of the payments are to ourselves. Not possible to distinguish. (This is also possible because communities also demand that issuers put funds and the tokens into liquidity pools, which is not always compatible with having a ton of other tokens just sitting in separate vesting treasuries. So liquidity pool shares are vesting and they can be sent anywhere and unbundled)
- RhodoGSA 6y agoWhat'd you really do is just send it to a liquidity smart contract and use a function parameter to send it to different wallet(s). These pools pay out big money to alot of different wallets, you'd never be able to track it out the other side.
- codethief 6y agoCame here to ask about this… Does anyone know whether this has happened before?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- cmeacham98 6y agoPretty sure what they mean is 'do you refuse it as payment?' - i.e. should you provide the thing someone is paying for or send the payment back and ask for untainted coins?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- nivexous 6y agoIf I send you a stolen iPod in the mail, do I forever taint your home address? Are you forced to accept it? No, of course not. You can return it to the police, throw it out, or return it to the sender. If you keep it and use it, then it becomes your problem. The same is true for Bitcoin. You can refuse any transaction output. You are not your address. Edit: This post is being downvoted by people who don't want it to be true. Sorry folks, it is. Bitcoin is UTXO-based, and every output sent to your address is a unique piece of mail. If you don't like that, use an account-based system where it all gets mixed together.
- runeks 6y ago> […] but I would imagine your address would be forever tainted by a number of illicit address/transaction tracking algorithms. Not if those algorithm are any good. In Bitcoin, you can’t taint an address just by sending funds to it, since all transactions to the same address create separate “outputs” that must be redeemed separately.
- liorn 6y agoCan one even refuse it? If someone just sends tainted coin to my address, am I screwed?
- arcticfox 6y agoWhat's wrong with simply returning it? Any "tainted coin tracker" could easily build in a mechanism for detecting that
- horsawlarway 6y agoThe simplest answer is that returning it isn't free.
- Ekaros 6y agoAlso there is a good question is there some limit or ratio of tainted coins that would be considered non incriminating. Or if there isn't would single satoshi taint all coins? If there were wouldn't dilution of funds be possible? That is wash them by sending to wallets with enough funds...
- furyofantares 6y agoOk so use it to pay the fee, returning the rest.
- noxer 6y agoYou just washed part of the BTCs which is now owned by the miner.
- tristanj 6y agoThat's assuming a BTC miner even agrees to process the transaction. Why would a BTC miner want to deal with the headache of tainted bitcoins? It's such a problem that Marathon Digital Holdings, a major bitcoin miner, has stated they will refuse to process transactions from tainted addresses. In the near future, I expect more mining pools to do the same.
- pie420 6y agoYou can definitely do this with bills... You realize when a bank gets robbed the serial numbers are tracked and confiscated when they show up, and often lead to the theives
- ericsoderstrom 6y agoIf someone pays you in cash, do you really look up the serial numbers of all the bills you receive?
- dkersten 6y agoAnd keep a list of all serial numbers of stolen money to check against.
- Guest19023892 6y agoNo, but I might deposit that money in the bank, and the bank could check those serial numbers.
- spoonjim 6y agoThis isn't so far fetched. Cash registers already have Internet connections and can be outfitted with cameras to record all bills going in, except maybe those inserted in a stack. And ATMs might already be recording serial numbers of dispensed bills. Essentially they might/could do with currency what they do with license plates, which is track where everything goes and at what times.
- slivanes 6y agoCoinbase suspended my merchant account from receiving funds about 5 years ago without warning. I was receiving funds as any merchant would, with the occasional payout to bank. I had no idea why they suspending receiving, and as some already know, their support was not very supportive. The only reason I could think of is possibly receiving tainted funds?
- young_unixer 6y agoMonero tackles this problem. Coins are fungible and transactions are private. https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/fungibility.html https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/fungibility....
- Skunkleton 6y agoThat both does, and doesn't solve this problem. If someone pays for services with stolen assets the ideal scenario is that the criminal is apprehended, the service provider doesn't lose money, and the funds can be returned to their rightful owner. Monero protects the service provider, but doesn't solve the other problems.
- lumost 6y agoIt's a curious question for the value proposition of blockchain denominated currencies. There is a real possibility that in the future, all stolen assets will eventually be recovered and returned to their owners. There needn't be any limit to recovery given a universal, traceable, and non-fungible transaction log. Pretty soon payment processors/recipients would start maintaining blacklists of stolen coins which they refuse to transact in. The value proposition of theft/fraud may be significantly curtailed in such a world.
- Skunkleton 6y agoThat won't handle the case where some coins are stolen and used before they are marked as "bad". Some merchant will be out of luck once the transaction is reversed. Really that is no better than what we already have from credit card payment networks.
- kelnos 6y agoAlso interesting: since the total number of Bitcoins is fixed, as more and more coins are used for crime and get blacklisted, the value of remaining coins will become inflated. Given a long enough timeline, there will be too few coins for the currency to remain useful. (Though to be fair, people simply losing the private keys to their wallet also has the same effect. Not sure which phenomenon would, over time, result in more coin losses.)
- miohtama 6y ago> if you receive BTC from one of these addresses as payment for something, do you refuse it? It's a crime to spend money you do not own. Like if you would find 500k in paper bills in your car. There is no source of funds it would be your legal asset. You hand it over to police.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoFinding money and using miney that your know is stolen are totally different situations. 'finding' is ofcourse situational, but abandoned property can be 'found' and claimed
- miohtama 6y agoIt is not. If you find something that does bot belong to you it does not become your property. Only in special circumstances you can claim it as your own.
- 0xtr 6y agowhy would I? I mean we still use dollars even though a lot of them are used to buy heroin and hookers
- retrac 6y agoKnowingly receiving then spending stolen money or property is a crime in many jurisdictions. In many cases it may be phrased like "or ought to have known" so wilful ignorance isn't a defence. Even unknowingly receiving stolen money or property leaves you on the hook, potentially. If the rightful owner tracks it to you they can go "that's mine!" and the courts will order you to give it to them. The loss you incur here is yours; the law treats it as an incentive to be diligent and to not deal in stolen goods. You can of course then try to recover the value you are owed from the person who sent you the stolen goods/money, if you want/can. And they from whoever sold them the stolen goods/money. And so on, all the way back to the original thief. The whole chain is tainted. (Pun intended, maybe.)
- chii 6y agoBut in reality, nobody does - and only in some peculiar cases do payments made to a merchant gets confiscated like that (and they usually have no recourse).
- kelnos 6y ago> If the rightful owner tracks it to you they can go "that's mine!" and the courts will order you to give it to them. I don't believe that's true, though this is based on just stuff I've heard, not on any data I can present. In general I hear that if someone steals something, and then sells it to you, and you don't know (and have no reason to believe) it was stolen, not only are you not legally liable, but you cannot be forced to return the property to the original owner. If this wasn't the case, the act of buying anything through a private sale would in general be pretty risky. This goes pretty far sometimes: I remember a somewhat bizarre case where someone sold some land to someone, and lied to the buyer about where the property line was. The new owner built on what was technically someone else's land, but later the "true" owner lost in court, and the owner who built on it was given ownership rights, and I don't believe was required to compensate the "true" owner. (I imagine the "true" owner had a strong case against the lying seller, though.)
- myself248 6y agoIs everyone expected to know the addresses by heart? Does software flag them? If so, where does the list of tainted addresses come from? Total outsider here, asking honestly.
- spinny 6y agoexchanges keep lists of stolen coins and probably use taint analysis https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf
- spinny 6y agoAFAIK exchanges will not accept certain outputs, this is probably based on taint analysis. I believe the FIFO method [1] is the most accurate and probably used by exchanges [1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1906.05754.pdf
- Kinrany 6y agoFIFO would mean that non-tainted funds added after tainted are also locked.
- Osiris 6y agoI work at a distributed exchange and we have a blacklist. if funds are sent in from an address that's blacklisted we hold it and don't send them the other half. I don't know what the business does with those coins after that but there is a compliance team so I assume it's properly handled.
- cyberpunk 6y agoWhat stops them from just sending it to an intermediate address first?
- pfundstein 6y agoNothing, and I'm curious about how any source addresses are traced backwards before permitting a transaction.
- londons_explore 6y agoThe mere fact a distributed exchange has a central compliance team tells me it isn't very distributed...
- Osiris 5y agoSorry that should have been "non-custodial" not distributed.
- byteshock 6y agoWhats the point of a distributed exchange if you can just deny any exchanges at will? Doesn’t that defeat the core idea of an distributed exchange?
- vmception 6y agoThere are a number of ways, you can use a non-custodial bridge like RenVM and receive renBTC which can be used as collateral or just traded in plain sight for something more liquid Like all blockchain analysis, following the conversion process always assumes that all addresses involved are tainted forever because its also assuming it is under custody of the thief, so if you really want to play along further and think that this is both true and that the thief needs to hide then the thief can just drop all the converted assets into Tornado.cash and take them out later. Even if you think that cashing out Tornado.cash is hard, they can always just pump the price of some other token that they already bought with clean funds, and those cleans funds just become highly-profitable-trader-clean-funds. While the addresses with tornado.cash sourced funds are just bagholding whatever token they bought.
- nojster 6y agoThat’s correct and several exchanges will freeze funds when they have a “tainted history”. Thus, tokens on open ledger DLTs are not fungible at all. Cash is more fungible, yet you can also link serial numbers on bills back to ransom payments. In a similar fashion, if you, even unknowingly, pay with counterfeit cash, you won’t get reimbursed for the face value, if it gets detected. Back to crypto, Monero addresses the aforementioned issues through stealth addresses, ring signatures and ringCTs, thus fungibility of the token is higher.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- matt-attack 6y agoIsn’t that what “marked bills” are? Isn’t that why kidnappers ask for unmarked money so it can’t be traced back to the theft? There are many stories of bills being marked in specific ways to to identify their provenance.