6 ms·

Can one even refuse it? If someone just sends tainted coin to my address, am I screwed?

• arcticfox 5y ago
  What's wrong with simply returning it? Any "tainted coin tracker" could easily build in a mechanism for detecting that
  • horsawlarway 5y ago
    The simplest answer is that returning it isn't free.
    • Ekaros 5y ago
      Also 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 5y ago
      Ok so use it to pay the fee, returning the rest.
      • noxer 5y ago
        You just washed part of the BTCs which is now owned by the miner.
        • tristanj 5y ago
          That'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.
          • noxer 5y ago
            If they were send to you, someone does process them.
      • deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
  • sennight 5y ago
    Every so often a moron shows up trying to sell the idea of colored coins... it is almost as if they've never heard of "fungibility".
  • feanaro 5y ago
    And why would currency users even bother with it? If I receive a payment for something, I don't feel the need to pretend to be the police.
  • noxer 5y ago
    Would you return stolen goods to the thief? How about return it to the owner/authorities. May not be simple but certainly better than sending it back. If all else fail there are black hole addresses to forever lock the BTCs.
  • swinglock 5y ago
    Why would you give money to a criminal?
• grlass 5y ago
  iirc, a number of wallets allow you to specify which unspent TX outputs you use. So if you got tainted coin sent to your address, you could avoid using that UTXO in future TXs. That might protect you from some scrutiny.
  • gst 5y ago
    That would work. But then there's also the question if the received transaction counts as taxable income in the jurisdiction of the receiver. If that's the case and if they received a very significant amount they would be forced to sell some of the coins so that they can pay the tax for them.
  • thinkmassive 5y ago
    > a number of wallets allow you to specify which unspent TX outputs you use. Yep, this is referred to as “coin control”
• csomar 5y ago
  Unlike Ethereum, Bitcoin addresses are just a hash of a public key. The sent Bitcoins are unspent outputs that you can selectively (depends on the wallet) decide not to use.
• noxer 5y ago
  Not an answer to your question but BTC does not really have wallets. Someone just signs a number of BTCs with his private key and your public key so the only way to sign it again is with your private key. This is essentially how it "moves" to "someone". Some other DTLs (blockchains) actually have wallets/accounts with properties where you can disable incoming funds/add a name/change the password and such stuff.
• spinny 5y ago
  what is tracked is outputs and inputs, not addresses. addresses are derived from a public key or a script. when a block is mined, an output is created, outputs can only be spent once. a bitcoin transaction is just a list of existing outputs (inputs) and new outputs to create (outputs). each output is created with a lock script, to spend the output you must provide the unlock script which normally contains at least a signature and a public key returning the output that corresponds to the unwanted transaction should do
  • thinkmassive 5y ago
    Would you pay the transaction fee from the returned funds, washing a fraction of it through mining? Or pay for it out of your own utxo, potentially leading to a griefing attack?