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How do you think they traced Ross Ulbricht? You do actual detective work to figure out who did the transactions and then you can work backwards to who the coins
by zitterbewegung 5y ago
How do you think they traced Ross Ulbricht? You do actual detective work to figure out who did the transactions and then you can work backwards to who the coins belong to.
Same with MT.Gox the stolen bitcoin is being given to the people who had the original accounts.
Bitcoin is largely anonymous not because of its encryption but basically security to obscurity because that since every transaction is on one central ledger.
- endisneigh 5y agoWith Ross, he didn't steal private keys, did he? And with Mt.Gox it was only possible due to it involving a centralized entity, which is my point to begin with.
- zitterbewegung 5y agoYes but Ross had really poor operational security. He reused identities across stack overflow. If you want to prove that someone had a private key stolen and had poor operational security what this hypothetical person could do is as follows. 1. Takes the private key of the person in question. 2. Immediately sends an email to a fence or just sends the BTC to an exchange. 3. Takes the money. In a court case you could claim the following: The user that got their private keys stolen has record of a file containing a private key that they own which is older than the other user and has done at least one purchase with it. If the person who stole your private key has transactions that aren't older than the original owner that's how you could argue the case.