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Great idea to have your bank balance on a ledger that's publicly available. Another home run from the crypto lads.

by mvdtnz 2y ago

akimbostrawman 2y ago
BTC isn't all of crypto
Etheryte 2y ago
While it's very hip to make fun of crypto bros, this isn't unique to crypto. You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU for example, since business registries are open (who owns how much of what company) as well as yearly financial statements (how much are the company's assets worth in a fiscal year). This isn't unique to the EU, it's simply the market I'm personally more familiar with, but I hope you see my point. What makes crypto unique in this setting is that it's easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact.
- hibikir 2y ago
  It's not just about receiving the ransom, but how easy it can be to access the original funds. The story of, say, someone successfully kidnapping Bezos in a lightning operation and trying to take a good bite of his wealth is quite different than the same if you kidnapped Satoshi while he has access to his keys. It's not even in the tracing, but how much you can take away successfully, and how fast.
  - miohtama 2y ago
    It's about ransom, not about keys. Fortune 500 company CEOs and such have a special insurance for the cases like this. There is an old movie Proof of Life about the topic.
  - cbsmith 2y ago
    It'd be trivial for Bezos to take out a loan for a ransom to buy crypto in a new account, and then transfer it to another crypto account.
    - shkkmo 2y ago
      While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? The larger the loan Bezos takes, the harder that will be. The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.
      - echoangle 2y ago
        > While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? I’m assuming it wouldn’t be Bezos himself doing it. You would contact his employees and tell them to get you the crypto if they want him back.
        shkkmo 2y ago
        Which assumes those staff doesn't have instructions on how to handle such a situation.
        echoangle 2y ago
        Why? Would the instructions be different from „do what the kidnappers say and get the money back from the insurance“?
        shkkmo 2y ago
        Absolutely.
        echoangle 2y ago
        So what would the instructions be typically?
      - cbsmith 2y ago
        > The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation. Yes. That's the point, the ideal target is one that doesn't have contingency plans, not someone who has crypto.
- lottin 2y ago
  > You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU I don't see how. Unless you're talking about a people who owns a significant percentage of a publicly-traded company, but that's most certainly not "any company owner". Probably less than 1% of the population.
  - Etheryte 2y ago
    The entries in EU business registries are public for all companies, not just publicly traded companies. You can check who owns how much of what company and you can also check their yearly reports. In most countries this comes at a small fee for the registry extract, but the information is readily available, in some countries it's even free. As an example, here's the Estonian business registry extract for the company Foobar OÜ (I'm not affiliated, I just searched for foobar) [0]. This is not a publicly traded company, yet you can see who owns the company in what fraction and if you download the latest annual report you can also see how much the company is worth. This information is legally required to be available to prevent money laundering, fraud, other financial crimes, etc. [0] https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/12199449/Foobar-O%C3%9C https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/12199449/Foobar-O%C3%...
    - miohtama 2y ago
      Business registries are no longer open, as there was a court case in Luxenbourg where one of Putin's fixers lobbied to get his private information closed. Ultimate Beneficiar Ownership information can be only accessed by authorities.
      - Etheryte 2y ago
        Well, I don't know about you, but I can see the beneficiaries in the above example just fine, and last I checked I was not part of an authority.
        MichaelZuo 2y ago
        When I search for ‘Toyota’, none of the results list the ultimate beneficiary owners. e.g. ‘ Toyota Baltic Aktsiaselts (10234087)’ lists 1 senior manager under ‘Beneficial owners’… which is clearly nonsense. He probably doesn’t even own 50% of the intermediary company registered in Estonia… let alone 100%. Edit: And ‘SIA Toyota Material Handling Baltic Eesti filiaal (11629379)’ doesn’t list anyone at all in that section.
- Aerroon 2y ago
  Apparently the tax returns in Norway for everyone are public information. I'm surprised this hasn't caused enough problems that we would hear about it in news articles.
  - NotLongNow 2y ago
    [flagged]
  - pavlov 2y ago
    It’s the same in Sweden and Finland. Turns out that in a functioning society, it’s not a big deal if someone knows how much money you made last year. Thieves and kidnappers are not lurking around every corner after all. Money and nudity are still the great taboos for Americans. These national obsessions must be closely guarded or some kind of calamity will consume the sinners who exposed their bodies and bank accounts.
    - Loughla 2y ago
      I think it's less about morals and more about social safety net? When you're at the bottom in a country that has decent safety nets for you isn't as bad as the US. And once you've done one crime, the rest get easier to justify, I would assume.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      In the US, compensation of top-earners of public companies (and non-profits) is public information in annual reports and, even if it weren't, you can pretty much assume a top exec of a large public company is fairly wealthy. "Average" people may not share their wealth in general (in part because they may not want friends and family to know they have a lot of money) but it's no secret that the CEO or SVP of a Fortune 500 company has a ton of money.
  - tokai 2y ago
    Maybe it has caused problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hagen_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hagen_(businessman)
  - deleted 2y ago
- dylan604 2y ago
  It's also common for wealthy companies to have KNR (kidnap and ransom) insurance policies for their key people. It's not unlike why some companies have policies where the key people are not allowed to travel together so an incident doesn't take them all out at once. Just another example of where crypto thinking they are hip/trendy for breaking the norms. Some lessons of bucking the traditional methods are gonna hurt more than others.
- xethos 2y ago
  > easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact This is actually less true than you assume (barring Monero). Crypto, and Bitcoin especially, is less (less, though not yet completely) of a Wild West due to Western nations enforcing KYC laws. Through this, addresses can be traced back to real people. Further chain analysis (Chainalysis is the name I'm most familiar with) allows investigators to follow the money through an immutible chain stretching back to 2008. In short, Bitcoin is not private. It is arguably one of the least private ways to transact, considering the Blockchain will show the history of every wallet, and where every Sat started and ended. Unless you take enormous precautions, it can be traced back to you. Whether the feds can get to you is another story, but one as old as time.
IncreasePosts 2y ago
The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Just knowing he's CEO of a crypto company means he probably has a lot of crypto.
- meowster 2y ago
  > The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Yes it is tied to you, when you spend it.
  - djbusby 2y ago
    Tornados.
  - IncreasePosts 2y ago
    Tied to you at your exchange - but publicly? Unless the argument is that hackers have infiltrated all the major exchanges
    - meowster 2y ago
      So now people have to trust complete strangers that work at the exchanges that they will never leak, tip-off, etc?
      - IncreasePosts 2y ago
        No, but there is a pretty small set of people who can access the information. It's not like anyone with a grudge can link a Bitcoin address to a real life person.
        meowster 2y ago
        > The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Or > there is a pretty small set of people who can access the information. Which one is it?

Great idea to have your bank balance on a ledger that's publicly available. Another home run from the crypto lads.

by mvdtnz 2y ago

Great idea to have your bank balance on a ledger that's publicly available. Another home run from the crypto lads.

akimbostrawman 2y ago

BTC isn't all of crypto

Etheryte 2y ago

While it's very hip to make fun of crypto bros, this isn't unique to crypto. You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU for example, since business registries are open (who owns how much of what company) as well as yearly financial statements (how much are the company's assets worth in a fiscal year). This isn't unique to the EU, it's simply the market I'm personally more familiar with, but I hope you see my point. What makes crypto unique in this setting is that it's easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact.

hibikir 2y ago
It's not just about receiving the ransom, but how easy it can be to access the original funds. The story of, say, someone successfully kidnapping Bezos in a lightning operation and trying to take a good bite of his wealth is quite different than the same if you kidnapped Satoshi while he has access to his keys. It's not even in the tracing, but how much you can take away successfully, and how fast.
- miohtama 2y ago
  It's about ransom, not about keys. Fortune 500 company CEOs and such have a special insurance for the cases like this. There is an old movie Proof of Life about the topic.
- cbsmith 2y ago
  It'd be trivial for Bezos to take out a loan for a ransom to buy crypto in a new account, and then transfer it to another crypto account.
  - shkkmo 2y ago
    While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? The larger the loan Bezos takes, the harder that will be. The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation.
    - echoangle 2y ago
      > While being held captive and done in a way that doesn't give away the location of the kidnappers? I’m assuming it wouldn’t be Bezos himself doing it. You would contact his employees and tell them to get you the crypto if they want him back.
      - shkkmo 2y ago
        Which assumes those staff doesn't have instructions on how to handle such a situation.
        echoangle 2y ago
        Why? Would the instructions be different from „do what the kidnappers say and get the money back from the insurance“?
        shkkmo 2y ago
        Absolutely.
        echoangle 2y ago
        So what would the instructions be typically?
    - cbsmith 2y ago
      > The extremely wealthy like Bezos have contingency plans and systems for this situation. Yes. That's the point, the ideal target is one that doesn't have contingency plans, not someone who has crypto.
lottin 2y ago
> You can easily approximate the net wealth of any company owner in the EU I don't see how. Unless you're talking about a people who owns a significant percentage of a publicly-traded company, but that's most certainly not "any company owner". Probably less than 1% of the population.
- Etheryte 2y ago
  The entries in EU business registries are public for all companies, not just publicly traded companies. You can check who owns how much of what company and you can also check their yearly reports. In most countries this comes at a small fee for the registry extract, but the information is readily available, in some countries it's even free. As an example, here's the Estonian business registry extract for the company Foobar OÜ (I'm not affiliated, I just searched for foobar) [0]. This is not a publicly traded company, yet you can see who owns the company in what fraction and if you download the latest annual report you can also see how much the company is worth. This information is legally required to be available to prevent money laundering, fraud, other financial crimes, etc. [0] https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/12199449/Foobar-O%C3%9C https://ariregister.rik.ee/eng/company/12199449/Foobar-O%C3%...
  - miohtama 2y ago
    Business registries are no longer open, as there was a court case in Luxenbourg where one of Putin's fixers lobbied to get his private information closed. Ultimate Beneficiar Ownership information can be only accessed by authorities.
    - Etheryte 2y ago
      Well, I don't know about you, but I can see the beneficiaries in the above example just fine, and last I checked I was not part of an authority.
      - MichaelZuo 2y ago
        When I search for ‘Toyota’, none of the results list the ultimate beneficiary owners. e.g. ‘ Toyota Baltic Aktsiaselts (10234087)’ lists 1 senior manager under ‘Beneficial owners’… which is clearly nonsense. He probably doesn’t even own 50% of the intermediary company registered in Estonia… let alone 100%. Edit: And ‘SIA Toyota Material Handling Baltic Eesti filiaal (11629379)’ doesn’t list anyone at all in that section.
Aerroon 2y ago
Apparently the tax returns in Norway for everyone are public information. I'm surprised this hasn't caused enough problems that we would hear about it in news articles.
- NotLongNow 2y ago
  [flagged]
- pavlov 2y ago
  It’s the same in Sweden and Finland. Turns out that in a functioning society, it’s not a big deal if someone knows how much money you made last year. Thieves and kidnappers are not lurking around every corner after all. Money and nudity are still the great taboos for Americans. These national obsessions must be closely guarded or some kind of calamity will consume the sinners who exposed their bodies and bank accounts.
  - Loughla 2y ago
    I think it's less about morals and more about social safety net? When you're at the bottom in a country that has decent safety nets for you isn't as bad as the US. And once you've done one crime, the rest get easier to justify, I would assume.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    In the US, compensation of top-earners of public companies (and non-profits) is public information in annual reports and, even if it weren't, you can pretty much assume a top exec of a large public company is fairly wealthy. "Average" people may not share their wealth in general (in part because they may not want friends and family to know they have a lot of money) but it's no secret that the CEO or SVP of a Fortune 500 company has a ton of money.
- tokai 2y ago
  Maybe it has caused problems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hagen_(businessman) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Hagen_(businessman)
- deleted 2y ago
dylan604 2y ago
It's also common for wealthy companies to have KNR (kidnap and ransom) insurance policies for their key people. It's not unlike why some companies have policies where the key people are not allowed to travel together so an incident doesn't take them all out at once. Just another example of where crypto thinking they are hip/trendy for breaking the norms. Some lessons of bucking the traditional methods are gonna hurt more than others.
xethos 2y ago
> easy for the kidnappers to receive ransom in a way that's very hard to trace back to them after the fact This is actually less true than you assume (barring Monero). Crypto, and Bitcoin especially, is less (less, though not yet completely) of a Wild West due to Western nations enforcing KYC laws. Through this, addresses can be traced back to real people. Further chain analysis (Chainalysis is the name I'm most familiar with) allows investigators to follow the money through an immutible chain stretching back to 2008. In short, Bitcoin is not private. It is arguably one of the least private ways to transact, considering the Blockchain will show the history of every wallet, and where every Sat started and ended. Unless you take enormous precautions, it can be traced back to you. Whether the feds can get to you is another story, but one as old as time.

IncreasePosts 2y ago

The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Just knowing he's CEO of a crypto company means he probably has a lot of crypto.

meowster 2y ago
> The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Yes it is tied to you, when you spend it.
- djbusby 2y ago
  Tornados.
- IncreasePosts 2y ago
  Tied to you at your exchange - but publicly? Unless the argument is that hackers have infiltrated all the major exchanges
  - meowster 2y ago
    So now people have to trust complete strangers that work at the exchanges that they will never leak, tip-off, etc?
    - IncreasePosts 2y ago
      No, but there is a pretty small set of people who can access the information. It's not like anyone with a grudge can link a Bitcoin address to a real life person.
      - meowster 2y ago
        > The address isn't tied to you, so how would anyone figure it out? Or > there is a pretty small set of people who can access the information. Which one is it?