4 ms·

This might explain the unusual rise of BTC vs. USD. The thief might have just traded those dollars to bitcoins which makes them harder to trace.

by Smrchy 14y ago

muyuu 14y ago
This only happened today and the rally has been on for more than a week.
- ceejayoz 14y ago
  From the article: > The original hacker could have compromised the funds on May 11th or any day thereafter.
  - muyuu 14y ago
    Yep, but the transfer didn't happen until today. He might have had the passwords all along, that's a different thing. In May, the equivalent of some ~90K US$ were stolen. Today, 40K BTC + 40K US$ (amounting to ~350K at current valuation) were transferred out of Bitcoinica's MtGox account. Different issue and it definitely doesn't explain the recent rally.
  - bnr 14y ago
    But they were only cashed out from MtGox today. So he could have done it earlier, but only did it today. At least that's how I read it.
bnr 14y ago
Another possible explanation for the increasing rate is that someone is offering 7% interest on BTC: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0 If that offer is really enough to make the price rise, this might be exactly what this guy is speculating on.
- nullc 14y ago
  You mean 3372% interest— The 7% number is _per-week_.
  - gibybo 14y ago
    I'm not sure why anyone would believe him enough to send him money. Perhaps they don't understand how absurd that claimed interest rate is? :x
    - jonhendry 14y ago
      If the money were funding a payday loan shop, that's the kind of interest rate they charge to their customers. ie, take in money via Bitcoin, loan out dollars to poor people as payday loans at very high rapidly compounding interest rate, pay somewhat smaller interest rate to Bitcoin funders.
      - gibybo 14y ago
        I don't think payday loan shops are ever constrained by the amount of capital they can loan out, though. If they were, it would be trivial for them to borrow money at normal rates (say 10%) from a traditional bank and solve that problem. I'm sure they are much more constrained by the physical locations/marketing/accessibility of customers/etc and no money at 3000+%/year is going to help them solve those constraints.
    - makomk 14y ago
      I'm not sure either, but apparently the person running the scheme has a 32,000 BTC ($250k USD) wallet so I'm guessing a lot of people must've bought in enough to send him a lot of money: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91653.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91653.0
coinabul 14y ago
The rise is unrelated.

This might explain the unusual rise of BTC vs. USD. The thief might have just traded those dollars to bitcoins which makes them harder to trace.

by Smrchy 14y ago

This might explain the unusual rise of BTC vs. USD. The thief might have just traded those dollars to bitcoins which makes them harder to trace.

muyuu 14y ago

This only happened today and the rally has been on for more than a week.

ceejayoz 14y ago
From the article: > The original hacker could have compromised the funds on May 11th or any day thereafter.
- muyuu 14y ago
  Yep, but the transfer didn't happen until today. He might have had the passwords all along, that's a different thing. In May, the equivalent of some ~90K US$ were stolen. Today, 40K BTC + 40K US$ (amounting to ~350K at current valuation) were transferred out of Bitcoinica's MtGox account. Different issue and it definitely doesn't explain the recent rally.
- bnr 14y ago
  But they were only cashed out from MtGox today. So he could have done it earlier, but only did it today. At least that's how I read it.

bnr 14y ago

Another possible explanation for the increasing rate is that someone is offering 7% interest on BTC: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50822.0 If that offer is really enough to make the price rise, this might be exactly what this guy is speculating on.

nullc 14y ago
You mean 3372% interest— The 7% number is _per-week_.
- gibybo 14y ago
  I'm not sure why anyone would believe him enough to send him money. Perhaps they don't understand how absurd that claimed interest rate is? :x
  - jonhendry 14y ago
    If the money were funding a payday loan shop, that's the kind of interest rate they charge to their customers. ie, take in money via Bitcoin, loan out dollars to poor people as payday loans at very high rapidly compounding interest rate, pay somewhat smaller interest rate to Bitcoin funders.
    - gibybo 14y ago
      I don't think payday loan shops are ever constrained by the amount of capital they can loan out, though. If they were, it would be trivial for them to borrow money at normal rates (say 10%) from a traditional bank and solve that problem. I'm sure they are much more constrained by the physical locations/marketing/accessibility of customers/etc and no money at 3000+%/year is going to help them solve those constraints.
  - makomk 14y ago
    I'm not sure either, but apparently the person running the scheme has a 32,000 BTC ($250k USD) wallet so I'm guessing a lot of people must've bought in enough to send him a lot of money: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91653.0 https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=91653.0

coinabul 14y ago

The rise is unrelated.