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There are a couple of reasons. Living in San Francisco might have allowed him in hide in plain sight. Who is going to suspect a 20-somthing year old who lives

by aestra 13y ago

There are a couple of reasons. Living in San Francisco might have allowed him in hide in plain sight. Who is going to suspect a 20-somthing year old who lives in San Fran of running a multi million dollar drug business. He doesn't attract attention to himself, especially from his family and friends who are most likely to report any suspicious behavior of his to authorities. If he moved overseas and started buying mansions in cash, a red flag somewhere might have gone off. His family might start asking questions he didn't have the answers to. After all, the unabomber was only caught because of the suspicions of his sister in law and brother. He might have thought of himself as immune to being found out, so it didn't occur to him to move. He was content where he was, and just stayed. Getting caught didn't even come to mind, because he was so confident in himself. He obviously was confident.

powertower 13y ago
Having lots of Bitcoins means very little. You actually have to convert them to cash first. And that process becomes increasingly more difficult as you go from selling 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 BTC. At each step you lose more and more of your anonymity and safety... Because you can't open up a MtGox account and offer 10k BTC to then cash out anonymously, nor create a localbitcoins account and use meatspace for this large amount without possibly getting robbed or killed. Not to mention some of those transactions can be traced back via the chainblock after-the-fact, creating more problems for you as now the FEDs know it's SR related. And that even does not bring up the fact that large transactions can easily cause BTC prices to go down dramatically, since the majority of upticks are based on small transactions that are fraudulently gaming the system. I imagine DPR basically had little to no money and a lot of BitCoins he could not sell.
- cookiecaper 13y ago
  >Because you can't open up a MtGox account and offer 10k BTC to then cash out anonymously, nor create a localbitcoins account and use meatspace for this large amount without possibly getting robbed or killed. My guess would be that if he had this type of btc, he'd begin to work on establishing reliable, trustworthy in-person communicants to perform his big transfers. Perhaps another reason why SF was an important place for him to be. It'd also be intelligent to bring some muscle along to the transfer. >Not to mention some of those transactions can be traced back via the chainblock after-the-fact, creating more problems for you as now the FEDs know it's SR related. Obviously, all bitcoins obtained from this type of activity should automatically go through a thorough, trustworthy mixer, perhaps even one that the btc owner wrote himself.

by aestra 13y ago

powertower 13y ago

Having lots of Bitcoins means very little. You actually have to convert them to cash first. And that process becomes increasingly more difficult as you go from selling 1 to 10 to 100 to 1000 BTC. At each step you lose more and more of your anonymity and safety... Because you can't open up a MtGox account and offer 10k BTC to then cash out anonymously, nor create a localbitcoins account and use meatspace for this large amount without possibly getting robbed or killed. Not to mention some of those transactions can be traced back via the chainblock after-the-fact, creating more problems for you as now the FEDs know it's SR related. And that even does not bring up the fact that large transactions can easily cause BTC prices to go down dramatically, since the majority of upticks are based on small transactions that are fraudulently gaming the system. I imagine DPR basically had little to no money and a lot of BitCoins he could not sell.

cookiecaper 13y ago
>Because you can't open up a MtGox account and offer 10k BTC to then cash out anonymously, nor create a localbitcoins account and use meatspace for this large amount without possibly getting robbed or killed. My guess would be that if he had this type of btc, he'd begin to work on establishing reliable, trustworthy in-person communicants to perform his big transfers. Perhaps another reason why SF was an important place for him to be. It'd also be intelligent to bring some muscle along to the transfer. >Not to mention some of those transactions can be traced back via the chainblock after-the-fact, creating more problems for you as now the FEDs know it's SR related. Obviously, all bitcoins obtained from this type of activity should automatically go through a thorough, trustworthy mixer, perhaps even one that the btc owner wrote himself.