FBI seizes over $27 million in bitcoins, likely from Silk Road suspect

Wiki in 5......4......3.....2.....

Clearly a lie. Wiki said this could never happen.

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Clearly a lie. Wiki said this could never happen.

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Welp...I knew this post was coming.

Let me explain again, for yet the 1000th time, what is met when people say that bitcoins cannot be seized.

I truly don't understand why y'all refuse to read and acknowledge the educational posts I make on bitcoin.

Bitcoins cannot be seized by an adversary if he/she/they do not posess an unencrypted version of your private key(s).

Properly protected private keys are safe from seizure.

That being said, others methods can be used to attempt to gain knowledge of a person's private keys, among them:

1. Negotiation: For example, the government might say to the accused: "Hey, we'll only give you 15 years in prison instead of 30 if you give us your private key(s)."

2. Rubber-hose cryptanalysis: The example above is technically a form of rubber-hose cryptanalysis, however, I wanted to highlight the potential use of torture to get a person to give up their private key(s).

3. Poor security practices: The accused could have written down their private key(s) and/or password(s) which could then be found in a search of the accused's residence.

4. Secret keylogger: An adversary could sneak into a person's residence and install a secret keylogger to obtain decryption key(s) and if the person is not paranoid enough to check for those things then they may fall victim to it.



Hopefully you all understand what is meant by bitcoins not being able to be seized. In fact, the funny thing about this story is that there are still approximately $22 million in bitcoin that is theorized to belong to DPR that hasn't been seized. So maybe it's possible that he gave them a large cache of bitcoins in exchange for a shorter sentence, and when he gets out he can go live the high life off of his stashed millions.

I don't get what is meant by hidden website?

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SR had an automatic built in mixing service. And I'm sure most vendors used independent mixing services as well. The taint on any coins used in SR transactions is probably long gone.

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You wrote this on October 3, 2013 in response to my claiming the authorities would be able to trace his transactions once they had a known point from which to start because the block chain records that information by necessity. The Feds can track Bitcoins to the owning wallet. They may not be able to open the wallet, but they can definitely determine which wallet holds Bitcoins and who uses those wallets over the internet.

I truly don't understand why you refuse to learn from the educational posts I make on Bitcoin.

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I truly don't understand why you refuse to learn from the educational posts I make on Bitcoin.

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Because every post you make is non-sense based on your complete misunderstanding of the technologies involved.

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You wrote this on October 3, 2013 in response to my claiming the authorities would be able to trace his transactions once they had a known point from which to start because the block chain records that information by necessity. The Feds can track Bitcoins to the owning wallet. They may not be able to open the wallet, but they can definitely determine which wallet holds Bitcoins and who uses those wallets over the internet.

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My comment that you quoted was regarding vendors on the SR. The issue in the OP is about the operator of the site.

Regardless, even if DPR used a mixer, if the dumbass didn't take the proper precautions and, for instance, stored his bitcoins in a bitcoin-qt encrypted wallet, then yes, upon seizure of that file, the government would be able to tell which bitcoins he controlled, even though they wouldn't be able to access them without his decryption key.


The main point to take away from all of this is that for a supposed mastermind, DPR was quite dumb. This is a guy that used a message board account associated with an email address that contained his real name to advertise his drug selling web site. It's clear that he did not take proper precautions.

I wouldn't flaunt this as a huge victory for the government over the qualities of bitcoin, because eventually a person that take the proper precautions is going to be in a position like this and the government will be hard pressed to prove anything.

For instance, things like "brain wallets" that allow a bitcoin user to easily store bitcoins in their mind without ever having to have a computer file that can be seized are quite common.

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So the creator of the system was a less secure user than other users of the system he created.

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He was careless.

However, vendors didn't have to identify themselves and they performed all communication with their customers via encrypted messages that DPR did not have access to. DPR was just a middle man allowing buyers and sellers to connect.

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Why can't you accept the fact that the very nature of authenticating Bitcoin ownership prevents untraceable transactions? If you could make a transaction untraceable you introduce the capability of conducting fraudulent transactions. How can you not understand that simple fact?

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Poodlebrain, you are literally the stupidest bitcoin hater on this site because you pretend like you actually know what you are talking about, whereas the rest of the haters just make snide remarks because they know the concept is too complex for their poodle brain's (puns intended) to understand.

First of all, severing taint between transactions is quite easy to do. For instance, a mixing service might have POOL_A and POOL_B. You send your money from ADDRESS_1 to POOL_A and they send you money from POOL_B to ADDRESS_2 (which you also own). So now, the "tainted" coins are sitting in POOL_A, while you control some non-tainted ones that were sent to you from POOL_B in a completely different bitcoin address. Someone else will eventually gets your original coins that were sent to POOL_A. That is a very simple example of how this works. They actually get more complex than that.

Beyond that, you are 100% wrong about "the very nature of authenticating Bitcoin ownership prevents untraceable transactions." As I've stated many times before, bitcoin is a basic protocol, like TCP/IP. And just like TCP/IP, other protocols can be added on top of it to enhance functionality. For instance, Zercoin is currently in development that will allow exactly what you claim is impossible.

How can you not understand that simple fact?

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Bitcoin is, in a lot of ways, less private than a bank account. With a bank, you only disclose your finances to the bank and their designees. With Bitcoin, you disclose it to the world since the block chain and all your transactions are public.

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The above quote is found here at the website you linked for Zerocoin. Game, set and match to Poodlebrain.

I don't care what wonder technology you can pile on top of Bitcoins going forward. The taint from past transactions has attached, and it is only a matter of time before the owners of the Bitcoins used in past transactions are traced. Now all they can do is try to go into hiding.

It is possible that future transactions may be conducted with less possibility of being traced with improved cryptography, but that will be small comfort to the people who bought the bullshite you have been spewing about Bitcoins in the past.

Just out of curiosity, how much have you contributed to help finance the Zerocoin project?