US prosecutors move to cash in on $8.5M in seized Bitcoin

https://www.apnews.com/3f8db32f3762431ea28fbf50b82ff2cd

by prostoalex • 9 years ago

37 35 9 years ago

apnews.com

joering2• 9 years ago

He plead not guilty and they already selling his forfeiture? Shame on them!!

wmf• 9 years ago

If he wins I guess he can get the $8.5M.

laurencei• 9 years ago

What happens if the value of BTC goes up or down though during that time though? What will he be entitled to?

pwaai• 9 years ago

With the recent series of news on bitcoin, it seems like the media and gov is increasingly painting a picture of Bitcoin as a thing for selling drugs, people and terrorism. Bitcoin maximalists will cry victim but it's no use, everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it. Why would you with the ridiculous security, transaction costs and slow speed?

Knowing that anything that was remotely used to aid terrorism in the past has resulted in the hammer flying down as they did with LibertyReserve.

https://www.reuters.com/article/net-us-cybercrime-libertyres...

You don't even need to have terrorism, after 9/11, money laundering has only one purpose in the official's minds.

I think if you are operating a cryptoexchange, blatantly breaking the rules thinking oceans will protect you is a critical mistake, one which never seems to deter people from being thugs.

adamnemecek• 9 years ago

With the recent series of news on bitcoin, it seems like the media and gov is increasingly painting a picture of Bitcoin as a thing for selling drugs, people and terrorism.

It's been like this since...2011? 2012?

candiodari2• 9 years ago

But the issue with that is that, especially for drugs (legal and otherwise) the government has been a profoundly NEGATIVE influence over the market, and bitcoin allows and end-run around that because it doesn't control the organisation that is bitcoin (because it is an algorithm), and the government doesn't actually control shipping (because that would destroy globalism due to the increase in costs that would bring)

For illegal drugs, the government is a negative influence because of their propensity to cause massive actual harm to supposedly "correct" small problems (e.g. an addict's third strike resulting in forcing them into a life of crime).

For legal drugs, the government is enforcing the pricing power, and even the price differentiating power (same exact product, different pricing in US vs CA or EU or India, or ...), of the pharma industry, even in cases where it's ludicrous (which is mostly the US being 10x as expensive as somewhere else).

Funny how the government is always in favor of globalism, except where it would actually benefit the lower and middle classes. Having the ability to ship medicine across borders ... there is no more clear-cut case of globalism helping people. Yet the government is fighting hard to make it impossible in that case.

In the case where it's destroying the middle and lower classes, steel imports for example, or subsidized solar panels, the government is fighting to make it continue, and protecting foreign companies and people from the consequences of their cheating (e.g. government intervention preventing Chinese firms from getting sued for fraud after falsifying steel products, essentially selling low grade steel as high grade steel, even in cases where it compromises personal safety. Apparently now the same thing is happening with Japanese firms).

mrb3• 9 years ago

«everybody is HODLing, nobody is buying pizzas or taxi with it. »

Every single Bitcoin submission, an HN user like you will say this. But it's not true. Payments in bitcoins are sharply increasing. BitPay alone saw their payments volume grow by 328% yearly: https://blog.bitpay.com/bitpay-growth-2017/

EduardoBautista• 9 years ago

Payments with bitcoin are too expensive to be practical. Hell, with credit card perks, credit card companies pay YOU to use their payment method. Crypto is the other way around.

mitchellberry• 9 years ago

The most funniest part of this oft-repeated argument is that currently bitcoin blocks are full, the mempool of pending transactions is at record highs and people are happily outbidding each other in fees.

Though apparently no one is using it if you listen to the internet.

There's a massive dichotomy between the cryptographically provable transactions and commentary. Someone is obviously using bitcoin. It's at max capacity.

ouid• 9 years ago

the argument that everyone is holding falls apart against the evidence that transaction fees are nearly 30 dollars. transaction fees are high because bitcoins are exchanging hands faster than the miners can process them.

gozur883• 9 years ago

In the end, governments can not tolerate widespread use of cryptocurrencies. They benefit too much from the ability to print money in sovereign currencies to lose control. They will use whatever excuse sticks - child porn, money laundering, aiding terrorism... whatever gets the public on board with new restrictions.

I believe that's why we've seen article after article lately about all the horrible people using bitcoins, plus scare stories about bubbles and how You'll Lose All Your Money. Concrete legal steps are on the way.

speedplane3• 9 years ago

The governments have not yet fully cracked down, but they have tested the waters with a variety of methods. The fact that they have lost over and over again further increases the bitcoin value.

If a government were to really try to shut it down, there would be an immediate drop in crypto-currency value, but if the government was ultimately unsuccessful, the value would rocket up to even higher levels.

Every bitcoin "investor"/gambler makes these tradoffs.

grkvlt2• 9 years ago

if being long on BTC is actually being seriously described as 'HODLing' then it's no wonder many banking and finance people find it hard to take seriously.

ringaroundthetx2• 9 years ago

I like how the dirty coins are now magically clean, thanks for washing it for us, marshalls!

best bitcoin next to the ones that come straight from miners

speedplane3• 9 years ago

Not a ridiculous point. I wonder if certain bitcoins could eventually be worth more than others simply because the chain of custody has gone through an official source.

ringaroundthetx2• 9 years ago

US Marshalls should just set up a mixer

In goes tainted coins, out comes cleam coins

tinus_hn• 9 years ago

Bitcoins don’t actually exist as separate entities, all that exists is a record of who transferred what amount to who.

symlinkk• 9 years ago

this is why Monero interests me: without a full transaction history on the block chain, there’s no such thing as “tainted” coins anymore

hjjiehebebe• 9 years ago

Some more money for the war on drugs. Perhaps they'll win that war some day.

US prosecutors move to cash in on $8.5M in seized Bitcoin

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