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So the unknown wallet was actually the DoJ taking control?

I was wondering what they wanted the courts to do.

I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?

It’s interesting to think about how to do this. It must be hard to keep an agent from recording the key, and using it 50 years later or something.

Theoretically as long as Bitcoin is around anyone who knows the private key can use those coins right? Is there a way to delete coins like a /dev/null address or something?

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From the link I dug out in the above comment

"According to an investigation conducted by the Criminal Investigation Division of the Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, Individual X was the individual who moved the cryptocurrency from Silk Road. According to the investigation, Individual X was able to hack into Silk Road and gain unauthorized and illegal access to Silk Road and thereby steal the illicit cryptocurrency from Silk Road and move it into wallets that Individual X controlled. According to the investigation, Ulbricht became aware of Individual X’s online identity and threatened Individual X for return of the cryptocurrency to Ulbricht. Individual X did not return the cryptocurrency but kept it and did not spend it. On November 3, 2020, Individual X signed a Consent and Agreement to Forfeiture with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Northern District of California. In that agreement, Individual X, consented to the forfeiture of the Defendant Property to the United States government. On November 3, 2020, the United States took custody of the Defendant Property from 1HQ3."

Sounds like they bought their way out of a prison sentence?

I wonder if any of the forfeiture got rebated back to them.

I wonder: could 'Individual X' be DEA agent Carl Force (previously sentenced to prison), Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges (previously sentenced to prison), or some other government agent or informant who had tried to enrich themselves via the investigation?

More about Force & Bridges: https://freeross.org/corruption/

Or perhaps Thomas Clark, who has his sentencing scheduled for December.

Any indication that Individual X was working for the government the whole time?

> Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?

Why on earth would they do that? Under US law, law enforcement agencies can keep a portion of the proceeds from the sale of any goods they legally seize. This is a massive windfall for them.

Oddly enough, in the case of other "Anonymity-Enhanced Cryptocurrencies" ("AECs"), the DoJ has taken the position that they'd rather not recirculate them. See <https://twitter.com/jerrybrito/status/1314254265251225600>, where it's reported:

> In most cases, the Department [of Justice] does not liquidate seized or forfeited AECs, as doing so allows them to re-enter the stream of commerce for potential future criminal use.

So note: if the DoJ auctions these off, it's "good for Bitcoin", as it provides further confirmation they consider them a normal form of property whose legal uses outweight any illegal uses.

On the other hand, if they refuse to auction them off, it's also "good for Bitcoin", as it permanently reduces the circulating supply, making all other units incrementally more dear.

I'm sorry - but - HUH?

> re-enter the stream of commerce for potential future criminal use.

Because of course if CASH re-enters the steam of commerce is somehow different?

I agree it's batty reasoning!

For example, what if we assume for a moment that this makes sense from a crime-fighting perspective. That is, the marginal value of future-crime prevented by withholding the cryptocurrency is greater than the value of the crime-fighting that could be financed if it were auctioned off.

If true, it would also follow that the DoJ should be buying cryptocurrency on the open market to keep it idle, at least until its price rises such that an equilibrium is reached, where "withhold-from-stream-of-commerce-value" and "spend-on-crime-fighting-value" become roughly equal.

Yeah, let's burn these bad coins, thus reducing the supply and raising the net worth of everyone who invested in them. That'll really teach people for using Monero!

Asset inflation is less useful for currency.

Though it's unclear still what Bitcoin's principle role is. If it's more an asset, then yes, destroying coins is a benefit to current holders.

Sounds like nice stash to fund Contras in some peaceful country.

In the past they have put it up for auction. [1]

You can send a transaction with a value and an output script of OP_RETURN (a bitcoin script instruction). These outputs are unspendable. [2]

[1] https://www.usmarshals.gov/assets/2020/febbitcoinauction/ [2] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/OP_RETURN

> I’m not sure after reading the article. Are they just planning on destroying the wallet key, kind of like if they just burned a billion in seized cash?

If you wanted to burn the coins you would send them to the zero address as coins in the zero address are guaranteed to never be spendable.

The simple way to do it is to send the btc to an address for which the private key is unknown, thereby making it impossible to spend. Watch them not do this.

How would you verify that the private key is unknown? I guess an auditable process in a black box to confirm the key is ever stored. But with $1B at stake, there’s some serious incentive to measure electrical output or something to snoop the key.

I guess you could send to a random address, but there’s an infinitesimal chance that someone in the future generates a key with that address, right?

This address has no known private key https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressD...

Sure someone could randomly guess it but not likely. You don't need to have or know a private key to generate a valid checksum bitcoin address that can be sent to.

I just created several trillion “disposal” sounding addresses and started sharing the one that I guessed a private key for. There’ll be some real surprises in 2025!

If you can generate the private key to a 27 character or longer English readable Bitcoin address then you can use the same magical technology you possess to earn far more than $1 billion USD.

Same question: Ok we may not be able to brute-force it today for less than $1bn, but tomorrow, may a vulnerability in the algorithm make it possible to regenerate the private key?

If there is ever such a vulnerability in bitcoin that allows you to either

- Generate private keys at a rate in which you will be able to produce it in a reasonable time

- Outright reverse engineer the private key from the public key or other metadata

Then Bitcoin is broken and that 1bn is worth next to nothing.

If someone discovers such a vulnerability and is able to cash out before it's publicized then they'll make a lot of money anyway.

They could also short Bitcoin before intentionally crashing it.

Keep in mind the receiving public key is not revealed when money is sent to an address, only its hash. So you'd have to "reverse" SHA256 first.

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