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Comment by np_tedious | Hacker News Reader

> ensured the man cannot access [his] largesse

How? Sounds like his address / public key is known but only he (if anyone) as the private key. What steps from an authority, besides an exogenous threat like being charged again is any balance moves, could they take?

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I think the explanation is simple: the person who wrote the article doesn't seem to understand how bitcoin works.

For all the police knows, the encrypted secret key could be backed up in a gazillion places (cloud, tape, paper wallet, hidden CD-ROM, USB key buried in garden, memorized 12 word seed, etc...).

For a properly prepared Bitcoin owner, there is no such thing as "preventing someone from accessing their Bitcoin" other than holding them in a jail cell with no internet access for the rest of their natural lives.

They will also monitor the wallet and the moment it's accessed in any way more indictments follow. The money officially belong to the authorities now so touching them is theft. He can't claim it was hacked, there's no reasonable way to hack a wallet, and if there was there are far more valuable wallets to target.

He'll also never be able to report it if he's ever robbed of that money.

Sure. It remains unclear that anything is preventing him from going to a different country without extradition once his sentence is completed and withdrawing the coins there.

Depends. He might be able to sell the keys to a third party (who those authorities have no access to), for a discount in say cash or something where the transaction isn’t logged, and then be obviously not touching it when transactions or moves occurs - perhaps in court talking to a judge, or something similar.

It’s hard to separate something like that from someone finding an old key/seed backup or the like, which I don’t think anyone would consider a proper prosecution.

There is also a plausible scenario like a gov’t or court appointee actually getting or cracking the password somehow and stealing it themselves, like what happened with a significant Bitcoin balance related to Silk Road that got seized and then stolen from under the gov’ts nose by a secret service agent.

Germany has recently passed a law which allows the government to seize property where the source of the money is not clear. This was done originally to prevent arabic clans from buying rental properties around the country, but I can imagine it applying to whatever money he's got from that sale as well.

Which would require finding it, or it being within a jurisdiction they control, etc.

With internet crime becoming more international, and increased globalism, I expect nations to collaborate more on these issues in the future.

I'm wondering if we're starting to see a shift towards more closed off/nationalized internet actually - with COVID, borders closing, fights over 'fake news' and how to do something about it (with approaches as varied as Poland, US, China, Australia), it seems like globalization is unravelling in a bunch of angry yelling between Governments.

> He might be able to sell the keys to a third party

He might but it would certainly be illegal. The keys are to a wallet he does not own legally anymore, it belongs to the authorities.

And selling the wallet might be difficult when every buyer could have made a deal with the authorities. His best bet is to go far from the reach of German authorities and hope nobody broadcasts his location and the fact that he has access to $60M that he can't report stolen.

My suspicion is that he was not properly prepared and only had that single copy of the key. Usually when police raids you they take all your physical storage media. IF he were properly prepared, he could just leave the country, and access the money from there. Maybe he doesn't do it because he fears the police take his backup away, no idea.

So most likely, both police and him are in a situation where collaboration by both is needed to get access to the bitcoins.

> My suspicion is that he was not properly prepared and only had that single copy of the key.

Which, if I was in his situation, is exactly what I would tell the police regardless of reality.

Depends. They could have erased his pc, and have access to an encrypted file, in the hope that he has no backups of the keys anywhere. Of course that wouldn't work with either basic precautions or "memory" or "paper" wallets.

TLDR: either the prosecutor is stupid, or they lie. I'm not sure which is worse.

>TLDR: either the prosecutor is stupid, or they lie. I'm not sure which is worse.

Or both.

Or they look at how often normal people actually back things up?

Or they got a court order (or whatever the term of art is) saying, effectively “memo to all banks: this person owes us XYZ in Bitcoin, he’s paying that back out of future bank balances”?

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