Men hand over Bitcoins worth two billion euros to German federal police | Hacker News Reader

Men hand over Bitcoins worth two billion euros to German federal police

spiegel.de

90 pointsdoener99 comments

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Translation: https://www-spiegel-de.translate.goog/netzwelt/web/movie2k-t...

Thanks!

https://archive.vn/nXxs3

That’s one confusing URL.

Sometimes it really looks like big tech companies are trying to impersonate scammers.

Reading on a new device I haven’t set up yet: man, that is one seriously obnoxious cookie rejection workflow. I’ll read about it somewhere else.

seriously! nested menus on nested menus! There must be literally thousands of third party vendors. Good heavens... I'm pretty sure GDPR explicitly specified it should be as easy to reject consent as give it, and it must be in a reject-by-default state. Sad that courts seem to not feel like enforcing the law at all.

They managed to force Google into offering a friendly "reject all", so I doubt others will be able to keep up their dark pattern shenanigans much longer.

The current evasion trend seems to be offering the "choice" between an outrageously expensive subscription and "free with tracking". That tactic needs to be legally challenged still, I think. I doubt it's legal, as there is no real option not to be tracked.

They have every right to paywall their stuff completely, but then I don't want their click-bait content teased in my feeds or search results, ever.

If you have a plugin that lets your turn off JS per website then that works 99% of the time. It's a nuisance and often unnecessary when you're reading what is essentially just text.

It's also very much illegal. First, there's no way to actually opt-out of tracking, which is a complete disregard of GDPR basics, since almost all tracking options, including highly invasive options, are marked as mandatory. Secondly, the law requires that opting-out is as easy as opt-ing in -- since you can opt-in with one click you are also legally required to be able to opt-out with one click.

Filing a report with the German data protection authority.

No, they're in the clear. There is a very easy way to opt-out: you need to pay for a subscription to Spiegel. It's on the first page of their cookie dialog, you "just" have to log in. And give them your credit card number, if you haven't done so already.

The GDPR explicitly allows for this. Practically all of the old-school EU news orgs work like that nowadays.

The GDPR does not allow for paying to opt-out.

>First, there's no way to actually opt-out of tracking

You can just close the tab. You are not entitled to a website's contents.

"Accept all tracking we throw at you or close the tab" is not a viable GDPR compliance strategy.

This is not consistent with the law.

I think, you just killed a journalist or something :/

You see, tracking your every behavior for targeted advertisement is really important for producing articles from copy-pasted dpa releases, Reddit sourced reports, and AI written rage-bait - a valuable and vital force in your very democracy. In face of such great responsibility, bending the laws a bit to gain your consent regardless of willingness, is of course morally mandated.

XOXO The Fourth Estate

I ticked every rejection box I could tick, and still somehow managed to press a poorly — or rather very smartly — positioned button to accept all cookies. Only to find out that the article was in German, because I couldn’t even see it in the first place due to a full-screen cookie banner /shrug/

The German police will presumably sell the coins for euros because authorities don’t like to hold volatile exotic instruments any longer than they have to.

I wonder if two billion euros worth of Bitcoin is enough to move the market. Most of the trading volume is in other crypto like stablecoins. Finding buyers worth two billions in actual cash may be harder.

They will probably auction it away

If they were smart they would keep them, but Western governments are rarely smart about this.

They should be able to find buyers at OTC desks and ETFs without affecting the market too much.

What exactly would be smart about holding this?

They'd have access to an asset that's highly valued, finite, and has the properties to serve as a future international reserve currency. It's a hell of a geopolitical "poker chip" to have fall in your lap.

It’s a deflationary currency. No one is incentivized to spend it.

If the value of the reserve money is $2b one year and it deflates to $3b the next, does that mean you can print more fiat every year? Sounds like an attractive proposition to me

If you got the money with zero energy expenditure, you don't care what the current fiat market value is. It's like finding a free lunch sack of cash on a park bench.

You could argue that there's an opportunity cost to letting the money stay parked, but because governments ultimately dictate the value of their own currency, that point is moot.

Deflation doesn't mean there's no incentive to spend. It means there's a slight relative reduction in the incentive to spend. You can argue that it's still bad, but it's a very different thing.

Yes, one day in the future we will find a use for bitcoin finally. It has been 15 years and we still don't have a really great use case for it but it will happen.

There are plenty of use cases for Bitcoin, this is just FUD.

Yes, the Gouvernement could use this „money“ directly to pay it‘s bills. Oh wait, it can‘t…

Sure there are plenty of use cases but no real significant traction for the everyday consumer. Price fluctuation is wild, would hate to have this has a "currency" that I hold to pay the bills. Even ignoring the volitility, the transaction costs historically have been high enough that it is not attractive from the consumer lens. Not FUD.

It's not a unique opportunity in any way, if the German government somehow decided that it would be awesome to hold $2B or $20B of BTC, they can simply buy it at any time.

Right now. As the supply dwindles, the ability to supply that demand will decrease dramatically. If you got it for free in a seizure, there's zero downside to just hold it and forget it until later (when, ironically, the government sends your own fiat currency into a hyper-inflation event).

The government can simply print real money any time they want (or lean on the European Central Bank in the case of Germany). Why would they want to hold a useless tchotchke instead?

Printing money doesn't increase the amount of money in real terms.

Yes, it does. Because then there is more money.

Economics 101 might be a good idea before engaging in economics discussions.

Because that "useless tchotchke" is going to be a life preserver for their government when the boat they've been shotgunning holes into the side of (their own currency) for 60 years finally sinks.

Why would they keep them? That’s holding on to currency risk for a potential price increase.

The government isn’t used to or wants to hold that kind of assets.

Some of the largest holders of Bitcoin are US and Chinese governments, due to confiscations. The government is not in a rush to sell.

First this is just a hold. They can't do much with it at the moment till court proceedings are over.

If there are fines which go to the state the state is not supposed to speculate, but spend it on investments, repay debt or whatever the state else needs.

for large transactions you'd do OTC sale (over-the-counter) where you handover the whole amount to a 3rd party

this 3rd party then offloads the sale on their own timeline

Transactions that aren't on an exchange still affect the market.

If it shows any risk to the price of Bitcoin, Tether will just print tokens out of thin air to buy them. As is tradition

Of all the things to see the Tether people indicted for on HN,

it's increasing the price of Bitcoin?!

Is that a surprise to you?

https://blog.dshr.org/2024/01/good-news-for-tether.html?m=1

Well, yeah. It is a surprise to me.

They're linked up heavy with dirtbag fraudsters, and pedophiles.

Seems worth mentioning.

And yet you didn’t

...I just did.

Please stop only posting hot takes and "gotchas" here. Be more substantive.

These conspiracy theories have been around for years, it's not new.

I have no idea if they are true or not, but certainly the people that believe them do not have evidence.

Tethers already been fined for misleading people by saying their coins are 1-1 backed by USD. That’s evidence

Please provide one reason to believe that USDT is actually 1-for-1 backed by USD. Because they say so?

Tether is the crypto version of a wildcat bank. It's totally unaudited, it's owned and operated by a former plastic surgeon and others with limited experience in finance, and it's been heavily fined by the state of New York for its shenanigans. It's only a matter of time before they implode like 3AC, Celsius, FTX, Signature, etc. etc.

Tether's business is very profitable right now because they don't have to pay interest. They can park all the money people hand to them in exchange for tether in T-bills and earn 5%. Meanwhile the people holding the tether get nothing. Basically, they are a bank that pays no interest on deposits.

Who'll be buyer for 2B worth of tether?

No one. But they don’t need a buyer to create Tether coins.

But if they want to buy Bitcoin with them there needs to be someone on the other side of the transaction.

The users of USDT are fine with this scheme (at least, they've been so far)

Which is fine, as long as the Tethers aren’t turned into real money their value isn’t realised. They stay in the system and the charade goes on

It could be pretty much the Germany police, directly or indirectly, since Tether proposes non volatile "currency" easily convertible with Bitcoin.

But the German police wants real money not Tether. There needs to be someone to offer it or BTC/USD will collapse.

The exchanges and crypto trading firms take billions of Tether in the form of bitcoin-collateralized loans [1].

Alex Mashinsky, former CEO of the now-defunct Celsius Network, described how it works [2]:

“If you give them enough collateral, liquid collateral, bitcoin, ethereum and so on ... they will mint tether against it,” he said.

“New USDT is issued for such loans,” he added, and later destroyed when the loan is closed “so it does not permanently increase USDT in circulation”.

If true, this contradicts Tether's claims that it only mints USDT in exchange for USD-backed treasuries.

[1] https://www.dirtybubblemedia.com/p/examining-tethers-secret-...

[2] https://www.ft.com/content/0035016c-29ad-4e6f-9163-2a17df490...

I think I read long ago that it takes almost 7% liquid market cap to trigger a major movement. Current market cap $800b, so if true then no, 2b wouldn't be enough.

I might be pulling 7% out of thin air though, it's been a long time since I was reading about crypto market manipulation.

The way large trades are done is you structure periodic block trades representing a small fraction of the volume in that time period. As an example you would sell 10% of the daily volume every day until you finish liquidating your assets.

Grayscale ETF has been selling $5B over the last two weeks. While the Bitcoin price is volatile, it has not significantly dropped.

It's not always the case. US government is still holding more than 100000 Bitcoins from the 200k it seized.

It's a great way for governments to hold BTC without raising suspicion of ,,advocating for'' it.

There's zero messing around in Germany when it comes to copyrighted media sharing.

That was not about sharing. They offered a paid streaming service with content they didn't own.

They were the biggest German platform for years... and notorious for masked interviews in the media and other stunts.

Correction: they offered an ad-supported free streaming service

plot twist:

hollywood can only claim damages on loss of revenue where, as usual, they'd start with 100% of "streams" == purchase * price == lost revenue, and then probably work down to a more reasonable assumption

if they simply put all the money they got from the website into crypto, and years later it's worth 2B, it does not belong to Hollywood or even the german governemnt

ofc between hollywood and tax department taking their cut there's still plenty left

Isn't that basically what happened with mtgox? Karpeles ended up on the hook for a dollar amount far less than the (then current) value of the crypto lost.

> if they simply put all the money they got from the website into crypto, and years later it's worth 2B, it does not belong to Hollywood or even the german government

Really? After money laundering the state can't take away the laundered money?

I highly doubt that this is how it works.

It's not 2B that the german government gets. It is 50k bitcoin. If the price (value) of bitcoin has increased in the last few years, that's nice but does not really matter. The price could as easily have dropped.

If you reeplace bitcoin by "famous painting" or "lucery sports car" it might make more sense

> They are said to have purchased Bitcoins with the proceeds

Based on this, I'd assume the illegal proceeds are fiat currency based, hence they could sell the full bitcoin amount, return _all_ illegal profits, fines,etc and still have plenty left

Likewise, if they bought crypto/stocks/business but the valuation went down, they'd be liable to pay the "illegal proceeds" amount, not the value of the business which may have declined significantly in the meantime?

A shame that they didn't release his name. Because he is from my town, and I thought I know all the hackers here in person.

I was just thinking "2013 hmmm I used to go to all the CCC's then I wonder if we bumped shoulders" hehe

This happened 2013 and the guy is actually from Leipzig, not Dresden. And they weren't hackers by any means, at least I wouldn't expect them to show up at any meetup.

Anyways, his name is Dirk

I haven't seen this transfer in my radar. Anyone knows the tx hash ?

Giving somebody your wallet does not create a transfer on the chain

According to TFA they transfered it to a wallet:

> Einer der Männer habe die Bitcoins auf ein sogenanntes Wallet – also ein Konto für die Kryptowährung – des BKA übertragen.

Google Translate:

> One of the men transferred the Bitcoins to a so-called wallet - an account for the cryptocurrency - of the BKA

First, the article states that the Bitcoins were in fact transferred to a BKA wallet.

Second, giving someone your private keys does not constitute a transfer of bitcoins. It just expands the number of people able to spend the funds, while a real transfer make the former holder unable to spend the funds.

Imagine the new holder of the private key not immediately transferring to a new address where only they have the private key.

Law enforcement is probably gonna want to avoid the chance of that wallet being backed up somewhere else and suddenly showing up empty.

I dont understand it. With german law they shouldnt get more than 10 years in prison. Why not keep 2 billion?

Because the prison sentence does not free you from paying it back...

Because that's what their lawyers likely suggested them.

I wonder how much an operation with mercenaries and helicopters to get them out of Germany and the EU would cost.

There are still some countries without extradition and 2B should get you pretty far. Plus I don't think the police would have expected a deployment of this proportion for a warez website.

Personally I'd rather live in Germany or the EU after a short prison sentence than live in some shady third world country, always looking over my shoulder and trying to protect my wealth.

And I'd rather stay in a country that cannot extradite me to the USA.

It’d probably get you straight into the position where your 2B was immediately stolen from you.

It's 2B€ worth of bitcoin, not 2B€. So, for starters, they can't even buy one liter of gasoline with it. Everyone who will accept crypto and interacts with them has to be somehow trusted not to take all those coins away... because 2B€ worth of bitcoin may warrant quite an operation to get those.

I doubt they would have given away the keys, if bitcoin was in fact useful. Because actual billionaires indeed don't play by rules of the common pleb.

Thinking of billionaires... they will have a similar dilemma at hand, giving orders inside their fancy end-of-times bunkers. I heard they consider shock collars :D

People accept crypto all the tine. I use it to pay for servers, donate to open source projects, etc. You can buy gift cards or Visa cards if you really want with it. For coins that are liquid you can sell billions of dollars of it.

> You can buy gift cards or Visa cards if you really want with it.

"You can use money laundering tactics to interact with the actual financial system, because the actual financial system doesn't want your crypto."

Wow that makes me feel bad about using crypto. /s. Oh well, I've worked on payment platforms. I do online purchases all the time. I know which one takes more time, has more rejections, requires me to give up more personal details, etc.

How is buying gift cards money laundering tactics? I don’t think either one of us will persuade the other so might as well end this here.

Gift cards are extensively used for money laundering and fraud. A quick search turns up endless articles and reports going back a decade or more.

I give and receive gift cards often enough, and no, no one is going to bat an eye if you're occasionally buying something with a gift card. If that's the primary way you interact with the financial system, I'm going to assume you're involved in some kind of crime and I've got a good chance at being right in that assumption.

> For coins that are liquid you can sell billions of dollars of it.

Yeah, when your finances are tightly monitored by law enforcement?

Hope those open source projects come to your aid, and good luck paying mercenaries in gift cards :D

You surely haven’t heard about what happened to Kim Dotcom in NZ.

English language article:

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-police-seize-bitcoins-worth-2-...

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