NY US Attorney: $28M in bitcoins seized | Hacker News Reader

NY US Attorney: $28M in bitcoins seized

sfgate.com

12 pointsaasarava8 comments

I got curious about what they'll do with the seized bitcoins, and http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-... covers it: "I asked the FBI spokesperson what the plan is for those cryptocoins. “We will download the Bitcoin and store them,” she said. “We will hold them until the judicial process is over.” Then what? “This is kind of new to us,” she said. “We will probably just liquidate them.”" That sounds like it'll be an interesting day.

This is also great, from that article: "Reddit has located what looks to be the FBI’s Bitcoin wallet...Now members of Reddit are starting to use the wallet as an email address, sending it tiny amounts of Bitcoins along with public messages, which can be read here (http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GN...)." It's been colonized by spammers now.

I'm surprised how large some of the transactions are on that list. 134 Bitcoins just dumped into the government's pocket in one transaction? Am I reading that right?

Is there a way, given consensus among the bitcoin community, to mark these coins as "bad" and effectively destroy their value?

Technically, yes. However it's very unlikely because the consensus does not want to go down the slippery slope of politics.

Coca-cola as done a lot to destroy its value, yet it continues to be one of the world's most valuable brands. Humanity has established a pattern of irrationally flocking to proven flawed systems and insisting on their perfection.

There's been chatter from the lead developers about tagging coins as tainted. Not so much over these coins as for coins that for certainly stolen.

It's something that really would have to be done in the client, and for it to work everyone would have to agree to use the "official" client (or code derived from the official client).

My suspicion is that it would actually make client fragmentation more likely as there would be a clear financial incentive to deviate from the standard.

Can't wait to hear all the bitcoin fanboys explain how this is in fact a good thing for bitcoin. :)

Less BTC in the wild, all other bitcoins value rise.

With Silkroad -> "Oh BTC is only used to buy drugs."

Silkroad shutdown -> "Oh I can't wait until fanboys can explain how this is a good thing for BTC."

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