Bitcoin Forum

Hi.

I just want to know what exactly tainted coins are and how they become tainted. I've recently checked through blockchain and found that one address that I received payments from has 40% tainted coins and a couple more have 13% and 11%. Then the next addresses on the list are at 0.1% and lower.

Are tainted coins bad to be associated with and what happens to tainted coins?

usually tainted coins, are those coins that are seized by autorithy, and they were used for illicit things, i think there is no way to have those not tainted without a proper mixing, with some alt

I think they refer to this -> https://blockchain.info/taint/18xqsF4wSwLardNBZfWqfUqdZ645ZE6MpL

Not sure how it works in detail though, none of the >90% addresses are mine.

Tainted coins are evil, that's why I don't use dollars.  ;)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contaminated_currency

The taint simply means that if you trace the the transaction history of an address, then the balance of the address is made up of spends from those taint addresses.

This could be a better place for you to know about Tainted Coins:

http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-are-tainted-coins-exactly (http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/7966/what-are-tainted-coins-exactly)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56170.0 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56170.0)

let's imagine that I have tainted coins. Will it be possible to later have troubles because I used them? Since all bitcoin transaction history can be tracked, can it at some point be led to me?

Its easy to tell where the coins went in its whole life, the thing is, its very hard to prove that through all the loops, you were the one that was used for a X transaction that was proven to be a crime.

Its pretty much the same as real cash.

Your cash could have some cocaine residue on it, does it mean you were the one that did cocaine? No.

Despite the name's connotation, there is nothing bad about taint itself. It is just a measurement. "taint" is the portion of coins at one address that came from another address.

Ok, thanks for that everyone  ;)

Ok. Now I understant. It works pretty much like cash... most notes was already used to pay for dubious services or illegal items, but that doesn't mean that you were the one doing it.

Whoa people. There are no coins in Bitcoin, just numbers. A "tainted" coin means one of the accounts in your transaction DAG was of questionable legality. Given time, every account will become "tainted". The only interesting question is: What happens if a court orders a "tainted" transaction rolled back?

There is no way to roll back a transaction. Court needs to study more about bitcoin before they embarassed themselves with ordering it to be rolled back. Besides that, there is no need to rolled back a transaction if they are just going to investigate the sources as it could be easily checked on the transaction ID of where it comes from

No, it doesn't mean that at all.


The answer to your interesting question is that nothing happens. You can't roll back a transaction without controlling the block chain.

There are no coins. All Bitcoin is is a set of accounts and a series of transactions. You cannot taint something that does not exist.


You're assuming that the courts understand cryptos. They don't. Not until there's an expert witness testifies as to what they are. If a judge orders a rollback, he will expect it to be carried out without question.

Interesting never heard of tainted coins before.

Court cant order someone to do the impossible thing. Even if the court ordered experts to do that, still it is not possible to be carried out unless you control it but it cant be controlled.Tainted or not, it doesnt matter at all as it is still the same coins that could be used to make some payment or even to be exchanged

Except that it is not impossible, just very, very difficult.

And again, you're talking like coins are real. If there is an account with 99 coins and someone sends a "tainted" coin to it, it the account and every coin spent from then on tainted? Or it is 1% tainted? Are all spent coins from then on 1%? Or just the first coin? Or perhaps the last?

If I have a tainted account and I send 100,000 satochis to 100,000 other accounts, are they all tainted? (In today's market, that's about 0.40 USD.)

The specific coins are the tainted coins as far as I know. Otherwise people could taint every coin in existance, basically making the tainting useless.

Tainted coins could in theory be a problem if miners start to reject transactions that cointain tainted coins. This is very unlikely to happen, unless they were stolen for istance from the mining pool itself.

Bingo.

BTW, there are no coins, just numbers.

There are no coins, just amounts of coins. Think of bitcoins as something like water, wallets as buckets, and "taint" as a color. When you send coins from one wallet to another wallet, it is like you are pouring water from one bucket into another bucket. If you pour red water into blue water you get purple water. You can't distinguish which bits of water are red and which are blue -- they are all purple now. Given enough time, all buckets will contain at least a little bit of every color. Bitcoins and "taint" work the same way.

A miner won't reject "tainted" coins because that will cause all its blocks to be orphaned and it will quickly go out of business.

WOW.

I'm more confused as ever now.

No need to be confused. Let's review:

1. "Taint" is measure of the portion of the coins at one address that came from another address (either directly or indirectly). A taint value can be computed for every pair of addresses.

2. Some people might also refer to coins (or more accurately coins at an address) as being tainted if the taint value between the address and an address known to receive stolen coins is high.

3. There are no individual coins. There are only amounts of coins.

There are a lot of users on this forum that know very little (or even nothing at all) about how bitcoin works.  Unfortunately, the lack of knowledge doesn't prevent them from answering questions and giving advice. As a result, if you are going to ask a question on this forum, it is important to figure out who is giving you actual facts and useful information, and who is just making up nonsense.
 

What court do you think would have the authority to even speak about currency that doesn't belong to any country ? And even if it did, or try to do,
i hope you understand that noone can "order" rollback of transaction on a decentralized network.
One day, if nodes become heavily centralized, this could be possible i guess, altho i hope it won't happen.

Any court.

I understand. Judges, on the other hand, still seem to be living in the 20th century.

And then they will learn that it is technically impossible to "rollback" a transaction. What will probably happen is that they will order the receiver to return the Bitcoin to the sender.

AKAIK it's not technically impossible, but it would mean that the blockchain would have to be forked, and noone in their sane mind would be on the
courts side voting for it. Even in cases of ordering return of the funds to sender, there is no way it could ever be enforced, just like in the case
of other decentralized p2p services (like torrents)

You all seem to overlook the fact that judges are not good at taking "no" for an answer. As I said, it will get interesting.

Yes, I believe you are right thanks  ;)

Cool, thanks.