Bitcoin Forum

https://micky.com.au/bitcoin-worth-1-million-confiscated-in-canada-over-landmark-ruling/

Bitcoin worth over $1 million has been confiscated by a judge in Canada's Supreme Court. The ruling came after the judge brought CEO of CipherTrace that performs tracing operations on crypto to notice illegal activities where it was indeed found the case was dealing on the dark web with BTC.

 “(The case) forced agencies to start thinking about cryptocurrency investigations as a reality more than a possibility.”

thoughts?

Only proves that bitcoin is not that anonymous as everyone has thought it to be in its early years. The guy uses it to buy guns in the darkweb and he thought the can get away with it. Unfortunately, many undercover authorities are also roaming the darkweb that's why he was caught. I wonder though was going to happen to his bitcoin, perhaps the government of Canada will auction it.

So just reminder for criminals not to use bitcoin at all cost  ;D, you may never know that you are dealing with undercover cops and just a matter of time before they will caught you.

It sounds like they have some sort of tracking software which I think is great for companies and individuals. We wouldn't want another Quadriga case to break out again. I worry if it did it will leave a lot of people bitter about crypto and we lose out on mass adoption

I like to point out that this dude got caught not because of the Bitcoin payment (the article didn't even confirm if he paid in Bitcoin) he made but because he was buying a gun from the authority that he later on gave his address for the delivery of the gun (which was really a flare gun :P ) which has led to the authorities on finding out his drug stash. I will say that this guy isn't really post as a buyer but a supplier of drugs in the dark web that is why they have confiscated a lot of Bitcoins from him.

This really has nothing to do with bitcoin at all.

In a drug bust, you'd expect the funds to be seized. It's exactly what happened here. The crime wasn't that someone was holding bitcoin, but rather they are doing illicit things, and bitcoin just happened to be the payment venue that they decided to go with. I don't think that this has anything to do with the anonymity of bitcoin, even.

It would be interesting to see however whether or not they hold onto the coins, or auction it off to convert it to fiat. It's the first time that I've heard something like this out of Canada's jurisdiction, though it has certainly happened multiple times before in the US.

Forget about deflationary aspects of bitcoin through block reward halving..

Confiscation (if it isn't onsold by authorities) and people dying without a way to share their private keys will probably have the greatest deflationary impact on bitcoin and crypto more broadly.

That huge amount of money can easily be trace in this blockchain technology and if they do this for a reason for sure some intelligence unit of the government knows this thing. Bitcoin is just there instrument to do things that is against the law, unluckily someone are working well to the government just to see those criminals. Now, cryptocurrency is part of their obligations to investigate more because there might be more black transactions happening in this market, who knows about it. So if you are one of those, you probably need to hide well.

Even though the bitcoin will let you buy things anonymously in the digital world, the person must have been aware that he was not alone doing so, the undercovers would also do it and catch him. The reason why this guy's bitcoin was confiscated just because they used bitcoin for buying unlicensed guns. This is is also not a gun dealer but a drug pusher, as well.

Darkweb is a marketplace where you will be able to buy things not available in a normal market. However, due to its popularity today, the authorities are able to see what is happening inside and try to find who are the people who took advantage of it.

bitcoin has never been anonymous - it is pseudoanonymous
and the guy who was dealing on the Darkweb didn't care for bitcoins , he just needed a way to get paid for his goods
bitcoin just happened to be the most convenient way to get paid , although he should have tried Monero or any other anonymous coin instead
and it wasn't the undercover cop who busted it but a tracing agency
as for the seized coins , their fate is unknown , probably auctioned and used by the government to make out lives better /sarcasm
 

Illegal dealings using bitcoin and other cryptos is indeed a challenge! That's the reason why a lot of governments are still hesitant to approve it as a legal tender. It can be easily used for drungs and arms dealings as well as terrorism financing. It is evident from the article that convicted person was dealing in illegal items through dark web using bitcoin. So the verdict makes sense!

We, as community members don't support such kind of illegal use kf bitcoins because it is a reputational loss for us! Rather we need to work in unison to prevent such activities!

but it is also difficult to prevent criminals from doing something they consider very profitable, even though they also know that what is done will definitely have an impact on him. the situation for committing a crime has been difficult to prevent as long as there are opportunities available although as little as possible can be done. as long as we don't protect ourselves so we don't get stolen.

Bitcoin is money, it can be used in illegal activities and money laundering, they should consider and study crypto in order to do the right investigation.
There is no significance in this news, one can make illegal activity as human makes mistakes, the way I see it, it gives a little exposure to the public.
Crypto is not a joke, it's a serious currency which is progressing now.

We all know that Bitcoin is psuedo anonymous.


They don't care, as long as they can sell anything and be paid, then at the end of the day its business. As far as the confiscated Bitcoins, the government can do whatever they want. They can kept it in cold storage, or they could do a public auction.

So they seized  281.14 BTC but now that $1M is already almost $1.5M usd and thats an easy increase.Hope those coins being seized wont be keep on their hands personally.

This would be an eye opener for those people who do illegally doing things with Bitcoin or any other crypto because one hole on your shady transactions would really put you up on jail.

Okay read the article.  So the guy moved drugs  as the thousands of grams of various drugs found in his house  is at least 2 keys of the drugs.

Which were  not just pot but coke and ketamine and pcp.

He tried to buy a glock on the net and have it shipped to his home = moron stupid

The cops sent him a flare gun  but busted him for trying to buy the glock.

This allowed the search
This found at least 2 keys of drugs.  mixed not just weed.
I would say he sells drugs as it was too much for personal use.
He made some drug purchases on the net using BTC.

So anyone that thinks BTC is why he was caught did not read the article correctly.
He got caught due to using a sting website.
If he had cash in the house they would have taken it.
So he had BTC on the pc in his home with wallets and traceable info.
This could lead to more busts  since buying the drugs  left  a trail.

So BTC has helped cops get evidence in this case

a pile of cash would have been less evidence.

CipherTrace and Binance's partnership seem to be fruitful knowing that they have already gotten one prosecution successful. Bitcoin seem to be not that anonymous after all knowing that there are tools out there that could verify where does the coin end and to whom it might belong to albeit not having direct connections to anyone or to any identity. This is a double-edged sword for bitcoin, but if it helps to prosecute people who did wrong to the government and to the people, then perhaps it's a welcome compromise for the sake of justice.

What strikes me is that they took all his bitcoins even when there was no proof of how he got all those coins. Innocent until proven guilty, right? So they found some drugs at his house and proof that he bought it online with bitcoins, but it was worth much less than was taken from him, despite his claims that most of the coins were purchased years ago.
I always feel like the law is there to steal as much as possible to feed hungry gov agencies. You had drugs at home? Now your home, computer, bank accounts belong to us. 

No one is claiming that Bitcoin is 100% anonymous. If you want to purchase illegal or contraband stuff from the dark market, then you better use coins such as Zcash, Monero and Deep Onion which can't be tracked. But even then, if you make the payments in these anonymous coins and give the delivery address to your vendor, you are obviously waiving off the anonymity.

this problem occurs so much, even without bitcoin.
people get pulled over on road trips, some back woods pig sees a stack of cash, and confiscates it, stating its probably from illegal activity, then people essentially can't get their money back without spending thousands on a lawyer.
governments want to seize everything they can to buy bigger tanks, bigger guns...
what a world.

This is really a good news coz the court recognize the value of BTC ant it can be use as a payment for buy and sell transactions.
Lawmakers should create laws, like in the event like these, as to where should you store and secure a certain amount of BTC.
And who will be the government agencies that will take a position on it, is it the Bureau of Treasury or the Central Bank.

As per the News article it says that the user was involved in buying/selling illegal items such as drugs and weapons over dark web. Total amount seized is around 281.14 BTC.
I wonder why these guys use bitcoins when they can easily escape with use of XMR aka Monero.

I see nothing unusual in this matter. The guy bought weapons and drugs. On arms set his place of residence, and during the search found the drugs, which he ordered via the Internet for bitcoins. In his computer was all the data on the purchase of drugs and the data of his 281 bitcoins. Of course, since drugs were bought for bitcoins, they are subject to confiscation. This has nothing to do with the fact that government agencies monitor our cryptocurrency transactions.

This is actually good if we see it in a positive manner. If governments are confident that investigations can be performed upon cryptocurrency cases and the person involved in scam can be proved guilty then governments might even think of making BTC legal in their respective countries. Because Anonymity is a big reason why most of the governments are against this.

However, if we see from one end then this means that BTC was never that anonymous and anyone can be traced out using different types of blockchain explorers and data. Moreover with advent of KYC even people can be identified linked with different addresses.

Almost always, the confiscated coins are auctioned off by the authorities. So you can't count it among the possible reasons for getting a deflationary impact. Regarding the second part, I guess most of the big holders will be having some mechanism to pass on the private keys, in case something happens to them. Exceptions would be rare. 

i have seen loads of cases where bitcoin transactions are been used not just in the Dark Web. The truth be told, most people do worst things with even with fiat currencies, why should they consider bitcoin transaction as the reason for a law suite and then getting to confiscate that huge amount of usd equivalent in bitcoin, it doesn't just add up.

Time and time again, it is already proven that anonymity is getting to be a myth as far as Bitcoin is concerned. A deep investigation can uncover details which can implicate a person doing illegal transactions on the dark web or anywhere. In this case, the reason why Bitcoin was confiscated because of the owner's illegal activities. However, if the guy used the US Dollar then the same fate can happen. Indeed, this can be a big lesson to anyone never to assume that just because Bitcoin is used then he can get away from the reach of the laws of the land.

If you are doing illegal activity with bitcoin you will get caught and that is what happened here, bitcoin is not meant to be anonymous and you can track every transactions and you really do not need some sort of tracking software to track those, a simple chain analysis reveals everything.

If he was using fiat currencies for those purchases he wont end up in this situation, it has nothing against bitcoin and this case will highlight how transparent bitcoin transaction are and no one can use it for illegal activities.

Obviously it's just a myth, although bitcoin address doesn't have any name association, but with the latest technology of tracking your foot print, they can easily identify you despite the (pseudo)anonymity of bitcoin. Blockchain is transparent, everything can be seen and that is where the government is looking at to find who are those individuals who do illegal stuff and trying to hide it through crypto currency, so this is a big lessons for everyone.

Even Satoshi would not claim that Bitcoins are completely anonymous. The log of each and every activity is included there in the blockchain. Still, the authorities will find it extremely hard to track you. But once you involve fiat cash in the equation, the situation changes. Fiat is not anonymous, and they can track it back to your Bitcoin wallet.

Obviously, your identity will be reveal one you exchange your crypto's to fiat. I don't know about privacy coins though, I'm not into it. Blockchain forensics is also evolving, but if you know who to hide your tracks then it will be more difficult for investigators to track you down. But I guess if you are not doing illegal and hiding from authorities you will be ok.

For the completely anonymous coins (such as Zcash, Verge, Monero.etc), the advantage is that the transactions are not recorded anywhere, unlike the case with Ethereum or Bitcoin. But then, once you try to convert your crypto to fiat, the same issue will persist. That is, unless you are contacting some trader personally and selling your crypto for physical cash.

If you are using these anonymous coins only for purchasing stuff (and not to convert back to fiat), then I guess you should be OK. But even then, I will never use them for any illegal business. What if some bugs are found with these coins, that can enable the authorities to track you?

Cryptocurrency is good not unless the government will interfere and make it illegal. Ofcourse, you can still use it behind the black curtains but when the time comes that the government will investigate and retrieve and collect all your coins then your probably doomed.

The hope of all those who participated in the crypto is that this kind of thing does not happen again, as stated above that if it happens often like this it will make many people who feel crypto doing a lot of cheating will affect many people who are afraid to join crypto.

This is why i favor the regulation to ensure that Bitcoin currency will not be use in illegal activities. Can you imagine of what will be the future damage that will happen if those drugs and guns will bypass the national security and will successfully to enter Canada? Expect that it will create lot of trouble for the Canadian people specially to the youth. So hopefully people will continue to support the regulation specially in other countries that regulation is still undecided.

You mean the hacking/inside job that happen to quadriga ?  Not only on quadriga but the latest was binance hacking  .  Hacking is a normal thing because we are online . But if you are talking about the spyware that the other guy mentioned then i think its not apropriate anymore  . The reason why we use crypto is because of anonimity and for privacy , we dont want to get tracked by someone else   

Are you joking? It is the responsibility of the law enforcement to make sure that guns and narcotics doesn't enter Canada. And the crypto-community has nothing to do with it. If the cops admit that they are incapable of doing that, then they should entrust that responsibility to some third party. Bitcoin community is already doing its best to prevent the misuse of the coins for criminal activity.

I feel like most people don't realize that public ledgers like Bitcoin can be tracked and traced. This leads to my next question regarding regulation of Monero and how long the government will keep it going until their involvement

I couldn't agree more with you but my question then becomes when BTC is 'confiscated' where does it go? Do we lose it and if so does that affect the entire system as a whole?

yep I agree with you. btc has always been a public blockchain which ultimately means with the right technology the addresses can be traced. I am sure it's a lot harder to trace the bitcoins  back to the actual person but it's a possibility? Is that how this guy got found?