Bitcoin Forum

But not by hackers!

Someone reported the first theft of four physical bitcoins in a recent burglary.


I find it novel to point out that this is about the only way physical bitcoins can be stolen... same as cash.

The four physical bitcoins are active and legitimate, so nobody needs to worry about their own coins being at risk.

And so the Blackmarket for Casascius coins begins ;)

I feel bad for the person who got robbed, but must be nice to have someone wanting to steal our Bitcoins :).

Not really, casascius could theoretically have the private keys. Never trust that he doesn't because there's no good reason to - only use your own generated addresses, print them out on paper if you please.

Well, it's not like you're going to keep your life savings in casascius physical bitcoins.

Thats why I have my physical coins in a safe deposit box.... at the bank... is that ironic?

... the safe deposit box is free...

What happens if a bank gets robbed? Is the safety deposit boc insured, and how do you prove value if so?

I have another copy in a secrete safe arguably more secure than the safe deposit box. If that gets compromised then they bloody well earned it.

I figure the chances of both copies being destroyed at the same time would mean that we have been hit by an asteroid.

edit: the only way to open the safe deposit boxes are with special made keys, without which takes their lock smith 2+ hours with special tools to drill out.
not insured as far as I know.

edit2: 2+ hours per box with special tools. there are hundreds of boxes.

Pretty sure a thief is not going to be concerned about the box being available for re-use so would be quicker in his/her method.

Governments have done such things in the past.

That's actually infinitely more likely to happen than robbers, should bitcoin become outlawed and you're found to be associated with it.

Nice example of why safety deposit boxes are no longer safe

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12248666 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12248666)

What would be ironic if is the insurance company denied the claim.

Most banks have a policy prohibiting the store of currency in safety deposit boxes.   Wildly ignored yes but they if a vault is compromised they won't cover claims on lost currency  "yeah I had um 1.2 no lets make it 1.5 million in $100 bills in my box.  I will take a cashier's check please".

While it would be bad news for the OP it would be good precedent for Bitcoin if the insurance company denied the claim on the grounds that Bitcoin was a currency and thus not subject to the policy.

I remember thinking at the time how much that whole operation stank of state enforced theft. None of the judges near the station where the raid was planned would issue the seizure warrants because they felt the grounds for searching the boxes was weak so the police had to get a "friendly" judge from miles away to help them out. Also confiscating possessions on the basis that you can't prove ownership is a blatant way of stealing wealth from ordinary citizens. I doubt that British museum could prove ownership of anything they possess but yet they don't get raided at dawn by the police. 

Just goes to show that the rule of law means sweet fuck all if the authorities are desperate to get your wealth.

I guess the lesson here regarding the BBC story is, if you want to set up this kind of business, you better be prepared to have a shooting war with the police. Because apparently it will come to that if you want to actually be able to offer your clients what you are promising. So quick question .. I dont really want to hire Academi because they are Xe and Blackwater scumbos, but who is their competition? Is there any good paramilitary mercenarcy organization with strong morals and good rates and availability?

sure, but the safe deposit "boxes" im refering to are more analogous to a "honey comb" than a box.  the lock smith is not concerned with the condition of the door to it either

Good question. I'm sure some of the legal MJ sellers in Cali would like to know this as well.

A safe deposit box might be a good idea. And if you're worried about your valuables you can always insure them. I was looking into it for my valuables and found this cool website that was pretty helpful. www.safedepositboxinsurance.com

The bright side: someone just learned about Bitcoin. I'm thinking about leaving behind paper wallets in public transit, just to see if anything gets spent eventually.

That would be a pretty interesting experiment.  I'd be curious how many coins would be used if you even wrote "this is a bitcoin address with BTC on it! It's valuable!" on said paper :D

I am thinking of leaving signs in public restrooms that say: "If this restroom needs attention, please scan this code".  The QR code would lead to meatspin.  Just kidding.  But honestly, I would be willing to bet that not many, and likely none at all, would get redeemed out of the general public.  Now in an environment with a high concentration of tech skills (e.g. DefCon) I could see a serious percentage of interest getting redeemed.

I wouldn't think that too many in general meat space would get picked up, but would still be interesting to see the numbers.  It'd be really cool to see what would happen if there was some sort of nation-wide effort to drop these addresses to see the differences between regions on usage!  The data would be wonderful!

This is a problem I have with the physical bitcoins, if I leave them sitting around a burglar is probably gonna mistankingly take it cause it looks valuable even if he knows nothing about bitcoin.

If I had a private key printed on a piece of paper sitting on the desk the burglar wouldn't know it's value.

Still love the coins though.. Would be spewin' if they got nicked.

On the flip side, if you die, your family will know the bitcoins are valuable, but won't know the private key is valuable and might throw it in the garbage.