Bitcoin Forum

https://www.bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=564.0;attach=167

https://www.bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=564.0

Last Active:    December 31, 2010, 12:21:02 pm

That was a whole bunch of bitcoins. MIA 4 months. Last posts were all the way from August. Wonder if he knows he has a million dollars.

371,067.36 BTC @ 2.95 = $1,094,648.71

Holy mother...

He's gonna have a nice surprise when he comes back then.

And he had a nice production rate too!  15k MH/s?  Dang...

Well, doesn't quite have $1M, since if he actually tried to sell them, he'd drive the price down to like $.25/BTC.

I was wondering the same thing.  I sent him a PM a while back but no response.  I think he wants to keep his identity a secret.

If so he hasn't done a very good job.

I believe it shows 15 MH/s

Only fool would sell 350+ kBTC in one day...

Perhaps, though I think yesterday MtGox did close to 160k in volume, with the price continuing to rise.  Perhaps he could dump a significant percentage of his holdings over a week's time...

He could slowly unload like 500-1000 a week and essentially give himself a decent paycheck

Or he can wait a year and a half and be in the Forbes list of billionaires :)

If he is a billionaire in a year in a half he will need to reside away from us jurisdiction and diplomatic influence or at least keep his fortune secret through offshore accounts.     By the time market value of btc represents $100 billion the us will have realized the threat btc represents to usd.

And then there will be more than just one btc millionaire missing.

What if he died in a car accident? Whole economy has 370kBTC less...
But if he's alive, I'm pretty sure that he sold most of his bitcoins already.

Don't mind me, I'm just failing miserably here...

Lol, or his computer crashed and he's still raging about it.

I'm pretty sure he switched his nick and he's still among us.

Oh, I'm still alive and kicking.  ;D

Yeah, still have them, though like was said, it would not be possible to sell them all at once and become an instant millionaire.  No one is going to buy that many at once. I have kept my client running 24/7 since then though, managed to generate a bit more before the collective mining groups took over  ;)

Without the massive server farm I had going before, I'm just down to my personal desktop, so it's never gotten over the 371k since.

I do keep many, many backups though just in case  8)

Welcome back !
I knew you wouldn't have rejected that whole bitcoin thing ;)
I hope we will see a bit more activity from you now :P

Can you explain how it feels to be a potential billionaire? Do you plan to buy a ticket to ISS? :)

You should probably consider setting up some sort of arrangement in case you die, perhaps setting up some sort of geekier version of the Nobel prize?

How about the X Prize for Immortality?

They've already cured aging in lab mice, so that actually isn't all that farfetched...

Kind to elaborate what this mean?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-11/harvard-creates-mice-grow-younger-which-could-lead-human-anti-aging-treatments

wow... this thread derailed

Yes, I can. Everyone is a potential Billionaire, with or without Bitcoins.
It feels good!   ;D

Are people who are actual billionaires also potentional billionaires?

knightmb:

How much?

PM me if you want to move large amounts.

from someone who has alot of btc to lose from a hacker; do u keep a separate client and wallet online with minimal to no btc in it?  if so, how do i split off a separate wallet as well?

Yes, the wallet file sits a (2) CD-R and (1) flash drive (was just curious how long that flash drive would stay good) in a safe deposit box at the local bank.  The wallet file on my PC is not the same one that has all the BTC in it for security reasons.  ;)

While it is fun to fantasize about being rich, I know realistically, the BTC would work better as a monthly paycheck than a lotto ticket.

Well, I do actually, but it would end up going to family members. I don't know if I would have enough to setup something as large as the Nobel prize unless it really did turn into a billions of value.

Hehe  ;D

It's just going to sit at the bank for now until the investors decide what to do with it. The irony is, they think the project is a bust, so I've requested to take over ownership of it but never mentioned anything about it's current value because they have never bothered to check since last year. Can you believe all the "smart business" people that told them that BTC was just a waste of time for them? Shows how smart they were.

Putting on 2 CD-R and Flash doesn't seem to be enough for 300,000K bitcoins.  Maybe you can tease us by encrypting the wallet with TrueCrypt, give it a 20 char password, and post it here.  You can be sure the wallet will continue to exist on the Internet and it will be safe.

I also just thought about that. Or not public but for some people only.
Backups should not be close to each other physically. I think it is risky.

knightmb, I am glad that you are okay! :D

You could always send me a copy... I'll keep it nice and safe for you.  :D

how does one create a 2nd wallet for spending?

what about updating those wallets?  doesn't this have to be done from time to time?

If you move wallet.dat out of it's folder a new empty wallet is created automatically.

but then u can't send btc to that 2nd wallet from the 1st wallet on the same computer.  my goal is to save the majority of my btc on a flash drive in my safe and not have to pull it out for several months.  then i'd have a 2nd wallet with spending money on my computer.   should i just send the btc to a client on another computer?  is the wallet.dat file interchangeable btwn mac and pc clients?

You can, by very careful file renaming while the Bitcoin client is closed.  I wouldn't make a habit of it though, doing it only as necessary.  Some people say they've made custom tools to help with easy wallet-switching, but I don't know if any of them have been released publicly.

What's cool about having your savings account on a CD-R in a safety deposit box at the bank is that you can STILL send bitcoins to that wallet!

When you go to the bank and get your CD-R and set the wallet up again, all your bitcoins that you sent to that wallet will magically appear.

If I ever have lots of bitcoins, that's what I'll do :)

I'm not sure that safe deposit at the bank is such a good idea given the rate of collapse of the banks these days. Sometimes Federal rules have been know to over-ride the custody agreements involved with safe-deposit boxes and customers lose everything inside them.

Might be better off in vault at a private security company or something. Or if you have the option, in a safe under your own control. Banks are too heavily regulated by the govt. to trust that anybody knows what will happen when they lock their doors, even the best lawyers in town couldn't tell you definitely where you stand.

I wouldn't trust a CD-R, they are not designed to last that long.  I'd much more likely put it in some service that backs things up with tape every night or has huge redundancy.  Having it physically sit somewhere is silly.  If anything, put a note in a safe deposit box with your encryption key and the location where it's at.  Put it stored electronically with a few different companies.

The problem with creating many back-ups is that every back-up copy must be ultimately deletable, down to the bits deletable or wiped, or else you leave it open for reading by disc recovery means and it can get stolen.

Yes back-up but not too much and carefully or else there will be lots of copies of your wallet floating around all over the place waiting to be discovered by some disc recovery software.

Leave a copy with your will at your lawyers office :)

That makes about as much sense as leaving a billion dollars cash with a lawyer. Sheeesh, of all the people to trust, why not just let a congressman hold onto it.

this strategy intrigues me the most.  what you're basically saying is that if i have a million btc in my wallet today i could send 999,999 of them to one of my receiving addresses right now but before i receive them i can close the btc client, disconnect my computer from the internet, back up my wallet.dat and encrypt it, go and stick multiple copies of it everywhere,but the bottom line is that all 999,999 btc will be stored in the block chain out on the network ready and waiting for me to download them to my wallet.dat when i want to recover them in 10 yrs or so.  is that about right?  yes or no answers please.

Yep.

Get 1M coins.
Get another computer.
Load Bitcoin on it. Do not connect to internet. Do not download blocks.
Write down an address from this wallet.
Encrypt wallet. Delete original.
Send coins to the address.
Wait.....
Unencrypt. Spend.

so why'd the hell did u write that long backup piece and then have the nerve to ask for donations? :D  this would seem to be the best, non hassle, easiest strategy of all.  forget the USB flash drives, holes in the ground, beds, po boxes, friends, wills, lawyers, safes, vaults, Truecrypt, 7zip, archives, keyloggers, media cards, email attachments.  why do we keep self flaggelating ourselves about this topic.  If btc survives you're a billionaire, if it crashes, all those btc's in cyberspace aren't worth beans anyways. :-\

nah, just joking with you!!  see smiley face?

are you saying this is a way to double spend?

Nope, they're saying that a wallet doesn't need to be online to send bitcoins to it :-)

ok, i get it.  takes me alittle while sometimes.  basically he was stating the same thing i was about storing your btc in the block chain in the network except he is saying you can send ALL of them up there and use a different wallet.  and theoretically you can wait an infinite time if btc survives.  have any of you had the  balls to save your btc this way?

Nope. Just restating the coolness.

With 999,999 BTC? Not just "no", but "heck, no"! I've not actually tried it with toy money, either, though I've always assumed it's (a) possible, and (b) very cool ;-) Might give it a go later - but with 0.00999999 BTC, not 999,999 BTC...

just use multiple accounts to send between them, each user have wallet created in different place

flash drive is not good idea, if it fails there is small chance of recovery of wallet, backup on 3-4 different mediums and two locations is minimum that you have to do to be safe

personally i have backup of savings wallet on three separate disks in my pc (all with full disk encryption) and copy on external drive and attachment on email account

after i found out that my bitcoins are worth over 6k usd i added dvd-ram, microsd card and base64 copy printed on laser printer on another location

all of course with heavy encryption :P i know it is a bit paranoid, but different mediums at different locations is a must have for long term backup

A printed copy isn't a bad idea either... I mean, heck, you can always OCR it back in, and convert it from whatever base you put it in.  And if the OCR fails, you could hand-type it all.  It'd probably be worth whatever is in your wallet at that point...

Just in case all your electronic media fails.

you have to use -rescan for the magic to work, though, afaik.


I only have some, but also entertain an extra savings-account.

The wallet.dat does not exist in unencrypted form. The encrypted one I emailed to lots of friends and also put on some removable media.

Bitcoin 0.3.21 puts a 'bestblock' entry in the wallet so it will automatically -rescan if you restore an old wallet (and it only rescans the blocks necessary to get up-to-date).

I've always thought it'd be cool to have a torrent going with a bunch of wallets just in case governments make it a strategy to identify and destroy all the backups that a person might have, or in the case that someone goes into a comma for like a decade and after waking up realizes that all the other backups are gone for some reason.

sort of like a wallet blockchain?

I guess? Just a simple torrent that gets updated with new wallets once or twice a year would do. Maybe there's a better way of doing it.

What will keep people seeding the torrent?

Perhaps you could encrypt your wallet and hide it steganographicly into something that people are interested in inside Freenet.

Good news for me anyway  :P , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time).

Thanks for the advise everyone!

I'm wondering though. ??? Couldn't someone make a custom client that rather than generate a random address create the address you are sending the money to? No public key would exist for it yet in the network so when someone else who is connected creates the address their public key would be the one for that address. I guess if that was true, it would still work as long as you didn't tell anyone what that address was as someone randomly creating the same address would be highly unlikely.

Now that you ask I'm not sure lol, didn't think it through. I guess some people would just feel good seeding, either because they are helping others or because they are sticking it to the government. A more reliable incentive I can think of is to track the upload rates of people so that they could potentially be used as a measure of reputation.


I'm very ignorant about Freenet. Would it be safe to leave the wallet there and come back to it after getting out of prison 3 years later or would it be gone by then?



Nice! I'm shocked that they didn't spend all of 30 seconds checking the price of bitcoins before selling.

;D

The more people access somthing on Freenet the more it gets copied around, and there are some tricks to put things together so if people access one thing they actually copy everything (like if you put the stuff inside a zipfile, or add your file into an image with steganography)


But AFAIK, if no one tries to access it for too long the storage space will eventually be used to store somthing else.

Far out. So let me get this straight. You have just secured the ownership of the keys to 371k btc for USD$5k because the initial investors wanted out and can't be bothered to check current trading value of BTC .... and your wife is skeptical!?

That's epic.

As I said earlier, if you need to move large amounts contact me ... or have your wife contact me if she is still skeptical.

You are my hero.

Definitely consider an encrypted printout. With the proper inks and paper it could last 100 years and survive a fire in a firesafe. Magnetic and optical media are too fragile to store value.
http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html

You can build your own algorithm and tool even.

Better yet, engrave the key to a high value address/wallet in a good sized gold ingot and bury the whole damn thing somewhere.

The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010.

My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start.

Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally.

I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure.

Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile  ;D

knightmb, this is an amazing story...can I post this in my blog?

Considering the fact that you are likely to own more BTC than all the other forum users combined I think it's time to update the signature :)

Michael Brown (knightmb), you have not told the full story here, and this is not the first time you have screwed an employer. If you do not do the right thing now, this will come back to haunt you.

You are also in over your head. Has it occurred to you that you owe $850,000 of federal income tax on this "deal"? Fortunately for you, we do not have state tax in Tennessee, but you will still owe business taxes, and you haven't even applied for the right licenses.

You have one chance to do the right thing here. You know what it is.

You never have federal income tax on items you buy.  Tax is recovered in the form of "gain on sale" for any assets purchased at lower than market value.  Unless/until he sells the bitcoins, he owes nothing to the US government.

State laws might be a bit more complicated, but aside from sales tax (which only applies to end consumers anyway, not sales of business transactions), I can't think of any reason a state would tax this particular situation.

I agree that knightmb didn't really take the moral high ground on this, but that's his decision to make, not mine.

Thank goodness!

knightmb is in the perfect position to start selling Bitcoins in a physical store.  Even at high markups, cash to BTC on Android or to a specific address has the potential to sell like gangbusters.
The high markups would be necessary to ensure profitability while finding someone else who'll take USD for BTC.

For your own sake knightmb, I hope you spent roughly triple that on iron-tight mutual indemnifications. If not, here is my advice (I'm not a lawyer, btw):

1. Get a lawyer, right now
2. On review, figure out if you need to get a settlement in place which covers all mutual indemnifications.
3. Get those things locked down. You will likely have to pay some of your $3m USD in earnings to get that sorted.

When you have a technical partner knowingly buying assets from non-technical partners for pennies on the dollar, there may well be significant repercussions. And, as someone here mentioned, it's also just kind of shitty.

Food for thought.

For those mentioning taxes -- unless he's selling his BTC, he likely doesn't have a requirement to mark his BTC to market; this is no doubt a gray area in the tax law right now. I wouldn't say he owes right now unless he's liquidating.

Beacon, is a newbie with one post.  Could be fake.  Beacon, do you know the full story?  Sounds like knightmb just pulled off a Louisiana Purchase.  The U.S. did it to France and I don't see what knightmb did wrong...unless there is more to the story...

Good point on the knowingly buying assets without revealing information.  I believe there are laws against doing this, which would mean that knightmb is kind of screwed if/when the other company partners find out.

This is amazing. It's probably best your wife doesn't get it or she might insist on getting some of those paper dollars.

I can't believe you didn't even give them their 12k back! Maybe you can't offer too much without making them suspicious? How did you ever talk these people into putting up money for something they had no interest in?

Bitcoins were also worth a lot less in Feb when knightmb did the deal.  I hope everything works out for everyone.

Since you're here, want to tell us the full story?

That's not the impression I get. I think this deal just happened.

I'll just point out that Beacon has said nothing so far that isn't publicly available info.

without commenting on this particular case, much of what people are saying about united states taxes in bitcoin-forum discussions is wrong.

in the united states, you owe income taxes on property you acquire from any source (except gifts and a small number of other exclusions). you don't get to wait until you convert it into cash. people who say that are confusing capital-gain-realization rules for income rules.

for example, if you find treasure in your backyard, you have taxable income. if you mine gold, you have taxable income, unless there are special mining laws that tax it differently. if you install linux for someone and they pay you in sdram, you have taxable income. taxes are computed at the fair market value (in dollars) at the time you acquire the property. you don't have to sell it in any of these cases to have federal income tax.

see http://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html

states in the us often have transfer taxes for business sales, and the transfer taxes may depend on the fair market value of the assets.

update: to be clear, i'm not commenting on this case or saying that anyone said anything wrong here. i just wanted to provide general information to correct what i've perceived as a general mistake in forum discussions. if i had to guess about this particular case, i'd think it's possible someone does owe taxes on the mining 'income' regardless of sale, based on the value when it was mined. i don't know if it's the buyer or the seller of the business, and i agree that it's all probably a grey area.

Clearly not. But maybe he will.

I think you're confusing income taxes from gain of assets in the course of doing business vs the purchasing of a business (which is what, I believe, knightmb did).

http://www.unclefed.com/AuthorsRow/Daily/fwdbuybusiness.html

i really doubt that - basing on his story he did not used any kind of 'insider trading', all information about btc to usd rate are easily accessible

Either way, both parties seem to be acknowledging that bitcoins is, indeed, real.  At least there is a positive in all of this. :-P

Oh, it's even better than that.  The party that acknowledged the reality of Bitcoins seems to have made out like a bandit.  While the party that had every opportunity to do so, and didn't, ends up looking like fools.

And that's exactly the way capitalism is supposed to work.  Risk brings reward.  All trades are not equal trades.  Information is not universal.  Stupidity is punished.  No one bails out the losers.

Aside from the case, I'm curious.

Do I owe taxes on the things I create? For example. I buy a saw (pay tax on that), and buy some wood (pay tax on that). I use the tool and the material to create a chair. Do I owe tax on the chair, or only if I sell the chair?

How would my example compare to mining Bitcoins? I buy hardware (pay tax on that), and internet service (pay tax on that). I download an open source program (no tax?). I use my hardware, internet connection, and the program to find the next block in the chain and I reward myself 50 BTC for doing it. Do I owe taxes on the BTC, or only if I sell them?

Do BTC equate to the chair or have I made some error?

Regarding taxes,

A simple purchase is never taxable for the purchaser unless there are specific asset-transfer taxes (think registration for a car) in the US, or any state in the US. Period, end of story.

BitCoins paid for services rendered or goods are certainly taxable, and they would likely be marked to market at end of year, or at time of exercise to USD on recommendation from a CPA.

BitCoins 'mined' with your computer are a little harder, and I don't think there's good indication here as to what they are, or if they should be taxed yet -- do you have to pay taxes on a piece of art you made, and haven't sold yet? (The answer is no, even if your paintings are worth millions). In any event, I think it unlikely that BTC mined will be reported and taxable in the near future for a combination of reporting and other reasons.

----- Now, for a more personal perspective ----

Regarding "this is how capitalism works", unless you're a sort of weird objectivist type who's come to love robber barons, anytime a business party knowingly misrepresents the value of something and makes significant gains, there may well be civil or criminal liability. Capitalism involves helping people transfer assets around for cash, build jobs and wealth, and keeping people from getting screwed doing so.

I don't know if KnightMB misrepresented, nor do I know if his agreements are solid, but I do know if he wrote a note that said "Hey, I'll take those computers and hard drives off your hands for $5k" and they said "OK," he will CERTAINLY be getting a nastygram one day, and his counsel is going to recommend settling, not fighting.

On the other hand, if he wrote up a proper asset purchase including everything, hardware and data, and made no warranties, and they also acknowledged they were getting out and signed proper indemnifications, seller beware. That's an all's fair in business sort of moment, and they should have looked more closely at what they were doing.

Of course, if this was a bunch of grandmas that KnightMB pitched originally, that will play differently than if it were some forex trading hedge fund managers; lots depends on the context. I don't think we've heard the last of this story, or the facts of it yet.

@rezin777: very nice questions, in my opinion.

manufacturers may have income as a result of manufacture. for example, see

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/industries/article/0,,id=100355,00.html

which says 'To figure taxable income, you must value your inventory at the beginning and end of each tax year'.

inventory rules are complicated, however, and involve many line-drawing problems. but it's very possible for a business to be required to include goods purchased below market in 'inventory' at fair market value before sale. for example, the same document i linked above directs taxpayers to include in taxable inventory all 'purchased merchandise if title has passed to you, even if the merchandise is in transit or you do not have physical possession for another reason'.

in general, there isn't a tax difference between 'making' and 'mining'. making gold from atomic processes (or more realistically at today's level of technology, making a diamond from conventional industrial processes for planned sale) would almost definitely have the same tax treatment as mining it, unless there are specific statutes that differentiate the two. what may be leading to an intuition that 'making' something isn't taxable is that if you just make something for yourself, not for sale or for its financial value, then it is likely not taxable.

but of course, i'm not commenting on this case or giving tax advice!

@vess, it is not correct to say 'a simple purchase is never taxable for the purchaser' under federal law in the united states. that is usually true, but there are many situations that require marking to market even if there is a purchase but no sale. it's 'for most ordinary taxpayers, trading most securities', not 'period, end of story'. i agree with you about what 'capitalism' is, however. it's hard to find people who actually engage in business in the modern world who have the extreme 'robber baron' view of nondisclosure norms. nor would those norms be economically productive in most situations.

@unk, agreed.

I would expect professional miners to pay inventory taxes, although probably not hobbyists, (again, the line is tough here) hobbyists I would expect to pay income tax on sale.

Understood.  :)

Thanks for the reply. I look forward to seeing exactly how it all plays out.  

This is a complicated question.  Assuming we're talking about someone who mines bitcoins directly (no pools, mining contracts, etc.), mined bitcoins come from two sources: the block reward (currently 50 BTC) and transaction fees.

Transaction fees seem very much like payment for the service of including the transaction in a block.  As such, they would be taxable.

The block reward is trickier.  Are they like a manufactured product, in which case they would not be taxable until sold?  It's not so clear.  There are a finite number of them, and they are granted to you for following a set of rules enforced by everyone else in the network.  I think the case could be made that the block reward is also a form of payment for the service of generating a block, though it is not clear exactly who the payment is from.

Pooled mining seems like offering computing services to the pool operator in exchange for payment in bitcoins, and thus may be taxable as well.

I'd be careful about assuming that no taxes are due when mining bitcoins that have not yet been sold.

You are taking things completely out of context.

This means that if you keep an inventory of finished goods on hand, available for sale, you must know the value of said goods.  It doesn't mean that producing the goods themselves is taxable, only that you must know the value of your inventory so that when you sell it, you have proper accounting for your cost of goods sold, so you know what your income is after expenses.

NOWHERE does it say that you are taxed for income when you produce goods.  You are ONLY taxed when you sell the goods you produce!

Or if they end up becoming unsalable?

This is exactly why there is no tax on product manufactured, only a tax on when it is sold.

Agreed.  I looked at the rules for inventories when trying to figure out bitcoin taxation.  I didn't see an indication that inventories are taxable prior to sale.  Rather, it seems that tax is due on income when goods are sold.  The income is reduced by the "cost of goods sold".  For a retailer, that would primarily be the amount paid for the goods, and for a manufacturer, the cost of manufacturing and raw materials.

That said, the first question is whether bitcoins are inventory or a capital asset.  That affects whether they are eligible for the more favorable capital gains tax rate and whether there is a limit on deducting losses.  I found an interesting discussion of the distinction in the context of real estate: http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2007/707/essentials/p42.htm

Property is a capital asset unless it meets one of the specific definitions of a noncapital asset, one of which is "Stock in trade, inventory, and other property you hold mainly for sale to customers in your trade or business."

If you mine bitcoins and sell them all on Mt. Gox, it may be true that they are held "mainly for sale" but I would question whether they are for sale "to customers".  If you sell via an exchange or market without even knowing who bought them, and without any advertising, salespeople, etc., it hardly seems that you are in the business of selling to customers.  I found some discussion of what constitutes a "customer" in this article (search for "customer"): http://www.chapman.com/media/news/media.858.pdf

If you are running a business like Bitcoin4Cash (in the U.S.), it's a different story and the bitcoins are likely inventory.  If you advertise bitcoins for sale on #bitcoin-otc, it's more of a gray area.  If you mine coins and hold them as an investment, they do not seem to be held "mainly for sale".  If you sell some and hold some, it's another gray area.

Information is for entertainment purposes only, this is not tax advice, etc.

As long as the US does not recognize bitcoins as a currency, there will be no taxation of mining or taxation of valuation gains until the bitcoins are sold.

If bitcoins are ever considered a "foreign currency" under US law, they would likely be subject to tax laws on ordinary or capital gains BEFORE being sold, and maybe tax on foreign currency transactions is what unk was trying to get at.  Hard to say whether currency produced out of thin air would be considered a gain on a currency transaction though.  :P

http://www.maximadvisors.com/knowledge-library/US-Taxation-Foreign-Currency-Gains-Losses.html

But, in order to be taxed in this manner, the US would be forced to recognize bitcoins as a legitimate currency.  :D

What if the bitcoins are destroyed?  Are you burning legal or illegal tender?

You're not burning tender at all, according to the US.  ;)

Unless they recognize it as a currency.  Then they'll throw you in jail for it.

Is it actually a crime to literally burn money?

Yes, but I don't think anyone has ever been prosecuting for doing so.

It's also a crime to deface money in any way (i.e. writing on it, etc).

Actually that's not true.  See WheresGeorge; they've been around for over ten years and the entire point is to write on money.  It's only illegal if you're mutilating the currency to the point where it's no longer fit for recirculation, but even that is only "technically" illegal, i.e. you're not going to get prosecuted for it even if you do it.  The only thing you're realistically going to get in trouble for is defacing currency with the intent to commit fraud, e.g. taking a $5 bill, bleaching the ink out, and printing a $100 on it.

http://www.wheresgeorge.com/ (http://www.wheresgeorge.com/)

I don't know where in the law it says that I have to pay tax just for having chickens, gold or otherwise. If it does exist, they can pry said tax from my dead cold fingers.

Damn statists and their tax pedantry.

it's not a crime in the us just to write on money. the crime requires an 'intent to render such bank bill, draft, note, or other evidence of debt unfit to be reissued'. i've never understood the point of even that, because someone burning their own money seems to be doing everyone else a favour, modulo the carbon emissions. (similarly, outrage at flag burning in the us has always struck me as silly: you didn't burn my flag. you burned your own flag.)

as for taxes on manufacturing, inventories, and sale, the problem is that we're deep into a grey area, and the various classifications are difficult. i may have misspoken about us law on manufactured goods. you seem to be right that mere manufacture of goods does not result in taxable income. traditional mining (which might have nothing to do with bitcoin mining) can, however, but it's complicated. see for example 26 CFR 1.613-4.

It's a wonder that people wouldn't become disgusted with such extensive tax laws and simply refuse to produce anything at all. Unless of course, they had strong incentive to believe in what those taxes were being use for.

Removed: Statist found it "too objectionable" ... read below if you can be bothered.

I only discuss taxes because I try to avoid being "under the gun" of the government with the biggest guns on the planet. If that makes me a coward, so be it. I'd rather be a grey man (even though I do a poor job) than a dead man.

Oh my god, Moa, would you give it a rest? When was the last time you had an original thought or did something productive for society? Is all you're capable of doing criticizing people who have even a small interest in the law? You've probably turned off more dozens of people to Bitcoin through your deranged rants than all the government regulators ever will. Are you really as uncreative and narrow as you pretend, or are you just trolling? Most of us here could write a computer program whose posts to the forum would be better than yours.

Or maybe you're just trying to kiss up to the person you perceive to be the new rich guy. How noble and intelligent of you. What a clever idea. Knight, if you're reading, stay far away from Moa.

Seriously, what have you ever done for anyone? I'm a long-time user of this forum and I was finally motivated to create a special anonymous account just to trash you. Your understanding of technology is facile. Your understanding of economics and politics is juvenile. You strike me as some sort of incompetent bond trader (or maybe gold or currency?) who's down on his luck. Your conception of the government is idiotic at best. You make me, an avid libertarian, want to become a totalitarian statist with your smug condescension at anything you don't understand. Go fuck yourself in the backwater nanny state where you live and leave the rest of us alone.

Well that particular truth must have got you off your arse to do something ... a new account huh? How creative, some nice big words in there though, thanks for your thoughts. (A simple "tone it down" would probably have sufficed.)

Edit: Statist is most probably "noagendamarket" or someone who he has revealed my location too ... thanks mate.

Or, we could just discuss existing tax laws like adults, until someone like you comes along.  ???  And I'm not a leech of the government teat.  I am a working individual who abhors the absurd amount of welfare dollars we give away every day, all the while going into deeper and deeper national debt.  I would like nothing more than to see all of the welfare-driven programs abolished, and the tax rate halved because of it.

Apparently, trickery, cheating other people, and tax evasion is ok in your book.  Remind me never to do business with you.

None of those things are necessary. As unrealistic as it might sound to you, if you disagree with the way taxes are being spent, live your life in a way that will ensure that you pay as few taxes as possible. I know this is difficult for most, but it's hypocritical to claim you disagree with the welfare/warfare state while continuing to pay for it.

There is no trickery or cheating involved when it comes to the vilification of theft.

Argumentum ad hominem.

People, mind the civility or I will start using my banhammer.  ;)

You got no evidence to prove either way.

Thats an outlandish allegation. Ive never accused you of fucking sheep.

 :P

noagendamarket is too awesome to be wasting his energy making ad hominems.

Never trust an aussie.

Regarding taxes,

Washington State in America has an annual 'inventory tax' which would likely apply to BTC, whether or not sold. I'm out of my depth applying US state tax concepts to BTC though, even my federal tax law knowledge is workmanlike at best.

You are delusional. Clearly Im not the only one that thinks so.  :)

Does anyone live their lives in a way that doesn't minimize taxes?

I'm not one that is going to dabble in tax evasion and risk getting huge fines.  It's in my own self interest to pay taxes.  Not the best thing for the community as a whole, and maybe you're right, in that I am somewhat hypocritical, but I'm not interested in going head to head with the IRS.  I DO take every deduction I can put my hands on (even though I hate deductions, and would much rather see a flat tax).  This last tax season, my effective tax rate ended up at a paltry 0.66%.

I like to voice my opinion on matters to hopefully listening ears, and I'll cast my vote in the ballot box, but in the end, I'm going to do what is best for me and my family.  And that includes paying taxes so I don't get my rear handed to me on a silver platter by the IRS later on in life.

If you are from the US, even if you renounce citizenship, you might still be required to pay taxes if you leave the country for a few years.  It's pretty absurd.

why so pussy dawg?

I would never suggest tax evasion. And I agree that it is in your self interest to pay taxes. But only due to fear of the repercussions from not paying them. Not because you agree with what they are use for.

Ah, ok.  Sounds like we are in agreement then.  ;)

except in the USSA

@knightmb:

Can you please consider helping to secure the future of Bitcoin with a little of that money? You could, say, pledge a little money on an Android Bitcoin Client. See the thread:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=1812.0 (http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=1812.0)

I think the android client would be massively useful to increase Bitcoin stability. This might be one of the easiest ways to get real, widespread usage of the coins, not just speculation that might end every minute. If I were to own a ridiculous amount of BTC, like you, I would spend a part of it to fix the most important weaknesses that endanger BTC value. Some changes might really make a difference. Usability on mobile phones! Acceptance in shops! You might be able to do the latter by just buying something very expensive and requesting to pay in BTC. With just a fraction of that money, many things could be set in motion; for example encouraging people to fix protocol issues the general public isn't managing to work out. *cough* we have no mining equilibrium after minting *cough*

Okay, the latter part might be asking too much. But supporting the android client in some way might really do something. Any kind of bounty or price should help to get this rolling. Or directly pay one of the programmers on here to finish that android Bitcoin client -- it's likely someone would work at low prices on this kind of project.

I'd really like to see a congress of rich Bitcoin early adopters, or something of the sort. Just discuss methods to use your current purchasing power to make Bitcoin a global scale currency. It might be the smart thing to do; it doesn't matter much whether you have 200k or 300k BTC. It matters whether they're worth 0.1 USD or 100 USD. And from what I know, values in between aren't all that likely to remain stable; Bitcoin looks like an all-or-nothing bet. If used in the right place, a few of those coins you have might increase chances in that bet.

I know I look like some beggar here, and I won't blame anyone, no matter how rich, for not doing something. I'm just suggesting these things since I honestly believe they would be in the own best interest of any early adopter.

That's something I've been wondering, too.

Obviously, I wouldn't presume to advise the elder Bitcoiners.  They're rich and I'm not.
But it might be worth a thread for people to discuss how they might maximise the overall value of their Bitcoins by spending a small percentage appropriately, and how best to go about profiting personally from their assets without crashing the market.

Collusion by those who hold more than 10,000BTC would be valuable.

Sure, go right ahead.

LOL, how many seconds did it take you google that? Yeah, my sig is in no way connected to that wallet file.  :P

Actually I had something better than a lawyer, I had a legal CPA Attorney do it for me. Truthfully, anyone can sue you for anything, but I'm not worried.

Besides, we all know that Lieutenant Hubert Astley Knight, M.B, died in 1906!

Beacon: yeah, warpig statists need more money.  kill yourself.

Wow dude.

If I where you. I'd sell 1000 BTC every month for that current prize and fuck my day job. I'd happily pay taxes on that and life my life for the next 31 years in peace and riches..

I'd just set up some company that makes 7k profit a month, pay taxes and be left with 3.5k every darn month. Easiest job ever. And who knows, by the time your 31 years older those last 1000 BTC's are worth 10000$ each.

Say worth of BTC doubles every year. 7, 14, 21, ... 7.5 billion a coin. Meh. That won't happen :') But still :p

Mining is a hobby for many miners, and that is treated very differently from a business.

This sounds terrible.

I would pay whatever was required to have all my needs met for bitcoin directly. I bet it would be easy and hardly cost extra in about 3 months. To never touch another dollar would be sweet.

+1

Bitcoin is not a get-rich-quick scheme. The end goal of bitcoin is to create a self-contained economy.

I would sell the 1000 BTC a month as well as that would not effect the volume at mtgox substantially as 1 million were traded last month.  But I would keep my day job and bank the money in stocks, real estate and gold.  If bitcoin continued at similar prices after a few years THEN I would consider retiring.
 

I would have to agree that knight would be a fool to leave all his gains unrealized when bitcoin is so vulnerable to threats from USG.
He'd also be a fool to talk about realizing gains on a public forum.

Why so modest? Let's make it the most trusted global currency.

Of course I agree having even a small economy is a step in the right direction ;)

Holy,

How does it feel to be worth 5.3 million $ :p ?

A better question is

What is is like to make $1.5M in a single day without doing anything?

This is a truly awesome BTC story

371,000?

Surely you can spare this not so wealthy first time father a couple hundred coins?

19CsjRxZGtrY6eadbh52zbhjKz1Tqch732

knightmb, you should use a portion of your fortune to make a big time transaction.  Maybe buy a Tesla Roadster.  Maybe you could talk to Elon Musk directly about it.  I mean hey you've got 5 million right now and the sky is the limit.  Some big purchase would get lots of attention.  You'll probably be a billionaire within the year.

He might not want that kind of attention though I love the idea and love the Tesla.  I wish I had one!

Today, besides bitcoin.....  Real estate is a steal in many places.   That is what I would buy.  Not lots.  Just some cherry picked good deals. 

Hey now your worth $5 million...

And today you are worth 6.3 million. Fuck. He earns 1 million $'s in one day :p

well, his last 360K coins or so would get him $0 if he sold it all in one fell swoop but yeah kind of

approaching $10m, good sir!

...and hit it a few hours later...

who is this guy and will he pls stand up!  :-X

if he's smart he's destroyed all evidence linking him to his online persona.

knightmb is either scared for his life right now, hired a top-notch security crew/bodyguard(s), or fled the country with backup encrypted flash drives.  Who knows, maybe he bought an island and named it Bitcoin Island  ;D

This ^^

In my view, you'll be a multi-millionaire in about 20+ years, if it all goes according to 'plan'... not before.

Dude,

Spend it !
Keeping money only gives you more headaches...
Take the family for a trip around the world have a good time.
Convert the money into fun experience and good for others.
When nothing is left, the experiences and good feelings remain - and no one can/will sue you for those (especially if you are broke and back to where you were 2 years ago).

Or form a foundation which owns a bunch of offshore companies and cook island trusts which own bitcoins and bitcoin funded businesses.

Nobody can take those money than BK or not.

Think of all the sockless children you could outfit in a new pair of Alpaca wools!!

I agree that people should use some of them to buy tangible things.  If the market (btc or USD or any market) crashes, then they can't take away your house if it's paid for, your car, etc, etc.
 
I'm not saying spend a ton, just whatever your comfortable with. 
 
If I was sitting on 300k btc, I'd totally buy a boat :)

I think he can take out about 50.000$ a day without crashing the market. Would last him 8-9 months, a good timeline to liquidate and after that just live your life to the fullest as a multimillionaire :)

Too bad for all the poor souls ending up with worthless bits. Meh, just feed some hungry African children, those fat capitalistic geeks had it to good anyway. The Bitcoin Robin Hood !

Folks like knightmb are actually the kind of people I'd love to hear most about.

The ones who were there, whether out of cleverness or idealism, when it all was still < 1$ stuff and a day of CPU cycles netted you double digits of BTC.

They are very much like lottery winners, but with a twist.
Basically they have been given immense opportunity to be "someone else" simply for "having been there" (sponsored by anyone gullible enough to help drive prices up hundredfold since then), and I have always been curious about the giant "what if" of money vs no money plus people.

These are the real stories imho. Not blah will regulators shut it down, blubb how high can we go, blerp bubblecrashworldrevolutionwhatevs.


More of these individuals should come forward and put forth their stories, be it here or on IAMA(BTC millionaire, e.g.) / reddit or something.

knightmb, congrats.
You have my best of well-wishes. I hope you manage to create as much real cash and accordingly cool real life experience out of this as at all possible.

haha knightmb,

you were very lucky and still are. know what? i would be very happy about 10k btc.
and because you really are not happier with 371k then with 361k (you know it!), you should really send 10k btc to me at 1AWqSp8zh1BPYaN96UE8KxLzKg7Kd9SoTn :)

Your asking for Sixteen Thousand Dollars. And your putting it in such a way asif it's nothing to him.
Ask a multimillionare why they dont go around down giving the homeless money, And see what they say.
It's probly gonna something amung the lines of "a penny saved is a penny earned, Do it 100times, And you got yourself a dollar"

160THOUSAND dollars is still ONE HUNDRED SIXTY THOUSAND DOLLARS, It Doesnt matter how much you have, If people just passed out cash like your asking then he wouldnt have money

It's undeniable that anyone would ask for some money from a multimillionare if they themselves werent doing so well.

Your asking for 160k, and saying "oh you wont notice a difference, this is meager to you, Make me happy"

I think it was mostly a joke...

Damn, you are set for life :P

I barely have one bitcoin :(

me too :[[

Sure hope he didnt have it all sitting on MTgox!  lol

damn

you are one lucky and smart bastard





i would not come back to respond knowing my ip would be tracked
i would hire some security experts and get the fuck out of America

No, last time I read the guy had it offline and backed up in multiple locations...

Still though if the value of btc crashes to 0 he's still screwed...

Not more screwed than the rest of us, though.

Yep..I'm willing to bet some BTC that he already cashed out a decent chunk of that. Tis all wild speculation, but I salute him for managing to carry the torch till the end.

What end?

The end of bitcoin (assuming such an eventuality)....

You think he can cash out that gigantic stash in case of a panick!? He's going down with the ship and there isn't one damn thing he can do about it. The big holders know that at least for now they're sort of stuck. They have to be long term bitcoin bulls. They can't sell out any time soon that is for sure.

But let's not think such negative thoughts.

Sell out why? .... they can just trickle them in over a long period of time ... as and when is needed.

This.

The big holders are probably the ones responsible for not letting the price get up too high.  Many of them are probably trickling themselves a nice $10k/month or so.

True, but time carries risk.

@SgtSpike, that could be true..but in that case it will turn into a game of who can hold out the longest / resist the urge to sell. Honestly if I had 300K I'd sell half and keep the other in a paper wallet and just forget about it for several years. It's a pretty big gamble but it could pay off huge in the end - assuming that you don't need to sell BTC to survive or sustain your lifestyle.

ah no ... you had 25,000 and you left them lying around on an insecure computer that is what you would do .... mouthing off about what big holders of BTC are doing is not such a good look given your purported circumstances.

WoW you guys are necros but this is a good post :)

makes me wonder what I'd ever do If I had that kinda of power!

 ;D

har har..laught it up, but if you bothered to actually read my post you'd understand that I was saying what I would do if I had that much in hindsigh of the experience I've went through. Obviously I would not repeat that mistake.

Anything new on knightmb and his 371 kBTC?

wow, you just remembered him? what did trigger that memory?

I was just wondering about him, too.  Anyone know anything?

Last Active:   June 11, 2012, 01:18:33 PM

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=345

Last Active:        Today at 10:34:23 AM

I still lurk around the forums   ;)

Someone did send me a message asking to come out and say hi.  :)

When I get more time later, I'll put up a good long post about what has been going on all this time. As most can imagine, I try to avoid the the spotlight, although my name seems to come up in bitcoin articles from time to time. Overall, just like to keep my privacy. As I said though, when I get more time later I'll type up a nice long "what the heck has been going on" post.  ;D

You're probably sticking your head out more than a healthy person would, which is admirable. Stay safe!

Ill love to read it!
Also, stories like yours are those, that give Bitcoin a charming character.
When there are amiable tales about soldiers of fortune like you in the news,
people like to read it just for fun. So please stay on the news and spread the word as a bitcoin icon! (anonymously if you like)

Can't wait for that story :)
Stay safe.

Well, here goes a long spiel.

Probably the last that anyone had heard from me before a few days ago was dated September, 2011 according to my profile stats. So it has been a long time of me just lurking around from time to time.

I can't remember exactly when, but some story broke on the Internet about my bitcoin collection and shortly afterwards things got crazy.

The first thing that happened was my inbox here at the forum exploded with people asking for a loan of anywhere from 10k to 100k bitcoins to start the next big market place. I had a few people message me here that they had been burned by a hacker or some website that had their wallet information and asked for anywhere from 100 to 1k bitcoins as a way to help them recover their loss. I always wanted to help people, but there is no well to tell if these were sincere request or just someone out to make a quick bitcoin scam. Some of those I did help people I did help just to be nice, but word must have gotten around quick.

I had to step back from the forums for a while as it was a good place for people to chase me down. All the questions of what I would do with it or how did I get it, was I the one that hacked XYZ website and that's why I have so many, etc. Somewhere in this topic I think, is a another long explanation of how I came into possession of it all. Long story short, I was in bitcoin early when the network was small and basically used a lot of Amazon processing power to load up a ton of bitcoin miners all at once in their clusters (Amazon) using a custom compiled version of the CentOS bitcoind source files. Amazon had a big price difference between running a lot of windows sessions and running a lot of Linux sessions. Turns out, the Linux sessions were running kind of an old version of CentOS as well as I couldn't even get the compiled binaries to run.

Well, a lot of money was spent to generate that chunk of bitcoins, but not so I could posses it all, there were plans to use it as a backing for re-loadable credit cards like service that had bitcoin powering it in the background. Needless to say, that project fell out due to (at least in hindsight) very inept investors. The project floundered and then finally as a way to get out, they (investors) wanted to see what they could sell everything for. It had cost a lot of real money to produce that pile of bitcoins, so I ended up buying it for dirt cheap (at least in terms that bitcoins really had no value to them). Maybe after the 7 year NDS I signed expires, the world will know who it was, but for now I can't name anyone or business.

Once the market value was shooting up to space, the pile of bitcoins was worth a small fortune in theory at least.

A lot of bitcoins were spread around the community to help people at first, but it kind of got out of hand.
Ultimately, a large portion ended up being donated to wikileaks.org, so I'm certainly not the person sitting up top a large pile of bitcoins anymore. The rest went to paying off small debts and the very last of it was just recently donated to wikileaks.org again. I never had any intention of trying to crash the bitcoin market with a large sell-off as many theorized I would do. So sleep safe that there is one less person like me in the bitcoin kingdom.  ;D

So, no matter what legend has built up, nothing amazing or exciting has happened to the bitcoins I once had. No buying a Country or purchasing Islands of the sort. Just trying to help out where I could instead. The only thing I have left is old screenshots and empty wallet files now.

A large portion of my past time has actually been invested in the creation of an alternate digital currency for the last few years because I always thought there was a better way to do it. So that's where I spend all my time now, at timekoin.org (http://timekoin.org)

I was great to catch up with everyone though, hopefully the story wasn't too boring. Maybe not as exciting as some had hoped.

That's a nice attempt.
"Just kidding; I donated it all to Wikileaks" isn't going to hold, although I do see why you would want to get all that heat off your back.

Yeah, I find it very hard to believe that he gave up that much money.

A lot of early users gave up a  lot of their bitcoins. Most of mine went to the weusecoins video for example. Maybe we just liked the idea of bitcoin more than the idea of being a tycoon :)

Just curious knightmb, to quiet all the naysayers, can you point us to the transaction of the donation to wikileaks?

Wait, this whole thing was just an advert for a Bitcoin alternative? Genius :)

This is a quote from the site:

If this means that there is no upper limit on the total amount of "coins" that can be generated - i.e. infinite inflation, than this will fail unfortunately.
All currencies must be inherently scarce, otherwise failure is guaranteed.
.

There is only so many hours in a day Im guessing :)

Exactly ! This story is BS and this guy is just waiting to cash out when we reach $10 in Dec.

Hope I do it before him, though !

Cash out? Why would he? Start spending some of his BTC, or converting some into fiat, perhaps... but cash out makes no sense at all.

Well, that was disappointing. If it's true, that is :p

oh come on, are you serious? Cut him some slack. This guy is in no position to have to prove anything. Believe what you want and give him the benefit of the doubt so he can play a "normal" part in this community again.

No, bitcoin was just a market research test baloon for timekoin that accidentally got out of hand.

Like he said before, it's his retirement funding. He's too smart to sell it for a measly $10 in crappy fiat this year.

Retirement funding ?

371 000 * 10 = 3 710 000 USD would suit 3 retirements for a normal human lifetime ! Is this guy a shapeshifting alien that is going to live 300 years ?

Wikileaks seems to have received ~2989 BTC from 994 transactions to their current address (http://blockchain.info/address/1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v?filter=2).

They also hand out addresses on request if you join IRC and talk to the bot.

Oh ok. :) Good thing. Thanks for letting me know.

@ knightmb:

As much as I wish you to pursue happiness in your own chosen way, playing the "normal" part in this community is over.
With all your money and background comes a lot of power and responsibility. You can step up to it, take it in your own hands and build something meaningful, or abandon the chances destiny gave you. Its your choice. But with regards to Bitcoin things will never go back to normal for you.

Depends what normal was .... sleeping under an Interstate flyover and cradling a bottle of cheap red to sleep is normal for some folks ... before (and after?) bitcoin.

This: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=87408.0

Me too.

knightmb,

I apologize for bringing this up, I didn't realize you did not want attention.

Why 3 replies in a row, Stardust? Couldn't you just edit you 1st reply and include everything?
You can still do it now and remove the 2 other (now) useless replies

Pick one of those 2: People get confused to whom it's addressed if I reply all in one post, or I am lazy.

Then, why not multi-quote and insert each reply after each quote?
A forum is not a chatroom.
Also, I think everybody undertsands if you address each person you wish to reply to with an @someone
But, whatever, do as you wish.

Not entirely true. Worst case he/she can always burn the knightmb identity. Even Satoshi is/are probably still hanging around here somewhere.

Haven't you read his last post here ?  He donated a lot of them to wikileak and he's still active on the new currency TimeCoin.
http://timekoin.org/ (http://timekoin.org/)

Yes I did. I don't understand your point. I was talking about options, not suggesting knightmb not participate however he/she chooses.

No he didnt. Thats the wikileaks BTC donation address: http://blockchain.info/address/1HB5XMLmzFVj8ALj6mfBsbifRoD4miY36v
Total received: 3400 BTC to date

What I meant earlier:
Now that bitcoin changed his life for him personally, he can never go back to the point where he started off. Even if he gave everything away and changed his identity, he would still keep a galore of memories and went through so many life changing events due to bitcoin, he would never be the same person again. Also, his outside world is different now (unless he kept it a complete secret from everyone except this community and still lives in his Mom's basement;).
To say it with Peter Parker's words: "With great power comes great responsibility."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKmQW7JTb6s&noredirect=1

maybe he IS Spiderman after all?

Fixed that for you.

It is 'an' address, not 'the' address.

Curious to know what was the value of USD/BTC rate when he donated them ?

Ah. Thank you for clarifying. I'm just a little dense sometimes.

Whatever else eventually comes from bitcoin, it certainly has already created some really new and interesting experiences for a great many people, and stimulated alot of thought and creativity.

Current status: Seized/confiscated/stolen by the US Secret Service? [1] (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/12yfnk/cats_lead_feds_to_knightmb_worth_371kbtc_in/)

[2] http://mbdonationfund.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=51&Itemid=57
[3] http://mbdonationfund.com/images/documents/search_warrant.pdf

I hope his wallets are encrypted or stored on encrypted volumes and he has encrypted off-site backups.

This should be fascinating. Quote's from 2011.

Another interesting quote from MBDonationFund.com:
"I am a self-employed wireless Internet service provider and web hosting/designed in Franklin, TN barely scratching out a living for my young family."

Thread from Endless-sphere forum when people found out about him acquiring the BTC for $5,000.

http://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=30632&sid=bc2ba1be6bb99fef8c9941ef67f4b5b3

So knightMB is the sender of the Romney extortion hoax?! what the hell?!

He says the cats pictured are not his, but a client's. Then he days someone else went through his trash and got the usb drives  ::) He should have securely deleted/purged that USB!! lol

http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid/

Why should we donate to a guy with 371k BTC?!

I kind of just read the first few posts in this thread.  But I figure something foul is afoot if he is still missing.  $100000 doesn't usually just go missing, looks like the next block chain should be dedicated to finding out just what happened to this fellow.

We know what happened to him.  He's far from "missing". 

He's begging for donations because the SS is investigating him for the Romney tax return ransom attempt.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=123591.0

And really, he last posted in June and his last activity on the board was on 4 October - there was no reason to be think that "something foul" was afoot.  It's always a good idea to read the last page of an old thread before commenting on its first few posts.

So not only did he send a ransom letter to a presidential candidate he also donated a heap of bitcoins to an "enemy of the state" ...no wonder they kicked his door in.

This is ridiculous.  I just made a thread about the security of BTC.  I know the government is going to do something about this...I just wonder what.  They are viewing this board and pinging every single person's IP address, I'm sure of it. 

Either way, if they link this person's actions with BTC they should be aware that it is still alive and strong, very strong.  It would be a hard task to shut down a crypto currency that generates it's own value according to a blockchain.  Especially when there are homeless people on the street begging for USD...Hmm.  I smell something bad, something is not being handled correctly. 

He says he made "large" donations to Wikileaks but that's a claim I'd take with a grain of salt.

oh god, the governments are pinging us. SELL!

hehe, "court order: confiscate the blockchain"

How would that work, exactly? Are you proposing a fork or an altcoin here? How would that help track someone down?

I think people are forgetting the real reason why they went after him. HE SENT A RANSOM LETTER TO A PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE.

Bitcoin is just going to get swept up in the middle of this by association, but the crime was old fashion Blackmail.

Did I miss that part? Where is it?

http://mbdonationfund.com/images/documents/search_warrant.pdf

Page 6, (Attachment B, 1. n.)

Edit:  Sorry, I didn't spot the irony - but I'll leave my response here for anyone who had missed the bit about the warrant actually specifying Bitcoin addresses (possibly a first).

I do not understand what is going on.
Could someone please doing a summary of this thing?

Did anyone notice the messages on the wallet addresses?

http://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8 (http://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8)
The September 7th, 2012 receiving amounts reveal: "gnp.Kz5HB/moc.rugmi.i//:ptth"
Reversed gives the url: https://i.imgur.com/BH5zK.png (https://i.imgur.com/BH5zK.png)
When scanned leads to: http://www.sendspace.com/file/m6crjs which leads to a file that has been deleted.

The September 9th, 2012 receiving amounts reveal: "tqvbn/oc.x//:ptth"
Reversed gives the url: http://x.co/nbvqt  (http://x.co/nbvqt) which just redirects to GoDaddy.com
Even "fixing" the url to be http://x.com/nbvqt  (http://x.com/nbvqt) leads to a page not found.

http://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB (http://blockchain.info/address/12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB)
The September 5th, 2012 receiving amounts simply reveal the message "prove it".

x.co is a domain shortener. It was probably directing to a honeypot attempting to log people accessing that URL. Remember, these are payments sent to the extortioner's address.

I think the search warrant that states really ignorant stuff like they are kicking in the door looking for pastebins shows it is just as likely he was operating a TOR exit node and somebody government crank got his IP address instead of realizing that they will not find the anonymous perpetrator.

US government thinks knightmb might be the guy who send the ransom note to romney/his tax company.


> "use of the screen name KnightMB"
that of course is highly illegal!


Is knightMB poor or still rich? If he really tried to blackmail Romney maybe it is true and he gave away all his coins.

If they only hit him because he was running an exit node this is bad news.

These are the "Stop Release" / "Promote Full Release" addresses from the infamous pastebin:


I really hope KnightMB doesn't happen to have the private keys to those addresses.

---

Found this especially interesting thread on the TimeKoin forums: (Only 4 posts total.)

Romney 1040 tax returns held hostage for Bitcoins by koinmaster » Tue Sep 11, 2012 6:24 pm
 (http://forums.timekoin.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=84)

---

It seems overwhelmingly likely that the Secret Service will want to have a look inside any safety deposit boxes that KnightMB might have,
that are known to contain COMPUTERS (well, usb sticks) that are known to contain Bitcoin wallet files.

This raises the question: What is likely to happen to evidence that is not related to the Romney investigation?

Would it be returned to the owner intact? Can seized evidence be kept indefinitely?
Can the Secret Service give KnightMB a blank USB stick and some unused CD-Rs as replacement?

What is the value of an USB stick containing (perhaps) the keys to (perhaps) 371K bitcoins? Around 20 dollars or around 4 million dollars?
If they give him 20 dollars and tell him to go buy a new stick, how can he argue otherwise? (Without getting into more trouble.)

you'd have to take some precautions if you had obtained that many coins illegally or run the danger of being suspected of illegal activity. Easiest just to put them into a brainwallet and say that brainwallet address is probably the wikileaks donation address you got from wikileaks irc bot when questioned about the whereabout of the 371,076 BTC.

I know in the UK if property is seized as evidence then charges dropped you have a certain time within which you may reclaim them - otherwise they are destroyed.  With all the additional protections of freedoms provided by the US constitution I can't see that the rights of the wrongly accused in this respect would be less than here.

It sounds like he is BTC broke or wants people to think he is...and really, what's the difference? Maybe the threat of one person unloading would be different if his stash were spread around many people....but that's about it. I'm inclined to forget about it all...other than the clever use of amazon...sometimes it's the simple ideas that really pay off!

We shall see how this alternate crypto currency goes...I was hoping he'd stick around and help Bitcoin grow...oh well. Souns like they've got an interesting solution to the transaction spam "problem." Maybe we can learn from that.

Addendum: missed a few posts. How do we know the search warrant is real?
Anyhow, I think something fishy is goin on.

Video interview with KnightMB on the Romney case:

http://www.kpho.com/story/20006705/secret-service-investigate-franklin-man-in-romney-tax-return-theft?autoStart=true&topVideoCatNo=default&clipId=7924362

Warrant and a list of items seized: http://cryptome.org/2012/11/romney-tax-plot.pdf

I have the feeling that more Bitcoins are being "lost" then perhaps Satoshi ever expected.

KnightMB didn't do himself any favours by posting that he'd been giving away large amounts of BTC just prior to the Romney tax thing happening.  That's something I'd definitely expect investigators to look at closely.

Here's a wild thought: the whole Romney blackmail hoax was a black-op with enough "clues" left around pointing toward knightMB to give probable cause for his arrest, detention and confiscation of 'evidence'.

If Secret Service wanted to investigate/discredit a major, public player of bitcoin sphere then the coincidence that they have happened to get exactly the right guy for both purposes seems slim ... imho.

KnightMB has done questionable stuff in the past, both Bitcoin-related and not Bitcoin-related.  The fact that the questionable stuff he's done in the past is known suggests that he's not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to avoiding consequences. 

Liar, liar, pants on fire, nose as long...: http://mbdonationfund.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=52&Itemid=59


Dude could easily get hired on over at Bitcoin Magazine or BFL.  ;D


For years at Timekoin, ey?


Theymos, give this guy the scammer tag.  ;D

I hate to sound like I'm defending him, but it's possible that he was developing the TimeKoin concept for a long time prior to launching it.  I read a lot of his early posts yesterday and it's pretty clear that he's always been looking for something which would give him some kind of "edge" over others. 

While he's lying when he describes TimeKoin as "long tested", the idea of developing a digital currency which doesn't require high end computers isn't unique.  From what I can see, he had a fair bit of interaction with the devs - including Satoshi - back in the day so he was exposed to the process of developing and refining a client.  This guy seems to be an opportunist so I'm not surprised that he's looking to create a niche alt currency.  I wouldn't trust him as far as I could throw him, but there's no doubt that people who now feel locked out of BTC mining are looking for something similar they can do with their existing hardware.

MB's Timekoin goes back to CPUs were all the rage: http://www.docstoc.com/docs/123704108/About-Timekoin (to read the entire abstract)


http://img.docstoccdn.com/thumb/orig/123704108.png

Good news! MB has many backups hidden so there's no way the Secret Service can find them. It's also a good thing that the SS don't read this forum so there's no way for them to know that they even exist.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-WgmPFLad8VE/ThH3YXMCzEI/AAAAAAAADVM/gqXB3cNDqxM/s1600/mib.JPG
Orion (MIB)

It's also a good thing that he didn't post about some of his back ups being in a safe deposit box because otherwise the Endless-sphere posters who were reading about how he acquired his 371,000 BTC might have passed that information on to the government as well.

We should all just leave this behind.  It's obviously not going to do any good for BTC or anything for that matter.  I support this guy and his hundreds of thousands of BTC, but seeing as how hard it is for a new miner to just get even on BTC, more energy should be focused on making this a better project all around. 

It isn't good that he did 'what' he did, but it's done and over with.  Hopefully it won't escalate.

Leaving this behind ? Nobody here care about what damage this could have done to Romney. Do you think anyone here will help the US gov prosecute him ? We've more than enough people to prosecute as it is.

 It might have been a low and stupid move, bringing attention to Bitcoin's potential for blackmailing...  but what I care about is the future of Timekoin and wondering what happened to his 370k BTC and I'll continue to do so.

Jesus wept.  People say exactly the same thing about anything negative which happens in the Bitcoin world.  "It's not good for Bitcoin", "let's put it behind us and move forward".  It's one of the reasons why there are no meaningful consequences for scammers.

Like it or not, Bitcoin is going to be used for things which attract the attention of the authorities, whether it's Silk Road, extortion attempts or trading child porn.  "lalalala I can't hear you" is not the best way to respond to things which bring negative attention to Bitcoin.

You're also forgetting that many people in the community thought that the ransom attempt was a good thing in that it got Bitcoin mentioned in the mainstream media in a big way.  For once, it wasn't only those who read the technology pages who were reading about Bitcoin - anyone following the US election campaign could have learned about Bitcoin for the first time because of the coverage the extortion attempt received.

Negativity only perpetuates negativity...

 ::)

It's true, this guy had to chance to be one of BTC's biggest contributors...but instead, he's in a whole world of trouble.

The two aren't mutually exclusive.  His early posts show that he thought a great deal about the development of Bitcoin and actively made suggestions to the devs and Satoshi.  He also recognised early on that an "arms race" may eventuate and perceived that as a "flaw", which is what led to him trying to develop a decentralised digital currency which wouldn't rely on high end processors.  To that extent, he's made a contribution to both Bitcoin and to peer to peer digital currencies in general whether or not TimeKoin succeeds.

While there are certainly Bitcoin fan-boys who regard Satoshi as some kind of messiah, Satoshi himself recognised the potential for the emergence of an alt currency which would be more successful than Bitcoin.  I think that a lot of people are committed to a decentralised, peer to peer currency rather than to Bitcoin per se and putting their time, energy and resources into the development is an alt currency is just as valid as devoting their energy to Bitcoin.  The idea that there should be one, true decentralised currency and that everyone should worship at its altar is ridiculous.

That KnightMb has an ego is readily apparent and his inability to keep that ego in check has certainly invited trouble, but it's unrealistic to expect that everyone who acquires wealth or influence through their involvement with Bitcoin is or should be a nice person or an altruist.  Some people involved with Bitcoin are going to be shitty human beings.  Some of them will make meaningful contributions to Bitcoin and/or make money out of it despite being shitty human beings. 

Your implicit assumption here is "the bitcoin made people do bad things" ...

... people do bad bad things, not computers, nor software nor crypto .... blaming bitcoin for the bad things people do is infantile, bordering on insane.

Nope.  KnightMB did questionable things that didn't involve Bitcoin at all.  Anything which offers an opportunity to part fools and their money is going to attract its fair share of opportunists.  Anything which is perceived as offering anonymity is also going to attract its fair share of opportunists.  Bitcoin is just another tool they're going to use.

What I was addressing was the assumption that because people are in a position where they could do something to benefit Bitcoin as a whole or "make a contribution" to Bitcoin they have some obligation to do so.  I think any such assumption greatly over-estimates the number of people who have some kind of ideological loyalty to Bitcoin.  People aren't spending tens of thousands of dollars on mining rigs "to maintain the blockchain".  The didn't invest with pirate because it was "good for Bitcoin".  They don't speculate on Bitcoin prices for ideological reasons.  A lot of people don't give a shit about Bitcoin per se - it's purely a means to an end for them.

Bitcoin doesn't make people do bad things but in the short-term it has some characteristics which are appealing to those who want to do certain types of shitty things.  There's certainly no deterrent to using this community to perpetrate scams when the community response is pretty much always "let's stop talking about it, put it behind us and move forward".  Any community - Bitcoin related or not - where there's a critical mass of people looking to get rich quick who also have a distaste for regulation and other government intervention is a scammer haven and this community is no exception.

If Bitcoin isn't robust enough to withstand negative publicity and negative events then it is ultimately doomed to remain a niche technology used only by Satoshi fanboys.

It obviously is a flaw. And he deserves credit for pointing that out. Timekoin seems ill-conceived though.

He's either lurking or the Secret Service now have his password.

The "bitcoin community" term is making me more than a little sick ... it is meaningless ... I don't think there is any such "community". Are you saying because I have an interest in bitcoin I am somewhat responsible for what some low-lifes get up to?

Is there such a "Euro community"? A "Fed Res. dollar community"? It's utter collectivist BS to ascribe a 'community' to a group of users who choose to use a type of payment system... wtf? "Visa community", "mastercard community", "PayPal community" ... obviously, there is no bitcoin 'community', it's a made up meaningless term allowing people to assign collective responsibility/attributes to an otherwise disparate group. It also dumbs down a much richer and complicated situation so people don't have to think about it too much, and makes the propaganda that much more effective.

May I suggest your distaste for the concept of 'community' might be colouring your impression of what was being said here?  From what I can see repentance is saying that we should not assume people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here act primarily in the best interests of the project.  As far as I can see there is no suggestion in repentence's post that people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here should form some sort of collective responsibility for one another.  I'm not saying there aren't people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here who believe in the wider implications of the word 'community' - those nuances that are more noble in some eyes whilst more abhorrent in others' (notice I'm not nailing my own colours to the mast here).

I would tend to agree with your assertion that the term 'Bitcoin community' is meaningless if the vast majority of Bitcoin users had very little of interest in common (including Bitcoin), did not regularly participate in a forum (in the wider sense) of people discussing it and related issues and instead simply used it on a day-to-day basis for their own gain (again I'm not intending to imply a value judgement here) as is the case with the examples you gave.  But what makes me smile a little at your rant (if I may call it that) is the reason you have an audience at all is that there are people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here.

What I'm saying is that sometimes people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here might want to refer to people-who-use-Bitcoin-and-hang-out-here without using so many letters and hyphens - and 'community' seems to be a word that fits the bill.

You forgot the flowers.

A new flash drive might be more appropriate given that KnightMB "lost" one.

You wrote a very nice argument, with which I mostly agree. It is just your use of the word "make". If you meant "make = force", then I'm fully with you.

But if you meant "make = induce" or "make = enable", then in my opinion you are wrong. Especially on the purely software technical side this project became a great enabler and inducer for incompetent programmers.

Looking purely at the effects it is hard to distinguish incompetence from the opportunistic treachery, cf. bitfloor fiasco. But the end result can be widely observed: Bitcoin started as a rather low-quality proof-of-concept code. It had no (or very few) remote exploit-style faults and this somehow became equivalent to the claim that Bitcoin is almost perfect "Mona Lisa"-quality financial code, cf. Dan Kaminsky presentation.

Well, the reality is that Bitcoin is far from perfect (in the financial software engineering realm) and has an unfortunate property of attracting some of the worst programming anti-talent. The profession of software engineering is completely unregulated, neither legaly nor morally. This is unlike eg. construction engineering, where enough people died in collapsed structures or simply lost the roof over their head to understand the value of the "building code". Similarly, one doesn't have to be electrical engineer to understand the value of "electrical code" or a firefighter to understand the value of "fire safety code".

There's still not enough people who lost their savings or operating funds to make the broad Bitcoin users community understand the value of high-quality software.

At least the bitomat.pl operator did his share and is now a perfect example of what will happen if you disregard the word "ephemeral" in the documentation of Amazon Web Services.

Edit: This post unfortunately lacks propert contextual qualification. I'm posting an apology below.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=6825.msg1337000#msg1337000

Yeah, I only used "make" because it was the word used by the poster to whom I was responding.

I do think that there's a kind of "cult of Bitcoin" which enables incompetence - and not just technical incompetence - and that you're right when you say that losses to date haven't been catastrophic enough to discourage that.

Right, we should be looking at the big corporations for an example of how to properly organize and write software that isn't so anti-talented.  Like Microsoft, who has had half a dozen tries to get their calculator right with every new release of Windows (I assume this calculator is used often in the same "financial world" you're talking about).  In spite of an update mechanism that would let them push out unlimited revisions they felt were necessary, even in fully-patched and up-to-date Windows 7 x64, when faced with something as simple as sqrt(4) - 2 (which should be zero), it gives some ridiculous negative number with lots of decimal places.

That's besides the main point: obviously you come with a lot of good ideas as to how Bitcoin needs to scale and evolve into world-class work.  But showing up and running your mouth and copping an attitude of contempt toward the other contributors to the project isn't a particularly effective way to contribute.  Assuming you genuinely care about the project, unless you plan to implement all your ideas yourself, try to be less of an asshole, so that you can spend your social capital on organizing others' efforts to steer the project the way you think it ought to go, instead of blowing it all on an ill-conceived plot to look like the baddest badass the forum has ever seen.

This is wrong on so many levels and really stirs up my emotions. I'm holding off my response because I'm trying to keep the forum civil and also because casascius has already formulated a good part of it rationally.

If you are skilled in programming, why don't you just make an alternate chain?
Bitcoin has serious problems that could use fixing. There is no way you are going to convince the developers to fix them. They will just deny the existence of these problems.

If you make an obviously better product, you can convince users to adopt it. Just making the back-end better is not enough, however. You need to offer users some salient new features.

Key problems include:
1) Long-run sustainable blockchain [don't know anything about scalability etc., but the bitcoin system will not be secure without block reward. I am sure of that. This is part of the back-end.]
2) Wallet security [There is no reason why users should have to expose their entire balance to theft whenever they send coins. Fixing this would be a salient new feature.]

You suggest that there are other issues. I don't have any programming expertise and cannot comment on these. Why not fix everything you can and release a higher quality product?  

The answer to "why not" is two pronged.

1) The mills of justice turn slow, but grind exceedingly fine. Just read the first paragraph of my BIP 2112 proposal. As a technical advisor/export to a plaintiff all my Bitcoin-related correspondence is potentialy subject to the discovery by the defendant counsel. I don't want to get involved in some sort interferrence accusactions, conflicts of interests, etc. I use my "social capital" to post here as a premier cryptocurrency forum to assure that everything technical I wrote is a matter of public domain and cannot become some sort of submarine patent. It really is secondary whether somebody implements my ideas or not. They just have to be matter of public domain.

2) IMHO another real-time, reflective, in-vivo alt-chain is not the way to go and waste of the effort. IMHO the cryptocurrency field will be stagnant until some enterprising biz-school grad or doctoral student does some sort of in-vitro discrete-time simulation experiments using GPSS or some such. When the headline will be something like "100-years of Bitcoin evolution simulated overnight" it will mean that the crypto-currencies have arrived as a field of research.

I mean I don't mind and even support you and others discussing alternatives. It is important to keep the ideas in the open, public domain. But it somewhat resembles the philosophical "what if?" discussions I've heard in the theological departments. But when the "what if?" are much-faster-than-real time animations then the actual scientific discovery will happen and the whole field will move forward. Either as a field of research or as an venture investment opportunity.

Nice, fast-moving WebGPSS or similar animations sell better than the walls of text or pages of certifiably-secure cryptographic algorithms. My contributions are really mundane, on the par of "how to make a good oil-pan washer so your engine won't seize even on the bumpiest road".

You think that a white paper based on simulation would convince anyone of anything? I highly doubt it. For economists who are introduced to the issue, degeneration of bitcoin would be trivial. It is a standard free-rider problem. Most of the community rejects mainstream academic research and holds various fringe beliefs (e.g. Austrian Economics, Libertarianism). Given that they are happy to dismiss most other economics research, what is to stop them from dismissing a critical white paper (no matter how valid). Look at the ridiculous reactions to the paper by Shamir. That paper was not critical of bitcoin to any meaningful degree. Nonetheless, it caused the community to go into witchhunt mode. Think how people would react to a full frontal attack. Complete dismissal.

The best way of convincing people is through a working system. Your argument is a cop out.

Your words are so full of crap it is hard to know where to begin shovelling ... I would place bets you have an MBA, law degree or perhaps both?

It will be many re-incarnations before you come close to releasing a crypto-currency, at least we can be sure of and glad for that.

As often said in marketing : speak of it in good or in bad, does'nt matter, unless it's spoken about ;)

The blackmail to Mit was just a nice publicity !  I enjoyed the news.. and don't care so much about so called "bad" news / publicity.. It all fall back to the same point, more and more peoples know about bitcoin :D


sorry for bad english

This whole story stinks like spook sushi.  Even worse than this forum.
Now the warrant is on cryptome.  Go figure. 

It appears there are only two obvious cases for whatreallyhappened :

1) This KnightMB character went batshit insane
2) Some federales decided they wanted to grab some new flavors of money for themselves and set a trap

My instinct says both seem too obvious, there must be more to the story. 

I now understand where I made a mistake. I want  to apologize and make a correction.

When I wrote yesterday:
I had in mind the effects of the following events from middle of last year:

1) Bitcoin Consultancy touring continental Europe, establishing an office in Warsaw,Poland and having various promotional meetings there:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=26919.msg338755#msg338755

2) 1000 BTC bounty for getting a major business to accept Bitcoins as payment:
 
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46646.msg555039#msg555039

Because of the above efforts some people have privately offered a "bitcoind Enterprise Edition" (based on the private branch of the public 0.3.23 code):

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=42444.msg531318#msg531318
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=46646.msg558545#msg558545

I was involved in an informal code audit of those offerings. They were spectacularly bad and I allowed my perception of that code to influence my perception of the wider Bitcoin community. The multiple discussions with lawyers even influenced my writing style, as observed by Mr. marcus_of_augustus .

I want to publicly apologize for my unqualified statements made yesterday. I also want to publicly thank:

a) Mr. casascius for publicly pointing to me my errors,
b) Mr. Transisto for privately pointing to me that my posts yesterday were flawed.

I'm sorry.

active again: http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=152030.msg1616495#msg1616495 

anything new?

bump

> $37million in today's money 8)

 8)

This is what he claimed happened to it all a while back.  I believe this was his last post in this thread.

He says a large portion of it was donated to wikileaks, but if you look at this article on wikileaks (http://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmatonis/2012/08/20/wikileaks-bypasses-financial-blockade-with-bitcoin/), it shows that wikileaks had only taken in $32,000 in TOTAL donations up to that point.  In August 2012, $32,000 of Bitcoin would have been less than 10,000 Bitcoins.  That's a far cry from 371,000.

Anyway, I'm not going to bug him about it.  He's probably still got a lot of coins, and that's fine - he deserves it for being an early adopter of this technology.  He also deserves to not be pestered by people trying to beg money off him.

Oh. Since there's some interest in this, again... I wrote an article intended for Bitcoin Magazine last year, but they apparently lost interest in it when ownership changed over (I wasn't paid, I'm assuming I retain ownership), so here it is:

(Someone pick me up to write -- I'm bored out of my mind and could use some side-income)

Two Secret Service Raids Later, Previous Holder of Over $4m in BTC in Good Spirits

One man's world has been inarguably changed, for the better, and the worse, by Bitcoin. Through a shrewd and, what some have claimed dubious, business deal, Nashville, TN resident Michael Brown (known online as “Knightmb”) acquired 371,000 Bitcoins (then worth roughly $20,000 in a market which couldn't bear downward pressure) for $5,000. As of this writing, the 371,000 Bitcoins he purchased in 2011 are currently worth approximately $4m. Now, however, he may not only be Satoshi-less, but may also (again) be at risk of a stay in federal prison.

Who Is Michael Brown?
Brown lives in TN with his wife and child, working in just about everything technical. He provides wireless Internet service, designs hardware for other his company and other Wireless Internet Service Providers (WISPs) to use, as well as software. Brown also works as network, email, and website administer for multiple SMBs. Brown is quite familiar with Bitcoin and within the earlier online community. Around 2010, Brown even wrote and published an abstract on “Timekoin,” a proposed Bitcoin alternative he still uses.

Brown's Bitcoins
Around the time of Bitcoin's birth, Brown collected money (the project had roughly $12,000 in total funding) and bought hashing power to accumulate Bitcoins. By the time the money had run out, the project owned approximately 371,000 Bitcoins. However, even while the price of Bitcoins were roughly $.06 each, there was only very weak market demand. According to Brown, “It is easy in hindsight to think of how foolish anyone would be to sell that large amount of bitcoins for such a small amount, but back then there were articles written all over the Internet about bitcoin being a pyramid scam or a fools investment. The people (investors) that originally got into it, thought they had made a huge investment mistake and just wanted to get out.” And get out they did, allowing Brown to buy the project and its 371,000 Bitcoins for “only” $5,000.

However, while this collection of Bitcoin would be worth roughly $4,000,000 USD as of this writing, Brown states he did give away most of his holdings, including a large chunk to Wikileaks when they began accepting BTC donations, with Brown adding the quip “At the time though, I might as well have been sending power points from pokemon cards as far as what actual value they would get from it.“ Brown also gave much of his holdings away to those finding his contact information, with the remainder being sold once the Bitcoin market skyrocketed, allowing him to “make back my initial investment plus a lot of interest.“

There have been claims of foul play by Brown's previous partners, who were primarily members of electric bicycle forum Endless-Sphere. Bitcoin Magazine reached out to Justin, the current owner of the forum (Brown previously owned the forum while the Bitcoin accumulation project was ongoing). However, as of this writing, no evidence was brought up indicating Brown had done anything morally questionable. While there was “a three day mutiny” against Brown while he owned the forum, it appears this was solely related to the sale of the forum to another person (not Justin) who wanted the forum to be monetized.


Tax Document Theft
In mid-2012, Mitt and Ann Romney's tax documents were stolen from their accounting firm, PWC. Later, PWC received a flash drive and ransom letter demanding $1m worth of Bitcoins to keep the documents private. These documents, as of today, were never released, though it would appear the Romneys never paid the ransom. BitInstant, for their part in grabbing the media's attention in this ordeal, offered the Romney campaign a free USD-to-BTC conversion should they be interested.

The flash drive in the envelope sent to PWC did not just contain copies of the documents the ransomer was threatening to release, but also included two pictures of cats around furniture. The cat pictures were heavily scrutinized by the US Secret Service and considered to be the smoking gun of the case, which Brown says “has kind of turned into a running joke now among friends and family.” The Secret Service then decided, likely with evidence not yet presented to the public, to conduct a raid against Michael Brown and his family's home (again).

Likely taken into consideration by the United States SS was Brown's previous acquaintance with SS agents during their last raid of his house, which occurred in 2009. At the time, Brown worked for an insurance company to help them neatly organize customers' personal information into a spreadsheet. Brown alleges that part of the information he was to organize were social security numbers, which he wasn't sure if was legal. Brown contacted the insurance company but wasn't given proper attention until he threatened to tell national media. Brown says, “They explained that no one should have access to any customer's social security number, but I was trying to show them it was wrong assumption. Soon afterward, instead of fixing the issue, they called the federal government and told them I had stolen their customer data which contained tens or hundreds of thousands of social security numbers.“ It was at this point Brown first experiences the joy of a federal raid, where only his workstation was seized (he would not be so lucky in the future).  According to Brown, “After many months and many visits to the Secret Service office in Nashville, the case was finally closed for being a waste of time and resources for the Secret Service and my workstation was returned (damaged). No charges were ever filed and the case dropped.“

The 2012 Raid
It was September 14th, 2012 when Brown and his wife would again awake to bright flashlights being shone in their faces by Secret Service agents. This time, agents demanded answers about the pictures of cats written to the USB drive included with the ransom letter sent to the Romneys' tax firm.

Unfortunately for the Secret Service, they soon found neither the cats nor the furniture pictured. This didn't prevent them from further interrogating Brown and his family, however. His daughter would later be able to identify the cats as being owned by one of Brown's former clients, Janine Bolin, whose computer he backed up for her while helping repair her system. The Secret Service left Brown's house after crawling around his attic and confiscating any electronics they could find. They then paid a visit to Bolin's house, where they'd again confiscate all electronic equipment in case it might have evidence.

Brown states legal fees may be as high as $6,000, with other damages including what was done to his house (including the stereotypical broken doors), and says the situation the US Secret Service has created is similar to if “your local plumber has his entire truck taken, along with all the tools he uses for the trade.” Brown appears in good spirits, however, saying “if I ever do get any/all of my equipment back, I'm going to have a lot of extra of the same thing at least.” Brown ends responding to my questions with “Overall, the Federal government is made up of regular people like myself. The Federal government makes mistakes and bad things happen because of it. The most our family can do is pick up our life and move on. That is why we were reaching out for help. There have been many times when I've donated money or resources to help those in need, I guess it is time I ask the same in return of my fellow man.”

Brown has created a site for donations at www.mbdonationfund.com.

OK, thx for sharing that resumé with us Kluge. The question remains, what ever became of it?
Did he go to jail? Was the case dropped? Did the cats come clean?
...

LOL

They dropped the case AFAIK, and he's back to operating his WISP. He's actually developed and sells some pretty useful hardware and software for WISPs. https://amaranthinetech.com/

The cats refused to give up their dark secrets and are being held at Guantanamo Bay as enemy combatants, likely to die before a release hearing.

This is why dogs make better pets.

They're loyal, honest and a best friend.

Cats on the other hand? You can't trust em.

Jeronimo "Look deep into my eyeeeesss...  trrrusssst meeee.."

http://img.techpowerup.org/130626/P4091592 2.jpg

Suspicious timing .... http://www.wkbn.com/2013/06/26/tenn-man-charged-in-romney-tax-return-scheme/ (http://www.wkbn.com/2013/06/26/tenn-man-charged-in-romney-tax-return-scheme/)

hashman's spook sushi stench getting stronger and stronger.

o.O

"The Justice Department said Brown falsely claimed that he had gained access to the PricewaterhouseCoopers internal computer network and stolen tax documents for Romney and his wife, Ann Romney, for tax years before 2010."

Was that mistyped? Oh, no... They were referring to the tax documents saying they were the stolen ones, not that he falsely admitted to stealing them, which'd be... weird. ETA: Actually, I have no idea what that sentence's supposed to say. He falsely claimed he gained access to PWC's internal computer network *and* stolen tax documents *for* Romney and his wife. That's pretty open to interpretation...

It's a shame. If he's a liar, he obviously has no use for the $1m and was trolling. If he isn't a liar, then... one more case of horseshit government investigations where they need someone to point at.

ETA: Alphabet soup's reading (or will read) this thread if anyone wants to wave hello, btw.

Nice timing indeed. I wish there would be some more clarification on this. Hopefully more info is released in the coming days.
Id like to know what the sentece is, whether he appeals, HOW they got onto him because there is still some missing link between the cat pictures and him and of course what happened to his BTC fortune!?

P.S.: I still cant believe that a computer savvy guy like him just uses one of his old, undeleted USB sticks with cat pictures on them to send them to HIS own town media and party offices for the extortion. Btw, with his multi million USD fortune, WHY would he take the risk anyway?

One of us has misread this story.

I hope it's not me.

So did he get his computers back? And were the Bitcoins stored on them?

Over here police often refuse to give back confiscated computers even when someone has been acquitted from prosecution. It is impossible to prove that someone is NOT GUILTY of a crime so they hang on to them just in case.

371k BTC were lost in the US Secret Service raid.
Wallet pc was searched and formatted, never backedup.

Were paper wallets not common back then? 371 kBTC seems like a lot to keep on any kind of electronic device.

He was the agent that 'lost' them...

Is this relevant?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2013/06/27/indictment-in-bitcoin-bidding-scheme-for-mitt-romneys-tax-returns/

Not only do they seize and search, they FORMAT as an extra f-u.

Like having your wallet turned in, it never has the cash in it. Cost of doing business?

Whoah. Did not know that. That's really crappy. :-/

Keep your backups safe, i guess  :)

http://news.yahoo.com/man-charged-scheme-involving-romney-131322316.html
"The U.S. Justice Department said a federal grand jury in Nashville indicted Michael Mancil Brown, 34, of Franklin, and charged him with six counts of wire fraud and six counts of extortion."
Seeya

Doesn't say anything about the evidence ... sealed documents, secret courts I suppose?

@Tinus, that's the case here, too. If you do recover what was stolen, it's often damaged, and if you don't claim it in time, it's forever forfeit.

If it makes you feel better, the SS left a mess of drives at Brown's house, some in really obvious places, like on the floor right in front of him.

AFAIK, the SS never took any coins while thumbing through Brown's thumbs. (but then, as far as I knew, the case was dropped a few hours before being formally charged. :p )

If MB did do this, there's really no reason to keep him locked up. He's a very clever guy who was trolling either for the attention of authorities, media - and either for himself, Bitcoin, or Romney's reaction.... So... I'm not sure if this would've been unexpected in that case. Maybe he just likes being a pain in the USG's ass.  ;D

I don't think "for the lulz" is a valid defense in the US jusstiss system, yet. Either way, unless Brown confesses, I can't see the USG being able to successfully prosecute Brown, because the evidence we know they have is a joke, while there isn't really much outside evidence which could link him to it except maybe whatever came out of PWC (but surely, they must have had that evidence way before raiding his house if it existed). It's not like you have eyewitnesses, and Brown's tech-savvy enough to know all the obfuscation techniques. The USG would have to have a REAL smoking gun to prove this "without reasonable doubt." They waited a very long time before charging him, so again - unless he confessed, I don't think they have shit on him.

On a smaller scale, this is like if Bill Gates went up to a known panhandler and threatened to expose his tricks if he doesn't pay him $200. Even if it did happen, no person believing in the fundamental spirit of law over the letter would ever prosecute him. I'm guessing those who chose to prosecute are either believing themselves "incorruptible" or were paid off. - Or to lazy to think about it - the herp-a-derp doin' mah job dipshits.

The USG may's well go after BitPay for trying to facilitate the "extortion," and maybe throw in some money laundering and terrorism charges, too.

That sure is the motherload. Imagine if he lost the priv key....

<conspiracy>I wonder if he didn't do it and the government is trying to scare the Bitcoin believers by discrediting them. Pick a high value, high profile target and lock them up.</conspiracy>

I wonder if they will sell them.

I love reading the math done back in 2011:  371,000 @ 2.70  is over 1 million now!!

If that same hoard was available today at around 100, that's 37 million or more, easy.   Crazy how the value skyrocketed like that.  The price seems to have a floor of about $100 I've noticed. 

I think the hashrates have started to increase a little over demand, but not by much.  I think they will have to plateau out at some point, and when that happens, the $100 is gonna jump to $1000 in record time. 

Yeah and 371,000 * $266 = $98,686,000.

There is update on http://www.mbdonationfund.com/ (http://www.mbdonationfund.com/)

Meaning of press' terribly-worded attempt to mask outright quotation of USDOJ release found... Here's what the DoJ posted:

"...

The indictment alleges that Brown devised a scheme to defraud Romney, the accounting firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and others by falsely claiming that he had gained access to the PricewaterhouseCoopers internal computer network and had stolen tax documents for Romney and his wife, Ann D. Romney, for tax years prior to 2010.

...

According to the indictment, Brown allegedly caused a letter to be delivered in August 2012 to the offices of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Franklin.  The letter demanded that $1 million worth of the digital currency Bitcoin be deposited to a specific Bitcoin account to prevent the release of the purportedly stolen Romney tax returns.  The letter also invited interested parties who wanted the allegedly stolen Romney tax documents to be released to contribute $1 million to another Bitcoin account.

The indictment alleges that Brown delivered similar letters to the offices of the Democratic and Republican parties in Franklin and caused similar statements to be posted to Pastebin.com.

..."

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2013/June/13-crm-721.html

So... they're alleging Brown trolled people. Anyone up for a game of wire fraud?

We all send PWC an envelope stuffed with a thumb drive containing a document demanding $1b in BTC or we'll release Mitt Romney's tax releases for years AFTER 2010. Include pictures of neighborhood cats on the thumb drive.

830 Crescent Centre Drive
Suite 260
Franklin, Tennessee 37067
United States of America

Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860
Telecopier: [1] (615) 503-2870


Lead prosecutor is Anthony "Tony" Teelucksingh - can likely be contacted personally at teelucksingh@yahoo.com (unconfirmed if still live) and officially at
*address and phone # snipped for being his actual home info, assumed too intrusive*
Fax: 202-514-6113
Email: Anthony.teelucksingh@usdoj.gov

Interestingly, Tony is likely knowledgeable in pgp and general cryptography. Fairly early Internet user. Looking for a pubkey... pubkey was posted @ http://www.charm.net/~tony/pgpkey.htm but is no longer available and I can't find an archive.

Tony previously worked for a DSL ISP, which gives him quite a bit in common with Michael. If they ever have a conversation, it may actually be fairly light-hearted, heh. Tony has also designed websites. Appears to be interested in both Christianity and Islam (sufism, particularly), possibly Muslim. I'd guess Teelucksingh is Indian?

Another email contact: tony2@home.net (very likely dead)
tony@charm.net (very likely dead)


... So now I'm intrigued. The guy appears very intelligent and level-headed. Not particularly cynical, but not a blinding ray of sunshine. Would be interesting to hear if he actually thinks MB was serious (assuming he did what was alleged), or if it's supposed to be some move against "ransom trolls," or maybe he was just being pressured to do anything.

You're looking to get served  :D

I hope some day I will have your concerns about security problems, that means mys 6 bitcoins worth a lot  :'(

By the way, I don't know knightmb but I'm happy he is fine.

Haha! He is far from fine. Alive, healthy? perhaps/probably but fine is a long-shot. I don't think any possibility of federal prison time is a fine way to be for anyone.

WOW! This no looks good.



Could P.H. be the starfish?  ;D

Will they sell them?

More likely, "P.H." is a typo of "P.G."

It occurs to me that this would be a good set-up if they are just after his Bitcoins, and think he is hiding them.  A good defense would be to show $37 million worth of assets and say "Why would I do this?  I have plenty of money already."

That is just straight unbelieveable. I am sure he knows he relogged in I just hope he kept until 250 and sold at least some of them  ;) ;)

Nice catch!

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gl=us&tbm=nws&authuser=0&q=Michael+Mancil+Brown&oq=Michael+Mancil+Brown&gs_l=news-cc.3..43j43i53.17656.17656.0.18652.1.1.0.0.0.0.105.105.0j1.1.0...0.0...1ac.2.u0xrgIbg4ug


I wonder how close Sonny Vleisides' cell will be to MMB's.

http://mbdonationfund.com/

Update July 1, 2013

I appeared before the Magistrate Juliet Griffin to have the indictment read. I entered my "Not Guilty" plea to the court. The prosecutor, Byron Jones wanted to setup a bond to detain me until trial court date (which had not yet be established). The Magistrate only agreed to have a $10,000 Appearance Bond that did not need to be paid (unless I don't show up for future court). The lead prosecutor wanted to suspend my passport, for which none exist. The Magistrate decided to create a special condition for the Appearance Bond that I do not apply for a new passport, for which I agreed. The Magistrate did not create any more special conditions and no reason was created to detain me any longer given the circumstance, so I was free to go after court adjourned.


Your door on "federal aid":

http://mbdonationfund.com/images/pictures/photo1.jpg

All of the donations received at the donation address have been sent to Satoshi Dice....

That's... really ridiculous.  This guy is a bigger scumbag than we all thought.


I thought SD couldn't effectively launder coins, since they send winnings back to the same address they came from?

Well, that escalated quickly.

o.O Check out the first address sending to https://blockchain.info/address/1Ha43kjkronAPUUyyZNdsgfKFhMgv5Ct5G

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127508.0

That's kind of a good use of an address that starts with 1FRAUD.

There's a lot of mixing involved with the fraud address... Here are a couple of the eventual locations: https://blockchain.info/address/1Kf1nT7jQnFC7N3tSdgg5qKGTV4MucfpBg | https://blockchain.info/address/16CvEwBTGfE7zhxKK7dzQEqCG6pSHXfLRe |

The first one has an input from Theymos, so maybe he could shed light. There's not really any way to verify MB actually holds any of that... They could be donations, assuming he's even 1FRAUD - which wouldn't make sense to connect with the donation address. So many mysteries!

Oh, see I read it as someone else calling him out as being a fraud.  Especially with the public note left on the payment.

Yeah. That might be it, but I almost doubt it just because the 1FRAUD address has >1kBTC received. This particularly ridiculous transaction  (https://blockchain.info/tx/c31565c63a433247637e38971357e63a6ab6453bafd763139ee8bdf8909a411c)shows a ton of other addresses in the person's wallet, many of which also had a fair number of coins, and have mixing/SDice activities tied to them.

The address activity totally stumps me, because it's almost like the person was trying to mix, but then there are transactions with huge lists of other addresses, almost like they wanted them to all be connected.

ETA: The mixed coins from FRAUD seem to come from https://blockchain.info/address/1LYZfBA7qHXCpbGyx9vmJE1XjucmrHLrQP -- looks like it's just some exchange. The relevant tx from there is https://blockchain.info/tx/def08b834c77c90ce389a2193fde7d9a79d08181406695bc4d5047f6bd1afa65

ETA2: Enough amateur dunno-what-I'm-doing blockchain sleuthing tonight. :)

Oh - since I don't think this was ever posted... here's the alleged ransom letter (these were on pastebin and picked up by some news sources, so either PWC or MB posted them - or they're fake ;)):

Dear PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Using your Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067  Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860 we were able to gain access to your network file servers and copy over the tax documents for one Willard M Romney and Ann D Romney. We are sure that once you figure out where the security breach was, some people will probably get fired but that is not our concern.
All major news media outlets are going to be sent an encrypted copy of the most recent tax years that your company had on file since you did not have them all in a convenient electronic form. The years before 2010 will be of great interest to many. If the parties interested do not want the encrypted key released to the public to unlock these documents on September 28 of this year then payment will be necessary.
The deal is quite simple. Convert $1,000,000 USD to Bitcoins (Google if if you need a lesson on what Bitcoin is) using the various markets available out in the world for buying. Transfer the Bitcoins gathered to the Bitcoin address listed below. It does not matter if small amounts or one large amount is transferred, as long as the final value of the Bitcoins is equal to $1,000,000 USD at the time when it is finished. The keys to unlock the data will be purged and what ever is inside the documents will remain a secret forever.
Failure to do this before September 28, the entire world will be allowed to view the documents with a publicly released key to unlock everything.
Bitcoin Address to Stop Release:
1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8
And the same time, the other interested parties will be allowed to compete with you. For those that DO want the documents released will have an different address to send to. If $1,000,000 USD is sent to this account below first; then the encryption keys will be made available to the world right away. So this is an equal opportunity for the documents to remain locked away forever or to be exposed before the September 28 deadline.
Who-ever is the winner does not matter to us.
Bitcoin Address to Promote Full Release:
12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB
Cheers!
Reference to avoid Fakes that only you will have.
1.all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty
2.[t]he moment I understood the will of my Heavenly Father

Here's another:
PWC Office @ 830 Crescent Centre Drive, Suite 260, Franklin, TN 37067
Telephone: [1] (615) 503-2860
 
Romney's 1040 tax returns were taken from the PWC office 8/25/2012 by gaining access to the third floor via a gentleman working on the 3rd floor of the building. Once on the 3rd floor, the team moved down the stairs to the 2nd floor and setup shop in an empty office room. During the night, suite 260 was entered, and all available 1040 tax forms for Romney were copied. A package was sent to the PWC on suite 260 with a flash drive containing a copy of the 1040 files, plus copies were sent to the Democratic office in the county and copies were sent to the GOP office in the county at the beginning of the week also containing flash drives with copies of Romney's tax returns before 2010. A scanned signature image for Mitt Romney from the 1040 forms were scanned and included with the packages, taken from earlier 1040 tax forms gathered and stored on the flash drives.
 
The group will release all available files to the public on the 28 of September, 2012
 
 
This line is on all the package letters for authenticity of the email being sent.
 
all these considerations did not deter me from the path of duty

Here's another fun one... here's the address referenced in the alleged ransom letter: https://blockchain.info/address/1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8

There may be some message in the send transaction. If you check the address the send goes to, it's connected to a ton of similarly-bizarre transactions.

Lol @ fail

I think it is only a matter of time until people start demanding ransoms from you in the Bitcoin world.

1Kf1nT7jQnFC7N3tSdgg5qKGTV4MucfpBg is John's forum treasury address. Which of the inputs is linked to the suspicious address in question? I can tell you the source of most of them.

Ugh. I don't know why I didn't post the chain the first time.

Okay. I'm starting @ https://blockchain.info/tx/7d8bfcb9eb523b7fb7357efce70f18f6ff5e74817f4bebe8a8994568f87d953f
>1CfhYwM5ZFTMqWb5QuWujnSx8ttsmXGLa9
>15ZcbLdbVN6x76mcLTAZXo9dQxPZeyY3QD
>1Crz9E3Yd8QYGf4VepnqedAMA7EKXyRn79
>1K5j7TiBxyXERkjRZaUE1D58LaiZZTVK2S (consolidation)
>12oxfArBacQu2jMJTcJAWPCeRaHxJ6Yw1N
>1AFaq82AyuDbTTeK9FEn1Tuza863WuD3Ss (consolidation -- first major taint contributor to 14MtPd)
>1MtAvfvNnSoy5BnMwCRjw69zmKcod6idWe
>1HSmEnAYrK8MLsrqPULLGBUXG9gNKVD9uk
>17jLaLiCxqUUNaf1giqGzPva3AwR45eJP6
>15BsbsERd1Lbk76EKtHiCBKfvybfcKvpWj
>14cRHQzv5X7eJeL4a7y4xUtGJVRBNP4RJv (*send taint to 1Kf1n now apparent* also a significant branch to https://blockchain.info/address/1FufXp6urVAuet6bELKatQwRAVwFWqj1Qy)
>13sth4AnBiPFsfmR2vXQWMidZ9xKnA4toJ
>14MtPdKuhneK3c16fTTESm143CDHD85Jni
>1Kf1nT7jQnFC7N3tSdgg5qKGTV4MucfpBg

So 1AFaq82AyuDbTTeK9FEn1Tuza863WuD3Ss is probably the most interesting. 1GYfSuX3ZkRYRXcwpeY3ULgsiWheQVH4jw taint is on 1Kf1. It's a long list and many of them look like legitimate spends. A lot of them go to SDice, but maybe that's normal.


1FRAUD controls 1Cxob6LwNk9WAztRidTjNDSuaSzhMEfYj7 -- information is given by https://blockchain.info/tx/7d8bfcb9eb523b7fb7357efce70f18f6ff5e74817f4bebe8a8994568f87d953f , too
<1JvzoekksUhPj2bZ1KXvuv8BdcJnwecoFt
<19YgbK75UKhSxySfCKbax48jJfj2fimD4f
<1NoDPxUcXwTzYaxNjPjdRKGDicMAcEMn1T (primary wallet of someone/something -- SD?) -- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127245.msg1352391#msg1352391

This is a much shorter list, and one ID could get us very close to the controller of 1FRAUD. None of this necessarily means anything, though. Could be a bunch of individuals trading with each other... old addresses need to be connected better to newer ones -- this is a crapshoot. (brb, something paying money needing attention -- I'll look more into whether any of that can be connected in ~30m)

14MtPdKuhneK3c16fTTESm143CDHD85Jni is MtGox. Not very useful. :(

:o So Mark Karpeles must be Michael Brown. I think Mark Karpeles is even an anagram of Michael Brown. Mekael ... Krars. If you change "Krars" to "Brown," it's almost an exact match. They have the same number of letters!

ETA: Left out the P. Mekael Prarks.

DAMN! I wish I had 10 BTC back when they were worth $1 each.  :'(

I did by 10BTC for $9.70. Here is how I spent 2 of them
http://static.spiceworks.com/attachments/post/0014/2272/PHOTO_20130821_131657.jpg

 :(

Boy, did I screw up, albeit not badly: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=295211.msg3167910#msg3167910

Found guilty.

"Michael Mancil Brown, 37, of Franklin, Tenn., was convicted of six counts of wire fraud and six counts of using facilities of interstate commerce to commit extortion."

http://www.tennessean.com/story/news/2016/05/13/franklin-man-guilty-romney-tax-fraud-scheme/84334150/

http://siliconangle.com/blog/2016/05/17/mitt-romney-tax-records-extortionist-convicted-on-multiple-charges-facing-25-years-in-jail/

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/05/17/bitcoinransoming_romney_hacker_faces_25_years_inside/

Interesting.  I'll add this to your list for good measure and to save people some leg-work:  

http://samesites.com/www/timekoin.org

Knightmb would have been a billionaire now if he had held on to his 371,000 BTC. :D

$2,742 X 371,067.36 = $1,017,466,701.12

Instead he's in the federal slammer for extorting the Romney's :(

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/16/romney_tax_return_hacker_dr_evil_gets_his_sentence_overturned/

 :D

Quite interesting story indeed. And damn that was a lot of bitcoin in total 371K I don't know what to do with them if I have that much btc in my wallet. But at least the full hands of the law has caught on him and now he is in a slammer. Too bad.  ;D he's not enjoying the btc he has.

Interesting how he got caught.

He should have just enjoyed his money and pay his taxes instead of getting in trouble. People's greed for power is always their downfall.

i'll bet he still has most. he claimed to have given most of it away to wikileaks and the rest went on paying off some debts. musta been quite a windfall for wikileaks and a significant amount of debt even when bitcoin was valued at a dollar.

however i don't get his involvement in some weird alt and all this extortion stuff.

he also claims to have more than a few clues about satoshi's real location and could verify his online identity due to some private communications.

knightmb posting on the Turkish boards now? ???

Watch out we have Keyser Soze on our hands ;D

He gone dormant again..

So then maybe it wasn't mike brown at all? I was going back to read how the connection was made, but seems it was pure speculation?
This is fun :)

I figure something foul is afoot if he is still missing.  $100000 doesn't usually just go missing, looks like the next block chain should be dedicated to finding out just what happened to this fellow.

Now just a lot of people who do not understand what it is, but rowing out of the herd feeling, thinking that it will grow endlessly and of course the growth will be good, joined the topic of bitcoin.

işin içinde Türk varsa, baştan sonra tekrar incele