Bitcoin Forum

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All you have to do is make a BIP38 encrypted private key. They cannot decrypt it to take your bitcoins, and they cannot get the bitcoin address from it to look it up either.

I would encrypt my wallet, plus make copies and secure them somewhere else in case they take they seize the computer itself.

Uh.... If you make more copies, they would find them, and nothing would happen even in they take your computer.

Correct but they can also get a court order compelling you to open the thing to them.

If you fail to do so, you can and will be held in contempt of court and given free room and board in the Greybar Hotel until you change your mind.

I would split my bitcoin holdings into two parts 90% and 10%. Hide the private keys with two different methods. If LE ask for your bitcoin, give them the 10% stash.

This could work, though possibly not if discussing such an idea was in your post history  ;D

How to Crypt your wallet:

1) Travel to 3 points in North Denver
2) initiate your wallet in the local chapter
3) Pop some punk-ass-bloods
4) Find some at a gas station - walk towards them while a bigrig is comming your way to cause the big rig to swerve into them.
5) Congratulations, your wallet is now Crypt-ified. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPXNs_fFSjE)

Put on a dummy public address with one bitcent instead of the actual amount in the encrypted key. If they still want it, then have the dummy address be a brain wallet.

LOL

I was trying ti follow, wondering where u were going with this..

How would they know you have Bitcoins?

Encrypt your wallet and store your wallet in a pen drive and hide this pen drive in some secret place.

Always take a backup of your wallet in other pen drive, etc. ;P

Never have your pubkey associated directly with your legal identity. If your legal identity is tied to any pubkeys you use, you're probably boned and will need to turn over the privkeys. If you have pubkeys showing in your wallet at all and they hold coins, you're probably boned and will need to turn over the privkeys, even if they're watch-only.

If you just keep your privkey private, though, you won't have your bitcoins seized -- that'd be technically impossible until they figure out how to accurately extract data from your brain. -But you're basically in a hostage/blackmail situation. If they found you controlled the pubkey at one point, they could probably charge you (maybe successfully) with destroying evidence, obstructing justice, and whatever other stupid charge they feel like piling on. Maybe money laundering if you "don't know who controls the key, now." :D

Ummm...don't even sweat it.  I heard a rumor that the Greybar Hotel would be accepting bitcoin by the end of Q4 for all commissary items :-p

So put a watch on the Silk Road seized coins addresses.

Use a brain wallet.

Store your wallet on the cloud that allows access via TOR exit nodes and use TOR to access the cloud provider.

I thought about suggesting that... go with the "oh, I'm just some fucking weirdo who likes to watch coin flow from a random subset of addresses" argument... but even still, if they can directly tie coin-filled public keys to you, I'd guess they demand you decrypt them and prosecute if you don't.

Has there been a precedent setting district court case that decided this? I know it has been challenged. At least in the US you can't be force to incriminate yourself.

He could say it was a thought experiment, he never actually did it.

It's disputed and has gone both ways in courts over the past few years. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140626/06532327686/massachusetts-ignores-5th-amendment-says-defendant-can-be-forced-to-decrypt-his-computer.shtml

Thanks. Yes, I tried to google for some US court decision, but I couldn't find one.

Well if you have an extremely trusted family member living at another address, and the court and law enforcement would have no reason to connect them to you in whatever questionable thing you're doing, you could give the wallet to them. Then if they take everything from you you'll still have that. I also like the idea about putting a "fake" wallet, with like ten percent, in another wallet and act like you don't want them to have that but then finally cave and give them the ten percent.

Would a one off use of a computer to generate paper wallets then wiping the hard drive work? Paper wallets would be a lot easier to hide in multiple places.

No, because they can just take the paper wallet and have the bitcoins.

Not if you encrypt the private key. bitaddress.org allows for this, and is probably the only way you should create a paper wallet, especially if you are sending copies to family as a backup method.

The idea is a good one.
They had previously is how to know the number of your Btc？

This is basically what happened to Ross Ulbright when the FBI arrested him, but instead of paper wallets they used his online account that he was already logged into.

That is why you only unlock your wallet when you are in a secure environment, and only for a brief period of time.

A secure environment is relative to your situation. If you are running the FBI's #1 criminal syndicate, with the entire US government and every politician after you, a secure environment is NOT a public library in a major city. In that situation a secure environment is something much more remote where you can be sure you will have enough advanced warning to re-lock or close your wallets. However if you are your average bitcoin user a secure environment is in your home, maybe using an off-line computer if you're very paranoid.

Paper wallets if you use them, need to be stored in a very very secure location that only you and those you absolutely trust know about. This is not your basement or even a security deposit box. Paper wallets are also something that you never ever go back to unless you absolutely need them, they are meant to "store and forget".

Ross broke many of these best practices. A great thing about bitcoin is they can be secured absolutely, but require correct usage by the owner and are susceptible to user error.

I think that Ross was trying to avoid connecting to SR while having any connection to his ISP at all. If the FBI were to somehow execute a 0 day attack on him then they would only be able to see the IP address of the library, but if he was somewhere in private then a 0 day attack would be able to identify him specifically. I think he gave up one security rule in order to prevent a possible other attack against him.

I really don't think he ever predicted that Silk Road was going to be as successful as it was. It appears that the government put a lot of effort and resources into finding out Ross's identity and gathering evidence against him, effort and resources that would likely not be put into trying to convict a small time drug dealer. However all they got was information from simple mistakes that could have been prevented if he had known how much of a wanted person he would become in the future.

I would argue that if Ross had known how successful Silk Road would become, he would likely have created a throwaway email account on TOR to register for that drug forum to post about Silk Road (that the FBI agent found, the one that originally had Ross's gmail account, but was later changed to altoid@altoid). If he had done this then I don't think he would have ever been caught.

Ok, but just for the sake of argument.  What if you "forgot" the password.  I have truly lost access to bitcoins like that in real life.  How could they in principle tell whether you were lying or not?

Here's an idea: Encrypt your wallet or public/private keys using RAR or Truecrypt (last working version is 7.1a) or AESCrypt, using a Yubikey static password that is 64 characters long.

Claim you lost the Yubikey and you don't have a backup, or it got destroyed (crushed, burned and melted by thermite, lost at sea.)

There's a story about how a guy buried his rifle and ammo for several years in the woods.

The important thing is that you must have prepared for this to happen, so you already have all the possible excuses and alibis worked out, and your actual back up is stored somewhere no one else can get.

People have been memorized pi to thousands of digits. I'm sure you could do the same if you just put your mind to it.

If not, there are many places to hide your private keys, or the passphrase to your private keys. Micro SD cards. Small pieces of paper. Dots in a book like your personal copy of Harry Potter or something. The order of the deck of cards.

The possibilities are endless. The resources of law enforcement are not. But don't give them a reason to put you in jail. Don't ask. Don't tell. Concealed means concealed. Always smile. And greet the officers.

I don't think a court can actually compel you to give up this kind of information. If you had to give up this information then you could potentially be implicated in a crime. The 5th amendment protects you from being forced to do this. 

Claim insanity. That works for many other things too.

paper wallet is better for a long term point of view, even with encryption you are forced to reveal it, or they arrest you

You would still have 5th amendment issues in this case as if there was incriminating evidence against you on there, you would be forced to provide evidence against yourself.

Then have a throw away account with small amount of BTC in it or tell them to just fuck off. I would do the later and take the free room and board.

If you are that  concerned about this, you should be saving your coins on cold storage away from your residence.   Are you really worried about your house being raided?

Another excellent idea. Never give up anything to the giverment.

I agree. I think that forcing you to give information as to how to find BTC that you own would likely b considered to be forcing you to incriminate yourself which cannot be done. Additionally it would be very difficult to for the courts to know for sure if you are disclosing all of your holdings as there are many addresses that have not had any sent TX in a long time.