So a pile of clothes and a kee kat led the cops to this dude. Cat people be warned.
Well... A USB stick containing the Romney ransom note was delivered to PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Tennessee. Quite incredibly, KnightMB admits to having had the same exact USB stick in his possession. From: http://www.thedaily.com/article/2012/11/09/110912-news-romney-tax-raid/Michael Brown, 34, told The Daily that ... “They have a flash drive that I believe belonged to me four years ago. In my line of work, I use these flash drives all the time. They get lost or they get taken.” (Emphasis mine.) Notice how he doesn't say "a flash drive that they believe belonged to me." By failing to shut up, he manages to incriminate himself in an interview with a newspaper.  Lesson of the day: When implicated in a crime (such as blackmailing a presidential candidate), don't go to the paper and and tell them that the instrument of the crime belongs to you. |
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Did anyone notice the messages on the wallet addresses?
These are the "Stop Release" / "Promote Full Release" addresses from the infamous pastebin: Bitcoin Address to Stop Release:
1HeF89wMjC48bWNgWvVo7Wu3RaLW8XVsE8
...
Bitcoin Address to Promote Full Release:
12AP6iCwRNFQqKLStH3A4b4hw3SL6RaNgB
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
Re: Romney 1040 tax returns held hostage for Bitcoins by KnightMB » Wed Sep 12, 2012 7:51 am This story seems to be everywhere. I don't know if it's true or not, but it is weird that the group wants to use bitcoins as payment. Are they really protected from the FBI tracking them down? I had to find these links on other sites, they seem to have been removed. I looked around, seems to be two stories. One that says the group "Anonymous" has released them and another that some group got them from his tax office. I think the latter is true and the former was a news hoax. I did read a topic over at the bitcoin.org forum about this as well. They seem to think the FBI will track them down right away. While I agree that no digital currency will make anyone 100% anonymous, it sure makes it very difficult to find them. To start, they can watch their account without any fear of being found because it's a global register (just like what Timekoin uses) so any transactions they make can be watched. The part where I disagree a little is finding them. If they spend the bitcoins around then it gets mixed in with all the other users. So if a user has 100 bitcoins and this group spends say 15 to that user. The user then spends 50 of the 115 bitcoins he/she has, how do you know which bitcoins were the original and which were from the group? It just doesn't mix that way, there is no way to make a distinction there as it's all math. Repeat this process enough times. So unless this group with the bitcoins spends it all at say Amazon.com on a new flat-screen TV and has it delivered right to their home address, trying to track them down is going to be neigh impossible without arresting every single person along the way that the dirty bitcoins have touched. That in of itself is a rather impossible task unless there is a database somewhere with the real name connected to every bitcoin address in existence. Re: Romney 1040 tax returns held hostage for Bitcoins by KnightMB » Wed Sep 12, 2012 2:20 pm So unless this group with the bitcoins spends it all at say Amazon.com on a new flat-screen TV and has it delivered right to their home address, trying to track them down is going to be neigh impossible without arresting every single person along the way that the dirty bitcoins have touched. That in of itself is a rather impossible task unless there is a database somewhere with the real name connected to every bitcoin address in existence.
So unlike money which is physical, if a robber steals $100 from a bank and gives it to you. You already had $50 for example. You go spend on something and by using the "stolen" money, it's easy to trace back to the bank. But with digital currency, there is nothing that "marks" one transaction or another, it's just a number balance. So if you spend 1 koin or 5 koins, there is nothing that can tell if those koins are part of a stolen transaction or just from someone else's account? Am I understanding that right? That's about right. When currency is transferred from one account to another, no information other than X transfer to Y exist. It's just math from that point, take 5 koins from one account, give it another account. The 5 koins are just that, the number 5 and nothing more.
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.) |
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The purpose of this journal has been to directly address this mindset and teach individuals a simple system that allows them to extract profits from the market, provided the individual possesses adequate discipline.
The point of me "waking up" and posting once again was to demonstrate that even though I taught the system 10 months ago, it is still profitable.
Thanks for the money!  One of very few threads here that are literally "worth it". |
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Just now on BTC-E support has come back online and said they were told MTGOX is behind the DDOS attacks on BTC-E right now.
COMMENTS?!
Yeah...  |
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 BitInstant: That 20K BTC buy-in. Know anything about that?  |
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Erik made sure we got placed next to Paypal.  Charlie, Roger, Erik ... I love you and I want to give you money. |
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In general: Because you're trying to do business, and doing business as a hidden service will immediately kill most of that business.
What would happen to the trade volume of ebay if ebay.com suddenly moved to ebay(...).onion?
Even SilkRoad would (I presume) explode with traffic if it was feasible to operate securely in the clear. (Which it is not.)
Going hidden has to be an strict necessity in order to outweigh the not-so-trivial inconvenience.
I already thought of this, but what's more inconvenient and detrimental to trade volume than getting shut down? Exactly. (Go open AND get shut down, OR go hidden service and stay tiny.) This scenario is the only scenario where a hidden-service-only business model is preferable to the alternative. |
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I'm curious. Why operate a normal web site out in the open when you can just set up a Tor hidden service?
In general: Because you're trying to do business, and doing business as a hidden service will immediately kill most of that business. What would happen to the trade volume of ebay if ebay.com suddenly moved to ebay(...).onion? Even SilkRoad would (I presume) explode with traffic if it was feasible to operate securely in the clear. (Which it is not.) Going hidden has to be an strict necessity in order to outweigh the not-so-trivial inconvenience to the customer. (And the resulting loss of business to the business.)
Update: Having an optional hidden service would be nice, novel, and likely to attract some modest additional business, without being too costly. Low hosting fees on hidden services, innit? |
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Good news. We have figured out a solution for this problem. Bitmit is not going to be sold. Business as usual =)
"Business as usual =)" Interesting PR strategy. ಠ_ಠ Don't cry wolf, unless the theatre is on fire, as the saying goes. Mind detailing the solution? I'll be a bit disappointed If this was a gimmick, what with services actually going up in flames every other week and all. Also: Hooray! |
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Not giving the opportunity for a refund to a customer when shipment has been delayed is against some FTC rule:
Quoted for the benefit of the lazy: Selling on the Internet: Prompt Delivery Rules
[...]
By law, you must have a reasonable basis for stating that a product can be shipped within a certain time. If your advertising doesn't clearly and prominently state the shipment period, you must have a reasonable basis for believing that you can ship within 30 days.
If you can't ship within the promised time (or within 30 days if you made no promise), you must notify the customer of the delay, provide a revised shipment date and explain his right to cancel and get a full and prompt refund.
For definite delays of up to 30 days, you may treat the customer's silence as agreeing to the delay. But for longer or indefinite delays - and second and subsequent delays - you must get the customer's written, electronic or verbal consent to the delay. If the customer doesn't give you his okay, you must promptly refund all the money the customer paid you without being asked by the customer.
Finally, you have the right to cancel orders that you can't fill in a timely manner, but you must promptly notify the customer of your decision and make a prompt refund.
[...] |
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So... Walk the plank or keelhaul?  Is making a piratelike win/win bet (for BFL) a good idea now, considering the precedent? Can Vandroiy take the bet, if interested? I hear he's got some cash on hand. |
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Definitely looks like there is a lot of interest based on all the bids so far. This is a good sign.
Well, at the moment I seem to have the highest bid at 100 BTC. (Which is ludicrously low, all things considered.) Bitmit is The Bitcoin marketplace. At least this side of the law. Bitmit shall not, must not, will not be allowed to die. Or have we lost all faith in this project already? Gentlemen, I believe this is the part in which we rise to the occasion. |
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Well, shit.  Tosaki: Are you pursuing other options, or is this, like, final? |
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Interestingly: Today I saw Adi Shamir (you know, the S in RSA) and managed to talk with him a bit about Bitcoin.
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Today I saw Adi Shamir (you know, the S in RSA) and managed to talk with him a bit about Bitcoin.
Thank you! Must have been an interesting little chat you had. Cryptology ePrint Archive: Report 2012/584 Quantitative Analysis of the Full Bitcoin Transaction GraphDorit Ron and Adi Shamir Abstract: The Bitcoin scheme is a rare example of a large scale global payment system in which all the transactions are publicly accessible (but in an anonymous way). We downloaded the full history of this scheme, and analyzed many statistical properties of its associated transaction graph. In this paper we answer for the first time a variety of interesting questions about the typical behavior of account owners, how they acquire and how they spend their Bitcoins, the balance of Bitcoins they keep in their accounts, and how they move Bitcoins between their various accounts in order to better protect their privacy. In addition, we isolated all the large transactions in the system, and discovered that almost all of them are closely related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010, even though the associated users apparently tried to hide this fact with many strange looking long chains and fork-merge structures in the transaction graph. Category / Keywords: Bitcoin, digital coins, electronic cash, payment systems, transaction graphs, quantitative analysis Date: received 14 Oct 2012 http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584 A fitting quote for the occasion: Something hit me very hard once, thinking about what one little man could do. Think of the Queen Mary—the whole ship goes by and then comes the rudder. And there's a tiny thing at the edge of the rudder called a trim tab.
It's a miniature rudder. Just moving the little trim tab builds a low pressure that pulls the rudder around. Takes almost no effort at all. So I said that the little individual can be a trim tab. Society thinks it's going right by you, that it's left you altogether. But if you're doing dynamic things mentally, the fact is that you can just put your foot out like that and the whole big ship of state is going to go.
So I said, call me Trim Tab.
—Buckminster Fuller |
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Sweet. Is this a new forum feature, or a one time thing? |
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Psssh. 9000 yoctohashes/s.  |
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If I was an early adoptor I would buy them both. LOL
Nah. If you were an early adopter, you'd probably have bought this guy's million dollar iPhone instead: Once I get my hands on a new one for Apple's iPhone OS 4, I will sell my old one for 100,000 bitcoins.
OP's offer is a 99.955% discount relative to April 2010. Oh, and this one is an iPhone 5.  Topic #100, even earlier than the PIZZA. Gotta love Bitcoin. |
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