First, there is a world of improvement needed for coin washing for starters. It is not quite there yet and when you are going to wash that many coins, which this guys hasn't done much of, you will still be able to follow them, just due to the amount.

bryant.coleman mentioned one possibility and if you think it ends there, there are for sure more. I can think of a few ways but will not post them here. No sense in helping the thief. 

We are in the very early days and this guy has already left enough fingerprints imo that intelligence agencies (e.g. NSA) if they get involved, could probably already point him out. In a way, it is nice they didn't nab him as it give hope to other thieves.

I just don't think this one or few guys are as smart as the mass of computer experts following him around. He is going to make a mistake and get nabbed is my educated guess.

IAS

You don't understand forensic computer science very well and so far the thief doesn't appear to either. This thief is moving a HUGE amount of mostly very traceable money.
One little slip up with ALL that money, just one, and/or one little assist from those with a "grasp" on TOR and what not  , and he is caught. It may happen now, in a few months, or even years.
But, I'd say he is as good as caught.

Its About Sharing

Agreed. It is just a matter of time. When you steal soooo many coins, soooo many people are watching the movements.
And on top of that there are many Forensic guys that don't post here and are making it their pet project.
So, you have a guy injecting hit .000666 btc into every transaction they can find and others following with or without that.
Just a matter of time. They will slip up somewhere or a problem with the VPN, or just something unexpected...

Interesting, I hadn't heard of them. They will ship end of May they say, probably more like June if they are lucky, but who knows.
Great prices, I wonder what happens in this race.

I wish more people understood this basic concept about our existing money system.
People have "comfort" with some money in the bank but are blind to the theft of it via inflation.
And when you mention to them that printing money devalues what they have, they rationally get it, but not at a deep enough level to actually act.

The next level of discussion should be WAR. Once people understand, really understand that war happens as a DIRECT result of just printing money and becoming servants this debt
they will take to the streets. Having war with a finite money supply means people would actually have to change their standard of living, as they would have less money.
The existing system enslaves them and they know it not.

At a very basic level, bitcoin is causing people to question money and with that, the veil is coming down.

Its about sharing

edit - It is a fair point that the Gox, SR, etc. coins that were stolen will become more valuable and hence have more power. But, that is outright theft. Our existing system hides that fact and makes it a part of business as usual.

I don't see what the big deal is. Until China makes it illegal (which I don't think is their intention), they are essentially casting a Napster spell on bitcoin.
Now, the innovations will be pushed even harder. Decentralized exchanges, local bitcoins, etc. here we come.
How bad do they want their bitcoin?

IAS

10000-100000; 0.1%
2000-10000; 0.9%
1500-2000; 1%
1300-1500; 2%
1100-1300; 3%
1000-1100; 4%
900-1000; 5%
800-900; 6%
700-800; 7%
600-700; 8%
500-600; 19%
400-500; 25%
250-400; 15%
0-250; 4%

Great read. The thing is, this guy(s) just needs to make 1 mistake. It might not even be his mistake. e.g. The NSA gets their hands on the VPN provider, etc. and tracks him down.
Even years later tech might come out to do better tracking and if ANYWHERE along the line he made 1 mistake, that could be the straw that breaks him.

I think it is a matter of time before we start seeing some big thieves get busted. Also, Forensic analysis and analysts are not posting and are following. I think the thief gets nabbed.

IAS

ps - Thief, if you are listening, just donate the bitcoins to wikileakes and other disruptive technology firms...

Have you looked at the size of the buys during this run from 350 to 500? There are some pretty large buys in there, like 500-1000 block buys. That is
not really small change.

I can't argue about Bitcoin being unexpected as it sure has fooled the best of us. But to think there is no development (when all the bitcoin 2.0 stuff is being worked on, the sidechain revelation, more businesses accepting it, more and more TV coverage, etc.) is not really honest.

Let's watch the mysterious move,
IAS

Not only am I typing slow, but I'm gonna try to "point out" the idiocy in what people see when they read your posts.

I liked Vircurex and at least it looks like they were honest. But until they show us their books, we will never know.

Anyway, I just checked the volume there and it is mighty low. So, I don't see how they will pay back the missing BTC/LTC/etc. and that is too bad.
I would go back to them but really, all of these exchanges need to have some form of industry wide security (e.g. - multisig, etc.)

IAS

Is something wrong with the site? I keep getting a Bad Gateway message....

Also, is there a way to download our trades to aid in doing our taxes?

Great site as usual,
IAS

In hindsight I think I actually appreciate your posts. Nothing wrong with bringing balance and there are many reasons, as you have stated, in this space to do so.

Regarding your point above, I wonder how to best go about this. For arguments sake, lets say Alpha Technology delivers before KNC Miner. (And I have one, or whomever has one)
Will I have a substantial advantage over a miner with 20 video cards whose hash rate is about 16Mh/s? I think I probably would, due to energy costs. So, mining LTC might still be the best return.

But, to your point, a couple of sub points:
How would one go about selecting other coins to mine? Jumping around? (I don't think pool hopping works very well, unless the pool does it automatically. Morally, I wouldn't want to do that anyway.)
With a lot of these rigs out there, couldn't some smaller coins just be destroyed by a large hashing power hitting them and then pulling out?

Anyway, where I stand now is that BTC to me is the #1, LTC the #2 and DOGE I still won't touch as I think the number of shares make it more like government fiat potentially. What I am looking
for is that number 3. I think a coin like Quark or Vert can be that. Something VERY ASIC resistant. There will be a lot of GPU's looking for coins in the next few months...

As predicted? They are (should be) first to market with a powerful Scrypt ASIC machine. KNC Miner is late right now with their BTC Miners, so I wouldn't count on them to deliver the ASIC's before Alpha Tech.

You do realize the engineering is being done by a notable engineering firm in India right?

And all of the bright minds in history who didn't have so called qualifications, yet their companies turned into billion dollar companies. Come to think of it, many of the young Bitcoin companies fit that bill.

If you want to hate, try to do a better job of it...  

Give credit where credit is due:
Alpha Technologies is giving timely announcements.
They are the first larger ASIC in this space.
They just upped the Hashing Power by over 200%.
They were the first company (I know of) to take partial down payments of app. 30%.
They offer something that a lot more people can afford. 10k for a KNC Miner rig, whenever that is shipped, is waaaay beyond the budget of most people.

Props to Alpha Tech - Keep it up Fiaz. Nothing is perfect but you have our support.

And the experiment continues.

Sure that might hurt Alpha Tech customers (me!) but really it comes down to when they can deliver.
The bigger question is, how will this impact GPU miners? I mean how much is going to be added to the network and then how much in GPU's subtracted?
Does the difficulty go down? Do the owners of the network, so to speak change hands or just technology or

Even though Alpha (in their newsletter from last night) said "At this point we would like to guarantee a minimum of 650 Mh/s for our second batch, this figure is just a preliminary minimum and it is more likely than not to be higher." it will come down to when KNC delivers. If they deliver around when Alpha delivers and Alpha doesn't once again up their customers a bit, they will all be out.

Further, as we get closer to that roughly 2 month before delivery "pay the balance date" for Alpha Tech customers, if KNC says they are going to deliver in the beginning or mid July ALSO, do any of the Alpha customers go through with their order??? Alpha may want to up things again but not match, say the 16Mh/s miners to 25Mhs (and not 2.5X more as KNC has done). Hardware wise, it would just be upping the lower end Vipers to the higher end Vipers (original specs). So instead of KNC running things, Alpha Tech takes over this role. 

Man, this is more interesting than the bitcoin mining ASIC "competition".

I can't play the mining game anymore. This is my last venture. Would be nice if KNC Miner made a $1000 miner, but why when they sell the 10k miners? Decentralization imo.

I really see VERT and/or Quark like coins starting to move as all those GPU's will find new homes. Also, Doge will be affected by this. I still don't like it since it is so inflated relatively speaking.

This is getting crazy, 100Mh/s to 250Mh/s?

This might cause a huge drop in the difficulty as the day approaches and affect the price as well. A bit scary here.
Perhaps we see a rush to coins like VERT and QUARK.

Still, KNC has to deliver around the time of Alpha Technology for it to be a shocker. If it is 2 months later, then not a huge deal, but would still suck for Alpha Tech customers as they would only have 2 real months to mine, or whatever the lead advantage is.

Will be interesting to see what Alpha Tech says now. I mean is what KNC is saying even possible? Is it so cheap for them to produce that they are essentially sending 2 machines to hurt companies like Alpha Tech???

The experiment continues

IAS

Sorry to hear that. I sent an email to them last week as I mentioned, before their announcement, and they never replied.
Before that, I think I got 1 reply (days later) out of 3 emails.

Just checked the spreads (as another mentioned) on Vircurex and Cryptsy. Nothing shocking, but sad. Note the LTC inversion relative to the others rise.

Coin      Cryptsy                    Vircurex

LTC      .027                           .020
DOGE   0.00000115               0.00000164
VERT    .0032                        0.00453000

Like 30% ish just by eying it. Memories of Gox.  

Looks like Vircurex would have done better with some financial backing rather than this plan. Perhaps they tried to get some?
The problem now is people are probably not going to trade there much, unless the alternatives disappear.

Too bad, was a nice exchange though they rarely got back to me when I had questions (at least not timely when they did.)

This brings up the point of insurance, which is probably going to raise trading fees. I really wonder what is going to come of all this.
In the end we will probably have the security of many large stock exchanges in the end, but till we get there...

Interesting in that 4 days ago I bought some LTC there and couldn't get them out as the wallet was offline (said the message). After the Goxing I was a bit
on edge, but decided to give it till morning. I also emailed Vircurex but as expected they never go back to me. A friend also mentioned the Goxing!
Still couldn't withdraw the LTC in the morning and just to be safe I sold them and prayed I would be able to withdraw the BTC.
I could and transferred them to Cryptsy to buy the LTC. I took a very small hit. Feel bad for all involved though.

This has been a great and rough ride fellas. The BFL saga (I was affected), the mining saga in general (ditto), the exchange hacks (ditto) and on and on.

IAS