I would like to believe in BTC but so far usage is limited to scumbags laundering money way less legitimate stuff.
I guess this is the price of freedom or whatever, but I despise the criminals.
And I hate the fact that we live in a digital world where everything is interconnected and etc, and still some retards manage to 'operate under the radar'.

I guess they must enjoy a life time of hiding...

The (supposedly) Russian based hackers from REvil now attacked Donald Trump, Madonna, Lady Gaga and some other famous people with lots of $$.
I think this is the last nail in their coffin.

On a side note - I found some guys doing the opposite -
1. Obtain stolen credit cards from hacker forums or via phishing and smishing.
2. They use the stolen cards to buy "advertisement web traffic" that pays out in BTC for referrals
3. They use the victims cards to buy more and more "ad traffic", until the cards get declined.
4. Add new card, rinse and repeat.
5. The revenue from this "Ad traffic monetization" gets payed out in BTC.
Supposedly "Super secure".
I immediately alerted Interpol, Europol, FBI, NSA and the web hosting firm.

It is schemes like this that give crypto a bad name.
And i doubt will be large scale adoption, until those illicit usage patterns are shut down. 


F the scammers and their "smart ways to make money and cheat the system". I hope they can go to hell. And take the stolen funds with them as well.
(the system is flawed as well - due to QUANTITATIVE EASING.)

Just my 2 cents and my perspective (I am a crypto n00b).

Good point about gold purity test he he!
I know a person who was mining ETH and never gave his details on any KYC exchange, he was dealing on some local market and got his FIAT funds via some app like cashapp or paypal or revolut, but the police shut down this service after about 2 years and froze their assets in bank accounts.
about 75K euros.

PAMP VERISCAN is pretty safe tho.

Also you don't have to physically carry around / move the gold if you know what you are doing.
1 OZ bars are pretty small also, nice price per weight ratio.
However unless your assets values for less than 100 000 euros /usd, it is not worth it to pay rent for a safe.

I am interested in the Russian article, as i know Russian very well.

Thanks for the discussion.
This is not a 1 man operation, it is an organized crime ring.
I asked some security folks and they told me FBI won't care, unless the crypto-theft is for more than 100K. (ic3.gov)
Same goes for Europol. I have alerted all CSIRT and CIRT teams about this, FBI and NSA were also informed.

However 10 mil puts a big target on the scammer's forehead and a lot of agencies will be monitoring for them.
maybe even rouge agents on local p2p markets could turn up for such sums.

Thanks for all the details!

As far as i have heard even TOR is not completely anonymous.
There are supposedly many rouge nodes operated by agencies and law enforcement.
I once installed it in order to try it out and it was painfully slow. "the price of privacy" I guess.

Many computers (Trusted computing platform) also have beacons and backdoors integrated on a hardware level.
Canvas fingerprinting and other techniques can be used to ID the exact machine used to access a given website.

So why don't agencies actually raid those useless scumbags who extort hospitals?
Looks like unless the victim is a bank or a "buddy", they let them get extorted.

Some states and universities also recently paid out huge ransoms.

How is that even a thing, i really don't get it, esp if "big brother" is so overseeing and all mighty.
Turns out crooks can still operate in 2020, as if it is 1999.

And you wonder why "normie" people hate on crypto.

thanks for educating me
why are those "mixer" services even legal then....
does not seem that can be used for anything meaningful, other than "cheating the system"

if the FBI has an attorney signed subpoena would the mixer service reveal who mixed what and when

oh let me guess, they are registered in Panama....

i wish those crypto-thieves have accumulated enough money for their hospital bills and lawyers
 

Hello,

How in the world does one hide 10 mil in BTC?!?!
I am mad and i wish that those guys go to jail!

I see some hackers are extorting big companies for large sums.
This got me thinking - if you have a fair amount of crypto, lets say bitcoins, how can you "cash out", but without relying upon exchanges (As most exchanges require KYC nowadays?)
I am asking because I feel both powerless and angry at the same time some cyber criminals, who seem to be able to operate "under the radar".

When I started to use the Internet in 1999 it was a bit like the "wild west" in terms of online payments
Nowadays a lot of things have changed. We literally have bugs with cameras and microphones (a.k.a. smartphones), NSA is tracking our every move, etc.

So how in the world do the bad guys "cash out" when they do such extortion?

Isn't it easy for the FBI / NSA to track down an address that the funds were siphoned to?
I know it is only quasi anonymous.

I mean even if the criminals use only MONERO or ZCASH or SPECTRECOINS i still feel that there should be an EASY way to catch the criminals.

How do they cach out?
My only though on this is -
-"p2p based exchanged"
-"local exchange"
-"hand over BTC on a flash drive for cash"
-OR BE A STATE SPONSORED ACTOR WITH AN UMBRELLA

My main point was that I would imagine that people who own BTC would be at least somewhat tech-savvy in the first place, and thus would be aware of such scams

How can somebody be simultaneously smart enough to own BTC, but stupid enough to fall for that kind of generic spam message, i honestly don't get it?!

Just a simple google of the BTC of the scammer gets him exposed - how is this even possible....


Apart from the wallet - I posted the full email headers to the ISP that the email was dispatched from, some small town university in France....

And the website that hosts all reports is called bitcoinabuse·com
Sorry to post in the wrong place you can delete my thread mods.

Hi
I recieved ransom email from some guy who wants my bitcoins as ransom
But i dont have any bit coins
I saw there is a site to make reports on extortion and stufff nad i added this guys BTC address where he wanted me to transfer him money to the scam database

And i checked his balance and some guy had transferred him money
now i feel bad because some guy is making easy money from victims who are afraid to get exposed
the email was something like heeeey i have your nude pics how you jerk off or something like this
what are the chances to mass spam somebody who has BTC and is stupid enough to fall for this jeses

hm I found two other that accept XSPEC trading, apart from Cryptopia, who now seem to accept new registrations again, after they paused the registration for a few days, due to high demand.

 
Livecoin            XSPEC/BTC    0.00032123 BTC    23073.843 XSPEC    
Novaexchange    XSPEC/BTC    0.00037 BTC    13.514 XSPEC    

lets hope now those go to double / tripple digits so my 50 euro becomes 500.
cheers

Hi,

I would like to buy some of those SPECTRECOINS (XSPEC).

I read some news that most online exchanges are currently (Jan 2018) receiving around 100 000+ registrations per day, and thus have suspended the ability for new users to register.
I already have verified registrations on some major exchanges, but those don't seem to offer support for XSPEC just yet.
Is there a comprehensive list of exchanges that allow buying of XSPEC somewhere?
Apologies if this has already been answered somewhere.
EDIT:Oh sorry - i just saw it is cryptopia. im stupid

i see a lot of promotions and google docs based forms circulate on social media, for so called "airdrops".
if i collect too much do they "clutter" my wallet?
how can one determine if they are listed on some exchange?

thanks - one seems like a spammy promo, but the others are now worth some cents according to coingecko

Hello,

I have 3 video cards 1060 and mine some ethereum and all is fine.

But the other day i was looking at my ETH address and i noticed something strange - In the TOKENS tab i see those:

777 INS Promo
7    VIU
120 XENON

1. What are those?
2. How did i aquire them, if i only mine ethereum only?
3. Why did somebody send them to me, is there any value and is this normal?

Apologies if this is a stupid question.