BitClub's fake offer to return fee blunder

[bitkilo]

The Coindesk article also indicated that there is evidence these funds may have come from a mixer, which means it is likely they were stolen funds and the sender will not come forward.

I don't think that's correct.

From: http://www.coindesk.com/accidental-136000-bitcoin-mining-pool/

The mining service said it has been researching the transaction and that it believes it was possibly sent by a bitcoin mixing service, a type of online offering aimed at privacy and anonymity but that is nonetheless associated with illicit use.

It's a claim from BitClub and not even a reasonable one... Everyone can see the TX on the blockchain, it's not like BitClub has access to secret information that would help them come to that conclusion just with certainty by being on the receiving end of it.

If you have the TX could you please post it.

Can you look up transactions with unusually high fees on blockchain.info or other block explorers?

[alani123]

If you have the TX could you please post it.

Here's the tx id: cc455ae816e6cdafdb58d54e35d4f46d860047458eacf1c7405dc634631c570d

Can you look up transactions with unusually high fees on blockchain.info or other block explorers?

blockchain.info has a graph

https://blockchain.info/charts/transaction-fees?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

[Wendigo]

May I ask how the original sender will identify himself/herself if he/she sent the coins through a mixer? Hasn't the mixer obfuscated the Bitcoin address who started the mixing process so as to not be possible to trace back to the original owner. So I guess only the output address is visible on the Blockchain but not the input address which would need some Blockchain detective work to be found? So how will Bitclub network know who the real sender is without the cooperation of the Bitcoin mixer?

[alani123]

Turns out that OP here was right...

https://motherboard.vice.com/read/someone-tried-to-pay-5-in-bitcoin-sent-137k-instead

[ebliever]

The Coindesk article also indicated that there is evidence these funds may have come from a mixer, which means it is likely they were stolen funds and the sender will not come forward.

I don't think that's correct.

From: http://www.coindesk.com/accidental-136000-bitcoin-mining-pool/

The mining service said it has been researching the transaction and that it believes it was possibly sent by a bitcoin mixing service, a type of online offering aimed at privacy and anonymity but that is nonetheless associated with illicit use.

It's a claim from BitClub and not even a reasonable one... Everyone can see the TX on the blockchain, it's not like BitClub has access to secret information that would help them come to that conclusion just with certainty by being on the receiving end of it.

From the Motherboard article (https://motherboard.vice.com/read/someone-tried-to-pay-5-in-bitcoin-sent-137k-instead):

Finally, and perhaps most damning, the wallet that the $137,000 transaction came from had the entire amount sent to it in a series of 13 transactions all made on Tuesday, and all from a series of different wallets which themselves only have transactions dating back to Tuesday. This indicates that the coins were likely sent through a “mixing” service, which sends coins through a Byzantine series of wallets in order to hide their true origin.

[alyssa85]

Danny is right on all points.

The Coindesk article also indicated that there is evidence these funds may have come from a mixer, which means it is likely they were stolen funds and the sender will not come forward. In which case there was some discussion about donating the funds or a portion thereof to a bitcoin charity. I think that's very good of Bitclub, a good precedent in general. While there would be many good recipients for such a donation, if it does turn out these were stolen bitcoins, an ironically suitable charitable contribution might involve recompensing those who've been robbed of their bitcoin (in those cases where the theft can be independently verified).

If it came from a mixer it's impossible to verify ownership, right?

[Wendigo]

Hmm in that Motherboard article it's written that there are speculations and allegations against the Bitclub network being a shady high-tech pyramid scheme and that Twitter user who posted the big news is not one of the employees but a shareholder in the mining operation. So I think we need to take this Bitclub network promise with a grain of salt unless some of the anonymous owners step forward and confirm what's going on.  

[Dabs]

Running an MLM isn't ethical in the first place.

Not all. I'm not actively involved in one, but the general concept isn't unethical. It's the application of the concept by some or a lot of big entities that twists the idea, as well as some or a lot of individuals in these organizations that makes the practice unethical.

For BitClub in particular, Roger Ver does not like it ... without going too much into what actually happened, I would tend to believe that BitClub itself has suspicious practices.

I've never heard of BitClub until today, so if it's a marketing strategy, it's working.

[Kprawn]

Running an MLM isn't ethical in the first place.

Not all. I'm not actively involved in one, but the general concept isn't unethical. It's the application of the concept by some or a lot of big entities that twists the idea, as well as some or a lot of individuals in these organizations that makes the practice unethical.

For BitClub in particular, Roger Ver does not like it ... without going too much into what actually happened, I would tend to believe that BitClub itself has suspicious practices.

I've never heard of BitClub until today, so if it's a marketing strategy, it's working.

So what you are saying is, Bitclub are doing this with their own funds to attract positive attention and to gain trust from people to mask their other possibly unethical activities? I must say this is a

brilliant idea, if it was. It sure did get a lot of attention... How long after the transaction were submitted, was it picked up by the miners and what chance did the miners have to pick their own block

before anyone else picked it up? It sounds a bit risky to me... BUT I guess if they did fail to mine that block, they would have stepped forward to claim it as a mistake. 

[The Sceptical Chymist]

I might be way too cynical,  but I would totally believe this isn't what it appears to be.   It could be a publicity stunt as some have mentioned or it could be something more sinister.

[Dabs]

How long after the transaction were submitted, was it picked up by the miners and what chance did the miners have to pick their own block

before anyone else picked it up? It sounds a bit risky to me... BUT I guess if they did fail to mine that block, they would have stepped forward to claim it as a mistake. 

They don't have to broadcast the transaction until they have found a block, so only they would mine it.

The risk is if their block gets orphaned, someone else could re-mine that transaction into another block.

[Hazir]

This story of a human error won't take place if we had proper regulation of Fees implemented. There is no way that we need Fee to be higher than 1BTC.
I wish hard coded fee limit would be coded in every wallet, it is pretty easy to implement. No Bitcoin code change is needed.

[gmaxwell]

It is possible for Bitclub to have inserted the transaction into their block (without transmitting over the network to other miners).

This was not the case. My node had the transaction for over three minutes before the block. It also heard from of the transaction from more than two dozen peers before the block, If you have logging turned up enough to see it-- you'll see you did too.

[Gleb Gamow]

This is apparently what happened to some unlucky person on Tuesday. A Twitter user spotted that somebody sent a bitcoin transaction amounting to roughly $5, but with a fee of 291.241 bitcoins, or $137,081.31, attached. This massive fee didn’t go to the intended recipient—they only got the fiver—but instead went to the person in the bitcoin network who processed the transaction.

According to the Twitter user, whomever sent this transaction likely meant to send the $137,000 to someone they knew, and just wanted to attach a $5 fee as a thank-you to the payment processor, but got it mixed up. Instead, they sent their pal enough change for a Starbucks coffee, and a bitcoin company enough cash to buy a new Maserati.

"Ten-hut! There's a mathematician on deck."

[cpfreeplz]

If someone sent from that address and now doesn't have access to it then clearly they screwed up and can't get it back. Also it's not very safe to just send the transaction back to the same address because what if they don't see it, or they just swept an address because it was compromised?

I'd say they're doing the right thing here. I don't understand where this hostility is coming from.

[DimensionZ]

I might be way too cynical,  but I would totally believe this isn't what it appears to be.   It could be a publicity stunt as some have mentioned or it could be something more sinister.

I am more inclined to think these are probably stolen coins that someone tried to run through a mixer that crapped up and spewed out the wrong amount. I am not sure what the benefit would have been and who would have profited from a publicity stunt like that. As for the sinister part, well the worst thing that could be is stolen money so if Bitclub network is really going to donate the coins to charity the balance in the universe will be restored. Karma is a ***** 

[eternalgloom]

I thought it was pretty bogus for BitClub to first announce they collected an accidental 316 BTC fee, then say they would return it if the owner contacted them and "verified their identity".

Obviously they could just send the 316 BTC back to the address that sent it.

I have to admit I would have kept the coins if I had mined the block, but at least I would not be so sleazy as to make up some lie about verifying people.

That would be a pretty terrible and unethical thing to do, I would not want to keep those Bitcoins if they were sent in error.
I think they're pretty serious about it, yes it's good publicity but also just a decent thing to do.

[Gleb Gamow]

This is apparently what happened to some unlucky person on Tuesday. A Twitter user spotted that somebody sent a bitcoin transaction amounting to roughly $5, but with a fee of 291.241 bitcoins, or $137,081.31, attached. This massive fee didn’t go to the intended recipient—they only got the fiver—but instead went to the person in the bitcoin network who processed the transaction.

According to the Twitter user, whomever sent this transaction likely meant to send the $137,000 to someone they knew, and just wanted to attach a $5 fee as a thank-you to the payment processor, but got it mixed up. Instead, they sent their pal enough change for a Starbucks coffee, and a bitcoin company enough cash to buy a new Maserati.

"Ten-hut! There's a mathematician on deck."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/27/man-accidentally-sends-137000-worth-of-bitcoin-instead-of-5/

[alani123]

This is apparently what happened to some unlucky person on Tuesday. A Twitter user spotted that somebody sent a bitcoin transaction amounting to roughly $5, but with a fee of 291.241 bitcoins, or $137,081.31, attached. This massive fee didn’t go to the intended recipient—they only got the fiver—but instead went to the person in the bitcoin network who processed the transaction.

According to the Twitter user, whomever sent this transaction likely meant to send the $137,000 to someone they knew, and just wanted to attach a $5 fee as a thank-you to the payment processor, but got it mixed up. Instead, they sent their pal enough change for a Starbucks coffee, and a bitcoin company enough cash to buy a new Maserati.

"Ten-hut! There's a mathematician on deck."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/04/27/man-accidentally-sends-137000-worth-of-bitcoin-instead-of-5/

wow... is it that hard for major news outlets to find authors that have a basic understanding of how bitcoin works? This particular one didn't even do a 30-minute google-fu to see how it works before writing the article.

[Blinken]

whatever they do, one thing is for sure. they cannot send the funds back to that address without anybody claiming it first. because even if it is not a mixer or a shared coin or something, the original owner of that address may not have access to that address anymore so sending it back would be like burning the coins.

How would they "not have access to the address anymore"?

Send $100,000 in coins, then delete any record you have of the key of the originating address. Doh, who would do that?

You are not describing a plausible scenario.