I just got hacked - any help is welcome! (25,000 BTC stolen)

[Astrohacker]

That really sucks. You could have bought 2.5 pizzas with that.

[allinvain]

That really sucks. You could have bought 2.5 pizzas with that.

Yeah or 1.5 houses and 1.2 cars ...fuck!

[Nescio]

How does me going to the media help me in any way? What are they going to do?

You could get 15 minute famous, go on a reality show, sell the movie rights. Probably worth something

Promo idea: Oprah hides 10 BTC under every audience member's chair.

Aren't bitcoin idealists usually anarchists?

Aren't anarchists those people blowing stuff up? I'm sure it was dem anarchists starting some big war.

Allinvain, you have not responded to the best solution I have seen so far regarding your predicament.

This is a terrible idea. Technically, as time passes it will require exponentially more work traversing the chain (enough mixing an you'll end up with a travelling salesman like problem).

If that somehow was no problem, it could be abused for market manipulation. Blacklist a sufficiently large enough number of coins, value of the rest goes up. If you have no mechanism to unlist them (after 'catching a thief' for example), you have just destroyed coins. If you do, then that can be used to manipulate the market in the opposite direction (inflation).

If this was largely accepted, a government could use it as a de facto standard, publish a list on a website which could be automatically used by a client, and you basically have a central bank like market manipulation tool. You also have a tool that will give any well orgazined entity the power to destroy opponents (freeze their holdings).

If this was only accepted on a case by case basis, it would end up as a public popularity contest of sadder than sad stories, and may the best (media backed) actor win. In other words, it would propagate duplicity and propaganda.

Lastly, any address publication on websites and clients looking at this diminishes the whole idea behind decentralization.

[TraderTimm]

So, any ETA on when this pity-party is over?

Just wondering.

Or a police report, you know, if it is actually real. (or not).

[Swishercutter]

So, any ETA on when this pity-party is over?

Just wondering.

Or a police report, you know, if it is actually real. (or not).

5 days, hundreds of posts and all this news coverage but no police report shown...interesting.  Another thing, none of the news articles have any statements from law enforcement of any kind...almost like this forum is the only basis for the stories.

[Rob P.]

So, any ETA on when this pity-party is over?

Just wondering.

Or a police report, you know, if it is actually real. (or not).

5 days, hundreds of posts and all this news coverage but no police report shown...interesting.  Another thing, none of the news articles have any statements from law enforcement of any kind...almost like this forum is the only basis for the stories.

Because it is...

Anyone know how to stop the forum from showing me this thread has been updated in my "Show new replies to your posts".  I want off this crazy train.

[PGPpfKkx]

allinvillain you have not responded to my question.

what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

[bitcola]

You should force the authorities to investigate this. If they refuse to, get a reason out of them.

Anything of value is taxable, even barter. If they refuse on the basis that this isn't worth anything, then they can't claim to tax it either. It's either worth something or it isn't - they can't have it both ways.

[gmaxwell]

allinvillain you have not responded to my question.
what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

Look at the inputs to that transaction. The blocks are quite old. No megafarm was required.

[joepie91]

allinvillain you have not responded to my question.

what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

He was supposedly a miner back when the difficulty was very low.

[sturle]

what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

It is not just feasible, it is very likely.  I checked a random generation block from the transaction in block explorer.  It was generated at 2010-03-12.  Those days a few khash/s was enough to generate multiple blocks every day.

[allinvain]

You could get 15 minute famous, go on a reality show, sell the movie rights. Probably worth something

Promo idea: Oprah hides 10 BTC under every audience member's chair.

I do not want fame, I just want to find whoever it is that stole them and bring them to justice, and if I can regain my foothold in the bitcoin economy great, if not I'll have to think hard about whether this is all worth it for me...what can I really do next? Can I still start a bitcoin business, no, because nobody would trust me. One momentary slipup and one's reputation is ruined. There are no second chances when it comes to irreversible currencies.

I think the most rational thing to do is to focus on making money the usual way - work, invest in crap, and pray that the financial system does not collapse. I don't know really. I'm not yet decided what role bitcoin will play in my life from this point on. I'm still mining, but hmm, I know that I'll never ever make close to what I had stolen in a lifetime mining.

[Rob P.]

I do not want fame, I just want to find whoever it is that stole them and bring them to justice, and if I can regain my foothold in the bitcoin economy great, if not I'll have to think hard about whether this is all worth it for me...what can I really do next? Can I still start a bitcoin business, no, because nobody would trust me. One momentary slipup and one's reputation is ruined. There are no second chances when it comes to irreversible currencies.

If you didn't want noteriety (different from fame), you probably wouldn't have started this thread as dramatically as you did.  It's a shame what happened to you, if it did, but if I have something stolen from me, I don't run to a world wide public forum and announce it.  I work with a few trusted individuals, maybe try and figure out what happened, and then go to the authorities with my evidence.

Perhaps hiring a professional forensic investigator, versed in Bitcoins.  Perhaps reach out to the Developers and offer to pay them to assist you in tracking things down.

All of the transactions are in the Block Chain, write scripts to alert you every time (and how much) of the money moves and to where, so you can keep an eye on the funds.  Eventually, the coins have to hit a legitimate entity, otherwise they're worthless.  Work with that entity to figure out who sent them the coins, then work backwards. 

I think the most rational thing to do is to focus on making money the usual way - work, invest in crap, and pray that the financial system does not collapse. I don't know really. I'm not yet decided what role bitcoin will play in my life from this point on.

That's always been the way it would work long term. 

[allinvain]

Allinvain, you have not responded to the best solution I have seen so far regarding your predicament. Have you no opinion?

I am thinking about a variant of this proposal and would like to probe into its technical feasibility and democratic acceptance.

The client gets amended by a functionality. The "owner" of a bitcoin address / wallet can decide herself not to accept money from a specific bitcoin address X. To prevent circumvention by laundering this would mean that the owner also would not accept money from another bitcoin address B, in case there is a "trail" into the past which ends up at address X. It is similar to the statement: "I do not want to be paid by AlCapone and I do not want to be paid by JohnDoe unless JohnDoe is able to demonstrate to me that he has funds available in addition to what he might have received by AlCapone" (and of course additional variants in case there is more than one intermediate). Since blockexplorer is able to trace BTC streams, this can be detected.

1) Alice decides not to take coins directly or indirectly from Mallory. So Mallory passes his money to Bob, who passes some of his money to Carol, who passes some of her money to Eve, who passes some of her money to Oscar. Now Alice is telling Oscar that she is not willing to accept his bitcoins as a settlement of his debt, since, according to her analysis of the block chain, all of the money Oscar owns could be seen as originally coming from Mallory. (BTC have no identity, so a more thorough analysis may be necessary for this). So unless Oscar also did business with John, who never received any money from Mallory, Oscar will not be able to pay Alice using Bitcoins.

Of course, at first sight, this is to the disadvantage of Alice. But it is just with egression filtering in network security: It does not help the network doing this, but it helps the entire community. After a while, everybody knows that Alice / MtGox / etc. will not accept money which can be traced back to Mallory - and so nobody is doing business with Mallory any longer.

The important word is scalability: So long as only Alice reacts this way it is to her disadvantage. Assume, Mallory kidnapped someone and requests money to be sent to his bitcoin address. The story makes headline news and, say, 1 in 8 bitcoin users decide to blacklist Mallory. And many others might follow, since they realize that money they received from Mallory (probably via intermediaries) is not accepted in the community. So, in case there is a broad consensus by many individuals to blacklist Mallory, it would should work out to blacklist Mallory. Since this form of blacklisting is a decision of the individual, no centralized arbiter or court is necessary; the solidarity of the community is sufficient.

2) How would this be implemented? Of course, Oscar can transmit a transaction from his account to Alice's acount and this would become part of the block chain. So Alice HAS the money, even though it does not show up on her wallet until she is back from her business trip and goes online with her wallt on her desktop. But if Alice maintained a publically known blacklist of bitcoin addresses (either as part of her ecommerce web site where she posts that she is accepting BTC (with the exception of these 3 blacklisted addresses) or a signed blacklist which is public and certified as part of the block chain in just the same way as transactions are presently), then Oscar would have known about this blacklist. And Oscar would not have accepted money from Eve...and back the chain up to Mallory.

We thus would have a democratic majority against accepting Mallory's coins.

The necessary adaptations would be
a) An analyzer for the BTC stream from Oscar back to Mallory
b) Optionally: An extension for managing signed blacklists

Sorry for not responding. As you can see this thread has grown by leaps and bounds and I'm having a hard time keeping up with it.

I like the idea of a database of stolen coins. This service can be provided at a cost so whoever is running it can still make some money to maintain it.

However I don't think this modification will ever be accepted into the official client. My feelings are that bitcoin will not change at a core level at all.

[allinvain]

allinvillain you have not responded to my question.

what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

I did not/do not own a mega farm. Didn't anyone read that I was one of the very first miners? It was much easier to generate coins back then.

My current "farm" is comprised of several 5870 cards.  Nothing fancy.

[allinvain]

You should force the authorities to investigate this. If they refuse to, get a reason out of them.

Anything of value is taxable, even barter. If they refuse on the basis that this isn't worth anything, then they can't claim to tax it either. It's either worth something or it isn't - they can't have it both ways.

I will and I am..going through standard channels is a slow and laborious process. I'm afraid by the time I even get somewhere the thieves would've sold all the BTC and I'll be pretty much screwed.

[allinvain]

what kind of mega-farm did u own in order to produce 25k btc from your start date you mentioned?
has anyone done the math on if this is feasible or not with the difficulty jumps?

It is not just feasible, it is very likely.  I checked a random generation block from the transaction in block explorer.  It was generated at 2010-03-12.  Those days a few khash/s was enough to generate multiple blocks every day.

True. I had the client running with the generate function ever since I heard about bitcoins.

[allinvain]

I do not want fame, I just want to find whoever it is that stole them and bring them to justice, and if I can regain my foothold in the bitcoin economy great, if not I'll have to think hard about whether this is all worth it for me...what can I really do next? Can I still start a bitcoin business, no, because nobody would trust me. One momentary slipup and one's reputation is ruined. There are no second chances when it comes to irreversible currencies.

If you didn't want noteriety (different from fame), you probably wouldn't have started this thread as dramatically as you did.  It's a shame what happened to you, if it did, but if I have something stolen from me, I don't run to a world wide public forum and announce it.  I work with a few trusted individuals, maybe try and figure out what happened, and then go to the authorities with my evidence.

Perhaps hiring a professional forensic investigator, versed in Bitcoins.  Perhaps reach out to the Developers and offer to pay them to assist you in tracking things down.

All of the transactions are in the Block Chain, write scripts to alert you every time (and how much) of the money moves and to where, so you can keep an eye on the funds.  Eventually, the coins have to hit a legitimate entity, otherwise they're worthless.  Work with that entity to figure out who sent them the coins, then work backwards. 

I think the most rational thing to do is to focus on making money the usual way - work, invest in crap, and pray that the financial system does not collapse. I don't know really. I'm not yet decided what role bitcoin will play in my life from this point on.

That's always been the way it would work long term. 

I know, now that I see what has come of this (me opening this thread) I shouldn't even bothered. Some people came forward with offers to help me (and I'm working with them now - you know who you are and I greatly appreciate the help from the bottom of my heart) and that's why originally I started this thread. I had this naive notion that the bitcoin community would rally around me and help me locate the thief...

I did offer to pay anyone who can help me recover the funds.

[allinvain]

This is a terrible idea. Technically, as time passes it will require exponentially more work traversing the chain (enough mixing an you'll end up with a travelling salesman like problem).

Yes, you will have to traverse the chain.

If that somehow was no problem, it could be abused for market manipulation. Blacklist a sufficiently large enough number of coins, value of the rest goes up. If you have no mechanism to unlist them (after 'catching a thief' for example), you have just destroyed coins. If you do, then that can be used to manipulate the market in the opposite direction (inflation).

No, this would be voluntary to each individual. No central control. If you are convinced the coins were stolen, you can blacklist them to avoid transactions that involve them.

If this was largely accepted, a government could use it as a de facto standard, publish a list on a website which could be automatically used by a client, and you basically have a central bank like market manipulation tool. You also have a tool that will give any well orgazined entity the power to destroy opponents (freeze their holdings).

Again, voluntary and individual.

If this was only accepted on a case by case basis, it would end up as a public popularity contest of sadder than sad stories, and may the best (media backed) actor win. In other words, it would propagate duplicity and propaganda.

Yes, people could present their cases. Obviously no one would blacklist coins without solid proof. For example, I would not blacklist allinvain's coins. No offense but there isn't enough proof. It would prevent false reports, because who would attempt to blacklist coins they still had? Yes, it would open the door to abuse by reporting other people's coins. Again, it would require hard evidence to convince me to black list an address. But if that evidence is provided, the community could take action.

Lastly, any address publication on websites and clients looking at this diminishes the whole idea behind decentralization.

Again, voluntary and individual. This would be Bitcoiners policing themselves. If enough proof was given to show stolen coins, anyone who receives them would be taking a risk that they would be stuck holding the bag. Coins would not be lost this way, after enough time, there would be new users that don't blacklist those coins and they would be clean to trade.

You could also blacklist coins that are linked to known "bad guys" around the world. Bad example time: Say Hitler used Bitcoin to build his army. When he buys some munitions (or whatever else) somewhere and his Bitcoin address is leaked, the people of the world could freeze his funds. It would be something similar to what's discussed in here: https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=5979.0 but more voluntary than convincing all the miners to block addresses.

Also, people could refuse to do business with known companies or individual that they disagree with. Say some "evil" corporation is killing baby whales, people who want to protest could block addresses that are tied to that company, and anyone who does business with that company.

Hmm..I see. As long as this method is totally voluntary and withing the "free market" ideology of the bitcoin system some people will find it useful. I'd like to think that we are moral enough that we would not accept payments from known criminals or accept "tainted" coins. But when it comes to something as personal as money all bets are off.

[aeroSpike]

You should force the authorities to investigate this. If they refuse to, get a reason out of them.

Anything of value is taxable, even barter. If they refuse on the basis that this isn't worth anything, then they can't claim to tax it either. It's either worth something or it isn't - they can't have it both ways.

Nice try, but in most countries (if not all) this doesn't work that way. You are dealing with 2 different entities, law enforcement and the tax office. They both interpret the law the way that suits them best.