Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[shahzadafzal]

US Officials Seize $3.6B in Bitcoin From 2016 Bitfinex Hack
Nearly 120,000 BTC was stolen in the hack.

“After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein,” the press release said. “Those files contained the private keys required to access the digital wallet that directly received the funds stolen from Bitfinex, and allowed special agents to lawfully seize and recover more than 94,000 bitcoin that had been stolen from Bitfinex. The recovered bitcoin was valued at over $3.6 billion at the time of seizure."

Should not the US Officials thank Bitcoin for this? I mean imagine if this $3.6B were not in Bitcoin but in fiat currency and suppose if these were already transferred to the British Virgin Islands or Swiss Account or somewhere in the Cayman Islands, lets keep the seizing part aside, could they even imagine trying to inquire about it?

[Paashaas]

Crypto appears to be near a hyper-adoption phase, similar to that of the internet during the mid-to-late 1990s according to Wells Fargo.

[OutOfMemory]

OK, seems i'm quite through with the Covid now     *Party.gif*
Woke up in the night with intense back pain, because i had quit the painkillers yesterday evening, until i had that nausea and some nasty covid shits'n farts.
In on top, out on the bottom, literally  

Poor wife, randomly considering herself to be fucking smart, omiited the carrageenan nasal spray treatment, which made her suffer quite a bit already, suddenly got the munchies and shoved in a couple of spoons full of Ferrero Nutella (tm), right in front of my shocked lil selfie, which she puked out with all she have had inside her stomach a few hours ago. Now she's lying in cold sweat and fever, wrapped in every unused blanket we had in the house.
Wifey didn't listen to OOM, but i just feel sorry for her, she's getting it really bad from the virus now.
Let's hope the best for her.

Tomorrow i have to drive to the testing unit for PCR testing all my kids. This will be fun, i guess, but not so much for them, unfortunately. The oldest one still didn't have a positive Antigen test yet, seems he's immune already, for whatever reason. When he's getting PCR tested negative tomorrow, he won't get that certificate that frees him from testing at school along with other restrictions, at least for six months. Either he already was infected asymptomatically before the rest of our family, or he benefits from some sort of cross-immunity. Antibody levels are no more accepted as a proof of infection by our stupid lil government, which is on the verge of dismantling itself, again  


Don't get me wrong, i've seen some mindblowing things in my life, but sometimes, only sometimes, i wish to live a boring and simple life....  
Stay tuned.

[NeuroticFish]

Yeaaahhhh.  The more I think about this... The less it makes very much sense at all!

There is some seriously important detail missing for sure. 

But on the other hand wouldn't the forces who might have fabricated this whole thing (if it were fabricated) done a slightly better job?

Maybe the actual thieves received most of the fiat obtained from those 25k BTC converted.
Maybe these who got caught are only the launderers/money mules.

I'm not that sure about the fabricated evidence. (But I also won't rule anything out.)

[suchmoon]

Yeaaahhhh.  The more I think about this... The less it makes very much sense at all!

There is some seriously important detail missing for sure.  

But on the other hand wouldn't the forces who might have fabricated this whole thing (if it were fabricated) done a slightly better job?

Maybe the actual thieves received most of the fiat obtained from those 25k BTC converted.
Maybe these who got caught are only the launderers/money mules.

I'm not that sure about the fabricated evidence. (But I also won't rule anything out.)

According to messieurs Hanlon and Occam, this happens more often than you'd think. Keep in mind that only the stupid ones get caught and posted on the dot gov site. The ones that get away... well, they get away and we never know how they did it. So there is a huge inherent bias in how we interpret this type of news.

[cAPSLOCK]

Yeaaahhhh.  The more I think about this... The less it makes very much sense at all!

There is some seriously important detail missing for sure.  

But on the other hand wouldn't the forces who might have fabricated this whole thing (if it were fabricated) done a slightly better job?

Maybe the actual thieves received most of the fiat obtained from those 25k BTC converted.
Maybe these who got caught are only the launderers/money mules.

I'm not that sure about the fabricated evidence. (But I also won't rule anything out.)

According to messieurs Hanlon and Occam, this happens more often than you'd think. Keep in mind that only the stupid ones get caught and posted on the dot gov site. The ones that get away... well, they get away and we never know how they did it. So there is a huge inherent bias in how we interpret this type of news.

This story is not done percolating.  For sure.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[suchmoon]

Cobra doesn't agree with this.

Are we seriously to believe the absurd notion that someone capable of hacking 100K BTC stores the private keys in… CLOUD STORAGE?

Well, it was ENCRYPTED so what could possibly go wrong?  

On or about January 31, 2022, law enforcement was able to decrypt several key files contained within the account.

Which is slightly chilling TBH but not very surprising.

[serveria.com]

The Bitfinex thieves (or at least the ones that ended up with the coins):

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency

Bullish! 100k BTC are no longer for sale. 

P.S. Monaco arrests Liechtenstein? 

[serveria.com]

Why the fuck are they even staying in New York with 100k bitcoin, LOL, dumb doesn't even begin to explain it.. I doubt they were the masterminds behind this scheme.

That can happen if you consider yourself to be smarter than other people. But yes, they're not the guys behind the hack I believe. 

[cAPSLOCK]

So.. in other new Wells Fargo published this and the bitcoin community cheers in bullish adoration.

I will tell you why they are wrong.



Don't get me wrong... I do think this is a bullish chart.  But I believe the prediction is overly conservative.

For internet adoption to happen the citizens of earth needed a lot of expensive things.  A computer, and a connection to the internet, and the time to use it.  Eventually the cell phone worked it's way into the mix, and even the lowly Raspberry Pi was created to bring internet capable computing to the least rich on the planet.  These facts were the resistance behind this adoption curve.  The building out of worldwide wireless networks is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of mankind.

Now for bitcoin.  What will the users need? 

Nothing more than the things they got in the first adoption curve.  A computer, a cell phone, and a network connection to the worldwide network.

See the difference?  Perhaps subtle... but very large. The implication of this chart is Bitcoin will likely follow a similar curve.

I think not.  (can anyone guess how cAPS thinks the curve might be different )

[bitcoinPsycho]

So.. in other new Wells Fargo published this and the bitcoin community cheers in bullish adoration.

I will tell you why they are wrong.



Don't get me wrong... I do think this is a bullish chart.  But I believe the prediction is overly conservative.

For internet adoption to happen the citizens of earth needed a lot of expensive things.  A computer, and a connection to the internet, and the time to use it.  Eventually the cell phone worked it's way into the mix, and even the lowly Raspberry Pi was created to bring internet capable computing to the least rich on the planet.  These facts were the resistance behind this adoption curve.  The building out of worldwide wireless networks is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of mankind.

Now for bitcoin.  What will the users need? 

Nothing more than the things they got in the first adoption curve.  A computer, a cell phone, and a network connection to the worldwide network.

See the difference?  Perhaps subtle... but very large. The implication of this chart is Bitcoin will likely follow a similar curve.

I think not.  (can anyone guess how cAPS thinks the curve might be different )

This?

[serveria.com]

So.. in other new Wells Fargo published this and the bitcoin community cheers in bullish adoration.

I will tell you why they are wrong.



Don't get me wrong... I do think this is a bullish chart.  But I believe the prediction is overly conservative.

For internet adoption to happen the citizens of earth needed a lot of expensive things.  A computer, and a connection to the internet, and the time to use it.  Eventually the cell phone worked it's way into the mix, and even the lowly Raspberry Pi was created to bring internet capable computing to the least rich on the planet.  These facts were the resistance behind this adoption curve.  The building out of worldwide wireless networks is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of mankind.

Now for bitcoin.  What will the users need?  

Nothing more than the things they got in the first adoption curve.  A computer, a cell phone, and a network connection to the worldwide network.

See the difference?  Perhaps subtle... but very large. The implication of this chart is Bitcoin will likely follow a similar curve.

I think not.  (can anyone guess how cAPS thinks the curve might be different )

Besides, the inventions from the beginning of the 20th century (telephone, radio, cars) took considerably longer time to reach adoption than later inventions (mobile phones, internet etc). The speed of technological adoption is rising with time. Mobile phones got pretty widespread in around 10 years or something. Which means that...    

[cAPSLOCK]

So.. in other new Wells Fargo published this and the bitcoin community cheers in bullish adoration.

I will tell you why they are wrong.



Don't get me wrong... I do think this is a bullish chart.  But I believe the prediction is overly conservative.

For internet adoption to happen the citizens of earth needed a lot of expensive things.  A computer, and a connection to the internet, and the time to use it.  Eventually the cell phone worked it's way into the mix, and even the lowly Raspberry Pi was created to bring internet capable computing to the least rich on the planet.  These facts were the resistance behind this adoption curve.  The building out of worldwide wireless networks is undoubtedly one of the most important achievements of mankind.

Now for bitcoin.  What will the users need? 

Nothing more than the things they got in the first adoption curve.  A computer, a cell phone, and a network connection to the worldwide network.

See the difference?  Perhaps subtle... but very large. The implication of this chart is Bitcoin will likely follow a similar curve.

I think not.  (can anyone guess how cAPS thinks the curve might be different )

This?

I think that's the same one, just compressed...  I am thinking more along these lines:


Comparisons to the adoption of the internet are a great step ion the right direction for the folks at Wells Fargo and elsewhere.  But they are still in error.  The friction around internet adoption is exactly what needed to be built for Bitcoin's adoption.  That whole curve is represented in the very beginning of our curve.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[cAPSLOCK]

I will put it another way.

That curve for the internet adoption includes millions upon millions of cell network towers being built.  It includes satellites being launched  into space.  It includes cables being laid across the bottom of the ocean.  It includes an entire generation of people in every country adopting smart phones (and/or computers).  It includes documents being converted into electronic form.  Entire  libraries digitized.  Millions of miles of coaxial cable strewn all over the earth. And then the same thing again but with optical fiber.  And most of that took, what?  About 30 years?

Bitcoin adoption?  Well it requires all the above, which is already done, and then?

Someone to download an app, and produce an address/invoice.  Not going to take 30 years.  The young generation can do that in 30 seconds.

[BobLawblaw]

~

"files within an online account [...] contained the private keys" LOL
I guess it's a good thing that criminals are idiots.

Not even an encrypted wallet.dat?

That's just full retard criminals right there.

Glad they were caught and something was able to be clawed back from the hack.

[JayJuanGee]

The Bitfinex thieves (or at least the ones that ended up with the coins):

https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-alleged-conspiracy-launder-45-billion-stolen-cryptocurrency

Wow.. interesting.

I think that many of us were assuming that the Bitfinex "hackers" were never going to be found - and especially, if found, not expecting many of the coins to get recovered.., and geez a husband and wife team of hackers.. huh?  true or not.. let's consider the matter..

For sure the USDOJ public release document remains quite laudatory towards the USGovt policing efforts and striving to suggest that no one is really going to get away from them - no matter the type of obfuscating that they are attempting to accomplish - and frequently mistakes are made (fair enough) - and surely we have seen Govt officials exaggerate regarding their own skills/abilities in the past (whether US Govt or other Govts have tendencies to do that) - but still interesting that the USDOJ take such a stance in their publicly released document.... and for sure, just through the press released document, it seems that a weakness (at least in terms of the USGovt getting ahold of the 94k recovered BTC was that the hackers were apparently holding their coins with a third-party service rather than in a privately controlled wallet.. at least that is what I gathered from this portion of the press release:

"After the execution of court-authorized search warrants of online accounts controlled by Lichtenstein and Morgan, special agents obtained access to files within an online account controlled by Lichtenstein."

So that does seem to be a pretty BIG mistake to be holding those coins with a third party - and not trying to suggest ways that "hackers"/"criminals" might improve their techniques, but just pointing out that we had already seen some implications that there might be something wrong with bitcoin.. when the reality does seem that there was a kind of third-party access involved, and we do not yet know which third party that was - whether we will find out is another interesting question, no?

Another historical conspiracy theory concern that had a decent amount of logical validity was that there was likely quite a bit of speculation that there was "insider-jobbedness" going on with the purported Bitfinex hackening - and this USDOJ press release does seem to lend credibility to Bitfinex's version of events - that there was no "insider" aspect to this - even though for sure, none of us should be accepting any new information without any possible grain of salt skepticisms.

By the way, I had also recalled that in late 2016, Bitfinex had issued a couple of different kinds of tokens (and/or forms of equity), and one of them regarded the account holders getting reimbursed (for their losses - socializing the losses based on total holdings that any account holder had on Bitfinex at the time of the hack), but another relevant form of equity token that Bitfinex issued around that late 2016 timeframe had to do with potential profitability (or windfall to equity purchasers) regarding if any of the hacked coins were to ever be recovered.. gosh and I suppose that anyone still holding those kinds of equity tokens with Bitfinex would be receiving some considerable windfall profits from this matter, if it ends up being true...

Another aspect that I recall is that Bitfinex did not permit any US resident to purchase any of those equity tokens that involved potential recovery of the "hacked" coins.. but I had not really kept track of those matters either... I would actually expect that Bitfinex has been a quite conniving business entity during this whole process (as it has shown itself to be), and I would suspect that Bitfinex had likely bought back a decent quantity of those hacker recovery related tokens/equity over the years.

Another thing is that in the past few weeks, we did hear about some recent moving of the "hacked" coins, so surely mistakes may have been made in those most recent coin movements that ended up drawing attention to how to identify the purported "hackers"?   Perhaps?  perhaps?

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[savetherainforest]

This story is not done percolating.  For sure.

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL

             

I had a good laugh.  .. He seems pretty dumb for a "Doutche".