Do you believe the FBI holds the biggest number of bitcoin?

[Ewinsane]

Nope i dont belive that . In fact they are hunting it and trying to destroy the all network of blockchain
They just want like we to pay fees and to be dependent by a goverment

This is plain stupid. Have you heard of the FBI arresting somebody for running a bitcoin node?
And now you don't pay fees? Of course you pay, but to the minervent.

Actually, the FBI most likely does hold the biggest number of Bitcoin. The US gov and all other govs would be unwise to at least get a piece of the pie before it hits $1,000,000... then good luck!

No they don't.
And the FBI is not the government, this is not communist Russia where everything is run by the same person.
In reality the FBI has already sold at an auction the coins they have seized.

Let me explain it to you in the simplest way possible. Silk Road is an online black market and best known platform for drug dealing. Ross Ulbricht is an alleged silkroad mastermind. FBI has seized his bitcoins. Guardian said the digit is 26,000 and Forbes said it is 30,000. Actually, different websites show different value. In order to seize anyone’s bitcoin, you need his private key and a BTC address of your own. I am sorry to say but I did not hear a word about what FBI has done with the seized bitcoins.

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[deisik]

Nope i dont belive that . In fact they are hunting it and trying to destroy the all network of blockchain
They just want like we to pay fees and to be dependent by a goverment

This is plain stupid. Have you heard of the FBI arresting somebody for running a bitcoin node?
And now you don't pay fees? Of course you pay, but to the minervent.

Actually, the FBI most likely does hold the biggest number of Bitcoin. The US gov and all other govs would be unwise to at least get a piece of the pie before it hits $1,000,000... then good luck!

No they don't.
And the FBI is not the government, this is not communist Russia where everything is run by the same person.
In reality the FBI has already sold at an auction the coins they have seized.

Let me explain it to you in the simplest way possible. Silk Road is an online black market and best known platform for drug dealing. Ross Ulbricht is an alleged silkroad mastermind. FBI has seized his bitcoins. Guardian said the digit is 26,000 and Forbes said it is 30,000. Actually, different websites show different value. In order to seize anyone’s bitcoin, you need his private key and a BTC address of your own. I am sorry to say but I did not hear a word about what FBI has done with the seized bitcoins.

Well, figures seem to differ in different sources

I heard that they had seized something like 144,000 bitcoins (i.e. over one hundred thousand bitcoins) from Ulbricht in late 2013. The US Marshals Service auctioned off something like 50,000 bitcoins (there were some news about the auctions as well as dudes who bought them), so the rest of the coins should still be held somewhere. Anyway, they could basically have sold the coins to themselves if their intention was to retain the Silk Road bitcoins by any means possible

[RedditMaster]

Why would the FBI have a huge amount of coins,the coins they have confiscated are the auctioned and so i really do not think they will be holding the coins because of their past auctions,so this is entirely a speculation which has no truth in it.

[marky89]

I think that the US does not want bitcoin in this world, the reasons are obviously, they dont want bitcoin to destroy the banks.

The US government may not like it, but the cat is out of the bag, and they know it. I think they are trying to exert as much control as possible (like they do in everything else). That means tight regulation, which also means fining and/or shutting down unregulated exchanges. I'm definitely worried for the fate of Bitfinex and Kraken right now. Hopefully the US government will just slap some fines on them and allow them to continue operating. But I suspect more action will be coming against unlicensed exchanges

I think it is more complicated than that

The question is certainly about control, but we should keep in mind that Bitcoin (as well as other currencies) may be a handy tool (a very handy at that) to track down criminals (just try tracing cash transactions). I mean to say that they might not be interested in exerting too much control over crypto beyond a certain point after which folks will start running away from Bitcoin. Regarding Bitfinex specifically, I'm more inclined to think that it should have fallen first before Btc-e (since it is a bigger and thus more tasty piece of shit, so to speak), but it kinda looks that all they managed to achieve is to block fiat payment channels for this exchange, to and from

Do you think that's all that will happen? I tend to think there are things going on behind the scenes. The charges in the BTC-e indictment go back to ~2012, and the investigation would have begun after Gox fell in early 2014, if not earlier, given the nature of the charges.

So if we draw a similar parallel to Bitfinex, they've been operating as an unlicensed MSB since ~2013. Fortunately for them, they weren't in operation at the time of the Gox laundering (its predecessor, Bitcoinica, was). If the BFX tokens qualify as unregistered securities, and they very well might, then those charges would stem back to August 2016.

I think blocking fiat payment channels was possibly a first step in a larger game.

[deisik]

I think that the US does not want bitcoin in this world, the reasons are obviously, they dont want bitcoin to destroy the banks.

The US government may not like it, but the cat is out of the bag, and they know it. I think they are trying to exert as much control as possible (like they do in everything else). That means tight regulation, which also means fining and/or shutting down unregulated exchanges. I'm definitely worried for the fate of Bitfinex and Kraken right now. Hopefully the US government will just slap some fines on them and allow them to continue operating. But I suspect more action will be coming against unlicensed exchanges

I think it is more complicated than that

The question is certainly about control, but we should keep in mind that Bitcoin (as well as other currencies) may be a handy tool (a very handy at that) to track down criminals (just try tracing cash transactions). I mean to say that they might not be interested in exerting too much control over crypto beyond a certain point after which folks will start running away from Bitcoin. Regarding Bitfinex specifically, I'm more inclined to think that it should have fallen first before Btc-e (since it is a bigger and thus more tasty piece of shit, so to speak), but it kinda looks that all they managed to achieve is to block fiat payment channels for this exchange, to and from

Do you think that's all that will happen? I tend to think there are things going on behind the scenes. The charges in the BTC-e indictment go back to ~2012, and the investigation would have begun after Gox fell in early 2014, if not earlier, given the nature of the charges.

So if we draw a similar parallel to Bitfinex, they've been operating as an unlicensed MSB since ~2013. Fortunately for them, they weren't in operation at the time of the Gox laundering (its predecessor, Bitcoinica, was). If the BFX tokens qualify as unregistered securities, and they very well might, then those charges would stem back to August 2016.

I think blocking fiat payment channels was possibly a first step in a larger game

We don't and can't know that for certain

But how many people heard about the US financial authorities making charges against Btc-e before it got seized? I don't think that many since otherwise the owners of Btc-e should have prepared the exchange for this kind of action (unless they are complete dumbasses, which we can't exclude either). On the other hand, Bitfinex had issues with the CFTC as early as 2015 (if not earlier), so they are well aware of possible consequences that getting in the eye of the FBI might mean. Thus I'm more inclined to think that blocking payment channels is in fact the best (or the worst, depending on your point of view) that the US security agencies like FBI could do to Bitfinex. In other words, they are tough game and ready to fight back

[marky89]

I think that the US does not want bitcoin in this world, the reasons are obviously, they dont want bitcoin to destroy the banks.

The US government may not like it, but the cat is out of the bag, and they know it. I think they are trying to exert as much control as possible (like they do in everything else). That means tight regulation, which also means fining and/or shutting down unregulated exchanges. I'm definitely worried for the fate of Bitfinex and Kraken right now. Hopefully the US government will just slap some fines on them and allow them to continue operating. But I suspect more action will be coming against unlicensed exchanges

I think it is more complicated than that

The question is certainly about control, but we should keep in mind that Bitcoin (as well as other currencies) may be a handy tool (a very handy at that) to track down criminals (just try tracing cash transactions). I mean to say that they might not be interested in exerting too much control over crypto beyond a certain point after which folks will start running away from Bitcoin. Regarding Bitfinex specifically, I'm more inclined to think that it should have fallen first before Btc-e (since it is a bigger and thus more tasty piece of shit, so to speak), but it kinda looks that all they managed to achieve is to block fiat payment channels for this exchange, to and from

Do you think that's all that will happen? I tend to think there are things going on behind the scenes. The charges in the BTC-e indictment go back to ~2012, and the investigation would have begun after Gox fell in early 2014, if not earlier, given the nature of the charges.

So if we draw a similar parallel to Bitfinex, they've been operating as an unlicensed MSB since ~2013. Fortunately for them, they weren't in operation at the time of the Gox laundering (its predecessor, Bitcoinica, was). If the BFX tokens qualify as unregistered securities, and they very well might, then those charges would stem back to August 2016.

I think blocking fiat payment channels was possibly a first step in a larger game

We don't and can't know that for certain

But how many people heard about the US financial authorities making charges against Btc-e before it got seized? I don't think that many since otherwise the owners of Btc-e should have prepared the exchange for this kind of action (unless they are complete dumbasses, which we can't exclude either). On the other hand, Bitfinex had issues with the CFTC as early as 2015 (if not earlier), so they are well aware of possible consequences that getting in the eye of the FBI might mean. Thus I'm more inclined to think that blocking payment channels is in fact the best (or the worst, depending on your point of view) that the US security agencies like FBI could do to Bitfinex. In other words, they are tough game and ready to fight back

Like you say, we can't know anything for certain. In fact, we can only make rough speculations as to what is happening behind the scenes. The CFTC decision may not be relevant--each US federal agency has separate jurisdiction. So the CFTC gave them a slap on the wrist for the way they handled their margin funding (IIRC). But that could be entirely separate from a criminal investigation by the US Attorney's office, the FBI and FINCEN regarding unlicensed money transmission or money laundering, or things like that. It would also be totally separate from SEC investigations into their BFX token distribution and their token markets. These investigations take years to come to fruition.

The thing is, Bitfinex is simply huge. I think they are too big to hide if the US government decides to move against them. The question isn't whether the US government could get their dirty hands on all the money; it's more about getting them blacklisted by an industry that is entering a new era of regulation.

[Omega Weapon]

Who in FBI holds Bitcoin? FBI isn't a person and only Individuals can hold Bitcoins.

If there is a party trying to control Bitcoins it's China. USA can be watching it, but I don't believe they are trying to have control over it or anything similar...

We cannot be this naive, a government is not a person either and yet they have properties, responsibilities and all kind of holdings from land and fiat from other countries to gold, we do not know if the FBI is holding any bitcoin but if the higher ups in the FBI wanted the institution to have some bitcoin in case it was needed then they could easily arrange that.

[stompix]

Let me explain it to you in the simplest way possible. Silk Road is an online black market and best known platform for drug dealing. Ross Ulbricht is an alleged silkroad mastermind. FBI has seized his bitcoins. Guardian said the digit is 26,000 and Forbes said it is 30,000. Actually, different websites show different value. In order to seize anyone’s bitcoin, you need his private key and a BTC address of your own. I am sorry to say but I did not hear a word about what FBI has done with the seized bitcoins.

The numbers from the Silk Road are already well known.Actually there were two amounts that have been seized related to Ross and one to the users.
I really don't understand why are you talking about it like being some mysterious event when we have like 100 threads about them

You have all the data you need here with the sources
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=576337#post_toc_52


Oh, and Silk Road "was".

[Pettuh4]

Who in FBI holds Bitcoin? FBI isn't a person and only Individuals can hold Bitcoins.

If there is a party trying to control Bitcoins it's China. USA can be watching it, but I don't believe they are trying to have control over it or anything similar...

We cannot be this naive, a government is not a person either and yet they have properties, responsibilities and all kind of holdings from land and fiat from other countries to gold, we do not know if the FBI is holding any bitcoin but if the higher ups in the FBI wanted the institution to have some bitcoin in case it was needed then they could easily arrange that.

It seems the FBI and the CIA can do anything they want and have their way so I wouldn't be surprised if they are holding a chunk of bitcoins at the moment. It's just possible even without proof.

[erickkyut]

I don't think so. Why would be FBI hold Bitcoin and how will they got those Bitcoin? The criminals they caught does not all have Bitcoin and once caught, they might not tell their password and wallet account to the FBI agents. They can still deny having their Bitcoin.

[Mike Mayor]

Lol conspiracy theories. 

If they did have many many bitcoins let's hope the burn them all and bring the value of Bitcoin up for the rest of us. Or would they try to manipulate the market ?

I don't think so. Why would be FBI hold Bitcoin and how will they got those Bitcoin? The criminals they caught does not all have Bitcoin and once caught, they might not tell their password and wallet account to the FBI agents. They can still deny having their Bitcoin.

I guess they think it's probably from confiscated Bitcoin from criminals on scam exchanges and the likes. For example the siezure on mtgox.

[Hamphser]

Do you believe the FBI holds the biggest number of bitcoin?

How would we know?  How certain are they?  We can't tell because nobody/no one would say how many bitcoins he/she has on his/her hands

I do believe that government do really have some decent amounts of Bitcoin on their hands.Remembering on the site that they have seized back in the past on which they do have confiscated or make hold of those bitcoins and im sure until now they do have the power or the holdings of those coins. Government wont just be blind on bitcoins progress and they would definitely go with the flow as long theres money involved on it.

[deisik]

We don't and can't know that for certain

But how many people heard about the US financial authorities making charges against Btc-e before it got seized? I don't think that many since otherwise the owners of Btc-e should have prepared the exchange for this kind of action (unless they are complete dumbasses, which we can't exclude either). On the other hand, Bitfinex had issues with the CFTC as early as 2015 (if not earlier), so they are well aware of possible consequences that getting in the eye of the FBI might mean. Thus I'm more inclined to think that blocking payment channels is in fact the best (or the worst, depending on your point of view) that the US security agencies like FBI could do to Bitfinex. In other words, they are tough game and ready to fight back

Like you say, we can't know anything for certain. In fact, we can only make rough speculations as to what is happening behind the scenes. The CFTC decision may not be relevant--each US federal agency has separate jurisdiction. So the CFTC gave them a slap on the wrist for the way they handled their margin funding (IIRC). But that could be entirely separate from a criminal investigation by the US Attorney's office, the FBI and FINCEN regarding unlicensed money transmission or money laundering, or things like that. It would also be totally separate from SEC investigations into their BFX token distribution and their token markets. These investigations take years to come to fruition

I agree that the ABC agencies are pretty independent of each other

And this is likely the same in other countries too. For example, in the times of the USSR, the Soviet police, MVD, (which roughly corresponded to the FBI) had been in conflict with the KGB (which was more like the NSA in its function). So it may well be the case with the US intelligence and financial agencies and commissions as well. But this is not my point altogether. I mean that since Bitfinex has already had plenty of conflict with the US agencies by now, they should be prepared to almost anything any of the US agencies is going to undertake against them. That was not the case with Btc-e exchange

[MissGrey]

I had never thought about it, but it can be true. If they really understand how bitcoin works and its potential, could be easy and cheap for the government to buy a lot of Btc and hold them, it could be happening actually right now.  But I don't think that they are holding themfor some conspiracy kind of thing or something similar, only economic interests or maybe politicians.

[stepwilli]

I don't think so. Why would be FBI hold Bitcoin and how will they got those Bitcoin? The criminals they caught does not all have Bitcoin and once caught, they might not tell their password and wallet account to the FBI agents. They can still deny having their Bitcoin.

You are underestimating the agency. You really think that they won't be aware of this technology. When we, common public, know that criminals are using bitcoins for illegal activities with the help of bitcoins, then FBI must have its hand on such info years ago. It’s not they may it is surely they have bitcoins. 

[pitiflin]

Do you believe the FBI holds the biggest number of bitcoin?

How would we know?  How certain are they?  We can't tell because nobody/no one would say how many bitcoins he/she has on his/her hands

Exactly you cant predict anything,without proper evidence and facts. This happens even if there is no bitcoin,like people hide their fiat money in places so that they can avoid tax or they try to avoid their shady business or even worse. The FBI won't tell anything public,you gotta keep your hands tied until facts prove something. I have heard stories about FBI holding some amount of bitcoin,but not sure if its true or not.

[Omega Weapon]

Lol conspiracy theories. 

If they did have many many bitcoins let's hope the burn them all and bring the value of Bitcoin up for the rest of us. Or would they try to manipulate the market ?

I don't think so. Why would be FBI hold Bitcoin and how will they got those Bitcoin? The criminals they caught does not all have Bitcoin and once caught, they might not tell their password and wallet account to the FBI agents. They can still deny having their Bitcoin.

I guess they think it's probably from confiscated Bitcoin from criminals on scam exchanges and the likes. For example the siezure on mtgox.

The only reason for security agencies to hold bitcoin will be to manipulate the price or to try to make some sting operations, they are not going to burn bitcoin since that will help the holders of bitcoin, at best I think they will be forced to sell it if they are not allowed to hold bitcoin for some reason, after all bitcoin is valuable and they could use the money for something else instead of just throwing it away.

[GreenBits]

Nope i dont belive that . In fact they are hunting it and trying to destroy the all network of blockchain
They just want like we to pay fees and to be dependent by a goverment

This is plain stupid. Have you heard of the FBI arresting somebody for running a bitcoin node?
And now you don't pay fees? Of course you pay, but to the minervent.

Actually, the FBI most likely does hold the biggest number of Bitcoin. The US gov and all other govs would be unwise to at least get a piece of the pie before it hits $1,000,000... then good luck!

No they don't.
And the FBI is not the government, this is not communist Russia where everything is run by the same person.
In reality the FBI has already sold at an auction the coins they have seized.

Let me explain it to you in the simplest way possible. Silk Road is an online black market and best known platform for drug dealing. Ross Ulbricht is an alleged silkroad mastermind. FBI has seized his bitcoins. Guardian said the digit is 26,000 and Forbes said it is 30,000. Actually, different websites show different value. In order to seize anyone’s bitcoin, you need his private key and a BTC address of your own. I am sorry to say but I did not hear a word about what FBI has done with the seized bitcoins.

I know what happened to those coins, but we will get to that in a bit:

https://www.wired.com/2013/12/fbi_wallet/

The FBI now controls more than 144,000 bitcoins that reside at a bitcoin address that consolidates much of the seized Silk Road bitcoins. Those 144,000 bitcoins are worth close to $100 million at Tuesday’s exchange rates. Another address, containing Silk Road funds seized earlier by the FBI, contains nearly 30,000 bitcoins ($20 million).

Thats 120 million dollars when bitcoin was crazysauce cheaper. To be fair, they did auction these off, but  I am not sure if they auctioned off ALL of them ( I stopped paying attention on the third tranche; and Im too lazy atm to look it up). Since then, we have had:

Hansa, with a total compromise (wallets were seized)

Alpha, the same,

and BTCE (which many members of the board can describe to you with colorful language).

They havent even reported the amounts of coins in the last seizures, and that does not include the less publicized, more frequent smaller confiscations

[deisik]

I know what happened to those coins, but we will get to that in a bit:

https://www.wired.com/2013/12/fbi_wallet/

The FBI now controls more than 144,000 bitcoins that reside at a bitcoin address that consolidates much of the seized Silk Road bitcoins. Those 144,000 bitcoins are worth close to $100 million at Tuesday’s exchange rates. Another address, containing Silk Road funds seized earlier by the FBI, contains nearly 30,000 bitcoins ($20 million).

Thats 120 million dollars when bitcoin was crazysauce cheaper. To be fair, they did auction these off, but  I am not sure if they auctioned off ALL of them ( I stopped paying attention on the third tranche; and Im too lazy atm to look it up). Since then, we have had:

Hansa, with a total compromise (wallets were seized)

Alpha, the same,

and BTCE (which many members of the board can describe to you with colorful language).

They havent even reported the amounts of coins in the last seizures, and that does not include the less publicized, more frequent smaller confiscations

We couldn't really expect a lot of publicity from the agencies like the FBI

The bottom line is that the higher Bitcoin price goes and more valuable Bitcoin becomes, the more incentive the FBI will have to keep the coins to themselves. As far as I understand it, the proceeds of the auctioned coins don't fill the pockets of the FBI itself, so there is no economic reason or interest for them to sell off the seized coins unless they can't hide them. Let's not forget that even ordinary FBI agents tried to steal a few bitcoins at the times of the Silk Road seizure

[farwellbit]

That’s strange, though if they hold it would probably be for some investigative purposes and not really for cashing except the government and the central bank know about it. But this is seeming ridiculous, maybe they use it to sponsor their spies on the darkweb