600,000 coins gone!! DPR's personal wallet un crackable!

[LouReed]

This may have been posted already, but I didn't see it. If it has, feel free to delete.

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht

[bennybong]

I didn't see this, 600,000 coins is a shit ton of coins!!!! Any proof of these coins being in DPR's possession??

Side note: I did think that he must have a stash of coins and a VERY valuable private key to go with them

[meanig]

All speculation at the moment. There's no way for the FBI to tell if he has 600k bitcoins under his control unless he told them. He could be trolling looking for less jail time 

[Oldgamer]

push some needles under his nails, he will be glad to tell you whatever you want to know

[caveden]

All speculation at the moment. There's no way for the FBI to tell if he has 600k bitcoins under his control unless he told them. He could be trolling looking for less jail time 

The FBI has control over the site, including its database. They can query it and discover how much money he made on commissions.

[meanig]

All speculation at the moment. There's no way for the FBI to tell if he has 600k bitcoins under his control unless he told them. He could be trolling looking for less jail time 

The FBI has control over the site, including its database. They can query it and discover how much money he made on commissions.

Yes but there's no way to know how many he has sold since starting the site.

[runam0k]

The 600,000BTC figure is based on the maximum possible $80m slice of sales he took, no? I would think his private stash would be a good deal lower than 600,000. Still lots for the FBI to sell if they ever get the key and recover it.

[LouReed]

All speculation at the moment. There's no way for the FBI to tell if he has 600k bitcoins under his control unless he told them. He could be trolling looking for less jail time 

That's sort of what I was thinking. There's no way those coins are all on one wallet is there? Wouldn't that wallet be viewable in the Blockchain?

Below is the FBI's quote from the article. If the wallet is encrypted, then how do they know what's in it? My guess is it must be an encrypted drive, or partition that they can't access, and they are ASSuming that the wallet is there. The one affidavit where the feds were playing hit man it says that he payed for one of the two hits with a cash transfer from a foreign bank, I'd bet that that is where most of his "commission" is. I highly doubt he told them! But then again, he did some pretty f*cking stupid shit!!

"An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth” that Ulbricht had “was held separately and is encrypted"

[Kouye]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent.

I guess the guardian should investigate a little more about their topics before printing such false claims.

[LouReed]

The 600,000BTC figure is based on the maximum possible $80m slice of sales he took, no? I would think his private stash would be a good deal lower than 600,000. Still lots for the FBI to sell if they ever get the key and recover it.

Yes, now that you say that, it is. It said in the FBI report that he paid his administrators between $1,000-$2,000 a week, and who knows how many of them there were, plus the costs of running a high security operation like that would likely be pretty high. Even if he had 1/4 of that for his personal gains from the site, that's pretty damn good for 2 1/2 years of work!!

[LouReed]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent.

I guess the guardian should investigate a little more about their topics before printing such false claims.

What are you saying? It's actually possible to have more than one copy of a digital file??

[Kouye]

What are you saying? It's actually possible to have more than one copy of a digital file??

You don't even need a copy of the wallet file, just a hand-written private key will do...
Maybe he just has a flyer for a concert lying around in his bedroom, with a QR code actually containing the private key.

He might even know it by heart, I know I would if I had an address with 600k BTC.

[Come-from-Beyond]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent.

I guess the guardian should investigate a little more about their topics before printing such false claims.

What are you saying? It's actually possible to have more than one copy of a digital file??

The guardian talks about a message when u encrypt ur wallet file. Something about "all ur backups won't work after this operation" thing.

[theonewhowaskazu]

IMHO, I think those funds will be effectively destroyed. If they ever get unlocked, it will be far, far in the future.

[theonewhowaskazu]

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent.

I guess the guardian should investigate a little more about their topics before printing such false claims.

What are you saying? It's actually possible to have more than one copy of a digital file??

The guardian talks about a message when u encrypt ur wallet file. Something about "all u backups won't work after this operation" thing.

I think thats when you empty our keypool.

[BitBlitz]

The FBI has control over the site, including its database. They can query it and discover how much money he made on commissions.

I didn't read that he *had* 600K coins in the complaint.  That is just the estimate of the commissions made.  Who knows what was spent, moved to other wallets, converted, etc..

[SgtSpike]

The FBI has control over the site, including its database. They can query it and discover how much money he made on commissions.

I didn't read that he *had* 600K coins in the complaint.  That is just the estimate of the commissions made.  Who knows what was spent, moved to other wallets, converted, etc..

Exactly this.  Plus, the majority of the coins were earned when Bitcoin was worth much less than it is today.  Any coins spent or cashed out during that time would have also been under that same lower price.  He could only have a small portion of those original commissions still in his possession, if any.

[Bitalo_Maciej]

I would guess that the funds from the commisions were transfered automatically to an address belonging to an offline wallet under DPR's control. The point is though, to automate that, the address(e) in question had to be hardcoded somewhere in the software on the server. So while we can't say where these funds are, FBI, who had access to the server, knows exactly where they are and if they moved further. That's where the 600k BTC figure may coming from.

[theonewhowaskazu]

From this:

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent. The Bureau is in a position equivalent to having seized a safe belonging to a suspect with no idea of the combination – and no hope of forcing it open any other way.

How do they know he doesn't have a brain wallet or a second backup? Seems rather likely IMO.

[wormbog]

This will be very interesting to watch. Does DPR hold the keys to 600k XBT? Probably not, but nobody knows for sure.

He could use it as a bargaining chip w/ the feds. He's likely looking at life in prison for his crimes, and the federal prosecutor is likely eager to make an example out of his case to deter the other online black markets that are already cropping up to take SR's customers. But if he's in prison for life, why hand over the money? Instead he can use it to bargain for a lighter sentence. Unlike the existing banking system, the feds can't take the coins without his cooperation.

He could use it as prison currency. Let's say his fellow inmates believe he has 80 million in untouchable, untraceable internet currency. If he dies, the money dies with him. But he could use the promise of that money to buy protection with the promise of riches in the future. Or he could become the target of inmates who think they can beat the information out of him.