If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what would happen? :o

[electronicash]

It is not entirely unlikely, because we saw what the law enforcement officials (FBI Agents) did in the Silkroad case. See this article for more information : https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-stealing-bitcoins-seized-by-u-s-marshals/

I have seen crime documentaries where hardware wallets was seized, so I reckon these guys know how to store bitcoins on hardware wallets, so my guess is that the coins are stored on hardware wallets and not on Exchanges.

The dumping of these coins will only cause a temporary slump in the price... then it will recover within a week or two. 

very unfortunate for the two rogue agents, if it happens later around 2017-18 they probably learned to send it to a mobile wallet.  should the wallet be in the list of wallet addresses that exchanges should freeze whenever coins come from them?

141,000 BTC is really going to make the robbers as whales in Bitcoin. however, everybody is going to be tracking them so it's going to be harder to hide.

[1714762440]

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[avikz]

There are thousands of bitcoins in the hands of the FBI, how they securely store bitcoin?

At the current price it's worth more than 7 billion dollars!!  

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

Hackers and scammers are feeble heart people! So knowingly no one would try to hack into FBI's wallet! It will be inviting grave problems into their own life. So it is the safest place on earth for these bitcoins within this wallet. But even if any hacker tries to hack into it even after knowing it belongs to FBI, it will be extremely difficult for the hacker to sell the bitcoins into open market. The mixer companies will be put on high alert because the hacker will definitely try to hide his trail of dirty money. So I don't see any major repercussions in the bitcoin market even if this bitcoins are stolen. It will be extremely difficult to sell such stolen bitcoins to the market. So the chances of decreasing the price is very low.

[Rikafip]

First of all, I dont think that's plausible to happen for someone to steal all those bitcoins from FBI. I mean, anything is possible, but realistically what are the chances?

But even if that happens, I doubt that would affect bitcoin price massively, or for a longer period of time. I guess that if someone stole those bitcoins, he wouldn't send them to Coinbase or Binance and try to sell them there, but he would sell them OTC. So no, I'm not worried about that scenario at all.

[maydna]

The thief will be rich if they sell all of the bitcoin in that wallet
I am sure they will disappear from their place and move to a country where no one will know who they are. But I am sure the FBI will have high-level security to access the wallet, and that will only for a few people who can access the wallet. People can only see the bitcoin amount on that wallet without access,  and if the FBI decide to sell that bitcoin, they will waiting for the price to hit the very highest price.

[kotajikikox]

There are thousands of bitcoins in the hands of the FBI, how they securely store bitcoin?

At the current price it's worth more than 7 billion dollars!!  

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

You have an exaggerated mind mate , how would you come to this far of thinking ?

Knowing how Good FBI in many things specially technology , I don't think they will be experience hacking and also for sure Hacker will keep distance against this agency because for sure they Knew that FBI will not go funny things for them.

[AB de Royse777]

How would we know that FBI controls those coins. Is there any official statement? Sorry, I was not aware of such things.

Assuming it's in their control - if anything happens to those coins, I do not think anything will happen in the current market. Maybe the worse will be a little price drop.

But it will be interesting how they have secured the private key. In fact, I always wonder how do these whales with hundreds and thousands of coins in their wallet maintain their wallet. Don't the feel scared when they send the coins to the exchanges for a trade and things like that?

[MCobian]

I don't believe any hackers dare to steal Bitcoin from an FBI wallet, because surely the security system will not be easily bypassed.
I don't know the technicalities of how the FBI stores their Bitcoin. To be sure the FBI will maintain a high level of security system.
But if a hacker manages to steal it, I'm sure it won't take long to get caught. So it's too big a risk to steal Bitcoin from an FBI wallet.

[masterrex]

There are thousands of bitcoins in the hands of the FBI, how they securely store bitcoin?

At the current price it's worth more than 7 billion dollars!!  

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

Is that really an FBI wallet? and where that Bitcoins came from and why it has an active and fresh-made transaction? By the way, I was only wondering thats why I'm asking it. but moving on I believe the FBI is one of the most sophisticated US government law enforcement and investigation agency thats why it is very hard to access those Bitcoin by the means of hacking. so I believe it won't happen even in the future as long as quantum computing devices are not yet operational.

[bryant.coleman]

First of all, I dont think that's plausible to happen for someone to steal all those bitcoins from FBI. I mean, anything is possible, but realistically what are the chances?

But even if that happens, I doubt that would affect bitcoin price massively, or for a longer period of time. I guess that if someone stole those bitcoins, he wouldn't send them to Coinbase or Binance and try to sell them there, but he would sell them OTC. So no, I'm not worried about that scenario at all.

Theoretically there is a possibility. Afterall, Bitcoin is a digital asset and if somehow the hacker can access the private key, then he will be able to move the coins. But no one in their right mind would do that. Think about the consequences. The FBI do have some very talented people who will track you down even if you are hiding in the most remote corner of the world. And if you are thinking about spending those stolen coins, then forget about it. There's not even a 0.0000001% possibility.

[Altcoinsintel]

I don't think it would be very intelligent for anyone to try and steal the Bitcoin owned by the FBI. I remember though there was discussion about this wallet and how it was hackers trying to break it open as an encrypted file was passing hands between some of them. I don't know if this kind of news was real either but in the end this wallet moved all the Bitcoin and later came a statement that it was a wallet used in Silk Road and years later the FBI managed to get their hands on the private key. It was also important that someone was in charge of the private key and handed it over to the FBI. This is what we read from the news but I'm not completely convinced events happened the way we read them. There seems to be many gaps in that story and information that is not shared at all with the public.

https://fortune.com/2021/02/08/bitcoin-3-billion-seizure-silk-road-federal-agents-cryptocurrency-individual-x/

[TedMosby]

-snip-

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

the first thing that crossed my mind after reading this question is..
FBI will lose their integrity because it could reflect their IT security level. and the FBI possibly blamed for the bitcoin price dump.

IMO, they will do anything to secure those bitcoins, because of their integrity and that is a huge amount of money.

Bitcoin address 35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP
Last seen receiving: 2021-03-03 09:21
Balance: 141,451.59751054 BTC
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

Bitcoin Cash address 35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP
Last seen receiving: 2021-02-27 04:04
Balance: 480,008.08471899 BCH
https://blockchair.com/bitcoin-cash/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

at least, 338556.487208 BTC has been moved outside that wallet.

[DdmrDdmr]

There is a 2018 article from Fortune that I thought might have shed some lateral light here (see Insise Uncle Sam’s secret bitcoin hoard). Nevertheless, the article is for subscribers, so we use a different source to see insights to the content. Fortunately, TheWayBackMachine preserves an open copy of the article: https://web.archive.org/web/20210203063308/https://fortune.com/2018/02/21/government-forfeiture-bitcoin-auction/

The article states that:

But the transparency is fleeting. There are often long lag times between the date of a seizure and its appearance in a report. And reports aren’t archived online: Each day, when a new one appears, the old one goes away. Paper copies exist—but nowhere, online or on paper, is there a tally of the cryptocurrency in federal custody at any given time.

The article goes on and depicts some seemingly "lost inventories", but the general idea is that there doesn’t (/didn’t at the time of writing the article) seem to be a proper overall inventory, and no details are described as to how the custody and secure the decommissioned bitcoins. Things may have evolved since then in terms of protocols and procedures, who knows …

[Vishnu.Reang]

I don't think law enforcement anywhere in the world keeps hanging on to confiscated bitcoins for that long. In fact FBI has many public auctions where they sell bitcoins they've confiscated from criminals regularly. Although OP has provided no proof whatsoever that his claims of those coins being in the hands of FBI but assuming that's correct those coins would move sooner or later.

As per their standard procedure, they need to convert confiscated assets to cash within a specific period. But just imagine how much profit they could have ended up with, had they held on to at least a fraction of those coins. The seizure from Silk Road alone amounted to around BTC180,000, which would be worth $9 billion as per the current exchange rates. But the FBI auctioned off most of these coins in 2014/15, when the exchange rates were at rock bottom.

[k@suy]

It cannot be hack so easily, FBI has their own high level professional cybersecurity engineers, they spend a lot to secure their networks and all of their assets so that at the end of the day there will be no flaws there will be no security breach that may happen, so I am pretty sure that if there will be a report of bitcoins are being taken away from their custody I am sure there will be an inside job then.

[imstillthebest]

why wont they return the confiscated bitcoin to thier respective owners because there will be owners for that stolen bitcoins and if they hold that much bitcoins they are included in the target list of hackers but if i am the hacker i will be afraid to attack fbi because they are fbi's and they have greater securities and greater consequences that you could face for trespassing thier gates but to your main question  . what do you think have happened before when there are million and billions of btc have been hack . same thing can happen to this

[2double0]

why wont they return the confiscated bitcoin to thier respective owners because there will be owners for that stolen bitcoins and if they hold that much bitcoins they are included in the target list of hackers but if i am the hacker i will be afraid to attack fbi because they are fbi's and they have greater securities and greater consequences that you could face for trespassing thier gates but to your main question  . what do you think have happened before when there are million and billions of btc have been hack . same thing can happen to this

You would hack FBI if you were a hacker? You think they don't have their own highly qualified 'ethical' hackers who can resist all your attacks? They don't have very big number of security guys who have abilities to kick you out and get you behind the bars within minutes if you ever try to visit them and steal anything from them?

[coin-investor]

There are thousands of bitcoins in the hands of the FBI, how they securely store bitcoin?

At the current price it's worth more than 7 billion dollars!!  

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

They should know how to secure their asset, although there is a huge risk of exposing their wallet in the eyes of the public, if ever the wallet was hacked and coins were stolen there could be a huge crash coming if the hacker decides to cash out those Bitcoins, we know FBI they have all the resources to track who hacked their wallet, it will not easy to getaway.

[Wilhelm]

There are thousands of bitcoins in the hands of the FBI, how they securely store bitcoin?

At the current price it's worth more than 7 billion dollars!!  

If the FBI wallet with 141,000 bitcoins was stolen what do you think would happen with the bitcoin price?

https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/35hK24tcLEWcgNA4JxpvbkNkoAcDGqQPsP

They should know how to secure their asset, although there is a huge risk of exposing their wallet in the eyes of the public, if ever the wallet was hacked and coins were stolen there could be a huge crash coming if the hacker decides to cash out those Bitcoins, we know FBI they have all the resources to track who hacked their wallet, it will not easy to getaway.

Run it through satoshi dice. Trade it in some crappy foreign altcoin exchanges between coins.

But I wouldn’t take my chances on tainted coins...

[STT]

Short answer is it doesn't matter, 7bn isnt enough any more.   However it matters in terms of news and perception to the idea of security and reliability that BTC offers, people wont doubt FBI before they doubt crypto though its well known that human error is the most common computer problem.    I always argue in favour of usability but thats how it is anyhow.
  The only effect from a wallet compromise like this is change in liquidity and presumably the coins all get released immediately and sold which means a possible blip lower but overall its not important

[stomachgrowls]

Short answer is it doesn't matter, 7bn isnt enough any more.   However it matters in terms of news and perception to the idea of security and reliability that BTC offers, people wont doubt FBI before they doubt crypto though its well known that human error is the most common computer problem.    I always argue in favour of usability but thats how it is anyhow.
  The only effect from a wallet compromise like this is change in liquidity and presumably the coins all get released immediately and sold which means a possible blip lower but overall its not important

Im not minding when it comes to entire market effect because we know that even if it do decrease its price but still there are lots of people/instutions/companies/whales who are really waiting for those possible bottom prices which means recovery would really always comes next.

The thing i do mind is on the emotion effect that it will affect the entire market where fuds become strong and negative news do continue to pop out from nowhere in case those FBI wallet would really be
hacked or stolen.

7Bn might not really be that big in terms of over total cap but the emotion or sentiment would it give will be a different thing.