What's to be done when a huge quantity of bitcoins is stolen?(+1% of world btc)

[E-C.Guru]

MtGox, for example. Or silkroad.


Or if/WHEN a government "cracks down" on several exchanges at the same time and takes a large % of the worlds bitcoins. Is there a plan for this? Has it been discussed? Shouldn't the techies and community try to "fix" it somehow?


I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have? That it takes a ton of time that theese people have to do for free?


What if 1 country with many exchanges does this(Steal all the bitcoins inside the country they can get their hands on). Couldn't this lead to other countries doing the same? I mean, if bitcoin is going to blow up to 10,000/BTC or even 100,000 as some actually expect, this could very well become a reality.



Is this a danger and/or what is preventing this?


thanks for your time,
/Guru

[Davis14]

MtGox, for example. Or silkroad.


Or if/WHEN a government "cracks down" on several exchanges at the same time and takes a large % of the worlds bitcoins. Is there a plan for this? Has it been discussed? Shouldn't the techies and community try to "fix" it somehow?


I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have? That it takes a ton of time that theese people have to do for free?


What if 1 country with many exchanges does this(Steal all the bitcoins inside the country they can get their hands on). Couldn't this lead to other countries doing the same? I mean, if bitcoin is going to blow up to 10,000/BTC or even 100,000 as some actually expect, this could very well become a reality.



Is this a danger and/or what is preventing this?


thanks for your time,
/Guru

For a gov to literally take the btc without a good reason especially in the US I belive there would be a repayment to those who were on that exchange.

[E-C.Guru]

MtGox, for example. Or silkroad.


Or if/WHEN a government "cracks down" on several exchanges at the same time and takes a large % of the worlds bitcoins. Is there a plan for this? Has it been discussed? Shouldn't the techies and community try to "fix" it somehow?


I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have? That it takes a ton of time that theese people have to do for free?


What if 1 country with many exchanges does this(Steal all the bitcoins inside the country they can get their hands on). Couldn't this lead to other countries doing the same? I mean, if bitcoin is going to blow up to 10,000/BTC or even 100,000 as some actually expect, this could very well become a reality.



Is this a danger and/or what is preventing this?


thanks for your time,
/Guru

For a gov to literally take the btc without a good reason especially in the US I belive there would be a repayment to those who were on that exchange.

Well, in the history books there's many examples of government stealing from their People. And if BTC would skyrocket many times over before this event it wouldn't be hard for them to justify it because Bitcoin would be 1 of many reasons why this supposed governemnts own currency is declining.


Edit: Imagine a Cold war or WW3 scenario. Then even the media would clearly state that the People that's been changing their own currency to e-currency are to be considered traitors or terrorists. And this is not far fetched, many countries today have a really really hard "climate"..

[E-C.Guru]

Oh sht. I just realized that this is why they're not banning Bitcoin. Because a ban means person to person trade and use and thus no big Exchanges to hijack(impossible to steal from wallets, basically. At least on a big scale)



 Or...? 


I just keep asking myself: Why is it legal?   




Surely, without a doubt, if bitcoin is not banned then sooner or later Bitcoin/E-currency will be a real heavyweight fighting for the belt.



/Guru

[Ron~Popeil]

MtGox, for example. Or silkroad.


Or if/WHEN a government "cracks down" on several exchanges at the same time and takes a large % of the worlds bitcoins. Is there a plan for this? Has it been discussed? Shouldn't the techies and community try to "fix" it somehow?


I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have? That it takes a ton of time that theese people have to do for free?


What if 1 country with many exchanges does this(Steal all the bitcoins inside the country they can get their hands on). Couldn't this lead to other countries doing the same? I mean, if bitcoin is going to blow up to 10,000/BTC or even 100,000 as some actually expect, this could very well become a reality.



Is this a danger and/or what is preventing this?


thanks for your time,
/Guru

For a gov to literally take the btc without a good reason especially in the US I belive there would be a repayment to those who were on that exchange.

Well, in the history books there's many examples of government stealing from their People. And if BTC would skyrocket many times over before this event it wouldn't be hard for them to justify it because Bitcoin would be 1 of many reasons why this supposed governemnts own currency is declining.


Edit: Imagine a Cold war or WW3 scenario. Then even the media would clearly state that the People that's been changing their own currency to e-currency are to be considered traitors or terrorists. And this is not far fetched, many countries today have a really really hard "climate"..

They all ready did that to a guy from North Carolina i think. He was creating gold coins and they called him a financial terrorist and seized his wealth. He followed the letter of the law but still got hammered. Great country we live in eh?

[jonald_fyookball]

It's already happened.

MtGox had over half a million coins stolen.

Life goes on.

[cryptopaths]

well the Gox coins counted for about 7% of total bitcoins atm.

[franky1]

bitcoins theft though it initial hurts the direct victims.. the long term picture is not harmed. eventually the thieves/hoarders/authorities sell the coins, and the coins circulate again. thus equilibrium returns.

the only impact of bitcoin ecosystem's long term effects is if coins are put into a public key, whereby the privkey is lost. deleting coins or making them permanently inaccessible is not the path anyone should take

[Elwar]

And ban bitcoins used in Russia and Iran too!

Great idea opening this ban door!

Who else to blacklist...hmm, what race or religions?

[serenitys]

On a semi related note, how the hell did the United States Dept of Homeland Security have any jurisdiction whatsoever over a Tokyo based exchange run by a guy from France. He wasn't IN the US was he? Even if he was, how could they pull it off?

I'm seeing a disturbing pattern to all these hacking horror stories - they all start sounding like BS when you look a little deeper at their details which never actually add up.

HLS has zero jurisdiction in other countries. Would we let Chinese government security do shit to anyone in this country?

[E-C.Guru]

It's already happened.

MtGox had over half a million coins stolen.

Life goes on.

And why shouldn't the bitcoin community blacklist and delete theese coins? If that is not standard procedures to the extent it is possible, more goxes will occure. Even state-seazing of "assets" in hard times(As said, check your history books. Gold/Silver has been confiscated hundreds of times).

bitcoins theft though it initial hurts the direct victims.. the long term picture is not harmed. eventually the thieves/hoarders/authorities sell the coins, and the coins circulate again. thus equilibrium returns.

the only impact of bitcoin ecosystem's long term effects is if coins are put into a public key, whereby the privkey is lost. deleting coins or making them permanently inaccessible is not the path anyone should take

How can deleting coins be more harmful than say a 5%(of all btc) theft? What I mean to prevent by deleting is ofcourse the theft, so that nobody steals because they know it will result in holding a ton of keys that's already been deleted.

And ban bitcoins used in Russia and Iran too!

Great idea opening this ban door!

Who else to blacklist...hmm, what race or religions?

Why would we ban/delete them? Because you're tellie tells you their evil? 

I'm talking about deleting coins that everyone knows been stolen. In case you didn't know, bankers once had a problem with bank-robbers.

Their solution? Deleting the validity of the bills. Didn't work that well I think but for Bitcoin? Well, 100x times easier.

I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have?

Blacklisting has been discused ad nauseum.  Use the search feature and search for "blacklist" you will find many, many, many threads on this subject.

Main problem with "listing" coins see my signature:

Does listing in practice not mean the coins are deleted?



I just think that for example Russia's way to go about it is better. Their media and government says "Bitcoin is better than real money" yet their banks don't touch it. That's a great thing! The people themself will create networks of users and personal exchangers which means it is basically unstoppable by government even if they'd change their minds.

If Bitcoin in USA or any specific country is built around big online exchanges, atm's, big buisinesses etc then what will happen to bitcoin when government ban it? The whole ecosystem of bitcoin gone in 1 day. Left is ofcourse millions of users but they'd have to start building the user-network from scratch.

If in 5 years Russian government on the other hand, which have not let banks/exchanges develop, ban bitcoin. What will happen? They cannot take the peoples bitcoin because that's stored as secure for them as it gets. They'd have to accept Bitcoin because there'd be no way to take it away.

[BCwinning]

On a semi related note, how the hell did the United States Dept of Homeland Security have any jurisdiction whatsoever over a Tokyo based exchange run by a guy from France. He wasn't IN the US was he? Even if he was, how could they pull it off?

I'm seeing a disturbing pattern to all these hacking horror stories - they all start sounding like BS when you look a little deeper at their details which never actually add up.

HLS has zero jurisdiction in other countries. Would we let Chinese government security do shit to anyone in this country?

The US govt likes to think if your business crosses their borders, virtual or not, they have the authority.

[franky1]

bitcoins theft though it initial hurts the direct victims.. the long term picture is not harmed. eventually the thieves/hoarders/authorities sell the coins, and the coins circulate again. thus equilibrium returns.

the only impact of bitcoin ecosystem's long term effects is if coins are put into a public key, whereby the privkey is lost. deleting coins or making them permanently inaccessible is not the path anyone should take

How can deleting coins be more harmful than say a 5%(of all btc) theft? What I mean to prevent by deleting is ofcourse the theft, so that nobody steals because they know it will result in holding a ton of keys that's already been deleted.

stealing funds is just moving them, eventually the theif or athority will spend them.. (moving them) which will bring them back in circulation.

stealing is just hoarding, it does not mean they are permenently out of use and locked out never to appear again. they are just held for a length of time until the entity holding them decides to move them. yes bad for the victim.. but in 1,10,50,100 years those coins will be in circulation and other people will use them. those looking at the big and long term picture, the coins are in circulation and not lost.(meaning NOT less then 21mill coins available ever).

but deleting coins by strategically putting coins into a random public key where the private key is unknown/lost. is making those coins inaccessible to anyone, and owned by no one. meaning they will never go back in circulation EVER again. in short reducing the total bitcoins in circulation to be less then 21mill. which is worse.

every coin will eventually pass through a darknet (illicit) service, a scammer, an authority. thus deleting coins that are stolen or used for illicit activity over the next 100 years will mean all coins will eventually be permenently lost.

imagine it this way, they say a large percentage of bank notes has drugs taint. imagine if police stopped innocent people and while standing infront of you. they burned every bank note you own that has drug taint.

your $100 may become $80 and it wont be your fault. its the fault that somewhere in the past that money touched the hands of a druggy

[dreamspark]

The very basic arguments behind blacklisting coins is preserving the fungibility of BTC and also the question of who decides what gets blacklisted.

As said though its been discussed as nauseum.

[Meuh6879]

in bitcoin, stolen coins ... are not loose.  

[turvarya]

In my opinion, there should never be a way to blacklist bitcoins. The whole idea of Bitcoins is, that nobody controlls them, because we don't trust governments, we don't trust Banks, we don't trust big corporations.
Why should we trust any other authority(BTC-developer-Team)?
People trusted MTGox, a nice Company, that played a big part in making BTC popular. We all know what happened.
I can't think, of an example of a Person, that came to great power and didn't screw over a lot of People. Can anybody else?

[IIOII]

In my opinion, there should never be a way to blacklist bitcoins. The whole idea of Bitcoins is, that nobody controlls them, because we don't trust governments, we don't trust Banks, we don't trust big corporations.
Why should we trust any other authority(BTC-developer-Team)?
People trusted MTGox, a nice Company, that played a big part in making BTC popular. We all know what happened.
I can't think, of an example of a Person, that came to great power and didn't screw over a lot of People. Can anybody else?

Exactly. People that do not understand the fundamental importance of unhampered fungibility should use government fiat only. Blacklisting would render bitcoin unusable.

[BitCoinDream]

They all ready did that to a guy from North Carolina i think. He was creating gold coins and they called him a financial terrorist and seized his wealth. He followed the letter of the law but still got hammered. Great country we live in eh?

Can u plz point a link to this incident ? Would like to know more about it...

[jonald_fyookball]

It's already happened.

MtGox had over half a million coins stolen.

Life goes on.

And why shouldn't the bitcoin community blacklist and delete theese coins? If that is not standard procedures to the extent it is possible, more goxes will occure. Even state-seazing of "assets" in hard times(As said, check your history books. Gold/Silver has been confiscated hundreds of times).

bitcoins theft though it initial hurts the direct victims.. the long term picture is not harmed. eventually the thieves/hoarders/authorities sell the coins, and the coins circulate again. thus equilibrium returns.

the only impact of bitcoin ecosystem's long term effects is if coins are put into a public key, whereby the privkey is lost. deleting coins or making them permanently inaccessible is not the path anyone should take

How can deleting coins be more harmful than say a 5%(of all btc) theft? What I mean to prevent by deleting is ofcourse the theft, so that nobody steals because they know it will result in holding a ton of keys that's already been deleted.

And ban bitcoins used in Russia and Iran too!

Great idea opening this ban door!

Who else to blacklist...hmm, what race or religions?

Why would we ban/delete them? Because you're tellie tells you their evil? 

I'm talking about deleting coins that everyone knows been stolen. In case you didn't know, bankers once had a problem with bank-robbers.

Their solution? Deleting the validity of the bills. Didn't work that well I think but for Bitcoin? Well, 100x times easier.

I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have?

Blacklisting has been discused ad nauseum.  Use the search feature and search for "blacklist" you will find many, many, many threads on this subject.

Main problem with "listing" coins see my signature:

Does listing in practice not mean the coins are deleted?



I just think that for example Russia's way to go about it is better. Their media and government says "Bitcoin is better than real money" yet their banks don't touch it. That's a great thing! The people themself will create networks of users and personal exchangers which means it is basically unstoppable by government even if they'd change their minds.

If Bitcoin in USA or any specific country is built around big online exchanges, atm's, big buisinesses etc then what will happen to bitcoin when government ban it? The whole ecosystem of bitcoin gone in 1 day. Left is ofcourse millions of users but they'd have to start building the user-network from scratch.

If in 5 years Russian government on the other hand, which have not let banks/exchanges develop, ban bitcoin. What will happen? They cannot take the peoples bitcoin because that's stored as secure for them as it gets. They'd have to accept Bitcoin because there'd be no way to take it away.

Letting governments come in and blacklist coins is a very bad idea.  One of the big benefits of bitcoin is that no one controls it.  If you take that away, you would be greatly weakening it's utility and appeal.

[E-C.Guru]

But I'm talking about the bitcoin community somehow banning Bitcoins that the GOVERNMENT take. Not the other way around