Anyone know what happened to knightmb and his 371,000 BTC?

[Jaime Frontero]

Putting on 2 CD-R and Flash doesn't seem to be enough for 300,000K bitcoins.  Maybe you can tease us by encrypting the wallet with TrueCrypt, give it a 20 char password, and post it here.  You can be sure the wallet will continue to exist on the Internet and it will be safe.

I've always thought it'd be cool to have a torrent going with a bunch of wallets just in case governments make it a strategy to identify and destroy all the backups that a person might have, or in the case that someone goes into a comma for like a decade and after waking up realizes that all the other backups are gone for some reason.

sort of like a wallet blockchain?

[JohnDoe]

sort of like a wallet blockchain?

I guess? Just a simple torrent that gets updated with new wallets once or twice a year would do. Maybe there's a better way of doing it.

[TiagoTiago]

What will keep people seeding the torrent?

Perhaps you could encrypt your wallet and hide it steganographicly into something that people are interested in inside Freenet.

[knightmb]

Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time).

Thanks for the advise everyone!

[bitlotto]

Get 1M coins.
Get another computer.
Load Bitcoin on it. Do not connect to internet. Do not download blocks.
Write down an address from this wallet.
Encrypt wallet. Delete original.
Send coins to the address.
Wait.....
Unencrypt. Spend.

I'm wondering though. Couldn't someone make a custom client that rather than generate a random address create the address you are sending the money to? No public key would exist for it yet in the network so when someone else who is connected creates the address their public key would be the one for that address. I guess if that was true, it would still work as long as you didn't tell anyone what that address was as someone randomly creating the same address would be highly unlikely.

[JohnDoe]

What will keep people seeding the torrent?

Now that you ask I'm not sure lol, didn't think it through. I guess some people would just feel good seeding, either because they are helping others or because they are sticking it to the government. A more reliable incentive I can think of is to track the upload rates of people so that they could potentially be used as a measure of reputation.

Perhaps you could encrypt your wallet and hide it steganographicly into something that people are interested in inside Freenet.

I'm very ignorant about Freenet. Would it be safe to leave the wallet there and come back to it after getting out of prison 3 years later or would it be gone by then?

Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time

Nice! I'm shocked that they didn't spend all of 30 seconds checking the price of bitcoins before selling.

[SgtSpike]

Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time).

Thanks for the advise everyone!

[TiagoTiago]

The more people access somthing on Freenet the more it gets copied around, and there are some tricks to put things together so if people access one thing they actually copy everything (like if you put the stuff inside a zipfile, or add your file into an image with steganography)


But AFAIK, if no one tries to access it for too long the storage space will eventually be used to store somthing else.

[marcus_of_augustus]

knightmb:

How much?

PM me if you want to move large amounts.

Hehe 

It's just going to sit at the bank for now until the investors decide what to do with it. The irony is, they think the project is a bust, so I've requested to take over ownership of it but never mentioned anything about it's current value because they have never bothered to check since last year. Can you believe all the "smart business" people that told them that BTC was just a waste of time for them? Shows how smart they were.

Far out. So let me get this straight. You have just secured the ownership of the keys to 371k btc for USD$5k because the initial investors wanted out and can't be bothered to check current trading value of BTC .... and your wife is skeptical!?

That's epic.

As I said earlier, if you need to move large amounts contact me ... or have your wife contact me if she is still skeptical.

[ScriptGadget]

She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

You are my hero.

Definitely consider an encrypted printout. With the proper inks and paper it could last 100 years and survive a fire in a firesafe. Magnetic and optical media are too fragile to store value.
http://www.ollydbg.de/Paperbak/index.html

You can build your own algorithm and tool even.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Better yet, engrave the key to a high value address/wallet in a good sized gold ingot and bury the whole damn thing somewhere.

[knightmb]

Far out. So let me get this straight. You have just secured the ownership of the keys to 371k btc for USD$5k because the initial investors wanted out and can't be bothered to check current trading value of BTC .... and your wife is skeptical!?

That's epic.

As I said earlier, if you need to move large amounts contact me ... or have your wife contact me if she is still skeptical.

The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010.

My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start.

Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally.

I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure.

Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile 

[syn]

They're going to do more than kick themselves.  If their is a kink in any of your contractual armor expect to be sued.

[Terpie]

They're going to do more than kick themselves.  If their is a kink in any of your contractual armor expect to be sued.

Yea, almost 0% chance they don't sue when Bitcoin pops up in the Economist. Hopefully you received decent advice from a lawyer when setting up the contract.

[jimbobway]

Far out. So let me get this straight. You have just secured the ownership of the keys to 371k btc for USD$5k because the initial investors wanted out and can't be bothered to check current trading value of BTC .... and your wife is skeptical!?

That's epic.

As I said earlier, if you need to move large amounts contact me ... or have your wife contact me if she is still skeptical.

The initial investors never got the concept really. When I first started, when 1 BTC was basically $0.0001, the idea was to generate/buy as many as possible, then use it for payments. So if someone wanted a credit card that could buy $100 worth of stuff, they would insert X number of bitcoins to get that value loaded on the card. To keep the bank current, the credit card would be backed by Bitcoins at the bank basically. They initially though that 1 BTC would never get above maybe $0.20 per BTC, at least that's what I go from them. So they invested about $12k to either generated or buy bitcoins for the first part of 2010.

My part was to simply compile some versions of bitcoin that could run on the Amazon cloud service. They rented a ton of CPU time and basically generated BTC non-stop for a while. At the same time, I was buying from members here (they probably remember me buying a ton from them) and then funnel everything into one massive wallet file. After funds ran out, so did the Amazon CPU time and me bugging members to buy what they had generated from the start.

Then things sat in limbo for a while, long while. The project went bust and the people I was working with really still had no idea how BTC worked really. Soon, the project turned into zombie status and the initial investors (remember these aren't technical people in the least) though it was worthless or maybe just a fade that was dieing a quick death. Who am I to argue? That's when I offered a buy out back in Feb of this year and they took it finally.

I think after a few more stories make it in the news about the BTC value, they will kick themselves for sure.

Either way, I'm keeping my BTC in several secure places and the wallet files I'll make sure never touch my PC for security reasons. I look at it as a retirement fund, when I finally get tired of working the 9 to 5 grind, I can tell my boss to shove it with a smile 

knightmb, this is an amazing story...can I post this in my blog?

[gst]

If this download saved you time, consider sending a donation of any amount to 1JpLBb3S9PEdft2SsB3ZT6YnwwNWqupYTJ

Considering the fact that you are likely to own more BTC than all the other forum users combined I think it's time to update the signature

[Beacon]

Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time).

Thanks for the advise everyone!

Michael Brown (knightmb), you have not told the full story here, and this is not the first time you have screwed an employer. If you do not do the right thing now, this will come back to haunt you.

You are also in over your head. Has it occurred to you that you owe $850,000 of federal income tax on this "deal"? Fortunately for you, we do not have state tax in Tennessee, but you will still owe business taxes, and you haven't even applied for the right licenses.

You have one chance to do the right thing here. You know what it is.

[SgtSpike]

Good news for me anyway  , they sold me the project for $5k to recover some of their cost. I now technically own the wallet files and other software I was working on with them at the time. For legal reasons I can't blurt out who the investors were or the banks, companies, etc. they were representing basically (unless I won't to land in court forever), but I think I made a wise investment. It's still going to take a while to get my wife on board as she still doesn't understand the whole BTC concept, but everyone here knows and I know what it means. She was really skeptical about my purchase this week.

I'll probably take some of the backup advise here too, why have a few backup copies when you can have many on different media types spread around everywhere (all encrypted of course this time).

Thanks for the advise everyone!

Michael Brown (knightmb), you have not told the full story here, and this is not the first time you have screwed an employer. If you do not do the right thing now, this will come back to haunt you.

You are also in over your head. Has it occurred to you that you owe $850,000 of federal income tax on this "deal"? Fortunately for you, we do not have state tax in Tennessee, but you will still owe business taxes, and you haven't even applied for the right licenses.

You have one chance to do the right thing here. You know what it is.

You never have federal income tax on items you buy.  Tax is recovered in the form of "gain on sale" for any assets purchased at lower than market value.  Unless/until he sells the bitcoins, he owes nothing to the US government.

State laws might be a bit more complicated, but aside from sales tax (which only applies to end consumers anyway, not sales of business transactions), I can't think of any reason a state would tax this particular situation.

I agree that knightmb didn't really take the moral high ground on this, but that's his decision to make, not mine.

[elewton]

Thank goodness!

knightmb is in the perfect position to start selling Bitcoins in a physical store.  Even at high markups, cash to BTC on Android or to a specific address has the potential to sell like gangbusters.
The high markups would be necessary to ensure profitability while finding someone else who'll take USD for BTC.

[vess]

For your own sake knightmb, I hope you spent roughly triple that on iron-tight mutual indemnifications. If not, here is my advice (I'm not a lawyer, btw):

1. Get a lawyer, right now
2. On review, figure out if you need to get a settlement in place which covers all mutual indemnifications.
3. Get those things locked down. You will likely have to pay some of your $3m USD in earnings to get that sorted.

When you have a technical partner knowingly buying assets from non-technical partners for pennies on the dollar, there may well be significant repercussions. And, as someone here mentioned, it's also just kind of shitty.

Food for thought.

For those mentioning taxes -- unless he's selling his BTC, he likely doesn't have a requirement to mark his BTC to market; this is no doubt a gray area in the tax law right now. I wouldn't say he owes right now unless he's liquidating.