Bitcoin - Be Careful Out There

[MikeyMikey13]

tl;dr James Bond doesn't care enough to do a thing about 99.9% of what he knows, but you're assuming he doesn't know. He knows.

And one last thing. Do you know how long it took the secret service to just track SR operators?

What about the guys who ran Alpha bay?

If they had all these capabilities they would use them. It costs 10's of millions to just find Ross Ulbrict

 

[IAmNotLegend]

Read this piece of news - https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoin-is-outside-the-regulatory-jurisdiction-of-the-european-central-bank/

Bitcoin is out of jurisdiction of central banks. Maybe some government may try to regulate it, but they won't/can't stop it. Wait a few months when china government will lift ICO/exchange ban after regulation.

 

[ViceOffers]

The JP Morgan guy said Bitcoin was a fraud, and then hours later when price fell, there were heavy Bitcoin purchases from JP Morgan. The guy is going to face legal issues for doing this.

Lol thats a funny story, anyways they will always test things out.
Bitcoin will last forever if Govt would not be involve in regulating it.

 

[IAmNotLegend]

The JP Morgan guy said Bitcoin was a fraud, and then hours later when price fell, there were heavy Bitcoin purchases from JP Morgan. The guy is going to face legal issues for doing this.

It was a misconception. It wasn't him rather it were the JP Morgan bank clients who did the purchase.

 

[TheSerpSlayer]

You are the idiot that said that tracked them with BTC, now you are saying they went that important to use this method? You sir, are backwards and have absolutely no clue what you are talking about.

Go back to reddit or whatever site you usually browse please.

I speculated that the intel agencies tracked SR with bitcoins using IP to key metadata among other things, not the FBI. The FBI afaik does not have direct access to that information and even if they were given that it would be inadmissible in US courts so they would have to go around that hurdle and send operatives to SR which they evidently did. I know that the NSA and the FBI have the capability to track them with bitcoins using public data, yes, but there's a difference, however it's subtle enough to go over your head like a lot of things. When I said the SR operators weren't that important I meant they're not that important to the NSA which doesn't care about relatively trivial petty crime such as what was occuring on SR. They care about national security stuff, domestic whistleblowers and other issues and do not prosecute or pursue petty crime such as SR's contraband vendors.

And GCHQ and NSA run many joint operations where they track SWIFT transactions for example. This is a well sourced fact that Der Speigel reported. It would be absolutely ludicrous to assume that they'd track SWIFT and just not bother with bitcoin. Besides snooping on the blockchain to gather IP information(which is what intel agencies do btw to earn their bread, or do you also dispute that?) they also along with the IRS have invested in sophisticated software that traces blockchain transactions and builds profiles which can be mapped to real people.

You just have no idea how any of this works, you keep spouting nonsense such as crims "spoofing IPs" as if that's even possible. It's not, routers on the internet don't propagate traffic like that if the originating workstation flips it's IP. VPNs and proxies and tor are heavily monitored and in fact draw more attention than regular IPs that don't bother "spoofing".

 

[davids355]

Cash is a great form of money for criminals but the government don’t / can’t stop that.

Bitcoin is no different.

I think it’s more the case that the media are as interested in bitcoin as anyone else, and up until recently fraud cases were the only news stories they could find about bitcoin.

Look now in the media and we are starting to see a more varied set of subjects relating to bitcoin which to me shows that more and more legitimate people and bodies are starting to take notice of it.

Onwards and upwards. And as for the government(s) they are way to slow to keep up with something as disruptive as bitcoin - they’ll be trailing behind this one for years before they catch up.

 

[skuBRAP]

Bitcoin is here to stay. Too many people are too invested to let it fail...and it actually serves a purpose besides that anyway

 

[THUNDERELVI]

And one last point for you brain box, if it is so so easy to track these people, then why is there endless darknet marketplaces selling guns, drugs and childporn with bitcoins? Surely, you could just track them or reconstruct every possible transaction and figure out their location with their IP address, right sir?

Who do you think the biggest suppliers of guns and drugs are? You answered your own question!

The thing is, the problem isn't actually with bitcoin itself...rather, it's actually to do with external services being attached to bitcoin accounts.
Bitcoin itself is secure, as there is no way to tell who owns a specific wallet. The problem comes when you add in your ip address to an external withdrawal service and don't funnel transactions properly to hide your identifying information. These are external services that have nothing to do with bitcoin itself. You as an individual are responsible for controlling your third party services. This literally has nothing to do with bitcoin itself though.

Yes, the problem is with BTC itself. Bitcoin uses the internet for transactions and the internet is NOT anonymous. The only people that can stay truly anonymous in the internet have knowledge about computer networks that you would only ever dream of - yes, hackers. Not you, not some random citizen, not some wanna-be hacker who thinks he is anonymous because he is using proxies, not 99.999% of the world. So, it follows that since the internet is not anonymous, as in you need to identify yourself before you access the network, then BTC is not anonymous as well. It never was, it never was created to be and it never will be. The concept of a private key protecting your public key (cryptography) is old, it's not new, it certainly wasn't invented in 2009. It's also certainly not used only in BTC, it's used in the very moment when you open any secure web page. That concept works to protect your wallet from outsiders, not from the government.

It reduces fraud, makes transactions faster (5-10 min instead of 5-10 days), makes them cheaper by saving banks billions in printing money, storing data & making transfers, makes the currency 100x easier to track than paper money, etc... How is this any benefit for the people LOL? That's the complete opposite, people are just too stupid to see it because they don't understand the technology and the whole game behind BTC. And of course you have religious followers of BTC that can barely use a computer tell you how awesome the underlying technology is and how anonymous when they don't understand shit how computer networks work or the blockchain for that matter.

The JP Morgan guy said Bitcoin was a fraud, and then hours later when price fell, there were heavy Bitcoin purchases from JP Morgan. The guy is going to face legal issues for doing this.

As much as he faced when he did what he did in the 2008 crisis. No, he will not face anything - his "clients" made the purchases, not him. It's all legally shiny in court...

 

[deathass01]

Really dude? Did you put your tin foil hat on when you posted this?.

 

[VikingAds]

Bitcoin has no actual value except hype. It's obvious that it's actually backed by and pumped up by certain governments and other groups on purpose. So OP has to explain why the people who created it while knowing full well what sort of disruption it could cause would suddenly want to destroy it. If it's doing exactly what it was planned to be doing then it will continue to exist for whatever reason it's backers chose.

Also, wasn't bitcoin used to trace people on silk road and go after them? It's not anonymous at all and everyone who uses it can be tracked obviously. Now why would the people with access to that tracking want to shut it down, maybe that was part of the reason it was created? Who knows.

Technically nothing has intrinsic value just by default. The value is what we as humans decide and what purpose we find for it. That value right now on Bitcoin stands at around $68,000,000,000, whether you agree with it or not.

The real power of Bitcoin lies in its network, which is revolutionary. Being able to make transfers to anyone in the world within seconds for practically nothing and without involving any 3rd party... Please tell me when that has been possible before.

Bitcoin is about decentralization and trust through cryptography. That is the value.

As for your Silk Road comment... Perhaps do a little more research next time. That guy was actually caught by a simple Google search and them connecting his forum alias to an email address. He was then tracked down to a library where he worked on the site and they seized his laptop in a raid. It had absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin

 

[VikingAds]

Oh and Bitcoin has never pretended to be anonymous. There are ways to make it incredibly difficult to track your Bitcoin transactions, but that was never the goal.

If you want an anonymous cryptocurrency use Dash

 

[IAmNotLegend]

Why does Bitcoin legitimacy is a debate? You don't find it worth investing, don't invest.

People have been questioning it since it was being traded for pennies. Bitcoin trading has worked for me.

I fucking tested with only fractolion of BTC and after 2 months of trading I have around 10 times the quantity of btc. It freaking works, my test is complete! Right now the makret is bleeding and I am accumulating altcoins (Bought and invested a couple of BTCs now).

All those against Bitcoin, it fucking works for me and helps me multiple my money, I don't care of government surveillance, I don't care of hacks or people who use Bitcoins. And this is the same with every other crypto trader.

MySpace, Motorola, Orkut and other such big time players in their own field are almost out of competition today. Can anyone have predicted this a decade or two ago?

If it works for you, invest. If it doesn't, let me laugh at you on missing out on the opportunity!

 

[MikeyMikey13]

I speculated that the intel agencies tracked SR with bitcoins using IP to key metadata among other things, not the FBI. The FBI afaik does not have direct access to that information and even if they were given that it would be inadmissible in US courts so they would have to go around that hurdle and send operatives to SR which they evidently did. I know that the NSA and the FBI have the capability to track them with bitcoins using public data, yes, but there's a difference, however it's subtle enough to go over your head like a lot of things. When I said the SR operators weren't that important I meant they're not that important to the NSA which doesn't care about relatively trivial petty crime such as what was occuring on SR. They care about national security stuff, domestic whistleblowers and other issues and do not prosecute or pursue petty crime such as SR's contraband vendors.

And GCHQ and NSA run many joint operations where they track SWIFT transactions for example. This is a well sourced fact that Der Speigel reported. It would be absolutely ludicrous to assume that they'd track SWIFT and just not bother with bitcoin. Besides snooping on the blockchain to gather IP information(which is what intel agencies do btw to earn their bread, or do you also dispute that?) they also along with the IRS have invested in sophisticated software that traces blockchain transactions and builds profiles which can be mapped to real people.

You just have no idea how any of this works, you keep spouting nonsense such as crims "spoofing IPs" as if that's even possible. It's not, routers on the internet don't propagate traffic like that if the originating workstation flips it's IP. VPNs and proxies and tor are heavily monitored and in fact draw more attention than regular IPs that don't bother "spoofing".

Lemme just highlighted where you speculated again...

And regarding the IRS, I didn't disagree with you. I actually brought that up first when mentioning HMRC.

Also, it seems like you are so on top of the NSA's priorities, why do they not hire you as a manager? Surely, they would benefit from such a bright mind like yours making speculations over the internet?

Regards in the Der Speigel report, again more speculation. Don't put your gut feelings across as facts.

You haven't provided jackshit, or even put across a coherent argument, just a load of nonsense you are making up.
Good day sir.

 

[MikeyMikey13]

Technically nothing has intrinsic value just by default. The value is what we as humans decide and what purpose we find for it. That value right now on Bitcoin stands at around $68,000,000,000, whether you agree with it or not.

The real power of Bitcoin lies in its network, which is revolutionary. Being able to make transfers to anyone in the world within seconds for practically nothing and without involving any 3rd party... Please tell me when that has been possible before.

Bitcoin is about decentralization and trust through cryptography. That is the value.

As for your Silk Road comment... Perhaps do a little more research next time. That guy was actually caught by a simple Google search and them connecting his forum alias to an email address. He was then tracked down to a library where he worked on the site and they seized his laptop in a raid. It had absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin

He won't do any research, he'll just keep guessing lmao.

 

[TheSerpSlayer]

Technically nothing has intrinsic value just by default. The value is what we as humans decide and what purpose we find for it. That value right now on Bitcoin stands at around $68,000,000,000, whether you agree with it or not.

The real power of Bitcoin lies in its network, which is revolutionary. Being able to make transfers to anyone in the world within seconds for practically nothing and without involving any 3rd party... Please tell me when that has been possible before.

Bitcoin is about decentralization and trust through cryptography. That is the value.

Ok once again, the value that we humans decided for bitcoin was determined by media hype. It was promoted all over the place and this is how it got recognizance and value. There's nothing that separates bitcoin from one hundred other cryptocoin currencies out there except the media hype. Bitcoin is backed by hype, by confidence in it's features and surivivability and nothing else. There's nobody guaranteeing bitcoin, or protecting it by law. In fact it's under attack by various governments. All the other coins use the same tech but they have less hype than bitcoin which is the only reason it's king of the coins right now.

Now compare that to a fiat currency. The fiat currency is backed by governments as well as banks. It's tied to a region's economy and has a bunch of people working to make it stable. Bitcoin doesn't have that and hence is very volatile. Why do you people not understand something this simple? Fiat currency has other types of support too, like full time professionals going after forgers and counterfeiters.

As for your Silk Road comment... Perhaps do a little more research next time. That guy was actually caught by a simple Google search and them connecting his forum alias to an email address. He was then tracked down to a library where he worked on the site and they seized his laptop in a raid. It had absolutely nothing to do with Bitcoin

As for my Silk Road comment do a little more careful reading. I never said that they caught the guy because of bitcoin(although it's likely bitcoin activity was what drew attention to his location but we're not given that information because it's classified). What I speculated was that they went after users of Silk Road using the "anonymous" currency bitcoin to link them all together. Here, I am going to retype what I wrote: Also, wasn't bitcoin used to trace people on silk road and go after them? You see that "?" at the end of the sentence means I am asking a question, not making an assertion. Do you know why I am asking that question? It's because I know that they went after one of the people prosecuting the case who happened to steal some bitcoins while using his governmental authority as a cover. Oh, and this cop also thought bitcoin was "anonymous" and he could get away with it. I can't post links so you'll have to search for it but it's damn obvious that they can go after all the buyers and sellers on silk road.

 

[MikeyMikey13]

As for my Silk Road comment do a little more careful reading. I never said that they caught the guy because of bitcoin(although it's likely bitcoin activity was what drew attention to his location but we're not given that information because it's classified). What I speculated was that they went after users of Silk Road using the "anonymous" currency bitcoin to link them all together. Here, I am going to retype what I wrote: Also, wasn't bitcoin used to trace people on silk road and go after them? You see that "?" at the end of the sentence means I am asking a question, not making an assertion. Do you know why I am asking that question? It's because I know that they went after one of the people prosecuting the case who happened to steal some bitcoins while using his governmental authority as a cover. Oh, and this cop also thought bitcoin was "anonymous" and he could get away with it. I can't post links so you'll have to search for it but it's damn obvious that they can go after all the buyers and sellers on silk road.

All you've done is make assertions, so why would we think this one comment wasn't?

Admit you guessed half the shit you wrote here? Or speculated? Like, cmon this is all speculation from you.

Also, the cop was found out through his bitstamp account, not through them piecing together all the metadata/IP addresses. But, he could have avoided this if he used an online wallet that did not require his identification.

 

[VikingAds]

There's nothing that separates bitcoin from one hundred other cryptocoin currencies out there except the media hype. Bitcoin is backed by hype, by confidence in it's features and surivivability and nothing else.

The separation is that it was the first. You're giving this impression that 100 cryptocurrencies all launched on the same day with exactly the same tech and Bitcoin hired some sort of PR agency to "hype" it up. That's complete nonsense.

It gained traction organically over time, due mainly to it being the first ever cryptocurrency. Then a lot of the other big cryptocurrencies came after and were built on its foundation (for example Litecoin).

And saying all cryptocurrencies are the same is simply not true. There are a lot of technical differences between them and some have very different purposes and objectives.

There's nobody guaranteeing bitcoin, or protecting it by law. In fact it's under attack by various governments. All the other coins use the same tech but they have less hype than bitcoin which is the only reason it's king of the coins right now.

This just shows your complete lack of understanding behind the principle of Bitcoin. There doesn't need to be a 3rd party guarantor. The network itself is the guarantee. Bitcoin does not need protecting. It would completely and utterly void the entire purpose of it (decentralization). In fact Bitcoin's strength is in the very fact it's NOT "guaranteed" or "protected" by some separate governing body.

Now compare that to a fiat currency. The fiat currency is backed by governments as well as banks. It's tied to a region's economy and has a bunch of people working to make it stable. Bitcoin doesn't have that and hence is very volatile. Why do you people not understand something this simple?

Fiat currencies are backed by governments, yes. That's about the only correct thing you've said in all your ramblings and conspiracies. So? How does this make Bitcoin have no value or be some sort of scam? I don't understand the connection there. And Bitcoin has thousands of professionals working on it every day, constantly forming new companies and applications around it. Considering how incredibly young it is compared to fiat currency I would say it's progressing incredibly well so far.

Fiat currency has other types of support too, like full time professionals going after forgers and counterfeiters.

Yes because the physical form of fiat currency is just ink printed on paper (or plastic) and it has been easily counterfeited for centuries. Bitcoin does not have this problem.

As for my Silk Road comment do a little more careful reading. I never said that they caught the guy because of bitcoin(although it's likely bitcoin activity was what drew attention to his location but we're not given that information because it's classified). What I speculated was that they went after users of Silk Road using the "anonymous" currency bitcoin to link them all together.

Fair enough, but then that's an incorrect assumption that you and the users of Silk Road made... That Bitcoin is 100% anonymous. It was never touted as such. Like I said if you want anonymity there are other cryptos out there for that purpose

 

[bartosimpsonio]

It was a misconception. It wasn't him rather it were the JP Morgan bank clients who did the purchase.

Of course it wasn't him.

The investigation will tell whether he advised his customers to buy after he went on the press to push the price down.

But anyway, JP Morgan is as regulated as Bitcoin, since no one in the US has the balls to do anything against them, ever. They're untouchable.

 

[joseph15]

Cash is a great form of money for criminals but the government don’t / can’t stop that.

Bitcoin is no different.

I think it’s more the case that the media are as interested in bitcoin as anyone else, and up until recently fraud cases were the only news stories they could find about bitcoin.

Look now in the media and we are starting to see a more varied set of subjects relating to bitcoin which to me shows that more and more legitimate people and bodies are starting to take notice of it.

Onwards and upwards. And as for the government(s) they are way to slow to keep up with something as disruptive as bitcoin - they’ll be trailing behind this one for years before they catch up.

I don't know about bitcoin, but aren't the governments of the world working towards a world without physical money? Obviously we're a long way from that (if it even happens at all), but I can totally see us going entirely digital in a few decades - at least in first world countries

 

[Patr1k]

"Too many warnings from top finance analysts" It seems like the perfect scenario to accumulate btc