Anatomy of a $40M+ Bitcoin heist(thinkdifferent.ly) |
Anatomy of a $40M+ Bitcoin heist(thinkdifferent.ly) |
Also one wonders what is done with the 'evidence' after the case. I could imagine the FBI simply deleting the wallets but does anyone know their actual policy?
In the US, law enforcement gets to keep a portion of whatever they seize. You can bet your ass they will not destroy millions worth of assets -- entire departments will get bonuses for years for this.
Law requires them to liquidate the assets through auctions, they cannot simply sell them at an exchange, or set a price for them and sell them at that price. There are plenty of companies that specialize in organizing such events.
Pretty sure whatever their policy is, it isn't "throw away $150million of seized assets"
What does the FBI or other agencies do with intercepted drug money and criminal possessions? Drugs get destroyed, that much I know, but not sure about the other stuff.
Bitcoin is not "fiat currency" by the most common definition(currency whose value is supported by the mandate -- or "fiat" -- of a government for its use in certain domains, but which is neither a directly-useful commodity on its own nor backed by a promise of exchange for a commodity.)
Bitcoin is "fiat currency" by another broader definition ("currency that is neither a generally-useful commodity on its own nor backed by a promise of exchange for a commodity"), which has historically largely been equivalent to the more common definition, because prior to Bitcoin and similar cryptocurrencies, no one was using unbacked currency that weren't supported by government fiat.
Its probably better to use a different term for the broader definition, since there is no fiat necessarily involved, there are meaningful differences between unbacked currencies supported by government fiat and those that aren't, and there are now meaningful examples of unbacked currencies without the support of a government fiat.
http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22fiat%20currency%22
I ask because most of these articles are trying to shock you with the exchange value rather than the BTC value.
I imagine the btc will be saved until the case is closed then try to be used for other investigations, I don't think the feds would try converting and selling it.
In response to this, I think of the service provided by bitpay.com. They offer merchants the ability to accept payment in dollars (or many other currencies) on their website/app and receive the payments in dollars (or other currency). There is a middle step where bitcoins are bought and sold. There are some benefits to the merchant as versus 'traditional' online payment methods ie. better security and "cash-like" online purchases. It is abstract, but I believe that this example illustrates utility that bitcoins (or other crypto-currencies) provide.
Utility != intrinsic value. Nothing has intrinsic value.
I think what you are actually saying is that "intrinsic value" is actually meaningless.
If "intrinsic value" is actually a meaningful statement about something (even if you believe that nothing has that quality), then I think we can indeed find things that have it, which disproves your statement in the first place.
The first definition of "value" that I found is "the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something." Note that this is by definition subjective - i.e. "value" is a perceived quality. More specifically, it is a quality perceived by humans.
Therefore I propose a definition of "intrinsic value": something that all entities to whom "value" has meaning universally believe has that quality. For example, oxygen.
One could argue that there are entities to whom "value" is meaningful but that do not value either of those things, such as aliens who do not need either substance. However, since we are not aware of any such entities, it doesn't prove this wrong.
On the other hand, I suppose a person who is deliberately trying to asphyxiate themselves may not value oxygen after all. Perhaps this disproves my own point...
Either way, it's an interesting debate.
No, I mean exactly what I said. Nothing has intrinsic value, ever.
>Therefore I propose a definition of "intrinsic value": something that all entities to whom "value" has meaning universally believe has that quality. For example, oxygen.
If I already have many lifetimes' worth of oxygen for my breathing apparatus, I might have no interest in and place no value upon your stock of oxygen.
Maybe the beings in question are some sort of alien life form that live in volcanos and breathe nitrous oxide. The type of error you are making is similar to calling air "superabundant" and then conflating that with "unlimited".
And yet, clearly you value oxygen enough to stock up many lifetime's worth of it - a testament to its intrinsic value.
> Maybe the beings in question are some sort of alien life form that live in volcanos and breathe nitrous oxide.
You have no evidence that such beings exist, however - so this is purely hypothetical.
On giving this more thought, however, perhaps objects or substances are too simple to consider from the perspective of intrinsic value. So how about something completely different, such as wisdom? Does wisdom have intrinsic value?
Those who do not value it are not wise, and are therefore not qualified to judge whether or not it has intrinsic value...
Maybe the only things that have intrinsic values are the atoms that make up our world and us as without them we have nothing and don't exist. So I guess on that point gold... fuck.
Bitcoin has no utility absent the present state of affairs where people believe in statism and government agents actively forbid money besides their fiat regime's. Some Austrian economists fail to see why bitcoin really is money, but it is because it has utility in this manner I mentioned.
A 'price' is a historical datum of an exchange. I valued my thing at X of your things, probably in terms of monetary units; you likewise valued my things in some sort of agreeable way that we voluntarily made an exchange.
"Intrinsic value" implies, "People will like this shit no matter what." Real value is subjective and only created by acting human beings.
You seem to be partially accepting my argument that "intrinsic value" doesn't exist but trying to win by redefining "things having intrinsic value" as "things necessary to sustain human life". Okay, things that humans need to survive are "intrinsically valuable" to that end but that isn't what we're talking about.