Re:94k Bitcoin (1B USD) transferred from unknown wallet to u...
by lonelappde on Monday September 09, 2019 @09:31PM
(#20924347)
If someone could fundraise a billion dollars, using it to steal another billion dollars (not great ROI considering all the security risks of bitcoin ecosystem) at the expense of shattering worldwide faith in Bitcoin (which also devalues the stolen coins), seems a really bad bet. It only makes sense if it was a government or some group spending a billion (semi illiquid because Bitcoin) dollars with the goal of destroying the Bitcoin ecosystem.
1. A malicious syndicate gathers a billion dollars of bitcoin and sends it to themselves
2. In a short period of time, like a few days, the syndicate exchanges that bitcoin for non-bitcoin assets
3. The syndicate spends tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to fork the chain, backing up the ledger, so that they own the billion dollars of bitcoin again
So anyone accepting bitcoin for non-bitcoin assets for the next week or so is at risk. It doesn’t have to be a single transaction, though; this danger occurs whenever the transaction volume on bitcoin gets above the cost of mining.