Re:US Law Enforcement Traces Bitcoin Transfers to Nab ‘Large...
by DaiPlusPlus on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @06:29PM
(#21276701)
> The Feds know that Dirty Money has gone to that wallet's address
They don’t. A wallet can have infinitely many addresses with nothing linking them together externally - only the holder of the wallet knows they’re related.
Think of a Bitcoin wallet as macOS’ Keychain or a LastPass account - and a Bitcoin address as the login credentials of each site you visit: provided you use a distinct login for each site, each site owner has no idea what other sites are in your LastPass/Keychain store.
Similarly: provided you use a new address for each bitcoin transaction then people you transact with have no knowledge of other transactions you’ve had.
People do often reuse addresses - however. Creating new addresses is free and instant - but consolidating your funds becomes a pain, especially if you have a lot of low-value transactions where the amount associated with each address would be eaten-up by the bitcoin network’s transaction fees.
And dumb criminals reuse addresses too - sometimes you see those “I have your password, send me bitcoin” emails using leaked passwords - and they all use the same (or a small number of addresses) - if this scam was run better they’d generate a new ransom address for each mail recipient. And I think that’s how they busted the operator and customers of the website in question: because they used a single address to receive funds at.
They don’t. A wallet can have infinitely many addresses with nothing linking them together externally - only the holder of the wallet knows they’re related.
Think of a Bitcoin wallet as macOS’ Keychain or a LastPass account - and a Bitcoin address as the login credentials of each site you visit: provided you use a distinct login for each site, each site owner has no idea what other sites are in your LastPass/Keychain store.
Similarly: provided you use a new address for each bitcoin transaction then people you transact with have no knowledge of other transactions you’ve had.
People do often reuse addresses - however. Creating new addresses is free and instant - but consolidating your funds becomes a pain, especially if you have a lot of low-value transactions where the amount associated with each address would be eaten-up by the bitcoin network’s transaction fees.
And dumb criminals reuse addresses too - sometimes you see those “I have your password, send me bitcoin” emails using leaked passwords - and they all use the same (or a small number of addresses) - if this scam was run better they’d generate a new ransom address for each mail recipient. And I think that’s how they busted the operator and customers of the website in question: because they used a single address to receive funds at.