Which is almost a tautology, so idunno, maybe that's better than the usual thing, but then scroll down the article and it says bond prices were also down as investors also sold their less risky assets

Mostly because anticipation is so important.

something something incentives....

Much harder to get clicks if your headlines are accurate. This would have to be the headline on most days:

"Millions of People Bought/Sold for Thousands of Competing Reasons Again Today, Short Term Randomness Continues"

Would anybody upvote that article on hacker news?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc

Edit: I found the bitcoin address https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/bc1q7eqww9dmm9p48hx5y...

https://www.engadget.com/fbi-encrypted-chat-app-anom-crimina...

And this is on HN:

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/11/20/165590860/epis...

More on Krebs: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/05/darkside-ransomware-gang...

But who knows, maybe the FBI has a quantum computer we don't know about.

But the tumbler idea actually seems more plausible to me.

Ransom was paid to darkside

Darkside tries to launder money on blockchain

Through blockchain explorer, the BTC ends up on Coinbase in attempt to liquidate. Coinbase has keys, and hands them over to FBI.

I don't think it's coincidence that these were news-worthy on the same day.

Presumably, via brute force capability of unknown nature or a weakness in Bitcoin not known at this time.

Is anyone here willing to say they believe the key was cracked? Seems extremely implausible to me.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27156073

I would not be surprised to find out the US has this capability.

ie, a $5 wrench

This was about principle and demonstration of capability.

If it is true the US has the ability to calculate BTC wallet keys as fast as it did, the price should fall.

Still not worth it if a crpyto function has been broken. If it was because of the encrypted chat app honeypot they ran, it might be different, but even then, only if criminals are moving to something else.

They also don't have the perpetrator.

If the US has the ability to quickly break a BTC wallet, it is a public demonstration of warfare that should act as a deterrent in other theaters of war.

> They also don't have the perpetrator.

I don’t think we have a full manifest of who was involved in the colonial attack or the personnel that have made up Darkside.

Even if we did, successful pressure on the perpetrators or their successors does not require holding the individuals directly.

I’m also wondering why the hackers didn’t request payment in a currency that’s more difficult to trace.

As soon as the ransom payment was transacted, the whole world could watch the chain and see the next step in its travel.

(but really the FBI since the Bank Secrecy Act and before)

As for anonymity on the receiving end: the BTC can always just be exchanged for a more anonymous currency like Monero. You might think that'd require the criminal to KYC to a [centralized] exchange, but there are decentralized exchanges (i.e. DEXes — on-chain, crypto-for-crypto exchanges with no support for fiat deposit/withdrawal), and these have no need for KYC, since they don't touch the real banking system.

Any service that takes deposits or processes payments in certain countries is required to follow those countries' KYC/AML regulations.

The actual AML laws are mostly about noticing when a given person has processed $10k or more through your service in a single day. But note that that's "person", not "account." You have to de-anonymize your accounts, in order to associate them with people, in order to obey the law.

The conventional KYC "compliance" measures — gathering ID documents et al — are actually not part of the law itself, but rather are industry best-practices for following the AML laws. The KYC process gives service-providers the information needed to restrict each person to having only a single account; and therefore allow service-providers to treat each account as a person under the letter of the AML laws.

We are just supposed to take the FBI on their word? There is a huge motivation for them to lie about seizing the BTC, in an effort to discourage other copycat crypto criminals.

Because they need to cash out somehow? Being crypto-currency rich doesn't mean much if you're unable to exchange the crypto-currency for real money.

People are content with crypto

They can invest, buy computer games, hardware and acquire general goods and services

There is no “I want to buy this flashy house/yacht how do I get crypto out”

Its easy to launder and easy to use without doing so, but also easy to launder whenever they get around to it

These guys didnt

1) These arent problems for ransomware hackers because they arent goals for ransomware hackers

2) even if these were goals for ransomware hackers these aren't problems either

It requires a special hubris to really think people that earn crypto want fiat. Just like people assume people that use Monero want clean bitcoin, its an absurdity that doesnt even consider that many just want and keep Monero. Its the same for fiat.

You would be more interested in discussing number 2 because I still say converting illicit funds to fiat isnt an unsolved or even difficult problem. But its so low on the list of priorities for this user story that its not really worth splitting hairs over. Ransomware hackers dont have an issue exchanging time for food and shelter, they are able to just accumulate and play in the crypto ecosystem which is what they really want to do already, with more. To many, its like someone stealing gold bars. Sure you go melt down an ingot or two eventually, but you’re really just hoarding the gold the sake of hoarding the gold. Crypto has the additional benefit of being internationally liquid for other digital assets and digital services instantly.

This of course makes your legal actions indistinguishable from hackers laundering their own crypto, shifting the methods away from probable cause to completely benign

The question is, is this a sign that froth in other markets will bubble away after everyone stops diddling in financial markets and gets back to work?

To be honest it's a bit hard to believe this reporting has nothing to do with the price dropping ~10%, given that one of BitCoin's big parts of its value prop is precisely supposed to be that governments can't do this.

In the case of coins moving through exchanges, they can simply take the coins instead by threatening the exchange.

In many other cases they can also catch you when you try to use the money by converting it into a currency that people actually use to transact like USD.

Do not mistake theory with reality.

10% daily moves happened four times in May: twice in each direction.

Statistically, we should consider it just a normal, unremarkable day for Bitcoin.

Perhaps people are correctly estimating that as BTC is likely to lose another use case for it (ransomware)[2], there is now less demand for it, thus resulting in the downward price pressure we've seen over the past few weeks.

Perhaps criminals are correctly predicting that 'their' BTC might be taken away from them, thus causing them to liquidate their positions, thus resulting in downward price pressure. [3]

[1] I am, of course, making a joke.

[2] The writing is on the wall, due to the government reaction to the Colonial hack.

[3] No, Monero is not a solution for them, because the FBI is not stupid. XMR:BTC is largely sideways. If ransomware switches to it, it's likely that exchanges transacting in privatecoins will be treated as international money launderers. https://coincodex.com/convert/monero/bitcoin/?amount=1

I wonder if the future push towards Proof-of-Stake away from Proof-of-Work will one day stop this happening.

This jeopardizes the use of Bitcoin as a currency for cross-border criminal transactions which is a large if not majority share of its use case.

So it’s easy to see why its value went down — fewer criminals will want to use it.

Do criminals seriously expect that bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency) is safe against the wallet being hacked? Hardware/cold wallets have been around for years, so this is more of an opsec issue than a technology issue.

But what does crypto have to do with criminals? Criminals just need to up their op sec game, they know that. BTC dropping is only related insofar as this stupid correlation is getting pushed hard in the media right now.

Criminals are basically the only group making widespread use of Bitcoin as a currency rather than as an asset class.

(This comic about price fluctuations has as much place on HN as this blurb piece about price fluctuations. At least it's more relevant than the XKCD.)