FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk Road founder

Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by pflats on Monday October 07, 2013 @08:55AM (#6507863)

If he had done the deal in a foreign currency, in gold, or for modern art, they'd still seize all of that, regardless of its current value. Bitcoins are no different, even if you're considering them a proxy for real dollars.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by kd0amg on Monday October 07, 2013 @09:32AM (#6508082)

Bitcoins are no different, even if you're considering them a proxy for real dollars.

As mentioned in the article, even after acquiring the wallet file, the FBI is still unable to perform transactions with that BTC. There's no bank they can order to transfer it into their account, no briefcase full of cash they can deposit, etc. As I understand it, the only way they're able to deprive Ulbricht of them is by not letting him keep a copy of the file. With the "brain wallet" strategy (not sure how viable that really is), they wouldn't even have been able to get this far.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by gigq on Monday October 07, 2013 @04:02PM (#6510810)

I would think it's a pretty safe assumption he already had multiple copies of the wallet/private keys stored before he got arrested.

Just from a redundancy standpoint you don't want one copy of your wallet in one location as it could get corrupted or destroyed in a disaster.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by fleitz on Monday October 07, 2013 @04:11PM (#6510875)

Which is a brilliant strategy in itself as the FBI can't introduce it as evidence with out providing him a copy.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by Zigurd on Monday October 07, 2013 @09:24AM (#6508042)

Bitcoins are different in that they weigh nothing and you can keep the fact you have them secret and plausibly deniable until they develop FMRI techniques to retrieve passwords or the location where you geocached memory cards with the wallet data.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by betterunix on Monday October 07, 2013 @02:34PM (#6510244)

...how is that different from paper money or gold? Burying your money is a pretty ancient trick...

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by damon_c on Monday October 07, 2013 @03:36PM (#6510639)

because burying 80 million dollars would take a few hours and a lot of space...and probably a few big black barrels or something.

burying bitcoin can be done with a flowerpot.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by aianus on Monday October 07, 2013 @05:58PM (#6511577)

It's very difficult to leave the country with $80m in paper bills or bullion. You can hide bitcoin in your head and nobody can tell it's there.

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Re:FBI struggles to seize 600,000 Bitcoins from alleged Silk... by raldi on Monday October 07, 2013 @09:40AM (#6508126)

What if he'd done the deal in USD, and then invested the proceeds in BTC?

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