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

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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