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A comment on Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer. Parent comment

Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by bunderbunder on Friday November 22, 2013 @10:53PM (#6785131)
It might be harder for authorities to monitor bitcoin transactions. But, as the very fact that this HN article exists illustrates, the blockchain is a public record that's available for anyone to monitor, analyze, cross-reference with other sources of data, etc. Particularly for large movements like this, I'm inclined to say that it would be downright foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous.
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Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by aagha on Saturday November 23, 2013 @12:45AM (#6785382)
It might be foolhardy to assume that BTC transactions are anonymous, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't be EXTREMELY EXTREMELY EXTREMELY difficult to figure out who was involved.
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Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by gala8y on Saturday November 23, 2013 @12:15PM (#6786605)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6786416 from 30 minutes ago.

Here’s who (probably) did that massive $150,000,000 Bitcoin transaction (washingtonpost.com)

From the article: "Who was responsible for the transaction? I asked Sarah Meiklejohn, a computer scientist at the University of California, San Diego, for her thoughts. She's the author of a recent paper demonstrating that sophisticated analysis can reveal a lot of information about who is responsible for Bitcoin transactions. She has combined a large database of Bitcoin addresses tagged with their likely owners."

Link to the paper is provided.

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Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by betterunix on Saturday November 23, 2013 @08:00AM (#6785809)
When it is such a large amount of money, it is not all that difficult. Just look for the guy who is $147M richer.

In other words, the only way you get to have the money is if you never spend it, except in minuscule amounts.

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Re:Someone just made a $147,239,214 Bitcoin transfer by bunderbunder on Saturday November 23, 2013 @11:07AM (#6786346)
Case in point: Supposedly the money from a lot of cases of major Bitcoin theft is still sitting in the same wallets. Implication: The thieves are having a hard time figuring out how to spend the money without outing themselves.
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