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The FBI's Giant Bitcoin Wallet

Posted by samzenpus on from the all-your-coins-in-one-basket dept.

SonicSpike writes with a story about the huge amount of bitcoins owned by the FBI. "In September, the FBI shut down the Silk Road online drug marketplace, and it started seizing bitcoins belonging to the Dread Pirate Roberts — the operator of the illicit online marketplace, who they say is an American man named Ross Ulbricht. The seizure sparked an ongoing public discussion about the future of Bitcoin, the world's most popular digital currency, but it had an unforeseen side-effect: It made the FBI the holder of the world's biggest Bitcoin wallet. The FBI now controls more than 144,000 bitcoins that reside at a bitcoin address that consolidates much of the seized Silk Road bitcoins. Those 144,000 bitcoins are worth close to $100 million at Tuesday's exchange rates. Another address, containing Silk Road funds seized earlier by the FBI, contains nearly 30,000 bitcoins ($20 million)."

6 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Can it be invalidated? by ASDFnz · · Score: 5, Informative

    Sort of...

    If 51% of miners got together they could in theory stop the FBI from using that wallet (it is actually an address, not a wallet but that is another story).

    They would have to continue to do so though, and once they stop the FBI could then use the funds. One of the tennents of bitcoin is that it is very hard (if not near imposable) to confiscate/block/invalidate etc someone else's funds.

  2. Bitcoin post = win by savuporo · · Score: 5, Funny

    Let me try a random headline generator with the word Bitcoin substituted in, see how many land on Slashdot

    Could binge bitoin mining burgle the middle class?
    Will the bitcoin steal the identity of the conservative party?
    Is the nanny state destroying the bitcoin?
    Could dumbing-down bitcoin tax england?
    Is cancer stealing the bitcoins of your children?

    --
    http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slashdot.org Errors found while checking this document as HTML5!
  3. Re:Can it be invalidated? by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How did the FBI confiscate someone else's funds, then?

  4. Re:Can it be invalidated? by paxprobellum · · Score: 5, Informative

    They took physical possession of the wallet.

  5. Re:Can it be invalidated? by mrchaotica · · Score: 5, Informative

    LOL, you've never heard of civil forfeiture, have you?

    --

    "[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz

  6. Re:Can it be invalidated? by Bazman · · Score: 5, Funny

    Irish pounds were actually "Punts" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_pound] - named to rhyme with the irish word for "banker".