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Who Owns the World’s Biggest Bitcoin Wallet? The FBI « Wired

 

Who owns the single largest Bitcoin wallet on the internet? The U.S. government.

 

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).

 

That doesn’t make the FBI the world’s largest bitcoin holder. This honor is thought to belong to bitcoin’s shadowy inventor Satoshi Nakamoto, who is estimated to have mined 1 million bitcoins in the currency’s early days. His stash is spread across many wallets. But it does put the federal agency ahead of the Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who in July said that they’d cornered about 1 percent of all bitcoins (there are 12 million bitcoins in circulation).

Posted (edited)
It says here that the Winklevoss twins (who own a whole pile of bitcoins) are advising people to buy loads of bitcoins. They should be thanked for their altruistic advice. Edited by jinnantonnixx
Posted
It says here that the Winklevoss twins (who own a whole pile of bitcoins) are advising people to buy loads of bitcoins. They should be thanked for their altruistic advice.

 

You mean two influential people who own lots of bitcoins are trying to pump bitcoin? What a suprise! They're hardly going to say it's failing are they? They stand to lose tons of money.

 

The previous weeks antics are a prime example of why you shouldn't buy bitcoins. Let it die so we can have some actual good cryptocurrency take it's place.

 

Oh but wait the price is back up to $670! Bitcoin is clearly going up uP UP!!!!!!! Invest your life savings!

Posted
I think we're on the 'return to normal' bit of the graph.

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]22102[/ATTACH]

 

Almost certainly. It'll only crash further when people realise "Wait, I can't actually do anything with these bitcoins?" and start trying to cash out before everyone else does.

 

Dogecoin is apparently the future of crypto anyway :suicide:

Posted

:eek:

 

This Pizza Cost $750,000

 

I'll pay 10,000 bitcoins for a couple of pizzas.. like maybe 2 large ones so I have some left over for the next day. I like having left over pizza to nibble on later. You can make the pizza yourself and bring it to my house or order it for me from a delivery place, but what I'm aiming for is getting food delivered in exchange for bitcoins where I don't have to order or prepare it myself, kind of like ordering a 'breakfast platter' at a hotel or something, they just bring you something to eat and you're happy! ...

 

If you're interested please let me know and we can work out a deal.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Now that Bitcoin has gone off the boil a bit, I thought I'd let you in to a little sideline. You can create your own currency. A write-up and a recipe is described in this Slashdot article.

How To Create Your Own Cryptocurrency - Slashdot

 

He has automated the process of modifying the source code to create custom currencies. Just enter in the name for your new currency, a logo image and set a few parameters (or accept the defaults), and you can have your own cryptocurrency.

 

Sounds like a winner!

 

The only snag, as I see it, is that "you just need to convince people that it is worth something."

Posted
Now that Bitcoin has gone off the boil a bit, I thought I'd let you in to a little sideline. You can create your own currency. A write-up and a recipe is described in this Slashdot article.

How To Create Your Own Cryptocurrency - Slashdot

 

 

 

Sounds like a winner!

 

The only snag, as I see it, is that "you just need to convince people that it is worth something."

 

This has been the case for a while - pretty much all cryptocurrencies are just find/replace jobs on the Litecoin source code. I'm not surpised someone has made a website to do it now though, especially after the "success" of dogecoins.

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Bitcoin’s Value Falls 10% As Faltering Mt.Gox Exchange Continues To Implode « TechCrunch

 

Mt.Gox promised to get its house in order, and get back to the Bitcoin community and its users today. It did, but didn’t open up withdrawals, or set a firm timetable as to when users might be able to get their currency off the exchange.

 

In response, the price of Bitcoin on Mt.Gox has cratered, again. It now rests just above $110. That’s down from around $260 the day before. Users are betting more heavily now that their Bitcoin on the exchange is never coming back.

 

This turbulence has not left the larger Bitcoin market unmolested. According to the averaged Bitcoin price, the dollar cost of a Bitcoin has shed around 10% of its value today, falling from $625 to $560. Mt.Gox, previously trading at around a 50% deficit, is now trading at one fifth the regular price.

 

Why would Mt.Gox bring down the value of Bitcoin on other exchanges? The failure of Mt.Gox highlights what sort of risk unregulated markets might entail. And in frankness Bitcoin has been on a slow deflate tip all year. The average Bitcoin price spiked over $900 in January, before settling into a pattern of decline.

Posted

The hilarious thing is that MtGox knew about the double-spending problem for months and didn't do anything about it. All the other exchanges use different methods of transaction verification which isn't impacted by the hash malleability attack. It's so easy to avoid the attack that it's only a low priority bug for the bitcoin devs themselves!

 

I'm not really surprised that a website which used to sell Magic The Gathering Online cards is poorly run, though.

Posted (edited)
I don't think anyone with funds in MtGox is getting them back. This is the beginning of the end.

The end is nigh! ;)

 

Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox goes dark, digital currency biz calls it a 'tragic violation' of user trust « Engadget

 

Less than a year ago when we took a long look at Bitcoin, exchange Mt. Gox reportedly handled some 80 percent of global traffic in the digital currency. Tonight however, the exchange's website is offline, all tweets have been deleted from its account, and customers are unsure what will happen to fiat currency (cash) or Bitcoin that it holds.
Edited by Arthur

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