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Title: WAS BITCOIN CREATED BY THIS INTERNATIONAL DRUG DEALER?
Source: [None]
URL Source: https://www.wired.com/story/was-bit ... ternational-drug-dealer-maybe/
Published: Jul 16, 2019
Author: SHARE SHARE TWEET COMMENT EMAIL AUTHOR:
Post Date: 2019-07-16 08:06:04 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 39016
Comments: 88

THE MESSAGES STARTED arriving on a Sunday afternoon in mid-May. “Just wanted to draw your attention to this,” one began. “Rumors are starting to surface,” another informed me. “I’d be very interested in getting your thoughts,” a third suggested. My correspondents, mostly strangers, were polite but insistent. They wanted my take on a theory, newly circulating online, that offered a resolution to one of the most alluring digital mysteries of the past decade, the real identity (or identities) behind the persona of Satoshi Nakamoto.

The question, as someone in my Twitter DM’s articulated it, was this: “Do you think that Paul Le Roux is bitcoin creator Satoshi?”

In one sense, they’d all come to the right place. I spent five years tracking Paul Calder Le Roux, a South African pro­grammer who built a global drug and arms dealing empire, and transformed himself into one of the 21st century’s most prolific and pursued criminals. I’d obsessively catalogued his life, from his early history as an encryption coder; through his creation of an online prescription drug business worth hundreds of millions of dollars; to his diversification into smuggling, weapons, and violence; to his 2012 capture by, and cooperation with, the Drug Enforcement Agency.

Along the way he had, among other endeavors, simulta­neously fed the American opioid epidemic; built his own base operations in Somalia, protected by an armed militia; run gold and timber extraction operations in a half-dozen African countries; laundered millions of dollars through Hong Kong; plotted a coup in the Seychelles (later abandoned); bought off law enforcement in the Philippines, where he was based; trafficked methamphetamine out of North Korea; and overseen a team of engineers building missile guidance systems for Iran and drones for drug delivery.

I’d traveled into the Manila underworld and found former employees, including ex-military mercenaries who’d worked as Le Roux’s enforcers. I’d distilled hundreds of interviews and tens of thousands of pages of records into a 400-page book, The Mastermind, detailing Le Roux’s epic rise and fall.

These questions about Satoshi, however, filled me with a special kind of dread. I’d traveled down the Satoshi rabbit hole before and returned empty handed. “I’ve got a secret theory that Paul invented bitcoin,” I’d written in 2016 to Mathew Smith, Le Roux’s cousin. Smith, along with over a hundred other Le Roux–connected people I interviewed, from employees to cops, had seen or heard nothing to support my theory. By the time I finished the book, in late 2018, I’d largely discarded it. “I wasted countless hours trying to determine if there was any connection” between Le Roux and Satoshi, I wrote in the final manuscript. “As far as I could tell, there wasn’t.”

There was some relief in this. I’d seen the ignominy when people went Satoshi hunting in the past. The siren song of bitcoin’s progenitor had been calling out to journalists since Satoshi seemed to exit the cryptocurrency world in 2011, leaving behind a technology that—even today, after all the hype cycles—promises to shape the future of everything from money to contracts. Whoever Satoshi was, the person (or persons) was sitting on a fortune, roughly a million bitcoins that analysts estimated Satoshi had mined at the currency’s inception in 2009. (At current prices that stash would be worth more than $10 billion.) There had been many attempts to unmask the creator, unresolved.

But now the messages about Le Roux kept coming, driven by 4chan and Hacker News threads churning over a tantalizing new clue—a footnote in one filing in a multibillion-dollar federal lawsuit in Florida.

This is where things started to get weird. The defendant in the lawsuit is an Australian computer scientist named Craig Wright. As followers of the Satoshi saga will know, Wright was the man outed in late 2015 by WIRED and Gizmodo as a likely candidate to himself be Satoshi Nakamoto. Both publications later walked back the stories after it appeared that documents they’d relied upon had been faked and manipulated.

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Begin Trace Mode for Comment # 32.

#1. To: All (#0)

Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.

A K A Stone  posted on  2019-07-16   8:07:45 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#1)

[A K A Stone #1] Bitcoin is for suckers and predators.

- - - - - - - - - -

[Pinguinite #2] The question of who created bitcoin is not relevant as it is both decentralized and open source. And even if it was important, there are hundreds of copycat crypto currencies in existence (though 98% of them I would not touch with a 10 foot pole).

The US dollar, on the other hand, is centralized. If you believe in freedom and object to centralized control of the monetary system, then bitcoin and/or decentralized crypto is what you should be championing.

There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked. With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.

As for a hack, anything that has been done, can be done.

https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/032615/can-bitcoin-be-hacked.asp

Can Bitcoin Be Hacked?

By Nathan Reiff
Investopedia
Updated Jun 25, 2019

Investors all over the world are swarming to buy Bitcoin, prompting some governments to step in with severe regulations. The success of bitcoin fueled the rise of legions of followers, including hundreds of new cryptocurrency launches and a wave of startups predicated on blockchain technology. Nonetheless, with all the fuss and hubbub surrounding bitcoin, many investors are still unsure about the security of the currency itself. Can bitcoin be hacked? And, if so, how can investors work to protect their investments?

Bitcoin and Security

Bitcoin was launched in 2009 as a decentralized digital currency, meaning that it would not be overseen or regulated by any one administrator, like a government or bank. Peer-to-peer transactions have fueled the rise of the digital currency world, and bitcoin has been at the forefront throughout. The blockchain is a public ledger used to verify and record these transactions.

The issue of security has been a fundamental one for bitcoin since its development. On one hand, bitcoin itself is very difficult to hack, and that is largely due to the blockchain technology which supports it. As blockchain is constantly being reviewed by bitcoin users, hacks are unlikely. On the other hand, though, the fact that bitcoin itself is difficult to hack does not mean that it's necessarily a safe investment. There does exist the potential for security risks at various stages of the trading process.

Wallets and the Transaction Process

Bitcoins are held in wallets and traded through digital currency exchanges like Coinbase. There are various security risks inherent in each of these two components. Developers are always improving wallet security, but there are also those looking to access other peoples' wallets illegally to swipe their tokens and coins. In the transaction process. two-factor identification is commonly used as a security measure. Of course, having the security of a transaction linked to an email address or a cell phone number means that anyone with access to those components can authenticate transactions. If a hacker is able to determine some of your non-cryptocurrency-related personal information, he or she may be able to infiltrate your transactions in that space regardless.

There have been widely publicized frauds, scams, and hacks which have plagued individual investors and even major cryptocurrency exchanges in their short history. Part of the issue is simply that the technology and the space itself are new. While this makes cryptocurrencies like bitcoin incredibly exciting--and potentially very profitable--investments, it also means that there are those looking to capitalize on security holes before they are corrected. All bitcoin investors are advised to take proper precautions in order to best protect their holdings.

Related Terms

Bitcoin Definition

Bitcoin is a digital or virtual currency that uses peer-to-peer technology to facilitate instant payments. Bitcoin is a digital currency created in January 2009. It follows the ideas set out in a white paper by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto, whose true identity has yet to be verified.

Cryptocurrency

A cruptocurrency is a digital or virtual currency that uses cryptography. A cryptocurrency is difficult to counterfeit because of this security feature.

Blockchain Explained

A guide to help you understand what blockchain is and how it can be used by industries. You've probably encountered a definition like this: “blockchain is a distributed, decentralized, public ledger." But blockchain is easier to understand than it sounds.

Coincheck

Coincheck is a Tokyo-based cryptocurrency exchange and digital wallet founded in 2014.

tZero

TZero is a cryptocurrency and distributed ledger platform that was launched by Overstock.

Bitcoin Maximalism

Bitcoin maximalists favor bitcoin over other use cases and for the long term. Maximalists are unapologetically in favor of a bitcoin monopoly at some point in the future.

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https://www.bitfolio.org/cryptocurrency-hack-mt-gox

The biggest cryptocurrency hack in the history of blockchain (hack attack that uprooted a giant from industry)

Shubham Davey - 21 August 2018
Bitfolio

https://www.coindesk.com/hackers-are-turning-binances-stolen-bitcoin-into-fiat

Hackers Are Turning Binance’s Stolen Bitcoin Into Other Cryptocurrencies

John Biggs
Coindesk

Jul 16, 2019 at 11:30 UTC
Updated Jul 16, 2019 at 16:38 UTC

A new analysis by Coinfirm shows the movement of the bitcoin stolen from Binance into various wallets. The hack, which netted 7,000 BTC, happened on May 7, 2019 at 17:15:24 UTC and the hackers have been moving stolen bitcoin from wallet to wallet.

Now, however, Coinfirm has spotted some activity that suggests the hackers are moving their gains off of exchanges, potentially into other cryptocurrencies.

[...]

https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/07/16/bitpoint-cryptocurrency-hack-bitcoin-ethereum-cash-litecoin-ripple-users/

55,000 cryptocurrency users affected in Bitpoint’s $28 million hack

Bitpoint's president says it will repay victims in cryptocurrency

David Canellis
TNW

Published July 16, 2019 — 12:47 UTC

Embattled cryptocurrency exchange Bitpoint has revealed that roughly half of its 110,000 users were affected by last week’s $3.02 billion yen ($28 million) hack, reports The Mainchi.

Speaking at a Tokyo press conference, Bitpoint president Genki Oda noted that of the 3.02 billion yen stolen, customers owned 2.06 billion yen ($19 million), while 960 million yen ($8.9 million) consisted of the company’s own holdings.

According to Oda, customer losses represented 13 percent of the total amount of cryptocurrency users had kept on Bitpoint. He also pledged to repay victims (in cryptocurrency) once standard trade resumes.

The theft, which included sums of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, Litecoin, and Ripple, was disclosed last Thursday. Originally reported to have totalled $32 million, those losses were later revised to a slightly smaller number of $28 million.

To find success, hackers were said to have targeted Bitpoint’s “hot wallets,” a term for internet-connected cryptocurrency storage software.

Oda then confirmed the discovery of an additional 250 million yen ($2.3 million) worth of stolen funds that were taken from overseas exchanges using Bitpoint software.

This directly contradicts apparently incorrect media reports that indicated a fraction of the stolen funds had been recovered.

An estimate for when Bitpoint will resume standard trade is yet to be determined, as official investigations are reportedly ongoing.

Fellow Japanese cryptocurrency exchange Zaif was ransacked by hackers last September, who stole $60 million worth of cryptocurrency in a seemingly similar raid.

nolu chan  posted on  2019-07-16   16:54:19 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: nolu chan, A K A Stone (#3)

There is no such thing as absolute security on the internet. With banks, you have insurance if your account gets hacked.

Usually true, yes. But your dollars held in a bank are not protected against debasement or inflation, which is a loss of purchasing power. This occurs when the government continues to run up a national debt or bails out financial institutions after they conduct immoral and or illegal activity which led to, as an example, the 2008 financial crisis for which no one was even charged with a financial crime.

Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments or other 3rd parties with court orders that may or may not be morally legitimate even if they are legally legitimate which they, again, may not be in every case. I'm sure that would fall under illegal activity in the mind of many but it nonetheless qualifies as risk. But if one trusts the government never to do that, then it is not a concern.

But free market crypto protects against these potential losses in value.

With crypto, primarily used by crooks, drug dealers, tax evaders, and others attempting to avoid the law, a successful hack means you are usually shit out of luck, with no legal recourse.

Obviously a demonizing statement. Cars, guns, baseball bats and knives are also used by crooks attempting to conduct illegal activities.

Hacking is an admitted and understood potential problem for any holder of crypto. To be clear, this is not a problem for the crypto blockchain which is the place where crypto holdings are actually recorded. This is instead a problem with the keys to the blockchain which are not on the blockchain but held privately in "wallets" which is not really an accurate description of how crypto works. These keys must be kept secure and the hacking of crypto has always involved accessing these keys or otherwise causing these keys to be used by a hacker to transfer funds on the blockchain. In every case, therefore, hacking has been possible because of security failures related to the keys, which is the responsibility of individual parties that either hold the keys or produced 3rd party wallets, and not the responsibility of the blockchain or crypto as a whole.

Yes there have been millions (in USD value) in Bitcoin hacked by hackers, however in the case of bitcoin, funds are traceable on the blockchain, such that all bitcoin stolen from one wallet can be seen in the new wallet to which it has been transferred. Though the identity of the person or party controlling that wallet cannot be directly known from the blockchain, any subsequent transfer of funds from that wallet to a new wallet can be monitored, and if any transfer is made to an exchange or other party that can be identified, no matter how small the amount, then the potential of tracing and identifying the original criminals is possible, even many years later.

As one of the articles stated, crypto is new technology and being such, makes it vulnerable, though again, it's not the crypto itself that has demonstrated vulnerabilities but rather the 3rd party wallets and holders of crypto that have the security flaws. Crypto also is non-mature as a currency due to the time it takes to make a transaction. While it is certainly far faster and far less hassle and far cheaper than bank wires, compared to credit card transactions, it is far too slow for general usage such as in a grocery store check out line. Still, being a digital technology, crypto has the ability to improve in these areas with additional software upgrades.

I understand Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin as a direct result of how the 2008 financial crisis was resolved (or to whatever extent it qualified as being resolved) by using taxpayer funds to forgive and make right massive problems that resulted from their gross and fraudulent mishandling of funds for the benefit of shareholders of major financial instiutions. There was no other remedy offered by government to that problem.. Not in the courts via prosecution, and not in law. Government is in bed with these institutions and objecting to crypto due to its independence neglects the interests of the American people and all holders of legal tender US dollars. Crypto is a protest response currency to neglectful and abusive government policies. Crypto is facilitated by technology which in our society and world is growing at an exponential pace, and it is on that basis something I see as inevitable. Ever changing technology has impacted society and business in significant ways in the past and it will continue to do so in the future. As I see it, regardless of how people feel about crypto, it cannot be stopped.

Pinguinite  posted on  2019-07-16   18:31:26 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Pinguinite (#5)

Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments

So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals.

It's a scam. It isn't anything but numbers on a computer. Utterly worthless. It is good for predators to take advantage of suckers though.

That is the way I see it.

A K A Stone  posted on  2019-07-16   18:52:37 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#23. To: A K A Stone, Pinguinite (#7)

Funds held by banks are also not safe from seizure requests made by governments

So in other words it is for drug dealers and criminals.

Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.

Banks Launder Billions of Illegal Cartel Money

Bank of America, Western Union, and JP Morgan, are among the institutions allegedly involved in the drug trade. Meanwhile, HSBC has admitted its laundering role, and evaded criminal prosecution by paying a fine of almost $2 billion. The lack of imprisonment of any bankers involved is indicative of the hypocritical nature of the drug war; an individual selling a few grams of drugs can face decades in prison, while a group of people that tacitly allow — and profit from — the trade of tons, escape incarceration.

Deckard  posted on  2019-07-17   7:30:29 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


#32. To: Deckard (#23)

Plenty of banks are used to launder drug money.

Good point!

The type of money is not the problem.

Pinguinite  posted on  2019-07-17   12:11:09 ET  Reply   Untrace   Trace   Private Reply  


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