Xamonas Chegwé wrote:The report says that $3.6m in bitcoins was confiscated. How does that work exactly? They took a computer that had the BCs in an electronic wallet? So what happens to those coins?
Could't possibly confiscate the bitcoin unless the guy was very careless. Maybe he kept them all in the same wallet that he ran the website from. If you had that kind of loot, you'd spend it into cold storage on an encrypted drive FFS.
Looks like they are being used to cause a panic sell off. Unload that much coin suddenly and you cause a sudden drop that might cause panic merchants to !!!SELL!!!
Interesting point thoug Xam. If they did drop the bundle, then there may be some recriminating backlash for the law enforcement officials. Cashing in drug proceeds?
Also, on a similar point, what happens if you accidentally wipe the HD of a device that is storing your coins? Where do they go? Do they disappear?
Well that depends on weather you backed up. You dont actualy need to have the original wallet as those coins exist on a disributed database. The bitcoin adresses are accesed using a private key. That is your secret code to prove those bitcoins are yours. As long as you can recover that privete key and you still have the address, you can recover your bitcoin. The private key can be saved as a QR code or string of characters and kept on an encrypted thumb drive off-line or can even be printed on paper. There's also a tequniqe called a
brain wallet that can use a secret pasphrase and turn that into a secondary key, that you use to get back your private key. I've never tried it but it sounds quite excelent.
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