Escrow?
E-Screw more like.
In a turn of events that should shock nobody, the operators of one of the largest darknet drug markets have apparently run off with user funds. The Evolution underground market, which sold guns, drugs, and a cornucopia of illicit merchandise, went dark. A self-described administrator said on Reddit that the site's owners have …
No, it's EVE-scrow. Which is defined as the practise of giving money to someone who plays EVE Online, in the hope that they'll give it back to you in future.
Sometimes this even happens.
EVE was good training for reading about Bitcoin. Because it gives one a certain predictive ability...
They didn't steal $12m. They took some internet monopoly money that just happened to have a market value in USD of $12m when they did it. The coins that Mt. Gox took/lost/whatever are worth less than half as much now as they were when they were taken for instance.
Word is though that they've got their hands on 130,000 bitcoins, rather than the original estimate of 43,000, or about $32.5m at the current rate.
I should have added "inasmuch as they're worth anything". They might have a dollar value on some dodgy market somewhere but that doesn't mean you can do anything economically worthwhile with them.
Other than buying illegal drugs, guns and pornography I guess. The future of currency!
They might have a dollar value on some dodgy market somewhere but that doesn't mean you can do anything economically worthwhile with them.
That's likely part of the problem they now face. The dollar value of the BTC may be high, but there are going to be some very pissed off people watching the blockchain trying to work out where that money has gone.
Cashing that amount out, even in small amounts is going to be pretty risky for a while (given you don't know exactly who you've pissed off, or how well connected they may or may not be).
After a theft a while back, one guy was even dedicated enough to follow transactions through a tumbler, so tumbling the coins (and it's likely no tumbler has that amount spare anyway, so you'll poison your tumbling pool pretty quickly) isn't necessarily a defence.
"Cashing that amount out, even in small amounts is going to be pretty risky for a while (given you don't know exactly who you've pissed off, or how well connected they may or may not be)."
You can guarantee that at least some of them have guns and are quite cross.
Scan take bitcoins now, so you could buy yourself a computer (or several thousand, depending).
It turns out there's quite a few ways to turn your electronic funny money into Serious Real Money these days, although converting more than a few hundred bitcoins will likely prove difficult.
I heard from a friend of a friend that, erm, Justin Beiber did it.
A comment like that can only lead to this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dci1iet9kc