Topic: MyBitcoin Investigative Bureau -- PARTIAL MYBITCOIN ADDRESS LIST RELEASED (Read 5793 times)

Great point. And it might have worked, had all the coins been spent ASAP. But these recent spends from old MyBitcoin addresses aren't going to go unnoticed... I suspect the folks tracing them are going to hunt them to the end.

I recall seeing some mention in this forum that MyBitcoin doesn't follow the usual coin-selection and change-making rules, presumably because its Bitcoin-handling code was custom-written; and that it shuffles coins around between its own addresses. Given this list of addresses, it should be possible to learn some things about it; and I strongly suspect that its transactions are distinctive in some way, which should make it possible to find *all* the MyBitcoin addresses.

Another theory - the reason MyBitcoin came back briefly and returned some coins, was to get plausible deniability when spending the coins that were stolen.

Why doesn't someone just call Tom Williams and ask? Christ.

hahahahahaahahahahaahahahaahahaha

It's been far too long to get any useful information out of the blockchain.

Indeed.  What the future holds for 'Tom Williams' may be quite valuable to some group who, for whatever reason, wants to further sully the reputation of Bitcoin and destroy the myth of anonymity in one fell swoop.  That's probably more of a likelihood than is some irritated former BTC holder getting revenge.

Sleep as well as you can scumbag...

I think you're underestimating the power of having all transactions connecting any two addresses permanently recorded in the blockchain.

If a malicious agent just threw up a list of unrelated addresses, and somehow they got added to the main list... they'll eventually be ignored anyway when they don't connect to the core group of addresses within a certain range of blocks.

And if the thief gets lazy or stupid ("Screw it, let's just consolidate all these coins to one address to make moving them to cold storage easier,") then the addresses that aren't related become immediately obvious: they're the ones not being sent to 1MyBTCThiefAddress. Even something a bit more subtle than that can result in useful information. All it's going to take is one send, even accidental, to one address with a public identity who's willing to help to shake up the whole game.



That sounds like a good opening to voice a couple of my concerns about the whole process:

1) That there will be some attempt to "taint" or "mark" the funds. IMO, this is both morally objectionable, and just a bad idea on a number of levels. If the thief is caught, and is somehow made to return the coins still in his possession, fine. But any coins spent to others not involved with this or knowledgeable of it should NOT be sought after.

2) If the number of coins that moved through that wallet is at all close to accurate, it represents a disturbing amount of money. Enough that my hope that this can be resolved peacefully is almost gone... once the thief is caught, then what? What if most of the coins have already been spent? I suspect bloodshed may come of this; not that "Tom Williams" facing that bothers me, what bothers me is what the consequences of such actions would be, both for those engaged, and for the image of Bitcoin overall.

Food for thought.

1. This data was generated from one address.
2. Therefore we can be sure that all of the addresses in that list are from the same wallet.
3. Therefore that wallet has processed over 38 million coins and contains 14k coins.

How many wallets in the Bitcoin world have processed over 38 million coins and contain 14k BTC?  Not many, and I think that reduces the chance of an inaccurate list by a lot. 

The data can be corrupted in so many ways it is pointless.  Not only can bad people put in GOOD addresses into your database, but someone holding 'bad' bitcoins can spend them at any number of stores (like mine) is SOMEONE ELSES name.  If they want to finger their enemy, they just place an order for stuff with the address and all contact info to that persons address.  Pretty much any data you can scrape from this process is pointless.

are you sure about that? I guess Tom Williams has a good reason to corrupt your data

good luck... laaawl.

Ok, so now you have a list of addresses which all somewhat questionably but probably correctly once belonged to mybitcoin.

What now? What is it exactly that you are trying to do here?

This is nice attempt to work against the original intentions of Bitcoin - anonymity and irreversibility. Still it does not help in any way, as mybitcoin does not seem to be concerned about obscuring them. That was the users fault of trusting his coins to someone else, in this case mybitcoin.

This is correct.

repeating myself: would it be possible to show us some code of the tools you we're using ? please

So, I presume something like this:

Take the list of addresses you know belonged to MBC;
For each address in list:
    For each outgoing transaction from that address:
        If transaction has more than 1 input:
            Add any input addresses to the list if they aren't already there

Seems quite reasonable

I would assume that they followed the chain of transactions.

How did this yield a 2.5 MB list with 100000 entries?

A few people said this like "my MyBitcoin address is 1____ if anyone wants to investigate," or something of the sort.