How Ulbricht paid ฿100 to learn about `bitcoind -rescan`

I was revisiting Gwern and my research into the Silk Road / Mt. Gox connection, found something very interesting on the '1MR6pXD' address. Oh Ulbricht...

xpost from this post:

Long-time readers may recall that among Ulbricht's problems with developing & running Silk Road, he had problems with theft from his MtGox account: "Silk Goxed: How DPR used Mtgox for hedging & lost big". We identified his accounts and deposits as part of that investigation.

Based on our findings, imposter has found a previously unknown Ross Ulbricht account on the Bitcoin Talk forums, used for tech support with SR1 problems: the user account "kohlanta" (posts), registered 19 August 2012. The name is a reference to a tourist destination in Thailand; Ulbricht was living in Australia around this time and traveled some places, apparently including Ko Lanta. This account must be Ulbricht because (1) who has ฿40,000 in a single address in August 2015? (2) the amount matches up exactly with the big transactions noted in 'Silk Goxed', and kohlanta's address 1MR..Y is the one involved in the Ulbricht withdrawals/deposits. (When he told me about this, I felt dumb - why hadn't I bothered to google 1MR..Y during our 'Silk Goxed' work to see if it had appeared anywhere else online?)

kohlanta's first question concerns the inability to move ฿40,000; this problem was solved by bitcoind -rescan, as pointed out by BT user fcmatt. (You can see he did indeed pay the ฿100 by noting that the amounts shrink by exactly that much.)

We can also see the trial testimony independently confirmed by kohlanta's further questions: questions about using curl, json-rpc, and versioning issues with the wallet.

There's nothing really important here that I can see, but it's interesting to see him panicking over the 1MR..Y, and it's definitely a reminder that Bitcoin addresses are only pseudonymous; once pseudonymity has been broken or damaged, you can continue to follow transactions & addresses to see what you can find.

Submitted November 02, 2015 at 02:39AM by impost_r http://bit.ly/1MAEw80