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Comment by nroets | Hacker News Reader

My theory is that a hacker gained access to a whale's account and didn't have a way to monetize his crime. So he did this for "bragging rights."

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If the hacker could send to that address they could send to one they controlled. I rate your theory as doubtful.

Plausible the motivation was pure malice rather than financial gain.

I think the idea is that if they did that, they'd be caught? There are mixers and monero and stuff, but maybe that's not enough.

+1, it's gotten pretty easy to do bitcoin tracing these days IIRC. there's definitely cash out methods but for this large of a sum, seems like it'd be difficult?

An address is essentially a random number, it would be as safe to send to a random number they generated as one that Satoshi generated.

Now using it further from there might indeed be problematic... but also a champaign problem.

Yes but random throws someone random under the bus (potentially) and doesn't carry the bragging rights GP suggests.

I wasn't suggesting they could pay to someone else. They could pay to their own address at no more risk than paying the genesis block address.

The risk to them comes when they try to spend the funds later. They'd always have the option of dumping them on something unconnected to them for bragging rights with relatively low marginal risk.

I'd think these criminals must have a way to "properly" do money laundering without getting caught too easily, e.g. sending to an account they control that can't really be tracked down to a person, cashing out in a country with near zero regulation of cryptocurrency, then somehow getting real money out of it. It would be surprising if this isn't already an entire business out there.

Just generate new wallet and never touch it again :D

I like this theory, but I think it could also be some investment bank in order to draw attention to bitcoin and pump it up before the ETFs.

Implying that someone has access to Satoshi's coins should tank the price, if anything.

If those were to be dumped on the open market, it would eat a lot of USD.

Someone sent bitcoin to satoshi's wallet. Not from it.

Wouldn't that hacker include some text in the transaction to prove who did it or send it to an address they control? How they can prove they are the ones that can brag?

Shouldn't he or she then be somewhere around bragging?

Also if you can send BTC to some wallet, why couldn't you send it to another wallet where you indeed have access?

Because that is a regular day's operation. What draws attention is the use of satoshi's wallet as a destination

This exactly. Whatever the motive, whomever fully realizes that this address is watched with a very fine tooth comb and simply isn't possible to go unnoticed.

Why the expenditure? Someone above basically said marketing -- marketing Bitcoin so headlines hit the masses and maybe get some sort of ball rolling again. I think it's safe to assume there is a larger plan in the works and whomever responsible has played their hand and now hopes the cards fall as they projected, for whatever ends.

If a hacker could withdraw to this wallet, it stands to reason he could withdraw to his own.

He may be convinced that wherever the this Bitcoin will be tracked wherever it goes. And confiscated if it ever reaches a centralized exchange. (Due to pressure from law enforcement, the whale and even Binance)

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