Welcome back to Bitcoin Season two. So you remember that eighty thousand Bitcoin whale that moved over the summer that then later was revealed to have been liquidated or sold those Bitcoin by Galaxy Digital?
Well, at the time, you may remember there was a bunch of conspiracy theory around who this was and what was happening.
In particular, one detail is that supposedly there were some messages sent to the addresses of this Bitcoin whale identifying this Bitcoin as abandoned. Well, guess what? We actually have some resolution on this.
Galaxy Digital researchers put together a deep dive on this, and it goes way deeper and is way more interesting than you imagine. I've got one of the co-authors of that report with me on this pod today.
Welcome back to Bitcoin Season two. Let's kick it off. [upbeat music] Welcome back. It's me and Colin. We are joined by Zach Pokorny. How do I say your last name, Zach? Exactly, yeah. One shot at it. Oh, sweet.
Okay, nice. That's why I'm in podcasting, 'cause I can say last names. Um, yeah. So Zach, uh, we've got you. You teamed up with another friend of the pod, Will Owens, on this research report.
Um, I will just jump in and give a little bit of context beyond just the hook I did at the top.
So there were some eighty thousand Bitcoin last summer, and, um, they started moving, and immediately the conspiracy theorists like go all of Twitter and come up with all sorts of interesting things and angles.
Later on, Galaxy reveals, "Hey, we sold this Bitcoin for the client." Put a cool press release in Opera Turn on it.
But a lot has been lost to memory because one of the core like, you know, things that were s- that was like around-- that was driving the conspiracy is someone had been sending messages to the addresses of this eighty thousand Bitcoin saying like, "Your Bitcoin's abandoned.
Here's a link to a website. Um, go do this." And a lot of people were wondering is-- was like quant-- was-- did somebody like quantum break this? Is there some actual legal angle where this is abandoned Bitcoin?
Let me just, uh, ask you, Zach, um, what other kind of like context do you think is important for the listener to like-- just to get out so we can start talking about your investigation? Yeah.
No, I mean, I think the, the big takeaway that, that most people missed when this happened was just the sheer breadth of the, the message campaign.
You know, this spammed forty-one thousand plus messages, thirty-nine thousand plus addresses. Uh, when, when the ADK whale received its message, it was very early on in the campaign.
At that point, only a few thousand messages had actually been sent.
So we really just saw the, the tip of the iceberg, and then as this entity started selling, that just kind of took front seat to the messages themselves, and we all, uh, just kind of forgot about it.
But, you know, that-that's like the big takeaway here is the sheer breadth and, and magnitude of the entire thing. Yeah.
And, um, I actually have-- if-- a lot of people may not remember this, but I think that one of the core like conspiracy like drivers was this one, I believe, was an AI-generated article on this goofy website called Cipher Talks.
I had multiple, multiple people send this to me, and it was the most terribly worded article. And obviously, look at this, the article no longer exists.
So like, to me, like that was a very clear indicator that like a lot of this speculation was, was mostly unfounded. And I actually... I'll flex this a bit.
I even, at the time, identified this as being a classic tactic of like Craig Wright and Calvin Ayre. I'll play the clip.
This type of messaging strategy where you message, you know, an old wallet on Bitcoin with a message in Opera Turn, which has some kind of like scary legal boogeyman message in it, this is actually a pretty common tactic that Calvin Ayre has used over the years.
If you're not familiar with Calvin Ayre, he is the former billionaire who, uh, funds Craig Wright, the guy who's been claiming to be Satoshi and suing Bitcoin Core developers.
So this is, uh, actually a strategy that he has used before to, uh, take these messages and try to use them in court to, uh, basically harass, legally, um, various notable people in Bitcoin.
I'm not saying that that's what this is, but, you know, this has the hallmarks of an unrelated, uh, just inexpensive to execute kind of like goofy, uh, attack. That was my take. I'm done tooting my own horn.
I'm gonna throw it back to you to take us deeper into this. Um, is the company-- So where-- So what was in these like messages, and what did they, what did they like say?
Yeah, I mean, the, the short end of it was just these coins haven't moved in a while.
They appear to be abandoned, uh, kind of along the, the spiritual lines of abandoned property laws in a number of, of states across the, the US.
And that because they've been sitting for so long, that the sender of the messages, which came under this sort of like Salomon Brothers branding but was actually a client thereof, it wasn't actually Salomon Brothers sending the messages.
Um, but they kind of sought some legal claim to these coins just for the mere fact that they haven't moved in X number of years, um, which for most states is three. Others range up to five.
The vast majority of the addresses hadn't moved coins in at least three years. Um, but yeah, I think your takeaway really coincides with what we found as well.
Like, quantum vulnerability in Bitcoin seems to be ill-founded. Um, zero sort of signs of that, and that this kind of resembles lawfare over anything else.
I want to step back for a second, um, and just lay some context down for people who might be walking into this. Um, specifically, you have this legal definition in the report, which I think is really good.
And the Opera Turns specifically cite, um-Uh, you know, uh, what, what's, what's the na-- like, what's the d-- what's the legal definition? Like abandoned property? Abandoned property law? Yeah.
Um, but Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute, quoting directly from the report here, defines constructive possession, there we go, constructive possession as the legal possession of an object that is not in the, um, person's direct physical control.
For example, someone with keys to a safe deposit box may have constructive possession to the contents of that box. So where I think this gets, like, in some weird...
This gets in, like, a weird gray area because they're sending these op return messages to these dormant wallets. They don't know whether or not the person actually controls the keys still.
And then it opens up the other question, if it is, like, a lost wallet, then what's even the point? No one has the keys to begin with.
Um, and then you also raise the question in here, let's say this does go through the courts, how do you even identify where these people live? Are they going to just divulge that information?
There's this really interesting bit in here where Salomon Brothers, when they're talking about this, they say, "Well, we're not gonna take Bitcoin from people who actually control the wallets.
We just wanna prove that they actually control them."
And there's this thing in here where they were talking about setting up a process where you could actually prove that you are still controlling the wallet, you just haven't made transactions in, in a few years.
Just a totally preposterous and, and ridiculous thing.
You, you don't need to prove anything to these people, and there's not even, as I understand from reading legal opinions on Twitter, there's not even an ac-- there's not even clear indication that this would hold up in court.
Um, did you-- w-did your, did your research indicate anything a-along those lines? Yeah, I mean, the, the enforcement gap on this stuff is, is massive.
Like, if you don't have the private keys, like, you physically cannot move the coins.
And if somebody is just holding them in their own private wallet and never touches, uh, a centralized intermediary or the like, like, there is no way that this can, can be enforced, um, in our view.
Now, if somebody were to get one of these notices and maybe move it to Coinbase or some other centralized intermediary that falls under the holder definition, um, which is essentially like, um, a centralized institution that holds coins on somebody's behalf, they track who they are, where they're from,
age, all that information, um, then maybe tho-those folks could get embroiled in some kind of legal tangle up.
But even then, it's like at that point you've already proved that you own the coins and they moved, so then how does the whole, like, abandoned property definition even stand up?
So yeah, uh, there, there's just, like, little, little chance that this could actually be enforced, uh, from a number of angles. Okay.
So I think maybe the s-the hilarious burning question is, is Salomon Brothers a real company? Like [laughs] what's- This is, this is- Yeah... really important. Can you- Yeah. What is, what is this company, Zach?
Can you break down what's happening here? Because there are gonna be some younger people listening to this who have no idea what Salomon Brothers was.
There are gonna be some boomers listening to this that are having flashbacks to the dot-com boom. Um, I believe Salomon Brothers dissolved in two thousand and three. Um, and, and now we have this kind of,
uh, I don't know, a pastiche of the old Salomon Brothers or alumni trying to start a new one. Can you explain exactly what Salomon Brothers was, what the new Salomon Brothers is, and why they fit into this at all? Yeah.
I mean, I fell into the super young people camp. I had no idea what Salomon Brothers was [laughs] until I looked into the report. But yeah, they were a s- a storied investment bank that goes back over a century.
Uh, big bond traders, had many books and, and movies made about them, um, and then eventually were, were absorbed by, um, a, a number of companies along, along the way.
Um, but then what ended up happening was a few years ago, a few alumni came together and they were like, "Let's, let's get the band back together," essentially.
Um, bought, bought the trademark to the old Salomon Brothers and kind of spun up into this, what they call Salomon Encore. Um, so, like, the old Salomon Brothers is not what we're seeing here.
It, it's merely just, like, a phantom, uh, company, uh, with the name Salomon Brothers.
So there's really no direct connection between the old one that, that everybody knows that's, like, super famous and storied versus what we have here today.
It's just a group of alumni who came together, bought the trademark, and are essentially using the branding to carry on their business today.
And trying to piggyback on the name, which is another thing that I think is, i-is fascinating. And, um, uh, let, um, cut this next part, Damian. I wanna make sure I have my facts straight.
Salomon Brothers basically dissolved because of, like, they were implicated in some sort of fraud, right? Am I right about that? Yeah. Okay. Um, yeah, that, that is my understanding. Okay. So Damian, cut back in here.
Or they, they, they were, like, fined and, and penalized along some line.
Um, I'm not sure I actually included that in, in the report, but yeah, they, they did get in some trouble, or a few traders at the firm got in some trouble.
Which is just really funny because there was a trading scandal, right? And, um, they ended up getting fined, and that was part of the reason I think why they ended up selling.
Um, it, it, it, it, you know, completely shattered their reputation.
But it's like, if you're gonna try to have a l-a, you know, a, a veneer of legitimacy to this op return dusting thing to try to, you know, requisition these dormant wallets, I think the last thing you'd wanna do is attach your name to Salomon Brothers.
And what I-- There was a point in your, um, report that I, I picked out here that I thought was really funny.
So the campaign had two phases, quoting directly from the report, trial messages that did not include links or mention Salomon, uh, starting June thirtieth, followed by waves of messages containing links to Salomon's website starting in July and August.
This is kind of funny. They were like, they started doing this, they're like, "Wait a second, we need to make this look more legit.
[laughs] Let's link to a since defunct now, like, um, revived, although scrupulously revived, no one r-really knows if they're actually even doing anything, and you're attaching yourself to their name."
The other question I have with this is why are they using Salomon Brothers for this and not a law firm?
That was confusing to me.Um, I don't know if when-- if Salomon indicated in any of their press releases that they were working with legal counsel. What did you make of that? Yeah.
No, I mean, we, we had similar questions and didn't find any conclusive answer.
Um, but yeah, the way it looks at face value right now is just the, the person sending the messages wanted a reputable or an area that appeared to be reputable, uh, to sort of host the notice.
Like, if they just created their own website real quick, threw these legal notices up, like, it, it looks like it carries a lot less weight than if it's like, "Oh, wait, we have, uh, at least the, the veil of Salomon Brothers branding and, like, their whole website and, and whatever else may, may come with that."
So yeah, it, it's unclear, like, does Salomon Brothers have lawyers that these people are using or not? Um, we didn't find any, like, real hard answers there.
Um, but yeah, it just looks like they're trying to piggyback off the name, the website, and, and whatever other weight, uh, that the Salomon Brothers name carries.
And, like, ostensibly, it kind of seemed to work in a way, in the sense that... I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, the-- that whale, the eighty thousand Bitcoin whale, was the one that sold through Galaxy, right?
That's-- Yeah, that's- And he was dusted. D-was that like... Do you think he got dusted, saw the notice, and was like, "I'm sitting on two billion dollars. I am not taking any chances, even if this is BS.
I'm, I-- we're, we are cashing out."
I'm, uh, I'm just kind of amazed that, like, maybe he was already thinking of selling, and this is just total coincidence, but the fact that, that, that he was dusted and then sold, uh, what, did he get spooked?
Was he already doing it? W-what do you make of that? 'Cause it's kind of a crazy coincidence, right? Yeah.
I mean, I, I don't, I don't know for certain, but kind of looking at other instances of this kind of stuff with these messages, like, we saw people receive messages
a day, a few hours after they had actually moved coins before. Like, it, it's not an unknown thing that whale activity is just super high in general, and these messages targeted these larger addresses.
So it, it-- there, there is evidence that the person sending the messages kind of ga-gathered up a number of addresses, waited, and then sent the messages.
Um, and then in between that time, people actually moved their coins already.
So I think there's just a ton of coincidence going on here with whale activity being high and just the timing of, of these messages coming through.
I also chalk it up as coincidence, but this actually, you know, if we think about, like, the likelihood of the coincidence, it actually might behoove us to get into, like, the scale of the dusting.
You said, um, what, like forty-something addresses, but what blew my mind, I had no idea about this until I read your report, was that, um, the cumulative amount of Bitcoin that was dusted was, like, two-point-something million.
Two-point- Two point three. Two point three million worth of Bitcoin, which is, you know, over a tenth of the Bitcoin network worth of, uh, Bitcoin, uh, was sent these notices.
And this, these were sent to, like, largely dormant ad-- like, legacy old address types. Um, could you kinda expand more on, on this, like, the scale of the, the dusting here? Yeah.
I mean, in the official communications from, from Salomon, they kept stressing, like, "Oh, it was only, like, point five percent of all the Bitcoin addresses that existed," but just completely skipping over the part that, like, okay, small amount of addresses, but massive amount of Bitcoin.
That was, that was the kinda crazy thing is, like, um, one of my thoughts is, so if we're talking, like, two point three million Bitcoin sent these notices, uh, you know, the first thing that comes to mind is Satoshi's got, what, a million Bitcoin.
D-d-- I don't know if you mentioned in your report, but are the addresses which we associate with Satoshi, did it look like those were included in these, like, old untouched Bitcoin addresses?
Um, like, any more insights to, like, these, like, this, this, like, old dormant Bitcoin here? Yeah.
Um, I mean, we didn't particularly look into the Satoshi addresses, though, in hindsight, that actually would've been a great idea.
But I think the, the big takeaway with the older address types is they didn't actually target any of the, like, super OG addresses from, like, two thousand and nine, like the original Bitcoin miners that received, like, some of the first block rewards ever.
Like, if any coins were to be abandoned and actually vulnerable to Quantum, which is their altruistic sort of rationale for doing this in the first place, like, those would've been the first place to, to start.
Um, we, we kind of looked into this ourselves and, um, Will actually, like, constructed a, a transaction manually to prove that, like, you can still actually send Bitcoin to these addresses, even if it wasn't through, like, a decentralized wallet like UniSat or through a, a centralized exchange like Coinbase.
Um, all that is totally deprecated, but you can still build a, a manual transaction and send it to these addresses.
But yeah, that, that's like I think the big takeaway there is, like, they, they claim to be saving the network from this quantum vulnerability or related, but actually totally skipped over [chuckles] the oldest, most vulnerable, and most likely to be abandoned types of addresses in the first place.
And that's, that's interesting 'cause that stated goal, that altruism is belied by the fact that they didn't dust those, to your point, because they know that they can't access those coins, 'cause almost certainly all of those two thousand and nine coins are lost, right?
Like, the, the vast majority of those miners, uh, you know, either s-spent them early or lost them or just stopped caring about Bitcoin before it got big. Th-this kind of leads into my next question, though.
To the best of your knowledge, and I know this is hard because I'm, like, asking you to get into the mind of, you know, I don't even know what to call him.
You can't call him a criminal, but, like, I don't know, cyber vigilante, um, like a, like a cyber Mr. Magoo trying to screw everyone out of their sats. Um, but, uh,
anyway, m- this leads into my question of, like, what, what's the methodology here, do you think? Like, looking at the addresses that were targeted and the patterns,
w-what do you think the methodology for picking out all these addresses were?
I mean, do you think there were parameters that he just plugged in, you know, to, like, a, you know-Uh, a JavaScript program, you know, and then just, like, plucked out the addresses from his node?
What, what do you think was, was, was the kind of, like, guideline for how he managed to get, what was it, forty thousand addresses to send to? Yeah.
No, I mean, the big one was at least three years of dormancy, whether that was the address appearing as an input sending coins or as an output receiving coins, uh, three-year minimum on that.
So essentially, no activity for three years, which coincides with the sort of bottom parameter for a lot of these abandoned property laws, um, which are defined by three years of dormancy. Um, and then also just
n-receiving coins and never actually sending them.
I think it was something like ninety-five to ninety-seven percent of the addresses had received coins and never sent them, which is probably a fair assessment to say, like, "Oh, these people never signed a transaction."
They're more than likely, or they're more likely to be abandoned than an address that is active.
So yeah, it was the, the three years not appearing as an input or an output and, uh, the lack of sending activity, I think, were probably the two top-line parameters.
Um, and then maybe they played around with, like, the size or the balance of the addresses a little bit. But kind of as the campaign progressed, we saw the actual balance of each individual address dwindle.
So I think that became less and less of an important parameter as they kind of were targeting more and more addresses. Um, it was mostly about the dormancy period, um, and the probability of it being sort of abandoned.
Coins that have not moved in three-point-five years. Um, I'll speak for myself and probably speak for Charlie too. I won't speak for you, Zach, 'cause I don't know you as well. But, like- [chuckles]...
I have coins that haven't moved in that long. Yeah. Same. And that's, like, common practice with Bitcoiners. You know, like, the...
You know, it was hammered into a lot of, especially the two thousand and seventeen class and maybe twenty twenty, it's like, "Don't reuse your address."
And so, like, how many Bitcoiners have a hundred thousand, a million sats sitting in multiple addresses in the same wallet just because they're not reusing the same address because they're trying to keep their OpSec, uh, clean?
Like, the, the fact of the matter is, you know, these-- we don't know how many people could have been involved in these, uh, dusting attacks, but, you know, it's definitely not forty-nine or fifty thousand, right?
Like, it could be a vanishingly small number of people. Could actually be, you know, a, a, a, you know, few hundred or a few thousand. Uh, the other thing,
um, too, that I wanted to point out about this is going back to the Cornell Law School definition, where they use the lockbox as an analogy, or rather we're using it here for this.
That analogy for me, at least a hundred, like, you know, like, a hundred percent matched up with, like, the crypto example is a-an exchange probably or a custodian.
Um, and so, like, if you were going to use this argument in that case, I would be interested to see how that works out legally.
But on-chain, that doesn't work because they keep all of this in cold or hot wallets, and it's all mixed together, so you have no way of knowing how long an account has been dormant.
Um, kind of just a sidebar thought of just how incredibly ludicrous this is when you try to think about the actual logistics of, of trying to execute a, a strategy like this.
Well, also the logistics, Colin, you point out, um... So in my, in my prescient comment that I played in the clip earlier, I said it was a fairly cheap attack to do.
But, like, Zach, you and Will put together the numbers, and it looks like it-- they spent, like, point four nine Bitcoin in fees, so basically half a Bitcoin, and then, uh, and in addition to that, spent another, like, point two Bitcoin in the aggregate dust outputs.
So we're ta-we're talking, like, um, eighty, ninety thousand dollars, um, to execute this attack, which, you know, in the grand scheme of things is not that much money. But that's not a cheap, like...
This is not a cheap, uh, dusting strategy. This is, you know, this, this is not a- It's not pocket money. Yeah, it's not pocket money. I know. Like, what are your-- what's your, like, take or interpretation of that?
Like, this is someone who's got a little Bitcoin, a little bit of mo- extra money to throw around at this. Yeah.
I mean, just given the sophistication of the messages themselves, like, this is clearly somebody who understands the Bitcoin protocol to at least a fairly deep level.
Um, and if they're willing to throw around, you know, point six, point seven Bitcoin just to kinda do this, it, it kind of suggests the fact that this is a, a larger actor or somebody that has, uh, at least enough Bitcoin to say, like, "You know what?
I'm willing to go off on a flyer here, and maybe we'll get something to land," um, and if it costs me ninety, a hundred thousand bucks, then that, that was a good, that was a good trade.
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Through your internal, we're gonna call it chain analysis, um, scoping of the, of the dust, uh, you linked it to previous attempts at, uh, dusting, which I thought was the most interesting.
So this was not an isolated incident. This summer's, like, period of dusting, uh, you were able to connect to other events. Uh, can you go into that? Yeah. I mean, the person who did this was experimenting with it for
at least a month or two in advance, like, sending messages to people that just, like, straight up said, like, "I am taking possession of this address," like, "it's mine now."
Um, and then even sending just, like, blatant tests, like saying like, "This is a test op_return message. It must be eighty bytes and precise."
So, like, clearly this person was experimenting with whatever system they had or how Bitcoin op_return actually works.
Um, so yeah, they, they were, they were messing around with this a good bit, and then they actually did, like, a decently scaled, I think it was, like, a, a few hundred addresses test initially without the Solomon branding that just saidOr I mean, it kind of echoed what the Salomon Brothers messages said.
It was just like, "Oh, we believe this is abandoned, like, move these coins or we're gonna take constructive possession."
Um, so, like, they were messing around with this stuff a fair amount, but, um, kind of in gathering all the addresses that sent messages in both these tests, um...
Well, actually, I-- it, it started from looking at the Salomon Brothers messages themselves, and then we built sort of this internal ledger of decoded op return messages, and then just looked at all the addresses that sent the Salomon ones and if they sent any other op return messages either after we wrote the report or before.
And there were two key sort of addresses that linked the initial set that went to a few hundred addresses to the existing one.
So, like, clearly this person was, was messing around with this stuff, trying to figure out how it works, um, did a small one at scale before they entered the full, um, Salomon Brothers branded one.
And the irony of the situation is, the first set of Salomon Brothers messages they sent actually had a typo, and the link didn't work.
So even, like, the, the message that the ADK whale sent, uh, the, the ADK whale received, the link was broken. So, like, technically from our view, there's, like, no actual legal ground there.
Like, if you didn't have the link, then you didn't get the notice that says what you need to do to prove ownership. So it was just kind of hilarious. Bro, this has, this has Craig Wright written all over it.
This is like, I mean, uh, this is the type- Are you making, are you making the call? Are you, are you saying that this- I'm just saying, like, this- This is shenanigans? [laughs] This is, this just...
I mean, there's onl- there's only one, there's only one guy who fits the bill for all this stuff, and it's, it's a Craig Wright type character. Now, I as- I assume there's many Craig Wrights,
Craig Wright folks out there, so...
But you know, like, this is the type of thing that Craig Wright's always done, you know, manufacturing documents in court, um, practice- practicing his Japanese swordm- swordsmanship in really goofy suits and stuff.
Like, um, this is-- He's like a, the Inspector Clouseau, but, you know, it, it always is the, it's the dumbest, like, you know, end to his story. I don't know.
I'm just throwing it out there 'cause I keep thi- every time I see, like, look more into this, I'm like, "This is like a Craig Wright thing."
Um, [clears throat] I don't know, Zach, what's the, what's the internal speculation at, uh, Galaxy who, you know, who this is? What are some of the wilder theories out there?
Maybe you can't put it in a report, maybe this is speculation, but I don't know. Have you l- what are, like, the, the crazy, like, ideas, uh, you guys think might be going on here? Galaxy is a reputable public company.
[laughs] They cannot dabble in the fruits of the grapevine. Ah, no, we, we gotta, we gotta speculate. We gotta gossip. I'm so curious.
Yeah, I mean, we don't really have any conclusive opinion on who the individual might be, but we suspect that just given the amount of effort that went into this whole operation, that there will be some kind of follow-through.
Like, we already hit the first deadline of the first series of messages that came, uh, last Friday on October tenth, and we'll get the second deadline on November fifth.
Um, we're, we're generally of the opinion, just given the sheer amount of input, resources, time, money, effort that went into this, that we'll see some kind of legal follow-through.
Um, I mean, it's kind of questionable where it will come from because the nature of the apparent law that they seem to be prodding at is hyper-jurisdictional. It's not just like this one, one rule fits all.
Like, it's state by state, and if they plan to do this in another country, which there's no indication that they may or may not do that, like, you literally need to go state by state, country by country,
possibly tinier jurisdiction by tinier jurisdiction.
Um, so we, we've been keeping our eye out on, one, follow-up messages from Salomon themselves, um, and two, just docs that may be popping up out of some of these, uh, these local courts.
But yeah, we haven't seen anything just yet. I've been checking the chain for more op return messages, haven't seen anything yet. So we suspect that we'll have to wait for the second deadline here.
So I know you're, I know you're not a lawyer, obviously, um, unless you moonlit as one in a past life. [laughs] Yeah, definitely not a lawyer.
[laughs] In the worst case of passive work, if any lawyers are listening or any listeners know a good lawyer to talk to about this, I would love to have these follow-up questions answered, because these are the things that are popping around in my mind.
You're talking about these deadlines. I assume that's deadlines to prove ownership. Um- Exactly. And it's kind of like a, a, a, a loose ultimatum. It's like, "Prove ownership or we'll do something."
But that question is, is like, what is the something? Because then this necessarily
would, uh, you know, a requisite for this would be chain analysis to dox the holders of the wallets so that you can actually serve legal papers and sue them, right? Or, or take them to court.
If you can't get someone into, in, into the court, then, and you can't identify them, there's no way that this even goes any further than the threats. Then my next question is, what's the legality behind that?
I mean, I don't know if it's illegal. Uh, can you just-- I guess you can, there, you-- people do PIs. But, like, is it these guys can just go to Chainalysis and say, "Hey, here are these addresses.
Get the IP addresses for these, please"? Um, obviously, that would cost a lot of money. Uh, Chainalysis works with governments and some of the most heavily capitalized companies in the industry.
But, um, this is not really a question for you, Will. This is more just me monologuing an open question of like, what-- how do next steps even manifest? How do you even begin to bring this into the realm of the courts?
This is something that you bring up in the, uh, in the, uh, conclusion to the introduction, where you're like, "Okay, like, if you even do get to the court, how are you gonna get the private key?"
Even, like, you know, even i-if the person doesn't wanna comply. I mean, maybe they go to jail, they say they lost it. I don't know. There's just so much open-ended in the legal front here.
I think we might need to do a follow-up episode, Charlie, with a lawyer about, like, h-how theoretically how this could even progress. Yeah. Um, it's-- I, I have no idea.
It, you know, it's, it's funny when we talk about abandoned property, if, and you're talking about, uh, you know, you gotta move your coins every three to five to eight years to prove it's not abandoned.
Now, you have takenHilariously, you've created Peter Todd's demurrage, uh, concept in-- but, but enforced through meat space legal practice, where you have to prove activity and prove liveliness, otherwise your coins get dinged.
So, uh, maybe it's Satoshi himself, Peter Todd, uh, uh, doing this to, uh, sneakily get a- Can I just say what a stupid proposal? Yeah. What a [laughs] well- What an absolutely ridiculous proposal.
[laughs] I know, but- All respect to Peter for a lot of the things that he's done, but sometimes these devs, man, need to get out of their own ways. It's like that in no world does anyone want that.
Dude, I like curve balls though. I like crazy ideas. I like the crazy, zany ideas. Um, so back to you, Zach. Um, you know, we've talked-- we've touched on a few things from the report.
Is there any other, like, little details or, um, idiosyncrasies you discovered that you don't think we covered here, like, yeah. Yeah.
No, I mean, I think the, the inconsistency in the messaging on, on this stuff from Salomon is, is noteworthy.
Like, in the most easily accessible communications, they say, like, "Oh, this is like a very, like, altruistic thing, like we're trying to save the Bitcoin network, and we've identified this massive threat."
Um, but then on the back end, in the links sent in the opportun messages, they were like, "Oh, if you don't move your coins, like we're taking possession of them."
So like, there's just like a lot of sort of contradict-contradictory statements and contradictory tone in the whole thing.
And, and yeah, the other, the other noteworthy thing that we already kind of touched on was they didn't target the most likely to be abandoned, most quantum or technologically vulnerable address types in the P2PK addresses.
So like, tho-those are two kind of like disqualifying things, um, about the entire effort i-in my opinion. Well, I'm gonna make sure the, uh, the full report is linked in the show notes.
Uh, I recommend you guys, you guys go read those. Listeners, check out and make sure to follow Zach and Will and the Galaxy Research team. They put out some of the best reports.
Um, Zach, uh, I'm looking forward to the next, uh, research you guys put out. You guys have been absolutely knocking it out of the park lately.
Any, uh, hints on what, uh, what you guys might be working on or looking at next? Yeah, I mean, I can't speak on, uh, what Will is working on, but, uh, been banging on the Futarchy drum for a while here now.
So, uh, we know we got a bunch of Bitcoin LT's launching. Maybe we could get some, some Futarchies on, on, uh, some of these Bitcoin chains. We'll see what happens. I'm for it. Let poly market run everything.
Let's do it, baby. [clears throat] Okay. Well, thank you so much for listening to, to Bitcoin Season Two.
Make sure to like and subscribe to the show, you know, leave a review, all that jazz, and we'll see you all next week.
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