One of the largest heists in bitcoin history is happening right now.96,000 bitcoins—that’s roughly £60m as of the time of writing—was taken from the accounts of customers, vendors and administrators of the Sheep Marketplace over the weekend.Sheep was one of the main sites that came to replace the Silk Road when it closed in October, but it too has now closed as a result of this theft.It’s a little hard to work out exactly what’s happened, but Sheep customers have been piecing it together on reddit’s r/sheepmarketplace.Here's what happened: someone (or some group) managed to fake the balances in peoples’ accounts on the site, showing that they had their bitcoins in their wallets when they’d actually been transferred out.Over the course of a week the whole site was drained, until the weekend when the site's administrators realised what was happening and shut everything down.Originally it was thought that only 5,200BTC —or £3m—was taken, with a message posted on Sheep's homepage blaming a vendor called "EBOOK101" for finding and exploiting a bug.

However, over the weekend it became clear that the amount stolen was much, much larger.In a normal robbery that money would be gone by now, but it isn't.Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous, and bitcoins can’t just disappear.It works because each and every transaction is public and visible to each and every other person using the Bitcoin network, and a person is only as anonymous as their link to their wallet.A couple of reddit users realised that the sheer size of the heist makes “tumbling” the coins—the normal method of laundering bitcoins—impossible, as long as they kept on their toes.Someone with bitcoin can send some to a tumbler like bitcoinfog, where it will be split into smaller subdivisions and mixed with other bitcoins from other places, recombining and splitting again several times over until the whole amount eventually comes out the other end, theoretically in such a way that it’s impossible to track.Silk Road’s in-built tumbler successfully foiled the FBI, allegedly.However, reddit user TheNodManOut managed to track where the first bunch of transfers out of Sheep went, and from there and silkroad reloaded2 worked out which tumbler that the thief was using.

Here’s how silkroadreloaded2 describes what’s happened since (“Tomas” is the alleged owner of Sheep, and one of the suspects for many users):All day, we've been chasing the scoundrel with our stolen bitcoins through the blockchain.Around lunchtime (UK), I was chasing him across the roof of a moving train, (metaphorically).I was less than 20 minutes, or 2 blockchain confirmations, behind "Tomas".He was desperately creating new wallet addresses and moving his 49 retirement wallets through them, but having to wait for 3 or 4 confirmations each time before moving them again.Each time I caught up, I "666"ed him - sent 0.00666 bitcoins to mess up his lovely round numbers like 4,000.Then,all of a sudden, decimal places started appearing, and fractions of bitcoins were jumping from wallet to wallet like grasshoppers on a hotplate without stopping for confirmations.Shit!He was tumbling our stolen bitcoins a second time, and a tumbler is unbeatable....Unless you guess which one it is, nearly all the coins belong to the person you're tracking, jump in with him, and get jumbled up through the same wallets using the same algorithm.

I was hopping from foot to foot shouting "come on!"at my laptop, waiting an age for 6 blockchain confirmations to get 0.5 btc into "bitcoin fog".My half a bitcoin got sliced and diced through loads of wallets and I followed the biggest chunk with blockchain.info - along with 96,000 stolen ones!Or, in other words:He gathered 96,000 in one pot, then split it into about 50 smaller ones.then he saw me 666ing them all.Imagine a sports stadium with 96,000 people in it, each with $1000.He sent them all via different routes all over the world, but the same 96,000 people then arrived at a different stadium and he went to bed.Now there are 96,001, and I just phoned you on my mobile to tell you where the stadium is.A major problem with tumblers is that they only work with lots of bitcoins coming and going from a lot of different sources - if a tumbler is taking in 96,000 bitcoins, those will massively outnumber all other bitcoins being tumbled and it’ll be easy to spot them coming out the other end.bitcoin slave

Mix in a little of your own with all those other ones and you'll find out the wallet addresses that the tumbler uses, and it should be easy to spot large transactions splitting off from there.The fascinating consequence of this is that you can see the stolen bitcoins on the public blockchain, and as long as there are people keeping tabs on it there’s going to be no way for the thief to cash in on their haul.Considering how people rely on tumblers to maintain anonymity when buying illegal stuff online, this unusual loophole is something of a revelation.Right now, as you’re reading this, you can watch as the the thief starts trying to move their bitcoins on again—it’s currently down to 92,000 bitcoins and dropping as smaller chunks begin going out.achat bitcoin prix a paper trail will still be generated.litecoin market data

As soon as it's possible to link one real-life bank account or identity to any bitcoins from that stash, it will be possible to work out their real-life identity.This counts as one of the largest robberies in history at Bitcoin's current market value, ranking in the same company as real-life thefts like the $108m diamond theft at the Harry Winston store in Paris in 2008.96,000 bitcoins also places the thief as one of the wealthiest Bitcoin millionaires on the current rich list (but bear in mind that few serious Bitcoin players keep their currency in just one wallet)—and all without having to go to the trouble of wearing balaclavas or threatening someone with a gun.Let's watch and see what happens next.bitcoin vps torDid a hacker or hackers pull off a huge heist from one of the biggest black market drug-selling sites, or did the operators of the anonymous digital narcotics bazaar, Sheep Marketplace, just get away with stealing at least $5.4 million and perhaps as much as $40 million from their clients?ubuntu run bitcoin server

After the shutdown of Silk Road in October, Sheep Marketplace became the most popular illicit virtual drug shop.Like Silk Road, Sheep Marketplace was a Deep Web site accessible via the Tor network; customers paid in the digital currency Bitcoins.But by Saturday, Tapscape reported, "It appears as though the entire site was a scam, resulting in all of the buyers and sellers losing their money.Concerns regarding the legitimacy of the site came into play once the administrators at the marketplace decided to prevent vendors from withdrawing any of their bitcoins from the site."cay tien bitcoinThen on Sunday, Sheep Marketplace administrators posted on the homepage: We are sorry to say, but we were robbed on Saturday 11/21/2013 by vendor EBOOK101.bitcoin plus block explorerThis vendor found bug in system and stole 5400 BTC – your money, our provisions, all was stolen.bitcoin wallet on usb

We were trying to resolve this problem, but we were not successful.We are sorry for your problems and inconvenience, all of current BTC will be ditributed to users, who have filled correct BTC emergency adress.I would like to thank to all SheepMarketplace moderators by this, who were helping with this problem.I am very sorry for this situation.Sheep’s owners have used that theft to justify closing the market without returning the bitcoins stored in the market by users, despite claiming that they would redistribute those coins to users’ “emergency addresses.” Sheep users and other Bitcoin followers on reddit say that the administrators began blocking withdrawals of bitcoins from the site more than a week ago, and may have absconded with as much as $44 million from the site’s users, pointing to a movement of 39,900 bitcoins visible in the public record of Bitcoin transactions known as the blockchain.spend bitcoin from paper wallet

Sheep Marketplace is being called the “biggest Darknet scam ever” by some roaringly-angry robbed people and DeepDotWeb is warning, “Let us remind you that we have recently published a claim from one of the Sheep old moderator[s] warning that the same owner is planning a second scam – so we urge you to think twice before trusting another marketplace, especially those who are recommended by the sheep staff.” Sheep Marketplace linked to a new drug bazaar, Tormerket, in their “Sheep is down” message.But the Tormerket operators said, “First of all, we are not associated with the sheep team.The sheep admin is linking us on their frontpage.This is the worst PR we can get right now.Please admin remove the link.And most important thing: delete all data and backups to keep the users safe.” “A site called Black Market Reloaded stopped letting new users register on 1 December saying it could not handle the influx of users caused by the closure of Sheep,” added BBC. started spreading the word on 11/27 that Sheep could be a scam.

The Daily Dot added, "Most damning, several vendors who are admins, moderators, or closely affiliated with admins, are reported to have suddenly started doing something which is very frequently seen in drug market cons: Offering far larger quantities than they ever have before, at unusually low prices (50% or less than their previous pricing), and requiring FE (immediate and upfront release of funds to them rather than going through escrow).Frequently done to rope in the maximum amount of hopeful suckers before bailing with the money."Meanwhile, reddit user sheeproadreloaded2 is chasing “the scoundrel with our stolen (96,000) bitcoins through the blockchain.” The Secret Service and FBI have offered no comment on whether the feds seized the Bitcoins, or if they are “investigating fraud allegations.” Yet it seems unlikely that dealers and buyers of illicit drugs on a black market site would lodge complaints with the feds.This theft, either by the operators or by a hacker as the admins claim, highlights some of the most disturbing problems with doing business over the Deep Web.