For a PC in one's workplace, in a hotel convenience room, cash register desk, or internet cafe, the part that needs to be inside the PC is the resistor and two shielded probe cables leading to a digital oscilloscope hidden somewhere else.  Othwerwise one would need a small circuit that includes the A-D converter, some memory, and some means to transmit the data out at a suitable opportunity, e.g. by bluetooth. It may be hard to fit that inside a laptop, but perhaps the physical hacker can remove a speaker or some other component whose absence will not be noticed.

Recall that the whole point of a hardware wallet is to keep the keys safe even when using an untrusted machine to sign transactions or hand over a public key.  Requiring the host to have trusted hardware would be a significant restriction to its scope.

The power measurement could be done from inside the PC, by inserting the resistor and voltage probes in the wires leading to USB port.

Turning off the progress display (which, according to that paragraph, a user can do without disconnecting the screen) reduces the noise and simplifies the analysis of the signal.  A more thorough analysis could perhaps succeed even if the progress display is active.


That protection is effective if someone stole the Trezor and tried to extract the private key by telling it to produce the public key.  But if the power measurement rig is hidden inside the PC, the trick could be used even without stealing the device.  Just wait until the user himself tries to use it.

Sorry folks, please don't pay attention, he is one of my personal exclusive trolls.  I still suspect that he may be a Brazilian student that I flunked, hence his generosity in rendering his services for free, 24/7.

Did you understand it?

Ahem.  Anyone remembers a guy who used to post warnings here about hypothetical physical attacks, and got called retard, paranoid, fudster, shill, and some nastier things?...


Until 1.3.2, a physically compromised PC could extract the private key from a Trezor, if the owner happened to had the display turned off (or perhaps even with the display was turned on).  But that is good news for Trezor owners! 

My recollection from what I read is that Force infiltrated (remotely) SilkRoad as an employee well after it was up and running.  How could he have been the brain behind SilkRoad before Ross created it?


But that is why the FBI likes bitcoin.  Crooks think that they can tunnel under the AML barriers by requesting payment in bitcoins instead of dollars. But they get caught when they try to spend the bitcoins on Lamborghinis and castles, because to do that they have to go through "trusted third parties" (ahem!) who will report them to the cops...

Edit: Force was the only one who infiltrated SR; the other rogue agent just helped him stage Force's murder for hire.  Correct?

I won't go as far as saying that bitcoin was created for that purpose, but my impression is that the FBI does like it for that reason.

I read a lot of stuff already.  Could you please summarize what is new in those docs, the point you are trying to make?  That Ross was induced by rogue agents to create SilkRoad?

(Bitcoin also helped the FBI to catch and indict those two agents, by the way.)

No joke.  A year ago, at the NY hearings, the FBI testified that they were not worried about bitcoin, so I read.  To this day, I have not read of anyone from US law enforcement calling for it to be banned.  Not even after the ransomware attacks against government offices.

Objectively, catching Ross Ulbricht must have been much easier than catching a traditional drug dealer, since much of the investigation could have been done remotely, by agents sitting at their desks, with hot coffee and donuts at hand...

Nominated for the Best Pun Oscar.

Trading of BIT shares (GBTC) on OTCQX will begin in Two More Weeks^TM

Yes, that's correct, thanks!

Uh, OK, if you say so.  Sorry for the misplaced skepticism.  Let's give the guys a chance. 

The coin is TRULY anonymous and private.  No one will ever discover its market price, or even where to trade it.

But, if you join, you may have a chance to go to an investors convention in some fancy resort in Thailand, like those fortunate MyCoin investors had.

Well, stoned high school kids need to buy things too. 

Or market-makers building some initial liquidity, in anticipation.

By the way, even if no investors want to sell for the current price, I would think that some should post offers to sell at a sufficiently high price. No?

An "emergency" could be an opportunity to invest in some promising startup, buy a house, etc.

Very few investors had an opportunity to cut their losses.  The maturity period may have been 6 months when the fund started, but it is now 12 months.  Redemptions have been blocked since Oct/2014, and investors were not allowed to sell their shares to anyone else besides BIT.  So the only opportunity for loss cutting was the window between Mar 2014 and Oct 2014 for 6-month maturity shares, or just Sep-Oct 2014 for 12-month maturity.  At that time people may have been more optimistic about future recovery than they are now.  That may explain the relatively small amount of redemptions listed on that report.

PS. According to their 2014 report filed with the SEC (available through the OTCQX page), there have been some redemptions in 2014.  The ~69 M$ figure I computed is the net total investment to date; if those redemptions were made at profit, the actual amount invested by the current BIT share holders was even larger than the net total.

PS2. Also from that report, I understood the bitcoins held by Greyscale are not insured against theft, embezzlement, or accidental loss; and Greyscale refuses to be held liable for losses to investors resulting from such events.  Could someone please confirm this?

I find it hard to believe that nobody will want to sell.  Surely some will have lost faith and will want to cut their losses, or will need the money for some emergency/

According to the data posted by the OP, there may be between 200'000 and 300'000 BIT shares that were issued in September and October of 2013, when the price was ~130 $/BTC.  Their owners could sell now at ~250 $/BTC and still make a respectable ROI.  All shares issued after the first week of Nove/2013 were sold above today's price.

However, ~180'000 of those shares (~18'000 BTC) were the "seed" provided by the fund creators.  They may have different motivations than ordinary investors.

By the way, that is the main motivation for someone to create a fund: it is a way to sell a large hoard of BTC to a new market ("old-fashioned investors"), therefore without depressing the price.  And then also maybe make some money from fees, if the fund becomes popular.  Even if they play strictly by the rules and don't try to trade with their BTC holdings.

Folk, seriously, LEOcoin was created by two guys involved with a fraudulent operation in Pakistan.  They deny being responsible for the fraud, and say that they cooperated with authorities etc.; but it does not matter, their business experience is in the "fraud" sector of the economy, not in the "cryptocurrency" sector.  On top of that, their business model includes rewards to people for bringing more people in. Anyone with an ounce of brain would stay clear of a company like that, just in case.