I decided to wait a week before posting this on the main sub. Here goes:-
"I've got a feeling that the handcuffs have locked. The last withdrawal from Nucleus was on 13 April, a hefty 12 btc which is almost certainly by the owner (there is 5000 btc remaining in the marketplace wallets, nothing stolen).
Nucleus' owner sent it to this wallet:-
https://blockchain.info/address/1Hxt8gUKqkJP2PhCXyWMVB1SGYbMGWyuAR
Which has been in use for a few months, and has had 1668 btc pass through it - $714 k (lots of small payments in, but the bulk of the money is from Nucleus). Not bad for 3 months!
https://blockchain.info/charts/received-per-day?address=1Hxt8gUKqkJP2PhCXyWMVB1SGYbMGWyuAR
Here's the troubling part:- If we look at it in walletexplorer, we can see that he cashed out 59 btc to localbitcoins recently
https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/3c6ff0f47e7246e0
Scroll down to 2nd April. He deposited 10, 10, 10, 10, 10 and 9btc to localbitcoins, without tumbling.
I think that one subpoena to LBC later, Nucleus went down, and that guy's (usually busy) wallet fell silent.
I didn't want to post this on the main sub."
It may be that the marketplace admins were arrested at the same time, or that they haven't confirmed the arrest in case it alerted the cops to the fact that they have the right man in custody, and not a very big vendor. They must surely know that they have arrested Nucleus' owner, because the site is still down.
The cops may have access to the server, but I think they would have put up a "seized" notice by now, and started draining the bitcoins. I really hope I'm wrong and this is a straight exit scam, because at least gwern can't read all your messages between you and vendors.
Lets all keep our fingers crossed for Mr. Nucleus. Something bad has happenned, but he hasn't robbed us and it looks like he DID manage to shut his laptop down before the cops got it and he's telling them nada.
You've probably seen enough of blockexplorer to make you think twice about taking your bitcoin out now, even if you could.
The best scenario is that Mr Nucleus manages to sneak his user ID and password out via his lawyer to one of the admins. They bring the site back up for a day or two, and you all withdraw your nitcoin and delete anything you can.
Site owners can sneak their earnings out if they tumble them, Mr Nucleus did a good job of hiding amongst the crowd. BUT IF YOU TAKE BITCOIN OUT WHEN THE SITE IS DOWN AND NORMAL USERS CAN'T WITHDRAW BITCOIN, COPS WILL SPOT THAT YOU ARE THE SITE OWNER like I did. 59 btc is quite a lot to sell in one day on localbitcoins, even if you keep each transaction down to 10 btc.
Localbitcoins are based in Finland, not North Korea. If the cops ask for the username assotiated with a particular wallet address they have to cooperate and the cops have your name, account number and sort code.
I'm going to get trolled by the usual guys telling you I don't know anything about bitcoin, but you can follow my working above for yourself. Remember that walletexplorer is good at looking at the whole wallet app eg electrum, multibit, mycelium - which can all use several (or thousands) of bitcoin addresses. Blockchain.info is better at looking at one address at a time. It doesn't know if a wallet belongs to nucleus or localbitcoins or the same android phone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Tj7ZUD138
Nothing never done before the time time time
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