I’m sorry to say this is not dead internet.

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That sounds kind of ideal, but I feel like their actions might have been justifiable.

If a massive heist like this triggered a run on one of the largest exchanges (Binance), potentially leading to a liquidity crisis, the consequences for the ecosystem could be far worse than temporarily freezing specific addresses holding stolen stablecoins.

Not saying that's what would have happened, but it seemed like a real possibility. And I'm not saying freezing assets is good in general, but in this particular case, maybe it was the lesser evil.

governments freeze currency all the time.

Put some pyramid in that blockchain?!

The accent makes no sense

It seems like bitcoin, currently 78719, was only 58526 on 30 June. That's 34.5% up in four months, meeting the definition of bull market.

Yes, typo.

I think the point is more that when something bad happens in markets it creates fear, which generally leads to downturns (for at least some time).

Binance has a market cap just shy of $100B, so a $5.8B sure hurts, but it’s not a showstopper I’d say.

I don't think the security trade-off for most people is clear here.

Given things like the ledger hardware attack[1] I think the time indexed risk of using a centralized exchange is probably lower than doing self-custody.

I understand that many people do self-custody for philosophical reasons, but I think trying to disguise this as a security decision ("If your crypto was stolen in this, it wasn't your crypto.") is arguable at best.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/70f69253-6017-4259-95c9-48bf0e088...

So what happened with all of those with hardware wallets that have been pwned?

There apparently is no such thing as “your crypto” with how many security problems there are.

Code is law!

This is highly insensitive and highly logical. I am very conflicted.

not your keys not your coins...

If someone steals your wallet, it wasn't your money, just the free market working as intended.

Controlling your own crypto keys is like having your net worth in cash or gold stored in your house. It could easily be lost or stolen or destroyed in a fire unless you take extraordinary precautions and then it is all gone.

Holding assets in USD isn't the same as paying taxes.

Someone is certain to buy dirty coins at the right price point.

I vividly remember a number of discussions/debates during that time (including on HN). I was more favorable to cryptocurrency in those days, and one of the things that contributed to my disillusionment was watching the people deepest and closest to it rediscover financial regulation from first principles, now that it was in their interest.

Laws and contracts are just words unless there is someone willing and able to enforce them. Which is how constitutions are regularly ignored and perverted by dictators.

The DAO incident was a special case. It was only sane to do the rollback because the stolen funds were time-locked up for 28 days.

Ethereum never did it again, rolling back hacks didn’t (and couldn’t) become normal policy. IMO, they shouldn’t have made an exception, as it set a bad example.

I’ve seen a few other small projects attempt to do rollbacks since, but it usually turns into some kind of mess. In most hacks, the coins aren’t time-locked and quickly get laundered through smaller exchanges (and other services) which act as mixers. The stolen coins end up in the hands of a bunch of innocent people, and the rollback then causes way more harm as those users lose their coins.

The unforked variant of the network was kept alive for years. Why didn't it prevail over the forked variant?

I don't think this counts as takesies backsies. This incident clearly followed the code is law principle, the whole point is that a majority forms the chain of truth. In this case, a majority decided to splinter and use a different chain where the incident never occurred.

As far as I understand blockchain, that is the system working as intended. Some nodes choose to run Ethereum Classic and some choose to run Ethereum. Isn't that the whole point? Decentralisation?

Or, as Upton Sinclair noted, what a man can understand is closely aligned with his current self-interest.

...while, generally, being thoroughly fleeced by whichever set of wolves (who do understand monetary systems very well indeed) gets wind of the situation and manages to snag the best seats at the feeding trough filled with naive money.

in lisp

Do you understand the monetary system? If so, what specific steps do you suggest I take to acquire a similar understanding?

Edit: the downvotes are suggesting I'm missing something. I think my communication style could be improved.

>And like the DAO hack on Ethereum showed, if most people who run blockchain software decide that something never happened, they can revert transactions that way.

Isn't that a pretty integral part of the blockchain? 51% attacks were even featured on the HBO show Silicon Valley.

Oh so you're saying a central authority can declare your currency worthless at any time? Good to know. Sounds very like a central bank issued currency though?

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don't bet against the house. eventually you have to cash the chips out for real money, and the house might throw out the old chips.

Unless the house is monero or something and you want a lifetime supply of drugs.

No takebacks make perfect sense UNTIL you hand over your keys to a third party;p

Interesting, so it ties into the NSA vs CIA war? Some nerds from NSA/MIwhatever launched crypto, then the CIA trust fund nepo kids hijacked/weaponized it through tether

There's an amazingly hilarious interview with the Deltec's "Deputy CEO" and CNBC back in the day:

- was conducted from his gaming rig

- about Deltec's (and therefore Tether's) money movements being several times larger than all the banking in their country was due to people misunderstanding the country's two banking licenses, the names of which HE "couldn't remember right now" (the Deputy CEO of a bank who can't remember the name of the banking licenses where they operate?!?), and he "wasn't sure which [banking license] the bank has, but we might (emphasis mine) have both"

- oh yeah, said Deputy CEO's "resume": 33 years old, by his LinkedIn claimed to have graduated HEC Lausanne in Switzerland with a Master of Science at the age of 15... celebrating his graduation by immediately being named Professor of Finance at a university in Lebanon. While dividing his spare time between running hedge funds in Switzerland (called Indepedance [sic] Weath [sic] Management) and uhh... Jacksonville, FL.

Once CNBC's viewers started ridiculing and questioning both Deltec Bank and Tether and when that looked hilariously bad, they removed his info from the bank's website.

And when that looked bad, they added it back.

And when that looked bad, they removed the bank's whole website, and replaced it with a broken WP template with no working links.

Hey, look, several years after that, go to Deltec's website. "Ultra sophisticated private banking" running on a different WordPress site. "Client login"? "This site can’t be reached Check if there is a typo in ebanking.deltecbank.com. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN". Just as has been the case for years.

... and then the entire bank website was replaced with a low-effort WordPress template. Their online banking was Javascript hard coded to refuse all login attempts.

"Sounds legit to me", said the crypto bros. "Fuck the regulatory system. This is the new era."

It's tethered to the USD. It seems expected that the government in charge of USD is doing the most blacklisting.

Where coins are held is completely irrelevant. There are cryptocurrencies on real blockchains, and while the technology is dumb and mostly useless, nobody denies that PoW and properly implemented PoS are decentralized.

And then there are centrally issued and controlled coins on private, permissioned ledgers a.k.a. databases. But most cryptobros never cared about the technology nor the political goal, so anything can be called a cryptocurrency as long as it's a medium for gambling and speculation outside the regulated financial framework.

In the beginning of crypto people believed in it. But as the numbers went up and up and up it attracted the wrong people. And the original people left.

Now the traditional banking system is basically rebuilt in crypto. The banks are busy the exchanges. The EU even talk about making it illegal to store money in your own wallet.

It's still useful for the portion of the audience that doesn't realize the depth of the fraud.

It's a poor dunk anyway. The crypto space is vast and has many kinds of coins and communities/people. Some people seem to think it's still 2012.

And it's impossible to mix them because Ethereum is even anonymous than Bitcoin.

Isn't it already too late at that point? The tokens would have moved already.

Not your keys, not your crypto.

Keys? Hahaha, still not your crypto.

In other words, they are essentially casino chips, not cryptocurrencies.

99.99999% is five nines too many?

And your point?

Do you price your savings based on 12hours of market volatility, or do you look at it cumulatively over a duration?

I understand the rationale around targeting inflation and seeking to actively avoid deflation. That being said, I wish the inflation target was less than 1%.

Eventually, possibly within my lifetime, a Big Mac meal is going to cost $50.

> You don’t want your actual currency to gain value just by waiting.

Relative to what? Talk of BTC gaining value is primarily wrt USD; I'd be perfectly happy with my actual currency (GBP) gaining value wrt USD.

I suppose BTC can only 'deflate' in the long-run (and with an assumed supply of goods and services available in exchange for it) since the mintable volume is fixed. But perhaps it exposes that talking of currencies inflating is a bit sloppy, as it doesn't really make sense for BTC, and it's the economy or banking system that inflates really..

That's why it's not safe to hold fiat money, it's by design. Governments don't want people to hold it, they want them to cycle it, spending it, investing it, and lending it out.

The existence of harder forms of money (gold, bitcoin, etc) is an expected consequence of how the system is designed, and not in any way a subversion of it. Somehow, both sides seem to miss this point.

It kinda is too bad because every inflation miss compounds, permanently. The 6 and 7% annual rates the US experienced a few years back are permanently embedded in price levels - it's not like the Fed adjusted its target down for a few years to counteract past years of high inflation, nor is it even evident that current policies are working, given that inflation hasnt actually been at 2% since 2018 (excluding 2020) and inflation is rising again in 2026. Obviously the late 70's were worse, statistically, but the Fed took enormous steps while the current Fed seems far more hesitant to ignore the government and Wall St.

>You don’t want your actual currency to gain value just by waiting

You might not, I do.

Tell you what: you go short btc/usd, I'll go long btc/usd, and let's circle back in 10 years and see who did better.

Sure. Since the invention of say Bitcoin, which of those assets would you have preferred to own and why?

Compare a purchase of any commodity, bond, precious metal, or ETF/mutual fund in 2008 to BTC's performance since 2008. Or 2009, or 2010, or 2011, or 2012, or 2013, or 2014, or 2015, or 2016, or 2017, or 2018...

Like I said, prove me wrong.

Tbh both ways of phrasing are fine to me. $1.56 today will get you as much as $1 in 2008, looking at it simplistically.

https://xkcd.com/538/ I've never been so honoured to be able to link one of these.

Is that what happens here? Tether just pocket the difference?

Because Tether is an obvious fraud linked to these other obviously fraudulent companies and predicated on trust in cryptocurrencies.

> Yeah totally not israeli hackers... it has to be scary kim.

The Israelis don't have any problem acquiring hard currency. North Korea does, and has an established MO of stealing crypto and running online moneymaking scams like ransomware.

Do you have any reason to believe this?

This fits the NK MO to a T. It does not fit Israeli intelligence activity. Your claim rings hollow without any support.

Could be Claude!

Well, looking at the way NK is demonized, you would think it was on a genocidal rampage, invading neighboring countries, and eliminating heads of sovereign states in pursuit of its Greater NK project.

You can move money into a crypto wallet without that wallet needing to do anything, or being online at all, or even having a private key that physically exists anywhere in the universe. It's just a public/private keypair; send it to the public key of a private key that's offline and it still exists on the blockchain, you just can't do anything until the matching private key comes online.

The point of a cold wallet is to keep the private key physically offline. That way you know it cannot be stolen by electronic means, because the physical device containing the key needed to authorize transactions is locked up and not powered on. Then you only power it on during very specific, audited times and conditions when it's needed to fund the hot wallet, which does all the actual automated trading and transfers.

GP's point is to have all incoming transactions to an exchange go to a cold wallet, which becomes a one-way sink, and then periodically the exchange powers up the cold wallet to sign transactions transferring assets to the hot wallet, which then funds all outgoing transactions. This isn't a bad architecture, though I'm not sure it'd save all that much here.

Most people in crypto are noobs, not hardened veterans of previous hacks.

By definition maybe they’re more risk tolerant. But I’m not sure they consciously identify as that.

Never use someone else's wallet to hold your money.

russia? others who dont care all that much?

the laundering wouldnt be all that hard to take those buttcoins on in exchange for clean ones.

business laundromats

From the article:

> “A lot of the people who come into this money are flashy, and they’re signaling that they have wealth,” he previously told The Post.

As long as you don't brag about it, I don't really see this being a real world issue. I think credit card fraud is a lot more likely.

Of course a guy with a net worth over a billion dollars would have 11m in hot wallet.

If someone steals my notebook I take a bigger hit on my net worth lol.

Living anonymously is about more than just shit posting. Not publicizing your wealth is a highly effective strategy.

You could treat them like bearer bonds. Split your holdings over multiple (like tens) of addresses. Sell individual addresses for cash. You'd need to do this via a trusted intermediary who could accept the cash and verify the address before making the exchange.

And yes, this is somewhat absurd. But so are online transactions that can be hacked with no backsies.

They let you play blackjack on online crypto casinos? The one casino game that you can famously beat the house on?