If cryptocurrencies are self-regulating, aren’t the techniques used by these hackers actually the best and most effective way to play the game by its own rules? Calling this behavior “cheating” smells of sore-loserism.
There is a certain Bitcoin evangelist who will preach the gospel of a self governing currency that via a system of rules will automatically validate transactions between trust-less parties in a decentralized manner over a globe-spanning internet protocol but then complain when that same system does not prevent them from accidentally sending the entire contents of their "wallet" to an address in North Korea.
The system does not represent ownership the system only tracks of the validity of transactions and if the North Korean government proposes a valid transaction of your BTC or ETH to an address they control and a mining-node includes that transaction in a block which a majority of the network accepts then those assets are no longer yours they belong to North Korea.
The properties of the crypto-asset ecosystem which allow it to be ungoverned also make it ungovernable.
I would imagine exchanges these days routinely monitor incoming and outgoing transactions, and if they suspect the funds are stolen, they are freezed. I would imagine North Korea doesn't have really an easy job laundering that BTC they have stolen.
These are but pricey bug bounties. This will lead to a more efficient and secure cryptocurrency market, as participants will insist on better financial controls, threatening to flee to the regulated fiat markets if their needs are not met. /s
I disagree. There's a tremendous amount of waste in the economy related to reconciling different companies' records of who owes what to whom and then getting that info to the bank and then hearing back from the bank about whether the debt was fully or partially paid and then relating that to whether the service continues to be rendered.
Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model would be a huge advantage.
It just hasn't happened because the vibes are wrong and it appears that they'll stay wrong for a while.
> There's a tremendous amount of waste in the economy related to reconciling different companies' records of who owes what to whom and then getting that info to the bank and then hearing back from the bank about whether the debt was fully or partially paid and then relating that to whether the service continues to be rendered.
Is all that really a tremendous waste, in the days of databases and instant communication? How much waste are we talking about here? I'd wager a lot of money it's at least one order of magnitude less than the literal heat waste produced by validating bitcoin transactions. Crypto is much more wasteful.
> Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model
The monetary system isn't what's preventing this. You can't provide a service and also charge for it in the exact same instant. If I hire a contractor to renovate my bathroom, there's a ton of negotiation, possible disagreements about whether the work is "done" or not, payment deadlines, etc., and crypto vs. fiat currency changes none of that.
i agree smart contracts are the way forward, but you don’t need crypto or blockchain to implement them. You do need a trusted third party, to adjudicate when things go wrong.
> It just hasn't happened because the vibes are wrong and it appears that they'll stay wrong for a while.
No. A civil society needs to be able to issue judgments that override transactions / seize assets. And therefore they cannot have automatons determining where the assets belong.
When criminals are caught with their hand in the cookie jar, we can't just shrug and say "gee I wish we had a way to get that money back."
I'm a big fan of bitcoin and to some extent cryptocurrency. I think it has real value. But I'm not deluded enough to think it can somehow replace all ledgers everywhere.
And pretty unique online irreversible near instant transactions. For this reason it was often the cheapest way to buy bullion online in a way that cleared in less than an hour, since most banks charge for a wire and credit cards (or vendor risk departments) charge high vendor premiums on bullion transactions.
> Hackers then send the ether to “mixers”—crypto platforms that co-mingle tokens from various users, obscuring their ownership. After that, the ether is swapped for bitcoin and then converted into tether, a token whose value is linked to the U.S. dollar.
Good timing for the US to lift sanctions on Tornado Cash [0].
Too many people think "lock them up" is the solution to crime, without considering that crime relies on certain types of infrastructure to remain in business. And that people who are "tough on crime" often have good reasons to keep operational the things that facilitate said crimes.
adding sanctions to a smart contract address that cannot appeal itself was not a winning position in the US courts
and determing that a smart contract deployment was a "foreign asset" was also not a winning position in the US courts, as its not clear if it was deployed on a node outside of the US to begin with, or if the person that actually sent the deployment transaction was a non-US citizen
The Treasury with its new head just short circuited that challenge and stopped wasting taxpayer money on this
yeah, stick with prosecuting the actual crime instead of the laziest approach of calling everyone a criminal for using a sanctioned smart contract
North Korea launders its stolen cryptocurrency through every available means. Including Tornado Cash, quite aggressively, which is why they were sanctioned. It is very hard to understand why the Trump administration would reverse those sanctions unless they are trying to aid this kind of money laundering.
It's pretty incredible that a sizable percentage of North Korea's GDP derives from crypto theft. Actually about the same percentage as Spain was pulling from the Americas at the end of the colonial period.
"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks"
The original point of Bitcoin was that someone else didn't keep custody of your money for you. You'd keep custody of it yourself, on your computer or a paper wallet.
Yet, there are tons of people who keep obscene amounts of Bitcoins on crypto exchanges or otherwise held by companies for them.
Why do people buy a cryptocurrency built on distrust of institutions that hold your money for you, and then give that cryptocurrency to an institution to hold it for them?
Did nobody learn anything when the former Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange imploded in 2013-2014?
Readit News
The system does not represent ownership the system only tracks of the validity of transactions and if the North Korean government proposes a valid transaction of your BTC or ETH to an address they control and a mining-node includes that transaction in a block which a majority of the network accepts then those assets are no longer yours they belong to North Korea.
The properties of the crypto-asset ecosystem which allow it to be ungoverned also make it ungovernable.
Oddly I am not in the least bit shocked. Now if we found out that this was an inside job I would again not be the least bit shocked.
This isn't sarcasm to me, but the rest of your comment is.
Dead Comment
0. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xtvg9/episodes/downloads
Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model would be a huge advantage.
It just hasn't happened because the vibes are wrong and it appears that they'll stay wrong for a while.
Why would the method of payment affect how you track accounts payable/receivable in your books?
Is all that really a tremendous waste, in the days of databases and instant communication? How much waste are we talking about here? I'd wager a lot of money it's at least one order of magnitude less than the literal heat waste produced by validating bitcoin transactions. Crypto is much more wasteful.
> Moving from an accounts-receivable/accounts-payable model to a insert-coin-receive-service model
The monetary system isn't what's preventing this. You can't provide a service and also charge for it in the exact same instant. If I hire a contractor to renovate my bathroom, there's a ton of negotiation, possible disagreements about whether the work is "done" or not, payment deadlines, etc., and crypto vs. fiat currency changes none of that.
Deleted Comment
No. A civil society needs to be able to issue judgments that override transactions / seize assets. And therefore they cannot have automatons determining where the assets belong.
When criminals are caught with their hand in the cookie jar, we can't just shrug and say "gee I wish we had a way to get that money back."
I'm a big fan of bitcoin and to some extent cryptocurrency. I think it has real value. But I'm not deluded enough to think it can somehow replace all ledgers everywhere.
Good timing for the US to lift sanctions on Tornado Cash [0].
Too many people think "lock them up" is the solution to crime, without considering that crime relies on certain types of infrastructure to remain in business. And that people who are "tough on crime" often have good reasons to keep operational the things that facilitate said crimes.
[0] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0057
and determing that a smart contract deployment was a "foreign asset" was also not a winning position in the US courts, as its not clear if it was deployed on a node outside of the US to begin with, or if the person that actually sent the deployment transaction was a non-US citizen
The Treasury with its new head just short circuited that challenge and stopped wasting taxpayer money on this
yeah, stick with prosecuting the actual crime instead of the laziest approach of calling everyone a criminal for using a sanctioned smart contract
The original point of Bitcoin was that someone else didn't keep custody of your money for you. You'd keep custody of it yourself, on your computer or a paper wallet.
Yet, there are tons of people who keep obscene amounts of Bitcoins on crypto exchanges or otherwise held by companies for them.
Why do people buy a cryptocurrency built on distrust of institutions that hold your money for you, and then give that cryptocurrency to an institution to hold it for them?
Did nobody learn anything when the former Magic: The Gathering Online Exchange imploded in 2013-2014?
From an outsider's perspective their methods seem typical.