The hackers stole more cryptocurrency in one attack than all the funds stolen by North Korean cyber criminals in 2024, when the rogue state’s cyber attackers made off with around $1.3bn in digital coins, according to cryptocurrency analysts Chainalysis.
Crypto once again showing why it’s either just a casino with extra steps or a way to buy drugs rather than a serious solution for any currency or real world transactions.
It’s so amazing and digital and modern and easy to steal.
Specifically too it’s very easy to steal in bulk. Sure scamming grandma and grandpa out of their life savings has way fewer safeguards with crypto than with fiat currency, but it’s absolutely still possible without crypto and happens all the time. This is the monetary equivalent of stealing nearly 16,000 kg of gold – something unthinkable with fiat currency.
Though someone did steal 3,000 kg of gold one time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brink’s-Mat_robbery
Holy moly. 3,000 kg of gold at today’s price would be $281,382,000 (281 million dollars). Gold is $93,794 per kg at the moment.
That’s fucking WILD, I have never read about that.
It is insane that you can do that kind of a thing just sitting in front of a laptop with Tails now, though.
Yeah, it’s pretty crazy
They made a TV mini-series about it a few years ago. It’s called The Gold. If you’re in the UK, it’s on BBC iPlayer. If not, then there may be other means of acquiring it!
I will absolutely check that out, thank you!
Are there crypto scams? yes, and plenty of them. Can you buy drugs with them? sure (and I thinks that’s great!) Do either of the above statements get at the core issue here? not at all.
The issue here is not with the crypto itself. The issue here is the same issue that is regularly a problem anywhere software is deployed, digital security. The take away here is that many (all?) crypto exchanges are failing to properly secure their systems. Which is why the general rule that anybody investing in crypto should follow is never keep crypto in an exchange wallet unless you plan on trading it in the very short term. As an extension of that rule, you should never keep your crypto in a wallet that you don’t hold the private keys for. If you don’t have the private key for the wallet, it’s not your wallet. Not your wallet, not your crypto.
When your adversary is a nation-state with an actual army of hackers that can work 24/7 and deploy 0-days, it’s hard to say for sure the exchange is at fault for not handling security properly. This isn’t a lone Kevin Mitnick pulling a stunt, this is literal cyber warfare.
I have never really understood exchanges tbh. Centralizing decentralized currency feels like getting the downsides of normal money/investments with fewer of the benefits.
Its because crypto doesn’t work for 90% of things like people want to too so you have to use an exchange to make it faster.
You know you could’ve asked what I already know instead of assuming it’s nothing and giving me the most basic 101 lecture all because I spoke ill of the almighty crypto. I mined for three years.
It wasn’t meant as a lecture for you. I made no assumptions about what you know, just what you said. The lecture was for others coming by your comment because lots of people don’t know the dangers of keeping crypto in exchange wallets.
Apologies if I offended you.
I don’t think that was an attack on your knowledge, but rather a disclaimer for other readers. I could be wrong, though!
I would say it is specifically a problem with crypto, i addition to what you said.
you wouldn’t be able to do the above with a bank. They’d just make the transaction not to have happened.
with crypto, e.g. btc, you’d have to convince 2-3 of the big mining pools to undo the transction, so random private actors. and it undo all other transactions done as well.
maybe that it happens is not due to crypto. That it cant be remedied is certainly because crypto.
Yeah, but crypto bros specifically told me “Blockchain! Anonymous cryptographic fungible NFT AI!”