
So, less than honest politicians, $big_corporation and such.
North Korean blockchain bandits stole more than half a billion dollars in cryptocurrency in 2024 alone, the US, Japan, and South Korea say. The sum of stolen assets totaled a little more than $659 million across five major incidents, although just two contributed a large portion of that. The BitcoinDMM crypto exchange was …
Not really, but some of those hit probably don't want to draw any attention to it as they can't provide satisfactory proof of where the money they 'invested' came from.
However, give it time and eventually there will be a mega-heist on one of the crypto companies and a pension fund that will have invested massively in it will lose multi-millions of dollars and go bust. All those peoples pensions will go up in smoke, but no-one responsible for 'investing' it in crypto will go to prison.
"However, give it time and eventually there will be a mega-heist on one of the crypto companies and a pension fund that will have invested massively in it will lose multi-millions of dollars and go bust. All those peoples pensions will go up in smoke"
FTX? It doesn't have to be a heist in the classic sense. If the exchange is being run by people that don't know what they are doing, things can implode without warning. A bunch of extremely large exchanges have folded taking loads of money with them since crypto first started.
It's a non-productive asset if you can call it an asset. There are many more better ways to put money to work than betting on something that is more akin to religion than real money.
Pardon my ignorance but I'm honestly unclear on how stealing crypto benefits North Korea. I assume it does or they wouldn't do it.
They're still under some of the most strict sanctions in the world so how do they "cash out" their loot? Having a load of Bitwhatzits isn't going to do you much good in the real world.
Who cashes it out for them? The Russians? The Chinese?
If it's the Russians, they're still sort of stuck since the Russians are under sanctions as well.
There has to be some sort of intermediary between North Korea and the outside world of commerce.
Someone with domain knowledge want to enlighten me?