China’s ‘The US hacks itself to make us look bad’ theorists return with a crypto conspiracy The Chinese agency that has accused the USA of cyberattacks on its own infrastructure to make Beijing look bad is back with another theory: Washington’s actions against cryptocurrency crooks are just attempts to dominate the global financial system. The agency behind these theories is China's National Computer Virus Emergency …
Would the US hack itself for PR? Of course, they are idiots.
They wouldn't succeed though, because they are idiots.
Would the US use shady methods to go after crypto crooks? Stop, you had me at *shady methods*.
But, the family of the POTUS are precisely those cryptocurrency crooks. How would they prevent an own goal?
So, nice try, but we aren't buying it.
The USA is too incompetent and corrupt to undertake either operation.
Security for a British company - almost every attack we see is launched from a US VPS host.
I completely accept the point that US is also the biggest target, so attacks are launched from there by adversaries.
However, there seems to be entire networks of VPS hosts who are setup purely to provide platforms to launch attacks from (some even accepting nothing by crypto payments to rent servers!). It's absolutely insane they haven't been busted, or that their upstream internet provider hasn't pulled the plug on them.
It's so frequent and constant (year after year) that we block logins entirely from the US (we don't have offices there).
If the Chinese government are so concerned about the evils of a dollar dominated world economy, all they have to do is make the Yuan freely convertible and removed their exchange and capital controls. Then they can have a fair fight with the dollar, and then complain about dirty tricks. At the moment, none are needed to keep the dollar dominant. The Eurozone can't even manage the Euro properly within their own economies, and no other currency is big enough - although the Yen and the Pound are still important global currencies.
Even the BRICS bank won't invest in many projects in Russia, because they're incapable of raising capital within the BRICS economies - and so have to tap Western capital markets, where many Russian organisations are sanctioned. So the BRICS bank would be unable to raise capital to invest in other BRICS projects. I mean, all they have to do is to raise their capital from the oil rich states, I'm sure the Saudis could create an investment fund not linked to any of their other ones, which therefore doesn't care about sanctions, because it only invests in the BRICS bank. But then, part of the problems, is that nobody outside (and not many inside) China trusts the Chinese capital markets - so they might have to look at having some kind of rule-of-law. Not something a communist party run government likes to have.
Of course, Trump would like to torch rule-of-law in the US. He's unlikely to last long enough to do that on his own, so the next President is really going to matter.
Is the dollar truly freely convertible?
Yes. That's why it's the currency used for large chunks of the oil trade. If I sell a billion dollar's worth of oil to someone in China, and they pay me in Yuan, I can't freely spend that - because I'm not in Chain. More, I can't change that Yuan into Pounds, Euros or anything else, without getting approval from the Chinese government. And I'd imagine that's harder for a foreign company to do, than a Chinese one.
Also, it's common for lots of internationally traded commodities to have a price in a fixed currency. This means everyone knows what price they're talking about. So the International Metals Exchange is in London, and I believe quite a few metals are therefore priced in Sterling.
However there's no conspiracy here. If I want to buy a bunch of oil, I can pay in whatever currency is mutually agreeable. The price will still be set in dollars, according to the market price, but we can convert that into anything. Cuba paid Venezuela for their oil in a combination of not very good bodyguards for Maduro and doctors for the Venezuelan government clinics.
One of the other reasons for global currencies is trade imbalances. If you're buying natural gas from Qatar, they've got a pretty small economy. They aren't likely to be buying enough things in Europe to make up for the fact that they sell loads of LNG. So the Europeans don't have the Dihrams to buy that oil (not enough trade going in the other direction), and the Qataris might not want the Euros - so everyone agrees on dollars. If Qatar has a use for the Euros, such as buying sports teams or investing in the European capital markets, then they can do the deal in Euros.
Similarly, Russia is selling lots of oil to India, at some nice discounts. But they can't use the dollar, because of sanctions. So how to pay? India don't have an Rubles. India export foodstuffs, but that bit of the Russian economy is doing very well, so there's not need there. Some of the difference might be made up in sanction-busting, India imports stuff Russia can't get - and shifts it to Russia for the oil. Or they could trade in Yuan, but Indian companies can't get hold of that, because of Chinese capital controls. That's why people normally use the dollar, because everyone can find a use for those.
If I sell a billion dollar's worth of oil to someone in China, and they pay me in Yuan, I can't freely spend that - because I'm not in Chain. More, I can't change that Yuan into Pounds, Euros or anything else, without getting approval from the Chinese government.
The first part is the same as if you traded in bitcoin. You can't freely spend that - no one other than ransomware criminals is pricing things in bitcoin and directly accepting them (if anyone is pricing real products like cars or whatever in bitcoin they've had to double those prices in the past six months lol) You have to convert bitcoin to dollars or euros or whatever first and spend that to "buy" things in bitcoin in the real world, which means it is not a currency by anyone's definition.
If China thinks crypto something the US should embrace more, why aren't they embracing letting people trade their yuan in for bitcoin? I know I know, because they don't want them to have a backdoor way to convert their yuan into dollars or euros. They want to force those who sell to China to also buy from China, to support their export based economy.
It has been suggested that if you are a horrible leader of a country that has oil, the US doesn't have a particular problem with you being horrible - like exporting weapons to "freedom fighters", or invading a smaller country to grab its resources. The only crime is asking for payment in Euros, or bartering for food, services, etc. (from countries other than the US?) rather than the Petrodollar. Some even suggest that the Petrodollar is the only thing holding up the US...
Some even suggest that the Petrodollar is the only thing holding up the US... ..... Tim99
And whenever such is certainly so is it a systemic catastrophic weakness and monumental exploitable vulnerability easily able to crash and collapse right dodgy fiat and ponzi stock and unicorn equity markets ‽.
And that is correctly shared here as both a question and a fact ..... a quantum enigma where and when a this is also a that and whenever vitally and virtually entangled together a RAT invasion and infestation for ....... well, Capture et Correction sind les mots du jour, n’est-ce pas? :-) .......... https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2026/feb/27/im-fully-prepared-for-our-dystopian-future-holliday-grainger-on-ai-firearms-training-and-the-capture
And it is a real live current running present day existential threat.
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