291–300 of 587 posts
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> as a means of settling disputes As a means of forcing someone to unwillingly settle a dispute in your favor that is. I have no sympathy for North Korea, but sanctions are not an alternative to war. Sanctions are an alternative to bullets.
How are bullets and war different?
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This. A lot of people seems to think that the USA bans everyone in the world to trade with cuba, even if they could buy an Havann Club in the store.
While USA does not ban everyone from doing trade with Cuba, USA does ban everyone who trades with Cuba from doing trade with the US. You can clearly see how this creates insentives for not trading with Cuba and instead trading with the far larger market next to it.
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Imagine knowing literally anything about north Korea and wanting to help that government. He should be put away for life for aiding crimes against humanity.
Lol what if by spreading crypto knowledge in totalitarian states, you give people in those states a viable way to preserve their income and assets in a way that no other asset class can? Imagine someone trying to protest or escape a regime imposing capital controls on citizens such as North Korea or Canada. What if, those citizens could simply memorize or encode a 12-24 word phrase that could preserve their net worth…
JFC. They don't have income or assets to begin with. Why TF else do you think they're stuck in those shitholes? The ones with money already left.
Did his PhD at Caltech under Christof Koch in computation and neural systems, was a super talented mathematician... and then he gets involved in crypto. I remember conversations with friends only a few years ago in which we would lament how young brilliant minds were eventually going on to work on adtech, and we would sigh and hope that the tide would turn. Boy, we were not prepared for this tide. Anyway, the NYSD re…
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How far down the "flew 8,000 miles to get there, climbed over the barbed wire fence, licked both his thumbs, and pressed them against the shiny parts labeled 'DANGER! 25,000 VOLTS!'..." rabbit-hole-of-stupid should one have to go, before it's 100% okay for me to stop caring whether or not his sentence was just?
"Man involved in community that regularly gets away with illegal shit surprised when he goes to jail for illegal shit" I'm definitely not defending him, but I can see why he'd feel confident not getting caught
According to the original complaint, a few months after being interviewed by an FBI agent on returning from his trip to North Korea, Griffith had the following conversation over text messages: Griffith: I need to send 1 [REDACTED UNIT OF CRYPTOCURRENCY] between North and South Korea. Other Guy: "Isn't that in violations of sanctions?" Griffith: It is. A few day later, also in text messages to someone else: Someone: W…
Source for those curious about this: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1222646...
Possibly because there are ongoing investigations about it? If this was bitcoin, they would likely state that.
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Because the civilized world would bring down the Kim regime, as we certainly should, if we could. Because they have nukes, we can't. This is getting to be a real problem as 21st-century history continues to unfold.
The "civilized" world had plenty of time to do that before NK got nukes, and it didn't. War in Korea would be far worse than peace.
The Korean War saw about 1.5 million civlian deaths, according to [1]. It's impossible to say how many died in the 1994-1998 famine alone, but [2] puts it at "240,000 to 3.5 million" and [3] cites figures of "up to 3 million."
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_famine
[3]: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/how-kim...
So, no. There are worse things than war. For allowing this situation to fester for multiple generations, history will judge us the way we talk about the "good Germans" who didn't lay a hand on anyone but who also did nothing to stop Hitler.
You're correct, though, in that the North Korean nuclear program is now an ideal excuse for continuing to do what we did before, which was nothing.
The founders of this country are rolling in their graves. Every part of this story. All he did was go to another country and spread truthful information. > "The most important feature of blockchains is that they are open. And the DPRK can't be kept out no matter what the USA or the UN says," This is conspiracy ? Is telling someone that a gun can kill now considered conspiracy to murder, too? Is it really the stance o…
>The founders of this country are rolling in their graves. Every part of this story. Some of them were put in their graves, for similar reasons - treason is treason. > All he did was go to another country and spread truthful information. This is nearly a non-sequitur. Analogous to, "All he did was goto another country to take advantage of the lower age of consent," which is objectively true, but blatantly illegal. >T…
I find the idea that someone who has not pledged their allegiance to a particular country can commit treason against said country to not make much sense.
"Just a couple national security secrets okay?"
He shouldn't have access to any such secrets afaik.
"I agree, he shouldn't be locked up. He should had been sentenced to hanging, from the neck."
I understand that it is easy to say such things online, especially since it is hard to humanize someone that you have only seen being talked about in various sites, but I think that you treat human lives way too cheaply, especially for something as minor.
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No, I think this is a misconception. Sanctions can work without government controlled money. Prosecuting terrorism or organized crime can be done without government controlled money. Catching tax evaders can be done without government controlled money. Everything can work without government controlled money, it just requires more on the ground police work. All of these things were done without government controlled m…
Sanctions only work that way in a world that doesn't exist - one with 100% agreement and compliance with sanctions at a nation-state level. The reason monetary controls are so critical to sanctions is that they make it more difficult for the countries that don't want to abide by the sanctions to do bypass them. Not impossible, but more difficult.