We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
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Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#2Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#3"French police free kidnapped Ledger executive" (Feb 2025), https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42819018
Physical security primer for Bitcoin (2019), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUgPhPkS2yc
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#4Reached? It's been happening for over a decade. Gosh, even the Bitcoin creator was probably murdered by "opportunists seeking to solve world hunger".
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#5Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#6Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system.
With banking systems, each bank account has a unique address (private, but they'll cooperate with the government and police easily, and are experienced doing so), and that address is associated with a real person... and it operates slowly, which means the police can easily catch up to transactions. A transaction that crosses country boundaries has more scrutiny and takes longer, giving the police even more time and information.
Crypto has public unique addresses (public keys), but there's no requirement any of them have names associated with them, and most don't. It operates more quickly than large bank wires, and easily crosses international borders.
I'm not a fan of crypto, but even with public ledgers, it's less traceable and more anonymous than normal banks of most (all?) countries.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#7Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
That has never stopped anyone, plenty of ways to launder money, quite a few of which are unique to crypto.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#8Could be worse. In Russia someone discovered a fake prison and incinerator in a police officer’s home.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#9Stealing most crypto money is about the dumbest thing ever, because all transactions (for most such currencies) are open to the public to scrutinise and de-anonymous at their leisure. And the police is included in 'the public'.
Even with a public ledger, it's harder to trace than, for example, forcing someone to wire the cash via the traditional banking system. With banking systems, each bank account has a unique address (private, but they'll cooperate with the government and police easily, and are experienced doing so), and that address is associated with a real person... and it operates slowly, which means the police can easily catch up t…
The lack of borders makes it more traceable as you don't run your head against a different jurisdiction bring unwilling to provide data. There's a lot of creative criminals though, and a lot of questionable creative crypto solutions that cater far too well to them.
Re: We have reached the "severed fingers and abductions" stage of crypto revolution
#10Baffles me how this industry is basically speedrunning through the troubled history of regular finance, and every piece of legislation and every institution has to be rebuilt from scratch even though the mechanisms and the problems are almost exactly the same.
I always found the idea of a free, unregulated financial market being a positive thing amusing. Many of these regulations were made because more or less complex loopholes got exploited and many less wealthy people lost their money. And quite a few of these people with practical experience in these various exploits are still around.