351–360 of 421 posts
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so many hard drives in so many landfills where we thought "hell, it's only $20 in btc, hardly worth reclaiming" I'm proud to say that I was able to acquire about $100 worth of product from the dark web using only what would turn out to be several hundred thousand dollars in bitcoin, so at least mine are still in circulation
I cashed out a significant amount a few years ago to help pay for an IVF attempt (sadly, it didn't work out for us, but no regrets). Obviously that amount would represent a large sum today. On the flip side, when I was packing up our house, I found some old paper wallets that I assumed were empty (from a time when I was doing some experimentation with various scripts). One of them had about $2k in BTC, that I promptl…
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Taylor is on to something here: https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1978273602719158448 tl;dr: Someone cracked these weak entropy wallets 3+ years before anyone else and kept it secret Whether that was the USG or another entity has yet to be revealed
Please use xcancel: https://xcancel.com/tayvano_/status/1978273602719158448 when linking to X since a lot of us don't have accounts or just don't want to log in.
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No, it was a "Russia invading Ukraine" sized miscalculation. The "wily" Cambodian leader's military got their asses handed to them by the Thai army, and Cambodia is suffering a lot more from the still ongoing border closure than Thailand is. Remittances, tourism, trade, you name it, it's all in the doldrums. (Good time to visit Angkor Wat if you can swing it, though.)
Militarily you are right, but remember war is politics by other means. Thailand's Thaksin is now in jail and his daughter, basically his avatar, has been removed from government. Mission accomplished. And to get a sense of how powerful this scam industry is in the country, the latest news is of a young Korean murdered after being kidnapped by a scam gang. Korea has responded forcefully, calling out the danger, yet th…
They don't want to go home because they fear the Chinese criminal gangs would follow them home in South Korea where they were recruited in the first place by Korean-speaking Chinese for debts they accrued while they were held captive. Others also fear they could also be held liable for participating in their fraud -- even if they were forced -- not because they love getting beaten.
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" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith. " " Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Edit: please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45597318 also. I…
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Compared to Cambodia, sure, but it's an international crime gang, with this particular one being just one branch. I wonder if this was their biggest hoard or if they had more? Really poor financial management to have all that money concentrated that much though. It either means they dropped the ball bigly, or this is spare change for them... although Bitcoin's market cap is $2.24 trillion at the moment, $15 billion i…
The difference between 15 billion and 2.24 trillion is pretty much 2.24 trillion. I'm not sure there is a definition of the word where this is true .
Trying to liquidate $15bn to USD reasonably quickly would very likely cause a massive drop the price, which would correspondingly drop the market cap by potentially many times that $15bn.
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Crypto is nonsense for a lot of its stated purposes once you strip away the shared delusions that have been propped up by us living in a fairly stable global society that at least goes through the motions of supporting the rule of law (though this is obviously changing quickly in some places recently). But then again holding some piece of paper (or a database entry) that says you own some gold that you don't actually…
If you don't pay your debts or taxes then even items that you own and which are in your possession can be taken from you, thanks to the rule of law. Conversely, if someone comes along and takes it from you without legal justification, the rule of law allows you to claim it back. That same rule of law ensures that you are entitled to the gold you own that isn't in your possession. Drawing the line at possession is arb…
It's 127,271 Bitcoins. Interesting choice not to mention the number of Bitcoins but use its current market value in USD. I feel like this says something about Bitcoin but not sure what exactly. Edit: Wow, people really don't want to know how many Bitcoins were seized :)
Ross Ulbricht had more, at over 144,000⁽¹⁾, with additional 51,000 seized from a hacker⁽²⁾.
[1] https://fortune.com/crypto/2025/01/22/ross-ulbricht-pardon-b...
[2] https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h....
Seems organised crime is taking advantage of less-policed (or lawless) regions in Cambodia and Burma. The spectre of a similar scam has resulted in lower Chinese tourism to Thailand. Basically Chinese (among other nationalities) tourists were led from the airport by fake immigration staff, put into cars and driven to Burma and forced to work 18 hour days in scam call centers. A chilling but extremely worthwhile read.…
Were? they still are. It's not even a small amount there are thousands of people at these centers.