As soon as you have an entirely new power structure you have a new government.

Different people may be on top, with different aims (...arguable, but let's pretend.)

But there will always be a government of some sort making the big decisions for the benefit of its ruling clique.

Who are these "crypto enthusiasts" who, in 2026, have a "stated goal" of "some alternative 'currency'"?

Look at the schedule of any crypto conference - ethereum events in particular, but others as well - and you will find that your critique has already been widely adopted. The discussion is around replacing power structures and sources of injustice, not merely 'currency'.

I was reluctant to get involved in blockchain tech because I don't care for currency and don't view it as a likely organizing principle for humans for the next thousand years. That was in like 2016.

Today, nearly every blockchain project attempts to overcome challenges other than currency.

and any attempt to avoid government oversight simply hits a wall of being illegal

see monero getting outlawed by EU countries

multisig escrow + privacy will bring this new power structure

The reversibility of transactions is often brought up but I don't think that is the main differentiator, or any at all really.

First, both cryptocurrencies and traditional finance systems have chosen to and have chosen not to reverse or freeze criminal transactions in the past. Decentralized blockchains have chosen to do so at least once [0]. The traditional finance system has chosen not to many times and even large sums [1] [2]. It really comes down to how much is stolen and how much influence the victim(s) have.

No, instead I think the main difference is the speed of transactions. Some blockchains operate within milliseconds while bank transactions take days. Even instant transfers are actually settled on a way longer cadence in reality.

That means attackers can do a fast sweep on blockchains, which is not possible with bank transactions because everything happens in slow motion and humans have way more time to react and step in.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO [1]: https://www.turkiyetoday.com/turkiye/german-bank-e100m-disap... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery

what if the promotion of said non-fiat systems was done primarily by those looking to subvert that system? NK, Russia? What if it was further supported primarily by people to give great liquidity to illegal activity.

Something tells me that politicians that visit said locations on the 4th of July and their buddies business "leaders" looking to destablize the system are just not on the up and up. May even be corrupt.

On the other threads it was noted that some of it had been frozen via USDT contracts

a 51% agreement could fork/reverse this.

Yeah I know you are referring to the fiat-based financial system. Keep in mind, wire transfers generally cannot be reversed. There have been notable instances where money is lost/stolen this way, and no way to get it back.

Add in Claude for some extra CYA:

> Dear Claude, please investigate the culprit of the attack and make no mistakes.

Zero evidence presented that this has anything to do with DPRK. "Trust us bro".

Probably because fiat, unlike crypto, is not decentralized and fraudulent transactions can be reversed. A North Korean hacker zeroing out an account balance and incrementing another, can be reversed.

They have! There was a famous incident in 2016 where NK tried to wire a billion dollars out of the NY fed and managed to get away with $100 million.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery

They do, here's one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangladesh_Bank_robbery

I think Darknet Diaries covers a bunch of these types of heists involving banks.

I suspect they just assess vulnerabilities and exploit them when/where they can. My understanding is that these thefts are big part of their (NK) economy.

Other question: why don’t they just forge currency? Surely with nation states resources you can create fake currency that easily fools most inspections? Is it that hard to launder cash? Or is the a red line and they are afraid of political measures?

There’s Superdollars but it doesn’t seem to be a really widespread problem so far, right?

>"draining banks in the U.S. and other countries of cash"

Cash sits in vaults. North Korea would need to physically send a team of bank robbers to extract it. The digital representation of USD is not cash, it's an entry in a ledger, and banks generally have systems that would not allow adding an entry with a sudden transfer of a large amount of money to "J. U. Kim, North Korea". That's why Bitcoin is called "digital cash".

They are trying!

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I was going to ask, why would NK attack a China-based crypto firm? Then I learned that Binance isn’t headquartered anywhere. They’re literally asking to be hacked. Nobody will protect them.

How can they be brought to justice? They can't. That's the long and the short of it.

Binance has $155 in assets. Not sure how much of it is their own but they likely have more than $6B to cover the losses.

https://coinmarketcap.com/exchanges/binance/

Unless they travel abroad to cooperating countries, nothing is going to happen to them.

They bought their tickets. I say let 'em crash! Those apes are likely gone.

Trump needs to call up his boy over there and get our money back ig

3 billion was recovered.

There is no way to bring them to justice unless the US were to somehow invade, or another country deals with it, or they leave Korea. All very unlikely. North Korea is the closet thing to an actual criminal state/hideout.

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Sam Bankman-fried jealous of their game

Makes perfect sense. Laundered way to get westerner money into north korea with china looking at no fault.

I don't follow crypto by a quick search indicates they offshored a few years ago. This would presumably not sit well with the party.

Binance is run by Chinese people. I don't think the Chinese government likes what they are running though. Binance itself is not legal/available in China.

They have chosen to run concentration camps and starve their own people for decades instead of becoming a rich country like South Korea. They can stop the sanctions whenever they want, by becoming a democracy.

Since when is X anything other than propaganda and porn

What kind of updates are they posting on X and what is the propaganda?