North Korea's Bitcoin Reserve Thought to be 3rd Largest in World: Report
North Korea's bitcoin reserve thought to be 3rd largest in world: report:
With authorities identifying North Korean hackers to be behind multiple recent cryptocurrency hackings, the totalitarian communist state is now thought to have a bigger bitcoin stash than any other nation in the world besides the United States and the United Kingdom.
Binance News, a news platform of global cryptocurrency exchange business firm Binance, recently reported that North Korea's allegedly state-run hacker syndicates are believed to have accumulated 13,562 BTC, valued at $1.14 billion. It cited Arkham Intelligence, a Dominican Republic-based company that provides data about blockchain transactions to help identify money laundering and other suspicious activity.
North Korea-affiliated hacking groups including the Lazarus Group were pinpointed to be culprits behind a string of cyber attacks in 2024 that stole $659 million in cryptocurrency, according to a joint statement by South Korea, the US and Japan made in January. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation last month released a public statement that North Korea is responsible for the theft of approximately $1.5 billion worth of virtual assets, the biggest hacking incident so far, which occurred last month.
Much of the stolen virtual assets were Ethereum coins, a substantial portion of which are thought to have been converted into bitcoins.
It was reported last week that the Lazarus Group converted at least $300 million of their stolen crypto into unrecoverable funds.
Lazarus Group and other hacking groups are alleged to be run by the North Korean government, and are thought to be an important source of income for it. North Korea is currently under multiple sanctions placed by the international community, as punitive actions for developing its nuclear weapons program.
A significant portion of the profits from North Korea's illegal activities are thought to be used to fund its ballistic missiles programs and nuclear tests.
If confirmed, North Korea's bitcoin reserve will be only behind US' 198,109 BTC and the UK's 61,245 BTC, according to the Binance's estimates. It would be more than 10,635 BTC of Bhutan and El Salvador's 6,117 BTC.
North Korean Hackers Cash Out Hundreds of Millions From $1.5bn ByBit Hack
North Korean hackers cash out hundreds of millions from $1.5bn ByBit hack:
[...]
Experts say the infamous hacking team is working nearly 24 hours a day - potentially funnelling the money into the regime's military development.
"Every minute matters for the hackers who are trying to confuse the money trail and they are extremely sophisticated in what they're doing," says Dr Tom Robinson, co-founder of crypto investigators Elliptic.
Out of all the criminal actors involved in crypto currency, North Korea is the best at laundering crypto, Dr Robinson says.
"I imagine they have an entire room of people doing this using automated tools and years of experience. We can also see from their activity that they only take a few hours break each day, possibly working in shifts to get the crypto turned into cash."
Elliptic's analysis tallies with ByBit, which says that 20% of the funds have now "gone dark", meaning it is unlikely to ever be recovered.
(Score: 4, Informative) by canopic jug on Friday March 21, @09:09AM (26 children)
Maybe, maybe not. And if if true, does it matter?
The reason to ask is that there is a very finite number of bitcoins possible. And the reason that is important is because Bitcoin wallets go out of circulation (taking the Bitcoin with them) by several means including loss or destruction [theguardian.com] of the physical medium, damage to or destruction of the file system it was stored on, or loss of the wallet's own password. Bitcoins cannot be split indefinitely and the very, very high transaction costs, on multiple levels, and the very long transaction delays mean that Bitcoin's utility is limited to speculation and when new coins cannot be mined and as more wallets are lost , then sooner rather than later that Bitcoin bubble will pop [nature.com].
I'll even go out onto a limb and predict that most "HODLers" consist of lost or otherwise defunct wallets. You can harvest enormous wealth from bubbles, if you are in early and cash out at the right time. But that does not stop them from being bubbles. In regard to Bitcoin, it's no longer early and the one, single question which remains is whether it will leave anything at all of use when it pops.
tldr; it's a bubble
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday March 21, @11:44AM (22 children)
How Much Energy Does Bitcoin Consume? [crypto.com]
Let me cast a perspective:
* In 2022, the United States had net electricity imports of 41.2 TWh
* producing 1 kg of aluminum via smelting typically requires around 12.5 to 14 kWh of electricity. Lets call it 15 kwh
* 1BTC in 2023 = 10.33 tones of aluminium
* 1 year worth of BTC mining (87 TWh) = 5.8 million tones of aluminium
* total US annual aluminium production in 2024 = 4.27 million tones of aluminium
FTFY
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Friday March 21, @04:13PM (21 children)
For me the problem is that conclusion is subjective. A lot of people consider crypto mining a waste, others consider AI a waste, a third consider advertising a waste, others consider warfare a waste, etc... Everyone's pet projects/interests are important but others are a waste.
As such I don't consider the "this thing I don't like consumes this much energy" type complaints as very constructive. You want to criticise BTW/crypto go ahead, there are far better points it can be critiqued over (the OP mentioned a few), but I don't think energy use is a good one.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Saturday March 22, @02:15AM (19 children)
What advantage the human society gets from Bitcoin?
Note: I didn't pick aluminium at random. If you don't use it as a metal, it can act as an energy storage - has twice the volumetric energy density of diesel and can be transformed into electricity w/o passing through heat and take a big efficiency hit. You know? For when the sun doesn't shine and the wind doesn't blow.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22, @10:01AM (1 child)
They get to say "My shit is valuable because I can cryptographically prove I wasted a lot of resources on it".
(Score: -1, Redundant) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22, @10:24AM
FTFY
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday March 22, @11:12AM (16 children)
It's a medium of exchange that doesn't depend on a government and it's supply can't be directly inflated. As to the energy consumed by bitcoins, that's paid for in units of currency that power companies will accept.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 22, @12:14PM (15 children)
And...? What's the advantage for the human society? How's this not a dis-advantage?
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Saturday March 22, @12:39PM (14 children)
I just answered that question. It's not to "human society's" advantage that you choose not to accept it.
Here's a way to think of it. One of the basic axioms of democratic society is that at least most of the time, the judgment and actions of the individual are accepted and conceded even when it appears in conflict with the desires of the rest of society. That's because such benefit to society, even when it actually exists, is usually less than the benefit to society of having people empowered to do their own thing without meddling from the state.
Here, you have no actual "dis-advantage" to cryptocurrency for society. It's of benefit to the people who use it and bypasses a means of state control. And the negative that keeps getting mentioned, its energy consumption, is paid for. Bottom line: democracy is about letting people do what they want with at worst modest restrictions. This is people doing what they want with no indication that they're running up against a modest restriction.
(Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Saturday March 22, @01:02PM (13 children)
Ah, the vagueness of "most of the time". Can you qualify this more precisely?
"Most of the time" like what? "Most of the time of the day"? Or "most of the types of actions"? (do we even need a criminal code of law?)
Sure, the state is the baddy-daddy, by the libertarian axiom. The enemy of democracy, right?
Have you tried using fentanyl as a medium of exchange ? I hear it's way less damaging to the environment to produce than bitcoin and people like it to bypass the entire reality of everyday life, not just the state control.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Touché) by khallow on Saturday March 22, @01:20PM (12 children)
More than half the time. Can you qualify "advantage to human society"?
I sense sarcasm for some strange reason. But yes, that's a typical libertarian axiom. A common sense libertarian axiom let us note. We don't have hundreds of millions of deaths in the world from too much freedom! But we do from adverse governments.
The obvious rebuttals here: fentanyl is easy to produce and thus, your money supply can be inflated by any sufficiently industrious chemist; and it's a heavy, perishable product meaning it's costly to use in transactions. Bitcoin merely requires energy.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 22, @02:40PM (11 children)
So, the "more time of the day" interpretation, rather than "most of the types of actions"?
(Touche) More people benefit than those who don't.
A pity it requires a new man [wikipedia.org] for getting out from the niche-common status.
Ha! Given that absence of government has not happen ever since the human society got past tribalism (failed state situation excluded), I don't see how you could support your assertion.
But feel free to try. Here, I dare you: [Citation needed]
Oh, so your flavor of libertarianism does accepts the idea of a non-"adverse government" type? How does such government look like?
1. so, the bad thing is that's inflationary and it's not because it's under the state control? You'd like to see a return to a gold-based currency?
2. what's wrong with a medium of exchange that everyone could produce? After all, there are crypto-currencies that are easily producible by more people than skilled/industrious chemists, cheaper than BTC too.
Really? Therapeutic (thus non-lethal) doses are about 20mg, guaranteed lighter than a $10 banknote
And what's wrong with a perishable medium of exchange?
(letting aside one could laminate fentanyl in a plastic envelope and it will be as perishable as a banknote).
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 22, @11:46PM (10 children)
Yes. Consider that there's vastly more ways to drive in a way that is hazardous than there is to drive in a safe manner. Self-interest solves a large part of the problems one could theoretically get just because most people want to do stuff or better their situation, not drama or harm to themselves.
In a totalitarian state, every facet of a person's life is under the control of the state. Even minor things like making jokes or involuntary expressions (like rolling one's eyes or sitting down [mannerofspeaking.org] because one can't stand up any more) can bring down the power of the state, if only because the state needs to meet quota on making examples.
In a democracy, there is no such oppressive oversight.
So for a contrived example, if we have a way to save one person's life at no cost to anyone else, it's not an advantage to society since less people benefit from saving this life than those who do not? In other words, i an action that would be a net benefit strictly because it benefits a small group without harming anyone else, that would not qualify as "advantage to human society"?
And really what's the point of the observation? Should we ban all activity that is not of advantage to society? Because otherwise it's merely an irrelevant claim.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23, @12:12AM (9 children)
I don't get what you imply, is the person whose life is saved not benefiting?
Methinks you'll have to demonstrate first that increased demand in electricity and computation power doesn't harm anyone, otherwise your proposed "at no cost to anyone else" analogy becomes not applicable.
I have myself as an example - I didn't upgrade my videocard because the crypto driven price hikes [gotbit.io] simply doesn't justify the benefit I'm gaining from my use of GPU. As such, I've been harmed by restricting myself on a less powerful GPU; and I don't think I'm a singular case.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23, @01:03AM (8 children)
Sure, but they aren't everyone else. There's 8+ billion people on the planet.
Let's suppose I have one of those science fiction illnesses that only one person ever seems to get and it merely takes a button mash by someone to fix the illness and continue on to the next episode. We do your advantage analysis and determine that well, khallow's life at best only helps a few thousand people, even given his inspirational presence on the internets. Meanwhile there's 8+ billion people. No way that khallow's life will benefit a majority of humans. So it's not an advantage to human society whether he lives. Sad.
So given that, where do we go from there? Does that mean that it would be bad to push that button because it's not to the advantage of human society?
No, methinks you'll have to demonstrate first that the miners aren't paying in advance for any harm they cause. After all, that money pays for the electricity and any costs of providing it including externalities and infrastructure upgrades.
Are the GPU manufacturers harming you by not providing cheaper or even free GPUs? I don't see why it's supposed to be harm when someone comes up with a more valuable use for those GPUs than yours.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23, @01:22AM (7 children)
So:
- save - +1 saved who benefited, all the others the same (your "at no cost to anyone else" premise)
- don't save - 1 people is harmed, all the others the same.
Total society benefit: +1 for the "saved" scenario, chose it.
What other arithmetic are you using, khallow?
You proposed the analogy/equivalence, your burden to prove it applicable.
Am I buying the GPU from the manufacturers? Why bring them into the picture?
I was OK with the manufacturer prices, except the retail prices weren't hiked by the manufacturers, but by extra demand coming from the crypto-miners.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23, @01:27AM (6 children)
"More people benefit than those who don't." That's the math I was using.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23, @03:17AM (5 children)
If, in the given premises, you obtained a different result than +1 for the "saved" scenario, you made a mistake somewhere in applying it.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23, @12:58PM (4 children)
I indeed did the math and got the same result. That is my point. Your previous asserted definition of "advantage to human society" would reach a conclusion based on that math. Namely, that the "saved" scenario is not an advantage to human society due to the low number of people who benefited.
This is directly relevant to the alleged waste of cryptocurrency mining because the miners pay for the resources they use (including those GPU cards you were whining about). Thus, the problem boils down to no net harm to society combined with a benefit to a relatively small group.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23, @01:43PM (3 children)
My whine means that there is harm, thus your "no cost" premise does not apply.
Case at point, I was working (hobby-style) on improving the performance of some OpenCAD functions when I hit the crypto-miners driving the prices up. That OpenCAD functionality is as slow today as it was 4 years ago, the time window I had available expired. Opportunity cost is still a cost and bearing it is not limited to "my whine".
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23, @02:38PM (2 children)
Your perception of harm != harm. And those miners aren't in your transaction path. GPU sellers chose to raise their prices. They are the ones who allegedly are harming you by charging you prices higher than you think they should be.
Where is the harm in that?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Sunday March 23, @02:49PM (1 child)
Love you too, khallow.
https://www.youtube.com/@ProfSteveKeen https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday March 23, @03:26PM
Even if bitcoin dies in a fire, the infrastructure can easily be reused and improved. And at some point you're looking at either using a traditional banking system with its copious fees, restrictions, snooping, and so on. Or you can do it by crypto and not have to deal with any of that. So you'll see more of those stories about mean crypto-bros melting the Earth and making gamers cry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 22, @07:27AM
Exactly. For instance I consider car racing to be a waste. All that fuel, rubber and wasted metal to simply run around in circles. I don't know the figures, but I would be astonished if bitcoin wasted more energy than racing.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by cykros on Friday March 21, @12:49PM (2 children)
Very long transaction times, lol. Guess nearly instant over Lightning is too slow for ya? Or perhaps we're referring to 10-30 minutes for final settlement of on chain transactions, which is faster than any other international means of transmitting money, with even bank wires taking 1-5 business days?
There's a lot less wallet loss these days than in the early years, in large part thanks to things like 12-24 word seed phrases that you can stamp into steel, or multisig wallets which allow for a much more resilient storage system, but yes, a few million are definitely presumed lost at least until quantum systems may revive them. Meanwhile, more and more people give up fiat entirely by the day. Guess some of us are stuck in the 2010s though.
(Score: 3, Touché) by vux984 on Friday March 21, @11:08PM (1 child)
I order things on credit card overseas all the time. Person to person transfers can take more time, but that's usually more due to moving money between different systems than anything else. If the source and destination use the same system its uusally instant. (e.g. If you and I have swiss bank accounts at the same bank or both have paypal accounts, we can move money between us immediately.) Which is pretty much the same situation with crypto... the 'efficiency of sending to another user' is not so much a feature of crypto its a feature of both users using the same system to send and receive money.
Sure, but mostly they're moving to wechat pay and similar apps and debit/credit cards. Bitcoin isn't really solving a problem most people actually have. It does solve a problem North Korea has though, which is why they've bought into it so hard. What problem does it solve for you exactly?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday March 22, @12:40PM
Does it have to help "most people" in order to be useful?