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North Korea Is Dodging Sanctions With a Secret Bitcoin Stash (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: North Korea appears to be stepping up efforts to secure bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, which could be used to avoid trade restrictions including new sanctions approved by the United Nations Security Council. Hackers from Kim Jong Un's regime are increasing their attacks on cryptocurrency exchanges in South Korea and related sites, according to a new report from security researcher FireEye Inc. They also breached an English-language bitcoin news website and collected bitcoin ransom payments from global victims of the malware WannaCry, according to the researcher. Kim's apparent interest in cryptocurrencies comes amid rising prices and popularity. The same factors that have driven their success -- lack of state control and secretiveness -- would make them useful fund raising and money laundering tools for a man threatening to use nuclear weapons against the U.S. With tightening sanctions and usage of cryptocurrencies broadening, security experts say North Korea's embrace of digital cash will only increase. The 15-member Security Council on Monday approved sanctions aimed at punishing North Korea for its latest missile and nuclear tests. U.S. officials said the new measures would cut the country's textile exports by 90 percent, restricting its ability to get hard currency.
So the banks that govern our fiat currencies have "moral responsibilities" do they? Actually, no, they don't at all. This is precisely why cryptocurrency was invented.
N. Korea only exists because of China. MacArthur had the fucking N. Koreans almost off the map but the Chinese had to come in and save them and prop up the Kim regimes.
It is 100% China's fault that North Korea exists and pulls this shit. All they have to do is pull the rug out and N. Korea falls. Un wants to be the shit, China is perfectly capable of neutralizing him.
China wants to be a World power? Well, it's time they learn the burdens and responsibilities.
Otherwise, China can go fuck themselves.
This is precisely why cryptocurrency was invented - to skirt the law and avoid moral responsibilities. Its sole purpose is as an enabler of criminal activity.
Just fucking ban this fake monopoly money bullshit already.
I'll support this mentality right after I see CEOs of banks behind bars for skirting laws and violating moral responsibilities.
The corrupt Financial Industrial Complex is the real reason cryptocurrency was invented and continues to be justified.
Please leave, we don't want your racist kind here.
I'm seriously struggling to figure out if that was sarcasm or if society has degraded to the point where people can no longer sense hypocrisy in their own voices. Let's all review the levels of argument, shall we?
can't you simply refuse to provide transit to them?
Who is the 'we' and 'you' that your post refers to?
Because Nearly all of North Korea's Internet traffic is routed through China
So the pertinent question would be "can't we simply ask China to refuse to provide transit to them?" to which the answer would be 'yes', but in reality China would not cut off their internet access, in the same way they do not cut off their trade, or place any security or border controls on North Korea's northern border with China.
The corrupt Financial Industrial Complex is the real reason cryptocurrency was invented and continues to be justified.
And the real reason why the governments will want it to stay in place is full traceability. Yes, for now, BTC is totally anonymous. But wait till the governments put their nose into it, and require all wallet holders to be IDd. Then ALL the transactions you will ever have done in your life can be tied to you.
I want to still be able to use paper money, and they will make it more and more difficult to use it.
Of course this assumes that the NSA has the ability to do these things.
Dennis Rodman has already planted the malware needed to do this.
The corrupt Financial Industrial Complex is the real reason cryptocurrency was invented and continues to be justified.
And the real reason why the governments will want it to stay in place is full traceability. Yes, for now, BTC is totally anonymous. But wait till the governments put their nose into it, and require all wallet holders to be IDd. Then ALL the transactions you will ever have done in your life can be tied to you. I want to still be able to use paper money, and they will make it more and more difficult to use it.
With the amount of surveillance in the world today, not even paper money transactions should be considered private or anonymous.
Yeah, cash can't be used for this.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There's a fun thing about the internet: You needn't be at home to order shit. I ordered stuff from Amazon while I was in the US and had it shipped home, they didn't even want to know why my IP address is a continent away from my shipping address...
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
There is one huge problem when you outlaw a currency: The shadow market doesn't give a shit about it. When I trade in illegal goods, why the hell should I care that the currency I trade it for is illegal, too?
If you want to see what this is like, ask anyone who was alive in an East Bloc country while it was still an East Bloc country. Old joke: How's GDR and FRG similar? You can get everything as long as you pay in D-Marks.
Just like it was required to have "West-Money" in the former East Bloc if you wanted to get anything that's short in supply, what we'll see is that you'll have to have the underground currency if you want something illegal. How do you get it? By doing something illegal for someone who has it. And now take a wild guess who has the most. And thus calls the shots.
In other words, all you do is hand more power to the mob.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Given the current bubblicious trading in BTC, one strategy for our intelligence agencies might be to assist in the pump-and-dump, leaving Weird Fat Kid as the last fool to be holding a hard drive full of devalued tulip bits.
If something becomes explicitly illegal, there is no body of 'legal use' for people making illicit use of it to hide within.
That is just common sense, although cryptocurrencies are a 'new paradigm' form of hype where common sense is ignored.
Moved on? What on earth are you talking about. China hasn't moved on. South Korea hasn't moved on. The United States hasn't moved on. Japan hasn't moved on. Russia hasn't moved on. The UN is still voting on sanctions ever year since the armistice. There is still a mined no mans zone across the 38th parallel. SK and the US are practicing joint military exercises. The US has 50k or so troops in S.K. What are you talking about? From their point of view, the entire world is trying to crush them, and certainly has their head pinned.
The only problem with the "North Korea is only saber-rattling" thing is that the other side has to recognize that it's only saber-rattling.
Trump.... doesn't. He has a serious "run off at the mouth" problem on Twitter and in other media where he is clearly not thinking things through before he says them.
Which, if he were still just a businessman, or just a Senator or Representative, wouldn't be that bad, really. I mean, how much attention do people pay to all the stupid shit Louie Gohmert says, for example?
But Trump's the President. And a President with a tendency to not think statements through before saying them is.... not good.
Mr. Hu is not a ninja.
I still don't understand how mining bitcoins can be a thing...I understand why any random person might invest in them because somehow a real dollar value has been attached to them, but when they get created out of nothing via activities that don't have any semblance of value or value control...I could never bring myself to even invest a dollar. To say it seems shady is probably a gross understatement. But I'm sure those who love bitcoin and the like have a different point of view...in the nearly decade that it's been around, I have tried numerous times to truly understand how it can even exist, and I've failed every time. Yes, any currency is made up and requires any two people who would use the currency in an exchange to agree that the currency has value. And yes, fiat paper currency doesn't have any actual value itself, but there is at least some level of legal infrastructure supporting it. Bitcoin is less than a fiat currency. And I just can't wrap my mind around why so many people have jumped into it. I'm just one person though...
I am no cryptocurrency expert, but my understanding is that the BTC really only has value because the BTC user base has formed a consensus that it does. I believe the vast majority of conscience human beings can agree that North Korea's (government's) recent actions and stance are dangerous and morally reprehensible.
Assuming that NK has channeled most of its BTC stash through a small number of wallets, and that most of them may be identified by NK's spending patterns, I think this is a good case for implementing "poisoned wallets" to render all BTC (or partial BTC) that left a verboten wallet after a given time stamp. This would work, of course, only for users that use the blacklist enabled version of the software... but I believe enough people find NK's position sufficiently dangerous to warrant adopting this alternative code base to at least GREATLY DEVALUE these "tainted" BTC. This type of change begs two interesting questions:
1) How are the list of poisoned wallets managed? On the micro level, I believe the choice of banned wallets should be up to the individual BTC user, but most users won't want to manage such a tedious list. I expect users would want to defer this responsibility to one or more "accusation bodies" each with their own accusation, conviction, poisoning and appeal processes, all blockchain protected (outside the BTC blockchain)... I expect users would sign up for these poisoning feeds in one of two groups: 1) organizations that uphold the users moral convictions, or 2) organizations that seek out a superset of poisoned wallets, for those that want to ensure any BTC they receive are untainted, and good for other transactions. I believe most users would be most interested in aggregators (#2), but enough users would also add original accusers (#1) to make such a system plausable.
2) Tainted BTCs wouldn't be completely valueless, as some users may still accept them, so differently tainted BTCs would trade at their own distinct prices, which may be an interesting opportunity for cryptocurrency exchange companies.
What do you think?
Loren Osborn
But wait till the governments put their nose into it, and require all wallet holders to be IDd. Then ALL the transactions you will ever have done in your life can be tied to you.
This is unenforceable. Bitcoin users can have billions of "accounts" and most wallets change the address (account) with each transaction for privacy. Some new changes already in use as we speak add much higher privacy to bitcoin. Lightning network payment channels with onion routing default with no recorded tx history on the blockchain, confidential transactions, mimblewimble, cross atomic swaps , all make chain analysis obsolete.
Define "preemptive" attack?
When Kim launches another ICBM over Japan, is that an act of war and can we respond or not?
Launching an ICBM over a state=provocation.
Launching an ICBM at a state=act of war.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil