Mining makes much more sense - if they could acquire mining hardware from China (where it's manufactured) in trade, they could use that to mine cryptos, which they in turn can spend on the (relatively) open market.
Getting funds to agents in foreign territory is particularly easy if you're doing this.
I'm certainly not an expert on the capabilities of North Korea, but my intuition says that if they can build a hydrogen bomb, they can power a few shipping containers full of ASICs.
My impression was that they aren't electrified because it isn't a national priority for them to be, not because they lacked the capable to develop the infrastructure.
On the contrary, it's probably part of their operating plans. Electricity and other creature comforts of modern society give people the free time needed to plan a revolt.
It's in their interests to keep the people alive yet stagnant.
If the NK elite want to continue to live in luxury they will have to do something about their underclass eventually. Bill Gates, et al, wouldn't have their present lifestyles if they didn't have well-educated (and well-nourished) people doing their work.
Serious question: If you're an elite NK party member with your own private home theatre set-up, who do you call when your Plex server stops working?
Nobody is saying that they don't have the capability. The fact that they're stealing bitcoin I think indicates that it's not as profitable for them to start a mining operation.
A lot of things need to line up to make the unit cost of mining bitcoin work.
You assume that "keeping their cities lit at night" is higher priority than "obtaining more cash for covert purchases of equipment for the nuclear program", for example.
And they have to ask themselves that question for every new kilowatt of generating power that they install.
NK is mostly mountains, it has plenty of potential hydro-electricity available. The hard part is building / maintaining the infrastructure and logistics required to get the electricity to each and every building, that's the hard part.
Mining somewhere where electricity is cheap and then sending the coin address to NK where electricity is comparatively more expensive makes more sense to me. Plus it keeps them on a leash to whoever funnels the funds.
Imagine going long - very long - with a stash that big.
The pundits-in-the-know often semi-seriously state they expect 1 BTC to rise to $100,000 USD within 10 years - looking at the past 5 years that's not an unreasonable statement to make. This is based on BTC's deflationary nature, and its increasing prevelance in the world. Imagine if you owned one 28,000,000th of the Internet economy - that would still be a lot of money. What if you owned 10x or 100x of that? In BTC it's still an amount affordable by a large organisation or nation state, but in 10 years' time it would be like having your own Fort Knox.
$100,000/BTC isn't a raw extrapolation to my knowledge and I've been in the crypto space since early 2009. It's a popular number chosen that'd represent BTC @ ~1/4 the market cap of Gold.
Which I don't think is that unreasonable if you're evaluating it as a store of value.
That's an oxymoron. And I'm not even trying to be cynical. People in-the-know aren't pundits, they're the ones the pundits are talking about. You can tell because pundits suddenly have alot less to say, and are much more circumscribed, when they're discussing topics with which they have contemporaneous, first-hand knowledge--pretty much the complete opposite situation of someone publicly predicting the USD price of BTC 10 years down the road.
It's certainly possible that they stole the bitcoins and paid for a few days (a week?) worth of goods.
But 1) the article does not provide any real evidence to support for this theory, 2) it's not a sufficient amount to be a viable strategy, and 3) the evidence even linking the thefts to NK sounds somewhere between non-existent and very flimsy.
When the FireEye report's leading point states: "...there are no clear indications of North Korean involvement", it's not good support for such a broad statement as the title of the article.
Again, it's definitely possible, but too little information appears to be available to draw this conclusion.
There are that many people, but I suspect a much, much smaller number of people actually benefit. The overall population probably isn't all that applicable.
Except they still need to be able to spend the bitcoin and ship goods back to NK. If a country is willing to trade with them, then it doesnt matter if its using bitcoin or trading with something else. The important part is that bitcoin is something with monetary value that is able to be stolen easily.
In the article, it basically talks about NK straling the bitcoin. My point is that to spend the bitcoin has the same hurdles as spending other money or trading something because the other country has to ship NK the physical goods they bought. Its less that nk is using bitcoin to get around sanctions and more its convenient for them to get a hold of.
Unfortunate display of the intrinsic value of bitcoin as an anonymous[1], decentralized store of value.
1. Please don't tell me that btc is not anonymous; the fact that I can trace transaction histories is irrelevant, since I still need to deanonymize the initial address.
No, by the conventional definitions of anonymous [1], the protocol is fully anonymous. Saying that it is pseudo anonymous is in my opinion misleading. There is a different word to describe the weakness of a deanonymized address. I dont know what that word is, but we will confuse and possibly turn interested parties and laymen away with the misnomer of pseudoanonymity.
I would compate this mislabeling to claiming that btc is insecure because of the mt. Gox hack; the fact that you can steal bitcoin's from people doesn't mean that bitcoins are insecure. Similarly, the fact that I can trace your transaction trail does not mean that your transactions themselves weren't fully anonymous.
This is HN, not CNN. s/anonymous/random/ and s/pseudonymous/pseudorandom/ and rethink your position. Anyhow, even in a more general forum like CNN pseudonymous is still the better term. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonymity
pseudo anonymity != pseudonymity. In laymans terms, "pseudonymity" means "fake name" whereas pseudo anonymity would mean "fake anonymity". shemnon42 is using the exact terminology you are referring to.
In this case, the conventional definition of anonymous is less useful than domain-specific definition of anonymity, since different currencies have different levels of anonymity. Recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672691
The proof they provide is "Fireeye said it." Must be legit, it's not like they're a company run by an Air Force vet with ties to the FBI, and there's no chance they'd make a ton of money off a cyber war with North Korea.
> "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."
the article claims they can steal btc from any wallet. thats preposterous and if they could do that, stealing btc would be the least of my worries because that would prove several cryptography building blocks might be obsolete.
Cross ref with Jaime Dimon's comments on bitcoin ... interesting .
“You’re wasting your time with Bitcoin! Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” said Dimon. “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.”
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[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 35.9 ms ] threadGetting funds to agents in foreign territory is particularly easy if you're doing this.
My impression was that they aren't electrified because it isn't a national priority for them to be, not because they lacked the capable to develop the infrastructure.
It's in their interests to keep the people alive yet stagnant.
Serious question: If you're an elite NK party member with your own private home theatre set-up, who do you call when your Plex server stops working?
A lot of things need to line up to make the unit cost of mining bitcoin work.
They certainly don't devote enough capacity to do that, but that could be in part priorities for use.
And they have to ask themselves that question for every new kilowatt of generating power that they install.
That's not really an amount of money to dodge much of anything at all.
The pundits-in-the-know often semi-seriously state they expect 1 BTC to rise to $100,000 USD within 10 years - looking at the past 5 years that's not an unreasonable statement to make. This is based on BTC's deflationary nature, and its increasing prevelance in the world. Imagine if you owned one 28,000,000th of the Internet economy - that would still be a lot of money. What if you owned 10x or 100x of that? In BTC it's still an amount affordable by a large organisation or nation state, but in 10 years' time it would be like having your own Fort Knox.
How much it extrapolates in 20 years then? 100 million?
Which I don't think is that unreasonable if you're evaluating it as a store of value.
Is this where "if we only get 1% of the market we'll all be billionaires" goes to summer?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_North_Korea
[2] http://www.indexmundi.com/north_korea/economy_profile.html
But 1) the article does not provide any real evidence to support for this theory, 2) it's not a sufficient amount to be a viable strategy, and 3) the evidence even linking the thefts to NK sounds somewhere between non-existent and very flimsy.
When the FireEye report's leading point states: "...there are no clear indications of North Korean involvement", it's not good support for such a broad statement as the title of the article.
Again, it's definitely possible, but too little information appears to be available to draw this conclusion.
1. Please don't tell me that btc is not anonymous; the fact that I can trace transaction histories is irrelevant, since I still need to deanonymize the initial address.
I would compate this mislabeling to claiming that btc is insecure because of the mt. Gox hack; the fact that you can steal bitcoin's from people doesn't mean that bitcoins are insecure. Similarly, the fact that I can trace your transaction trail does not mean that your transactions themselves weren't fully anonymous.
1. Dictionary.com/browse/anonymous
In this case, the conventional definition of anonymous is less useful than domain-specific definition of anonymity, since different currencies have different levels of anonymity. Recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672691
I didnt even know that pseudonymous was a word until today, thank you.
There have been a series of articles in a specific type of media lately trying to link NK or China or Russia with Bitcoin and blockchain technologies.
It reeks of fear. To me this means that Bitcoin is winning.
the article claims they can steal btc from any wallet. thats preposterous and if they could do that, stealing btc would be the least of my worries because that would prove several cryptography building blocks might be obsolete.
“You’re wasting your time with Bitcoin! Virtual currency, where it’s called a bitcoin vs. a U.S. dollar, that’s going to be stopped,” said Dimon. “No government will ever support a virtual currency that goes around borders and doesn’t have the same controls. It’s not going to happen.”