FBI says US has seized $1.2B worth of cryptocurrency stolen from Binance(apnews.com)

32 pointsby awb6 hours ago5 comments

lordkrandel3 hours ago
We are convinced that digital money is safer than analog gold bullions or notes. But... is it true?
- infinite_spin2 hours ago
  I don't remember anyone of good repute saying such a thing, how are you (the convinced) measuring safety?
sciencesama2 hours ago
curious how !
Detrytus5 hours ago
What does it even mean to "seize" Bitcoin? Did they somehow get possession of wallet keys?
- jpardoe44 minutes ago
  It’s likely the stable coins. Those can be frozen by the stable coin operators.
- no-name-here4 hours ago
  1. OP article doesn’t seem to mention bitcoin, and original hack covered multiple cryptocurrencies (including bitcoin).
  2. Other theoretical ways would be if a governing body for one of the other cryptocurrencies reversed a transaction, such as occurred during the earlier DAO hack. Another possibility is if some of the funds were left in an exchange’s custody - obviously a hacker would work to avoid that, but maybe they were rate limited or something before an exchange locked the funds.
  - chistev3 hours ago
    Crypto lost part of its appeal to me when I found out they do that after major hacks - reverse transactions.
    The whole point of crypto, for me, was to be immune to central authorities who can reverse transactions.
    bigfatkitten2 hours ago
    Crypto has, for the most part been a speedrun of the last 150 years of the financial system. A lot of people have learned the expensive way why we have the regulations that we do.
    solyin3 hours ago
    I'm not super in the crypto scene, but hasn't that only happened a tiny handful of times on the major coins? Like twice, ever? That isn't what happened here, afaik.
    akimbostrawman2 hours ago
    >reverse transactions
    That is an issue of inferior public and non-fungible crypto like BTC not crypto as whole. Monero XMR for example has none of these issues as one of the only actually useful crypto.
    DaSHacka30 minutes ago
    Always love to see another XMR maxi out in the wild. I've been saying this for years, I never understood the point of NFTs or any other blockchain-based technology but the capabilities XMR provides are legitimately useful. It's basically the closest thing we have to digital cash, gas fees are super low and there's minimal centralization of the network versus other currencies. Also fluctuates less in value so it works better as an actual currency versus some "speculative asset".
- stackghost4 hours ago
  Some of the coins like Tether have been speed running a less trustworthy version of central banks and governmental monetary policy by allowing certain privileged users to freeze funds.
  It’s probably those that have been seized, as the heist wasn’t entirely BTC.
5 hours ago
undefined
hulitu2 hours ago
So US stole from Binance.