Hacker News

points by Tiberium 6 hours ago | 0 comments

About $2.4 billion out of this is already frozen by Circle and Tether. Some of the big ones:

- 971.15M USDT (Ethereum): https://etherscan.io/tx/0x7baba482077843514d9c72bac0110ba091...

- 823M USDC (Ethereum): https://etherscan.io/tx/0xc954c86f118e8e410e6a3eb9e3b38ff4a9...

- 312.73M USDT (Tron): https://tronscan.org/#/transaction/71b0ec0fe873fe820c37cc3ec...

- 175M USDT (Ethereum): https://etherscan.io/tx/0x0c07a5e428ce233a3bcb40f257ad899594...

If your crypto was stolen in this, atleast you can rest assured that your money will be put to good use. In North Korea that is, by the military. I'm sure at this point Kim himself has Bitcoin merchandise with how often they make massive heists

[–] NoidFonsense 6 hours ago

If your crypto was stolen in this, it wasn't your crypto. It is simply cryptocurrency that has been reallocated from an exchange to a more competent party, as the free market intended.

[–] nl 5 hours ago

I don't think the security trade-off for most people is clear here.

Given things like the ledger hardware attack[1] I think the time indexed risk of using a centralized exchange is probably lower than doing self-custody.

I understand that many people do self-custody for philosophical reasons, but I think trying to disguise this as a security decision ("If your crypto was stolen in this, it wasn't your crypto.") is arguable at best.

[1] https://www.ft.com/content/70f69253-6017-4259-95c9-48bf0e088...

[–] done_lurking 51 minutes ago

Self custody doesn't require using a hardware ledger, and such gadgets represent a very small minority of self-custody wallets. In addition, there are noteworthy non-security risks when using an exchange. There's fraud, illiquidity, new legislation, asset forfeiture, and innumerable other reasons why an exchange might prevent you from withdrawing your funds. I think it's naive to suggest that self-custody is just a novelty with no value.

[–] nl 17 minutes ago

> Self custody doesn't require using a hardware ledger

Does this mean you recommend not using one? Because that goes against all the common best practice recommendations from when I did a couple of years working in Web3 stuff a few years back.

> I think it's naive to suggest that self-custody is just a novelty with no value.

That's not what I suggested.

I suggested that it is less secure over time than centralized exchanges, even with the things you listed.

[–] ebiester 5 hours ago

So what happened with all of those with hardware wallets that have been pwned?

There apparently is no such thing as “your crypto” with how many security problems there are.

[–] caymanjim 4 hours ago

By the nature of blockchain, it's never, ever your crypto. It's allocated to whichever bucket the majority of participants in a given network agree to allocate it to.

[–] dlubarov 3 hours ago

Well, not exactly. A malicious majority of miners could rewind the chain as they please. They could indirectly steal some funds by undoing certain transfers, but they couldn’t just directly reassign funds to themselves.

[–] dididi27484sd 2 hours ago

Has anyone calculated the mining capacity of the AI data centre buildouts? Presumably the big firms could out-mine mining firms if they chose to?

[–] trevinhofmann 2 hours ago

Absolutely not, as GPUs used in data centers cannot compete with ASICs designed specifically for Bitcoin mining.

The Bitcoin mining network is somewhere around 1000 EH/s, while the (AI assisted research ahead) 34.5 million H100-equivalent GPUs globally would yield about 0.435 EH/s. They'd represent less than 0.05% of the Bitcoin network.

[–] weird-eye-issue 5 hours ago

Back around 2012 I created a paper wallet using an offline website (it was HTML and JS downloaded locally that worked without internet. I put it on a USB stick and then use it in a laptop without internet), printed it out and put it in a safe

[–] trollbridge 4 hours ago

I did a similar stunt with an old PowerBook where I electrically disabled the WiFi/Bluetooth so it wouldn’t be online unless I plugged in Ethernet, generated keys, and played around with mining. This was back in 2010 when this was all just basically toys for fun. I also encrypted it all with FileVault.

Then I forgot my pass phrase and have never been able to recover any of it. I don’t even know how many btc were mined/lost.

Before anyone asks, no, there aren’t any usable exploits / vulns found for the encryption methods used. And from what I can tell the coins in question have still sat frozen for going in a decade and a half now. I suspect many other hackers did the same thing…

[–] skinfaxi 3 hours ago

Apparently legacy filevault can be attacked offline with tools like john the ripper.

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 hours ago

If you were attempting to mine Bitcoin with a PowerBook I can confidently say you mined zero Bitcoin

Edit: I thought he was talking about 2012 but yeah in 2010 CPU mining was still a thing

[–] skinfaxi 4 hours ago

Wasn't the difficulty like 6 orders of magnitude easier back then?

[–] WarmWash 4 hours ago

ehhh you could CPU mine in the early months IIRC. The issue was that 50BTC wasn't even worth a penny back then lol

[–] rationalist 4 hours ago

Wasn't there an offline wallet that used a poor algorithm to develop seed phrases, and thus someone stole all of those coins a couple of months ago?

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 hours ago

Aren't you thinking of a hardware wallet?

[–] rationalist 4 hours ago

Yes

[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago

bitaddresses .org? If the JS code was defective, the coins can still be stolen later if the hacker can recreate the keys by going through the small key space, despite the coins being created being offline.

[–] weird-eye-issue 4 hours ago

Ah yes that's the one, although the domain name isn't plural

[–] xmcp123 5 hours ago

I keep a modest amount in Cake Wallet, not on an exchange. No hardware needed.

Tbh the biggest problem is platforms deciding you’re buying drugs because you purchase and transfer out (thanks Venmo)

[–] extraextra 5 hours ago

Technically you can literally memorize your secret key

A paper wallet works as well

A hardware wallet is just a tradeoff between convenience and an extra security risk

[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago

insufficient entropy is the real problem. this is why coldcard was hacked

[–] NoidFonsense 5 hours ago

idk the whole point of hardware wallets is that they are supposed to be a simpler stack. But if you're using a closed source hardware wallet...

An old laptop with the wifi card taken out is more transparent and auditable. It just runs the ordinary open source code

But I just keep all my funds in a hot wallet, no multisig. And if I get hacked I lose it all. I think the answer is just have good security and dont get hacked. The risk of losing cryptocurrency will encourage security advances across the whole ecosystem. I think I will set up multisig eventually

[–] lxgr 5 hours ago

How do you update that open source code without network connectivity? How do you securely input long transaction data to sign?

> I think the answer is just have good security and dont get hacked.

So you proposed a way to be more secure, only to discard it yourself in favor of “just having good security”?

[–] trollbridge 4 hours ago

You don’t. It’s not networked. It doesn’t need updates.

In fact, updates are only a risk. You physically remove anything that can allow updates to happen + anything that allows wireless networking.

[–] georgeecollins 1 hour ago

How do you actually use funds like this? I mean, I know this is set aside for later. But if you had an emergency, how fast could you actually spend it?

[–] NoidFonsense 3 hours ago

USB flash or QR code to transfer data

I agree my approach is not great, I dont own a lot

[–] razodactyl 4 hours ago

I wonder if wallet is not a good or bad analogy considering it would make sense to have many wallets to distribute potential damage instead of being taken out in a single hit... UX issue?

[–] jwpapi 5 hours ago

You can have crypto without hardware wallets

[–] method_capital 6 hours ago

Code is law!

[–] razodactyl 4 hours ago

This is highly insensitive and highly logical. I am very conflicted.

[–] cryptoegorophy 5 hours ago

not your keys not your coins...

[–] pkulak 5 hours ago

Or if it is your key and your air-gapped hardware wallet gets hacked because someone didn't use the right RNG. Crypto is apparently never yours; you're just holding on to it for some future criminal or nation state.

[–] cryptoegorophy 5 hours ago

hardware waller is NOT your key too. YOUR key is the paper wallet generated OFFLINE on a clean laptop that was never connected to web. There is a giant difference.

[–] rationalist 4 hours ago

Your method does not protect against what the person you replied to, posted.

If your paper wallet, generated offline, used a bad RNG, it is just as vulnerable.

[–] addaon 4 hours ago

> YOUR key is the paper wallet generated OFFLINE on a clean laptop that was never connected to web.

That sounds like your housekeeper's key...

[–] nkrisc 2 hours ago

Commit it to memory, the original kind.

[–] skinfaxi 4 hours ago

If someone steals your wallet, it wasn't your money, just the free market working as intended.

[–] UltraSane 1 hour ago

Controlling your own crypto keys is like having your net worth in cash or gold stored in your house. It could easily be lost or stolen or destroyed in a fire unless you take extraordinary precautions and then it is all gone.

[–] idiotsecant 6 minutes ago

It's not at all like storing gold, since you can have multisig wallets. You can make it arbitrarily difficult to lose or get stolen, depending on how thinly you want to slice your secrets and how many friends you have.

[–] throw101010 1 hour ago

> If your crypto was stolen in this, atleast you can rest assured that your money will be put to good use.

You could put it in USD and you'd be financing the bombings of schoolgirls in Iran in a pointless and no-end-in-sight war... not saying either is better, but one of them is optional for US citizens, while the other isn't. And the optional one also lets you avoid third-party custodians like Binance.

[–] tootie 1 hour ago

Holding assets in USD isn't the same as paying taxes.

[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago

who is the buyer though? North Korea has to sell it somewhere to buy stuff

[–] zaik 3 hours ago

Someone is certain to buy dirty coins at the right price point.

[–] gizajob 41 minutes ago

CZ being that someone.

[–] rwmj 6 hours ago

I thought the point of crypto was no takesies-backsies?

[–] michaelt 5 hours ago

That hasn't been true for years.

Back in 2016 a then-huge Ethereum smart contract called "The DAO" [1] had a loophole that let an attacker extract a third of all the funds.

But a lot of the developers and miners had either lost money themselves, or had friends who'd lost money, or felt the embarrassing incident was devaluing their own Ethereum holdings. So they decided to allow takesies-backsies.

There's probably a philosophical lesson there about power and who the rules really apply to.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO

[–] chao- 5 hours ago

I vividly remember a number of discussions/debates during that time (including on HN). I was more favorable to cryptocurrency in those days, and one of the things that contributed to my disillusionment was watching the people deepest and closest to it rediscover financial regulation from first principles, now that it was in their interest.

[–] throwaway132448 5 hours ago

Witnessing the same people discover philosophy from first principles in the face of AI has been similarly farcical, as if we’re the first people to try and wrestle with a definition of intelligence.

[–] cheraderama 4 hours ago

Philosophy, unlike financial regulation, isn't generally forced on people.

[–] narrator 4 hours ago

Yeah it is. It's called law. For example: when is intent important or a mitigating factor in a crime? When is it not important. Very philosophical.

[–] nonethewiser 3 hours ago

By that logic financial regulation is philosophy too but that makes the original comparison of financial regulation to philosophy non sensical. You’re shifting the terminology beneath out feet.

Law is downstream of philosophy. Youre forced to deal with conclusions that may be based in philosophy (or they may be arbitrary or self interested). Nobody makes you hold a position on mens rea. In that way you can ignore the philosophy.

[–] throwaway132448 4 hours ago

I don’t think I understand what you’re trying to say.

In the literal sense, people have been forcing their philosophy on other people for at least as long as we’ve had societies, so I assume it’s not that.

[–] nonethewiser 2 hours ago

Arent you disagreeing with yourself? You say these people are just now wrestling with the question of what intelligence is despite it being a longstanding philosophical question. So it clearly wasn’t forced on them.

[–] michaelt 4 hours ago

I myself was held prisoner by John Searle for 20 years, my only contact with the outside world by notes slipped under the door written in Chinese - a language I do not speak.

[–] jojobas 2 hours ago

You take not being subjected to say Marxism-Leninism at every stage of your life for granted.

[–] ex-aws-dude 5 hours ago

That is the tech bro circle of life

Invent Notion then keep adding features enterprise customers want until you're re-inventing JIRA/Confluence

Who left this stupid fence here?

[–] ahartmetz 48 minutes ago

Laws and contracts are just words unless there is someone willing and able to enforce them. Which is how constitutions are regularly ignored and perverted by dictators.

[–] phire 4 hours ago

The DAO incident was a special case. It was only sane to do the rollback because the stolen funds were time-locked up for 28 days.

Ethereum never did it again, rolling back hacks didn’t (and couldn’t) become normal policy. IMO, they shouldn’t have made an exception, as it set a bad example.

I’ve seen a few other small projects attempt to do rollbacks since, but it usually turns into some kind of mess. In most hacks, the coins aren’t time-locked and quickly get laundered through smaller exchanges (and other services) which act as mixers. The stolen coins end up in the hands of a bunch of innocent people, and the rollback then causes way more harm as those users lose their coins.

[–] vvillena 4 hours ago

The unforked variant of the network was kept alive for years. Why didn't it prevail over the forked variant?

[–] monk_grilla 3 hours ago

I don't think this counts as takesies backsies. This incident clearly followed the code is law principle, the whole point is that a majority forms the chain of truth. In this case, a majority decided to splinter and use a different chain where the incident never occurred.

As far as I understand blockchain, that is the system working as intended. Some nodes choose to run Ethereum Classic and some choose to run Ethereum. Isn't that the whole point? Decentralisation?

[–] toyg 6 hours ago

Those who cannot understand the monetary system are doomed to reimplement it.

[–] bell-cot 4 hours ago

Or, as Upton Sinclair noted, what a man can understand is closely aligned with his current self-interest.

[–] crtified 5 hours ago

...while, generally, being thoroughly fleeced by whichever set of wolves (who do understand monetary systems very well indeed) gets wind of the situation and manages to snag the best seats at the feeding trough filled with naive money.

[–] dmitrygr 3 hours ago

in lisp

[–] manofmanysmiles 6 hours ago

Do you understand the monetary system? If so, what specific steps do you suggest I take to acquire a similar understanding?

Edit: the downvotes are suggesting I'm missing something. I think my communication style could be improved.

[–] 12_throw_away 1 hour ago

> If so, what specific steps do you suggest I take to acquire a similar understanding?

School! Teachers! Classes!

Seriously, the traditional higher ed system is still a very good place to learn things like this. (I honestly tend to forget about it since academia hasn't really caught up at teaching software engineering, but that's really the exception rather than the rule ...). For traditional subjects like finance/economics, you can absolutely find inexpensive extension courses taught by people who care about pedagogy.

[–] danielmarkbruce 4 hours ago

Talk to chatgpt about how a checking account works, and really understand what happens when you put some money in the bank, and when you transfer that money to another person at another bank, how it's accounted for, how the banks actually do that transfer.

That's 80% of the thing right there.

[–] trollbridge 4 hours ago

The banks and government go out of their way to make fraud difficult and prevent accountholders from being defrauded of their deposits.

[–] cheraderama 5 hours ago

Reply to the edit: the parent comment was making a joke (though maybe there is some depth to it) and your reply sounds like a rhetorical question by a spoilsport. Unfortunate!

ETA: it's a joke because the original saying is "those who don't know history are doomed to repeat it"

[–] manofmanysmiles 4 hours ago

Thanks!

[–] collinmcnulty 5 hours ago

MIT opencourseware has an intro to finance course that was taught as the financial crisis was unfolding. I highly recommend it.

[–] ashkankiani 1 hour ago

Watch Yanis Varoufakis videos on youtube.

[–] toyg 5 hours ago

Going to school and reading up on how and why we got where we are...?

Some people (particularly criminals and oligarchs) might not like them, but most of the structures around financial movements exist for very practical reasons, often stemming from the will to uphold the rule of law. Obviously nothing is perfect (the US have an excessive level of control, VISA/Mastercard are de-facto monopolies, etc etc), but one cannot seriously think that the way to fix things is to reimplement everything from scratch in a wild west of shady unaccountable operators...

[–] iugtmkbdfil834 5 hours ago

<< one cannot seriously think that the way to fix things is to reimplement everything from scratch in a wild west of shady unaccountable operators

One absolutely can, but I think things have to first get sufficiently difficult for ordinary folks to even notice. Fortunately ( sarcasm tag here for otherwise perfectly normal individuals, who may be missing some caffeine in their organism ), given that the war is coming along with various related national security restrictions, we may soon be able to experience that particular slice of fun.

[–] manofmanysmiles 5 hours ago

My intuition is saying: the system arose naturally and intelligently over a long period of time, and even with its flaws has a lot of "load bearing legacy code" that few people understand, and new "engineers" think they'll just rewrite the whole thing from scratch and delete the "junk DNA" to use another metaphor. A little time passes and the beautiful clean rewrite collapses because of "totally unforeseeable circumstances" and the "old broken legacy system" is used to save the day. Somewhere a senior "monetary engineer" rolls over in his grave...

Any recommendations for books? Or even podcasts?

I don't have zero understanding. It sounds like you have a deeper understanding than I do.

[–] kube-system 5 hours ago

I can't think of a specific episode relevant here, but this is a good economics podcast in general:

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510289/planet-money/

[–] TheOtherHobbes 5 hours ago

The entire financial system is a chaotic boundary between thieves and opportunists, and people who want to keep thievery and opportunism under enough control to keep the system nominally workable.

It's always been like this. Which is why financial systems blow up and/or collapse regularly.

[–] HFguy 5 hours ago

If you want to quick primer to read tonight I suggest “The Economic Organization of a POW Camp by Radford”. Will be free download.

[–] Jhsto 6 hours ago

Doesn't apply for USDT and USDC which can freeze funds with a court order.

And like the DAO hack on Ethereum showed, if most people who run blockchain software decide that something never happened, they can revert transactions that way.

[–] Hamuko 6 hours ago

>And like the DAO hack on Ethereum showed, if most people who run blockchain software decide that something never happened, they can revert transactions that way.

Isn't that a pretty integral part of the blockchain? 51% attacks were even featured on the HBO show Silicon Valley.

[–] wmf 4 hours ago

Fixing the DAO hack wasn't done via a 51% attack. In most/all blockchains protocol changes aren't done by simple majority vote.

[–] jml7c5 6 hours ago

The value in USDT and USDC comes from the fact that they can (theoretically) be redeemed for real US dollars. One thing the issuers can do is announce "we will never accept redemption requests for these particular stolen coins", making them more or less worthless.

[–] grey-area 5 hours ago

Oh so you're saying a central authority can declare your currency worthless at any time? Good to know. Sounds very like a central bank issued currency though?

[–] codedokode 4 hours ago

It's literally in USDT contract [1], see line 264. USDT is implemented as a contract in several other networks like ETH and has a blacklist. So every USDT operation is a record in ETH blockchain that calls one of the methods (like "transfer" or "add to blacklist").

[1] https://etherscan.io/address/0xdAC17F958D2ee523a220620699459...

[–] dlubarov 1 hour ago

This is a purely optional part of the crypto ecosystem, so I don't see how it's an argument against crypto in general.

One can also burn tokens, just as one can burn cash, but we don't tend to hold that against either systems since it's purely optional.

[–] cowlevel 4 hours ago

Stablecoins are literally central banks. Decentralised coins are literally decentralised central banks. Bitcoin's algorithm is a central bank.

[–] grey-area 4 hours ago

Well I don't think they're very decentralised, which was the original premise.

Any rules can and have been changed by those with leverage to do so (be that exchanges, miners or devs), in the end any system like this storing value is captured and controlled.

[–] broken-kebab 2 hours ago

They are decentralized cause they operate on a sort of consensus between nodes as was original premise. Are they "very decentralized" depends on your definition of "very", of course, and techical realities of a particular situation.

[–] icepush 4 hours ago

Decentralized central banks - are these the finance equivalent of dehydrated water ?

[–] xaksnTMu2 6 hours ago

That was already proven false after ETH fork on 2016-07-20, that rolled back funds stolen in DAO hack.

[–] NoidFonsense 6 hours ago

don't bet against the house. eventually you have to cash the chips out for real money, and the house might throw out the old chips.

Unless the house is monero or something and you want a lifetime supply of drugs.

[–] eagerpace 6 hours ago

Centralized decentralization

[–] hgoel 5 hours ago

Turns out that even crypto's rules only apply if you're poor.

[–] basch 5 hours ago

It’s always been that the voters determine reality.

[–] lossolo 2 hours ago

Stablecoins like Tether and USDC can freeze funds held in their contracts, they can even destroy funds in blacklisted accounts:

> function destroyBlackFunds (address _blackListedUser) public onlyOwner

[–] stackghost 6 hours ago

The idiots that wanted no takebacks are the same ones who lacked the critical thinking ability to foresee this exact situation.

[–] iugtmkbdfil834 5 hours ago

No takebacks make perfect sense UNTIL you hand over your keys to a third party;p

[–] qwbar 6 hours ago

Well, Tether was started by an Epstein friend and first handled by the CIA Deltec bank in the Caribbean. Now it is handled by Lutnick's Cantor & Fitzgerald and is in Bukele's El Salvador.

Don't mess with Tether, it is practically state owned.

[–] bflesch 5 hours ago

Interesting, so it ties into the NSA vs CIA war? Some nerds from NSA/MIwhatever launched crypto, then the CIA trust fund nepo kids hijacked/weaponized it through tether

[–] FireBeyond 5 hours ago

There's an amazingly hilarious interview with the Deltec's "Deputy CEO" and CNBC back in the day:

- was conducted from his gaming rig

- about Deltec's (and therefore Tether's) money movements being several times larger than all the banking in their country was due to people misunderstanding the country's two banking licenses, the names of which HE "couldn't remember right now" (the Deputy CEO of a bank who can't remember the name of the banking licenses where they operate?!?), and he "wasn't sure which [banking license] the bank has, but we might (emphasis mine) have both"

- oh yeah, said Deputy CEO's "resume": 33 years old, by his LinkedIn claimed to have graduated HEC Lausanne in Switzerland with a Master of Science at the age of 15... celebrating his graduation by immediately being named Professor of Finance at a university in Lebanon. While dividing his spare time between running hedge funds in Switzerland (called Indepedance [sic] Weath [sic] Management) and uhh... Jacksonville, FL.

Once CNBC's viewers started ridiculing and questioning both Deltec Bank and Tether and when that looked hilariously bad, they removed his info from the bank's website.

And when that looked bad, they added it back.

And when that looked bad, they removed the bank's whole website, and replaced it with a broken WP template with no working links.

Hey, look, several years after that, go to Deltec's website. "Ultra sophisticated private banking" running on a different WordPress site. "Client login"? "This site can’t be reached Check if there is a typo in ebanking.deltecbank.com. DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN". Just as has been the case for years.

... and then the entire bank website was replaced with a low-effort WordPress template. Their online banking was Javascript hard coded to refuse all login attempts.

"Sounds legit to me", said the crypto bros. "Fuck the regulatory system. This is the new era."

[–] m348e912 4 hours ago

Is this the interview you were referring to? (It's not a CNBC interview, so I wasn't sure)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ3nQ8-KY28

[–] FireBeyond 2 hours ago

It may be - there was also a CNBC interview, but this feels very similar, and I remember this host.

[–] razodactyl 3 hours ago

Shhhh. If we keep closing the book and staring at the cover the whole illusion of shared societal norms breaks.

Let's continue reading...

[–] aidenn0 5 hours ago

Most crypto is "majority rules" where the majority is either "majority of the currency" (proof of stake) or "majority of the mining power" (proof of work).

In this case, iFinex has the explicit ability to freeze funds in Tether.

[–] codedokode 4 hours ago

Probably not everyone knows, but USDT has a "black list", and admins can prevent any address holding USDT from spending. The black list is implemented in USDT contract.

So USDT is not truly decentralized and your money can be frozen for any reason or no reason at all.

[–] smoovb 1 hour ago

The U.S. government is the largest beneficiary of this service. More than $2.1 billion in USDT connected to or requested by U.S. authorities out of over $4.4 billion in total illicit USDT freezes globally.

[–] varenc 1 hour ago

It's tethered to the USD. It seems expected that the government in charge of USD is doing the most blacklisting.

[–] extraextra 5 hours ago

What's the point of even stealing the stablecoins? They're controlled by private companies that can easily freeze them

Am I missing something here? Seems like a waste of time

[–] wmf 4 hours ago

In this case it looks like the attacker managed to swap some stablecoins into ETH before they were frozen.

[–] chairhairair 6 hours ago

So much for anti-centralization.

[–] dumberquestions 5 hours ago

No one really considers crypto held in exchanges as decentralized, I guess some might but it's pretty standard knowledge.

[–] hocuspocus 5 hours ago

Where coins are held is completely irrelevant. There are cryptocurrencies on real blockchains, and while the technology is dumb and mostly useless, nobody denies that PoW and properly implemented PoS are decentralized.

And then there are centrally issued and controlled coins on private, permissioned ledgers a.k.a. databases. But most cryptobros never cared about the technology nor the political goal, so anything can be called a cryptocurrency as long as it's a medium for gambling and speculation outside the regulated financial framework.

[–] method_capital 5 hours ago

We're talking about Binance, a centralized exchange.

[–] Analemma_ 6 hours ago

I keep saying this: don't bother trying to dunk on crypto people with accusations like this. To a first approximation, nobody in crypto actually believes in the stated principles of anti-centralization, freedom, etc. It's entirely about number go up and always has been. Your charge of hypocrisy just bounces straight off people who never cared about the politics.

[–] wolvoleo 6 hours ago

In the beginning of crypto people believed in it. But as the numbers went up and up and up it attracted the wrong people. And the original people left.

Now the traditional banking system is basically rebuilt in crypto. The banks are busy the exchanges. The EU even talk about making it illegal to store money in your own wallet.

[–] pixl97 3 hours ago

It's money, did you think it wouldn't attract the wrong people?!

This is what happens when people don't think things thru.

[–] grey-area 4 hours ago

The traditional banking system does not use cryptocurrencies.

[–] wpietri 5 hours ago

It's still useful for the portion of the audience that doesn't realize the depth of the fraud.

[–] kalaksi 5 hours ago

It's a poor dunk anyway. The crypto space is vast and has many kinds of coins and communities/people. Some people seem to think it's still 2012.

[–] hocuspocus 4 hours ago

Well at least in 2012, people who cared about the space seemed to understand the guarantees a blockchain is supposed to provide.

[–] paulpauper 3 hours ago

it was all a lie

[–] getcrunk 2 hours ago

Interesting I didn’t know you can block/cancel transactions. Does this have to happen before the new block is minted. or it can happen after, that’s what I’m inclined to think just based off of the word block

[–] cosmojg 2 hours ago

Centralized stablecoins like USDT and USDC aren't layer-one cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin or Ethereum. They're more like applications running on top of other blockchains, usually as smart contracts, and their issuers hold admin keys which can freeze, mint, burn, and otherwise redistribute funds at will. As far as timing goes, stablecoin issuers can't actually cancel or reverse a transaction that's already in a block that's been mined, but they can freeze the receiving address afterward and burn the funds there, then reissue them elsewhere, which has much the same effect.

[–] jwpapi 5 hours ago

Freezing crypto is so disgusting to me I don’t know…

Like the whole point of crypto to me I money without central governance.

I never liked stable coins or the concept of it and it’s mainly a huge fraud, so freezing just adds on top.

[–] maccam912 1 hour ago

At least a motivated person could audit the smart contracts on this. It isn't like it's a surprise when it turns out it's possible to freeze these coins.

[–] hoppp 4 hours ago

Stablecoins are fiat on-chain and they are legal so they need to have the freezing mechanism in the smart contract otherwise they could go to jail.

So crypto + legal company means not really following bitcoin ideology anymore

[–] paulpauper 3 hours ago

governments, banks freeze currency all the time

[–] kolanos 6 hours ago

> About $2.4 billion out of this is already frozen by Circle and Tether. Some of the big ones:

How does freezing crypto work in this context?

[–] redox99 6 hours ago

The smart contract for those tokens supports freezing. Tether just calls the freeze function on that address.

[–] cowlevel 4 hours ago

And it's impossible to mix them because Ethereum is even anonymous than Bitcoin.

[–] hackernud3s 5 hours ago

Isn't it already too late at that point? The tokens would have moved already.

[–] petu 5 hours ago

Moved where? Moving to a different wallet wouldn't prevent freezing. It's 5B, impossible to cash out or exchange for different crypto quickly.

[–] hackernud3s 3 hours ago

right but too late to call freeze on the original wallet address as per gp's post. I would imagine it got distributed to many wallets and attempts to tumble by the time Tether could move on it.

[–] wmf 6 hours ago

Most crypto assets are operated by a smart contract that controls every transfer. So the contract can decide to not perform certain transfers.

[–] ceejayoz 5 hours ago

Not your keys, not your crypto.

Keys? Hahaha, still not your crypto.

[–] cowlevel 4 hours ago

Unless it's Monero, the only currency to be declared illegal in most countries because it's too much like cash.

[–] giwook 2 hours ago

So they got “only” ~$3 billion

[–] reddalo 6 hours ago

Frozen? What are they going to do, fork the blockchain?

[–] Marazan 5 hours ago

USDT and USDC are both centralised crypto currencies with a single source of truth.

[–] hocuspocus 4 hours ago

In other words, they are essentially casino chips, not cryptocurrencies.

[–] RobotToaster 5 hours ago

That doesn't sound very decentralised.

[–] sergiotapia 6 hours ago

I thought crypto was built specifically to prevent these 'freezing' actions? wtf

[–] iillexial 5 hours ago

Does anyone on this website realize there are different types of crypto coins?

[–] codedokode 4 hours ago

USDT is implemented as a contract written in Solidity, working over other network like ETH, and it has a blacklist managed by admins. Once address is added to a blacklist, you cannot spend anything from it.