North Korean Hackers May Try to Sell $40M Worth of Bitcoin, FBI Warns

The FBI believes that North Korea hackers may cash out stolen Bitcoin worth over $40 million. FBI said Laser's group and a PT 38 were behind multiple hacks this year. They include approximately $60 million theft from payment processor Alpha alpo and the 100 million exploit from atomic Wallet. January, the FBI named two groups responsible for the 2020 Horizon bridge hack. 100 million stolen. Um As far as my thoughts on this go, I don't know, I don't really have any thoughts on it. An expression. It's not a thought if you're listening on the podcast, Wendy's thoughts is just a displeased expression. I, I mean, like this is bad stuff. So hopefully they, you know, they catch the bad guys if bad things was actually done, but maybe that this is a big psyop and it wasn't even this particular group. Maybe it was in fact, um something else I love this story if there was a time magazine for crypto and they did like the person of the year, the best the hottest take would be North Korean hackers for person of the year because they remain fascinating. The press release that the FBI put on that the the FBI put a, put a press release out on this also spicy, right? This is like a bank heist. This is like a low speed chase. Right. Right. Where the FBI is identifying the wallet addresses, six wallet addresses uh of these alleged North Korean hackers. And they're saying, watch out, watch out for these wallets. Folks do not transact with these wallets or anything that could be associated with these wallets, do your diligence. We're tracking these bad guys and we know where they live. And this is super funny to be able to watch a bank height such as this play out in real time on chain. But with the FBI identifying in the last 24 hours that these alleged North Korean hackers are probably looking to unload this stuff somewhere. So it's super funny that I don't know, crypto enables this, right, enables this visibility into all these crazy things that happen in a very, in a very opaque space with all sorts of crazy actors, some of whom are financing nuclear weapons development in North Korea. So it's just crazy. Um It's crazy. I like this press release. I like this news item. It's crazy town, North Korean hackers, crazy town. That's it. That's all I got. I'm confused by Wendy. Didn't get all excited about this story. I feel like this is, this is, it's like all all points bulletin. Yeah, I just don't want them to target me. Oh, that's fair. Well, that's a fair point. The show. Oh, no, no, I don't, I don't affiliate with time. I don't live that life anymore. I don't affiliate with bad people. Um, but I mean, this is, this is also another valid use case for Blockchain technology because you can actually see everything live on chain and you can catch people if they are, in fact, something bad and you can't really do that with cash or with wire transfers in order to like subpoena a bank to get any types of records. It takes a lot of time and resources. But when it does come to anything on the Blockchain, it's there forever. It's immutable and you shouldn't do anything bad with cash or with Blockchain technology because you're gonna get got or you're gonna get framed, you'll get, got. Yeah, just following up Zach's thoughts here. I think this is like a pretty important story and I, I like to see these stories because I think it sort of brings in like a geopolitical question with crypto which often times we just forget about in like the day in day out of like the friend tech pumps and like the random token pumps. Like we have the ability to move money seamlessly over borders, like for the first time in human history and like there's consequences for that at real time, right? So if the FBI is putting out these addresses, well, what does that mean, for all these businesses who do use crypto, who do use Bitcoin. Well, that means they need to pay attention to these addresses, right? And that means that there's going to be tons of different custodial solutions for building in easy applications. So you don't use these addresses or you don't interact with these addresses. There's already a lot of solutions out there. But I think you can see in stories like this where the future of crypto going, there's going to be the need for a lot of different products and services that sort of work around, like the problems that an open Blockchain does create. And there's like a lot of benefits from having an open Blockchain, but there's also a lot of downsides and that's sort of where you get like the innovation and the creativity. This brings you back to the tornado cash case, right? Where uh came in and said like, hey, can use tornado cash. And we're, we're saying this address on Ethereum and that caused a lot of headaches for a lot of people who had money on top of trade of cash. But again, it's a geopolitical question. And for the first time in history, we'd see that an online address for Cryptocurrency was sanctioned by a government. We're going to see that happen time and time again as North Korea and other rogue nations and terrorist regimes are able to use cryptocurrencies, Jen. Yeah, you guys all took the words right out of my mouth. Like both the groups that are mentioned in this article are responsible for many of the hacks that we've spoken about right here on the show. And I think it's important and you've all said it open and transparent means, you know, we can track anything. And I think this is the first time we've seen big groups like this steal mass amounts of funds. I believe in the hundreds of millions of dollars, if not tens of millions. I stand to be corrected. I think it's hundreds of millions. Um and we can just watch what's happening with those funds. We know exactly what's happening and when they finally get to an off ramp, um agencies like the FBI can freeze them. And I think that you're all right, that is huge innovation. I just hope the next time we hear uh Congress or senators speak about all of the bad things that come with the crypto industry and all of the bad ways that North Korea is able to get funding because of vulnerabilities in the crypto industry that this comes up. I say this every time we talk about hacks and we talk about tracking funds um across blockchains and ecosystems and getting to fiat off ramps and the FBI saying, you know, watch out for these wallets. And I hope that this conversation finally makes its way into the lawmakers mouths because that's just gonna help them create a better a better future for us all. And that's where I will leave it before break really quickly. What happens if they use this techno or what happens if they use this ideology and harm everybody else that are like harm on like innocent people with the CBD C with the tracking and with the stopping of moving funds and what not for a simple parking ticket. That's what scares me about it is that they're going to use the story like this and then put it down to innocent or just anybody who's innocent for a simple parking ticket and just make their life a living heck. That's all.