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submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by yesman@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

The way I read the article, the "worth millions" is the sum of the ransom demand.

The funny part is that the exploit is in the "smart" contract, ya know the thing that the blockchain keeps secure by forbidding any updates or patches.

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[-] Starbuck@lemmy.world 22 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Because sometimes even criminals need to buy things that aren’t illegal, I guess. And the legitimate people who have those things don’t want to play games dealing with fake internet money.

If I want to buy a jetski, the place I buy it from isn’t going to take crypto because the people that sell the parts for it don’t take crypto and the people who build it can’t pay for food in crypto.

Crypto is only useful for rug pull scams, money laundering, and black-market transactions. It’s real innovation is undoing centuries of banking regulations so that people can learn the hard way why all those regulations exist.

[-] merc@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Because sometimes even criminals need to buy things that aren’t illegal

Money has value basically because people need to pay taxes. The shop owner sells things for Euros or USD partially because eventually at the end of the year they need to turn over Euros or USD to the government as taxes. If they sold things for bitcoins, they'd eventually have to convert those bitcoins to USD to pay taxes.

Other than speculation, the only reason bitcoin has any value is that sometimes people need to pay ransomware ransoms. That means they need to buy bitcoin somehow. And, even the criminals who receive that bitcoin will launder it and change it back into real assets because it's not useful to them as bitcoin. Eliminate ransomware and suddenly the only value for bitcoin is people who hold it hoping there's a greater fool out there who will buy it from them for more than they paid.

this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2023
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