Comment by schleck8
14 hours ago
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
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.
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...
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.
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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.
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.
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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
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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)
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
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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
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You can have crypto without hardware wallets
Code is law!
This is highly insensitive and highly logical. I am very conflicted.
not your keys not your coins...
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.
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If someone steals your wallet, it wasn't your money, just the free market working as intended.
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.
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.
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> 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.
Holding assets in USD isn't the same as paying taxes.
That's why I've mentioned being a US citizen, but don't worry the same kind of moral dilemmas applies to most other fiat currencies/citizenships.
who is the buyer though? North Korea has to sell it somewhere to buy stuff
Someone is certain to buy dirty coins at the right price point.