We might as well just load up ships full of cash and send it to North Korea at this point.

We are terrified they might buy a sweatshirt with a Nike logo on it and spend billions trying enforce tens of thousands of petty sanctions, while we can’t run financial security strong enough to keep them out.

One day we claim they are eating grass and tree bark and have no electricity, the next day they are the world’s most sophisticated hackers.

Then they are running their military off wood gassified trucks, and the next day they are building a massive neighborhood of skyscrapers.

When pictures of Pyongyang appear online, we claim it’s only for a tiny percent of the political elite, but nearly 15% of the entire country lives there.

I’d say either our actual intel or our propaganda is a bit off kilter. We can’t even keep our own stories straight anymore. Our foreign policy is so confused.

Same people that tell us Russia's military is a joke yet here we are 4 years later. Meanwhiel, Ukraine hit another refinery today. This crap is never going to end.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended withdrawals after hackers broke into its digital wallets and stole $6 billion in what appears to be the biggest crypto heist ever.

Binance said late Thursday that its initial investigation indicated the hack went through an engineer’s laptop, “which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” Blockchain evidence suggests the hack originated in North Korea, according to multiple crypto-tracing firms.

A team of cryptocurrency firms managed to freeze about $3 billion of the stolen loot amid a frenetic battle with the hackers to find and control the digital money.

Binance co-CEO Richard Tend said on X that the attack was not a “one-click” action, but rather a complex process. The investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual nor found evidence of any wallet private key leak.

Binance said it would cover all losses from the company’s funds and an emergency assets fund, adding “user funds are safe.” The crypto exchange said it had temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals to allow security checks to be completed and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds. The crypto exchange expects withdrawal services to resume by Sunday morning.

Crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs attributed the heist to an elite North Korean hacking unit “based on robust on and off-chain intelligence,” pointing out that “several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists.”

Pangolin Intelligence, another blockchain-tracking firm based in Singapore, said it also believed that a North Korean hacking unit was behind the heist.
....
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/30/tech/...t-hnk-intl

They keep finding more remote workers from North Korea too.

A few months ago one was working for the Federal Government.

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/technolog...-s-agency/

Hell, we should just outsource the hiring to North Korea .

I believe the phrase “penny wise and pound foolish” suits our m.o. pretty well.

They keep finding hundreds of remote workers at a time, so who knows how many there really are.

Thousands? Tens of thousands?

We’ll never know because we’ll never catch most of them.

They are already multiple steps ahead of us and have other things going on that we aren’t even aware of yet. And those new schemes have likely been going for years undetected by now.

I suspect a lot of companies know who they are employing but are getting a lot of brains and productivity for their buck, and maintain plausible deniability, so just keep them on because the North Koreans are so much more productive than Americans they can hire.

(10-30-2026 08:31 AM)Gitanole Wrote:  Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended withdrawals after hackers broke into its digital wallets and stole $6 billion in what appears to be the biggest crypto heist ever.

Binance said late Thursday that its initial investigation indicated the hack went through an engineer’s laptop, “which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” Blockchain evidence suggests the hack originated in North Korea, according to multiple crypto-tracing firms.

A team of cryptocurrency firms managed to freeze about $3 billion of the stolen loot amid a frenetic battle with the hackers to find and control the digital money.

Binance co-CEO Richard Tend said on X that the attack was not a “one-click” action, but rather a complex process. The investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual nor found evidence of any wallet private key leak.

Binance said it would cover all losses from the company’s funds and an emergency assets fund, adding “user funds are safe.” The crypto exchange said it had temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals to allow security checks to be completed and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds. The crypto exchange expects withdrawal services to resume by Sunday morning.

Crypto-tracing firm TRM Labs attributed the heist to an elite North Korean hacking unit “based on robust on and off-chain intelligence,” pointing out that “several features of this attack match earlier North Korea-linked heists.”

Pangolin Intelligence, another blockchain-tracking firm based in Singapore, said it also believed that a North Korean hacking unit was behind the heist.
....
https://edition.cnn.com/2026/10/30/tech/...t-hnk-intl

Our security experts are able to forensically track them down within hours every time, with great certainty I might add.

Too bad those experts can’t detect them in the systems for ages waiting to act. Or be secure enough not to let them in.

Thank goodness our greatest security minds are busy getting their names out there as “experts” by doing interviews.

#SycophanticSecurityInc

A couple things:

Something like this kind of blows the whole crypto narrative - only you can get to your super secure, govt has no control over, digital assets.

My guess is Russian hackers, generally considered the world’s best because Russian’s are really good at crime related stuff, worked with NK to make this happen as compensation for throwing their young, crappy, soldiers into the meat grinder of Putin’s special operation.

Anyone playing around in the crypto scamoverse deserves to lose it all.

wait a minute...I had heard that blockchain and crypto's absolute unhackability was one of its main 'features' versus regular finance....so, that wasn't true?
Give me cold, hard paper cash, silver and gold....

Artist: Burl Ives
Album: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (soundtrack)
Song: "Silver and Gold"
Songwriter: Johnny Marks
December 13, 1964 Decca Records



Happy Holditferdays, cryptonaughts....

Over 6 Billion Served

Imagine thinking crypto couldn't be hacked. LOL

(10-30-2026 08:14 AM)b2b Wrote:  Same people that tell us Russia's military is a joke yet here we are 4 years later. Meanwhiel, Ukraine hit another refinery today. This crap is never going to end.

The fact that we are here four years later and Russia didn’t take over Ukraine is the proof that their military is a joke.

(10-30-2026 12:16 PM)Gitanole Wrote:  Over 6 Billion Served

The Wests financial system just got served.

Again.

North Korea may be unwittingly saving us from ourselves. Sure, it’s not individual clients losing their money, but the industry keeps taking hits and it makes the whole thing seem much more risky to people.

Of course, crypto isn’t going anywhere, so driving terrified retail customers out would drive the price down and inevitably leave much more bitcoin under the control of large institutional investors who probably don’t store this coin in places like Bitcoin.

If the big boys owned all of it and no one else could profit from it, then it would be forced on us, guaranteed.

(10-30-2026 11:18 AM)GoodOwl Wrote:  wait a minute...I had heard that blockchain and crypto's absolute unhackability was one of its main 'features' versus regular finance....so, that wasn't true?
Give me cold, hard paper cash, silver and gold....

Artist: Burl Ives
Album: Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (soundtrack)
Song: "Silver and Gold"
Songwriter: Johnny Marks
December 13, 1964 Decca Records



Happy Holditferdays, cryptonaughts....

Gold is down under 4k, at $3891.10 today, and silver took a huge hit today also, down to $49.86. I've been buying 5 ounce silver bars by the truckload this year along with buying gold by the gram with every order I place, and at this rate I've spent far more than I could get back out of it today.

Some forecasters are saying silver will rebound to the mid-60s by the end of the year, while others are saying that within the next 6 to 12 months it will soar to about 160 bucks an ounce. At one point I had pounds of silver; I'd go to estate sales and find sterling silver jewelry for next to nothing, and I had a friend who buys and sells precious metals who would sell it to me at spot price or barely above it.

I sold a 1-kilo silver bar to my baby brother early in January for 1650 bucks. I think I paid just over $1000 for it in January 2025, and immediately after I sold it to him, silver jumped to $115 an ounce, I think, so he sold it for a nice profit, more than double what I sold it to him for.

Baby brother used the cash he got for the silver bar to help pay some of his medical bills. He developed lung cancer and had no insurance. He died 3 weeks ago. RIP baby brother Patrich. I sure am going to miss you playing the blues on your Strats and Tellies or watching you jump around on stage when playing rock tunes. Man, he could shred that guitar. It was like he was choking the neck for everything he could get out of it. He was a wild man while playing rock music. He reminded me of Ted Nugent when he was younger. A week before he died, the Memphis Blues Society awarded him with a plaque and certificate as a "distinguished contributor to the Blues in Memphis." It was presented to him by a great friend and his late-in-life mentor, Brad Webb, the only person I personally know with a blues note on Beale Street.

It's amazing now much less expensive medical services cost when paying cash. Even so, those bills ate up most of his gold and silver that he'd been hoarding for years, though.

Ok, sorry for the stream of consciousness writing. I know this response is full of it.