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It also makes some practical sense, as NK regime has little in the way of hard foreign currency and bitcoins would be a great source of untraceable unsactionabl
by jorblumesea 9y ago
It also makes some practical sense, as NK regime has little in the way of hard foreign currency and bitcoins would be a great source of untraceable unsactionable income. Their previous adventures in illegal activities (counterfeit bills, meth, prostitution and slave labor) show they are not above deviousness to achieve stable income for the Kim state.
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoSupposing North Korea has Bitcoins... how could they sell them in a way that grants them usable currency?
- jorblumesea 9y agoThe same way N. Korea does everything overseas, foreign agents and "diplomats" that act couriers. China would be the obvious conduit as bitcoin is widely accepted there.
- adventured 9y agoNorth Korea has the world's #2 and #3 economies next door, and both increasingly like Bitcoin. China has a significant appetite for Bitcoins, even more so with the capital controls now in place. That's a pretty easy black market trade.
- mc32 9y agoI'd venture to say #3 has no love lost for N Korea so highly doubt #3 would look kindly at aiding and abetting N Korea. #2 is rather frustrated with the DPRK regime and have tightened commerce with the regime.
- ryanlol 9y agoIt's trivial to exchange Bitcoins anonymously to cash almost anywhere in the world.
- discordance 9y agoNot in volumes that count
- DaiPlusPlus 9y agoBy cash do you mean physical money, like coins and notes, or liquid amounts in a bank account? The problem is physhcal money is not a good way to move large amounts around, and most bank accounts have a great deal of oversight. No-one cares about $75 being used to buy heroin on The Silk Road, but people will notice $75,000,000 being moved - and Bitcoin is not anonymous either, merely psuedonominous.
- oh_sigh 9y agoSell them on one of the Chinese exchanges for yuan and physically carry it over the border to NK.
- openasocket 9y agoHell, you don't even need to carry it over: anything you want to use the money to purchase is going to be in China anyway.
- tyingq 9y agoNot sure ~$150k in Bitcoin is that interesting to the DPRK.
- losteric 9y agoThey would have earned at least an order of magnitude more if the WannaCry killswitch hadn't been discovered.
- tyingq 9y agoIs ~$10M that interesting to a nation state, even a cash strapped one though? This is almost certainly not about the money.
- jpatokal 9y agoThis is a country whose diplomats sell bootleg liquor and use diplomatic pouches to smuggle crystal meth, so, yes: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11305540/Under-paid-diplomats-at-North-Korean-embassy-forced-to-shop-at-car-boot-sales.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/11...
- gjjrfcbugxbhf 9y agoThere is a difference between a nation state its officials...
- captainmuon 9y agoWhy not? It just has to be more than they invested in this attack. It's not going to single-handedly pull the country out of recession, but it is probably the best utilisation of those computer-skilled individuals who developed it.
- dx034 9y agoIt is. They probably hoped for much more but sanctions by nearly all states in the world mean that North Korea desperately needs FX reserves. For a state where very few people have access to material that US$ can buy, a few hundred k$ can be a lot of money.