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The most logical conclusion is that this probably wasn't about money. Plenty of better ways to make money than telling people to give you BTC. I'm expecting a h
by Thorentis 6y ago
The most logical conclusion is that this probably wasn't about money. Plenty of better ways to make money than telling people to give you BTC. I'm expecting a huge data drop on wikileaks/pastebin/wherever of private DMs, images, who knows what else.
- dmix 6y agoPlus there was no way they knew beforehand they'd only make 12BTC. People always overestimate the value of twitter and conversion rates when an actual action is required - even with targeted audiences like cryptocurrency people in this case. People seem to assume everyone takes tweets at face value and won't do a double take when it doesn't sound like something they would normally say. Even here there was plenty of people on HN who were claiming outlandish possibilities while it was happening.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI’m surprised they pulled off that much.
- diab0lic 6y agoI can't help but make the obvious observation here. It's bitcoin... The space has a prior for people who are willing to rush head first into something they don't understand in order to attempt to make a quick buck. I'm surprised it was only 12 BTC.
- 6nf 6y agoThey used several different BTC addresses and even some Monero and other crypto ones. It's not just 12 BTC.
- ALittleLight 6y agoI hope Twitter's report includes a list of all the attacker's tweets.
- SifJar 6y agoBut there's also a precedent of scams like this being posted on twitter, esp. from accounts impersonating e.g. Elon Musk. Just because it's tweeted by an official account doesn't suddenly make it less scammy - sure some people clearly fell for it, but I reckon most people using twitter with an interest in cryptocurrency would immediately recognise these tweets as a scam, regardless of the source
- ngngngng 6y agoI could go for 12 BTC right about now
- nullc 6y agoThey may not have: It's normally for various cons to pay themselves to some extent to add legitimacy to their actions and generate more attention.
- koheripbal 6y agoI'm surprised they didn't get more. Poorly executed, frankly. The tweet just wreaked of spam.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago12 BTC could be retirement level money in some countries.
- fiblye 6y agoNot really, when you factor in inflation, unless you're planning on living in abject poverty your whole life or not planning on living very long. e.g., Vietnam is a livable place and GDP per capita is ~$2600. That'd get you a very modest living. GDP/capita is also up 2x from 10 years ago and 10x from 20 years ago. You could maybe squeak out 20 years with very modest living and few unplanned expenses and assuming the economy and thus cost of living doesn't grow tremendously (like it likely will). Somalia would give you a little more value for your money. But I think if someone suddenly had that much money in Somalia, they'd probably be getting out of Somalia or hoping nobody found out.
- Kiro 6y agoI could easily survive and be happy on 12 BTC for the rest of my life and I live in one of the most expensive countries in the world.
- ben_w 6y ago$110k for the rest of your life? $500/month for 18 years? That wouldn’t cover health insurance plus rent (even though I’m sharing rent with a partner) here in Berlin, and Berlin is cheap compared to the UK or the bits of the USA I’ve visited.
- koheripbal 6y agoSeems more likely that they expected to get more.
- jonny_eh 6y agoJoe Biden was one of the hacked accounts, Trump was not. It's like 2016 all over again.
- zwily 6y agoI’m guessing after the last time Trump was hacked internally, some new control went in place specific for his account.
- CJefferson 6y agoI am struggling to think of any better system than BTC. Almost anything else I can think of would require either (a) substansal amount of starting cash (for example trying to crash Tesla's stock price), or (b) be almost impossible to pull off without getting caught (blackmail, or again stock manipulation if you do it in a big enough way to make some decent money). In terms of risk/reward, assuming someone found some easy trick and wanted to cash out ASAP, this feels like the best option.
- 542458 6y agoI don’t think it would take very much starting cash at all to make money off a Tesla crash. Options can be pretty cheap for moonshots. Alternatively, is it possible they bought options on twitter itself? It’s down 4% in after-hours (which is less than I expected, but still enough delta to make some cash).