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Interesting side note on crypto: > Early crypto liquidity came from ransomware. The existence of a pool of desperate, panicked companies and individuals whose
by sieste 3y ago
Interesting side note on crypto:
> Early crypto liquidity came from ransomware. The existence of a pool of desperate, panicked companies and individuals whose data had been stolen by criminals created a baseline of crypto liquidity because they could only get their data back by trading real money for fake crypto money.
Is that even true, and if so, documented and quantified somewhere?
- RealityVoid 3y agoSurely _some_ came from ransomware, but I feel the article overstates this. Presumably, the hackers also exchange it as soon as they have the chance and they wouldn't have used this as an environment if it didn't have value in the first place. I think a much better case can be made that early crypto liquidity came from darknet markets.
- jaidhyani 3y agoGoing to be extremely hard to quantify, ransomware peddlers aren't famous for their meticulous public record-keeping. You could try to sift through all the transactions on the public blockchain and try to classify the ransomware ones, but that's going to be challenging at best I imagine. Overall I'm skeptical of the claim. It could be true, or partially true, but demonstrating that would probably require some work. Alternatively, someone could demonstrate that liquidity came from speculators or some other source, which seems potentially less doable but still not easy.
- SkyMarshal 3y agoPretty sure that early crypto liquidity came from VCs, hedge funds, and speculators on Mt.Gox and other early fiat-crypto exchanges and OTC desks. To the extent crypto ransomware contributed, it was a small portion of that.