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Binance fired employees who found $1.7B in crypto was sent to Iran
- toomuchtodo 8mo agohttps://archive.today/t2pG6 https://archive.today/t2pG6
- boplicity 8mo agoPlease understand that circumventing copyright makes it more difficult for journalists to make a living.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoI'm a subscriber, but not everyone is.
- boplicity 8mo agoAnd by making it easy for them to circumvent copyright, they have even less incentive to support the journalists who did the reporting.
- freitasm 8mo agoSubscribers can share the link as a gift, so readers can see the original, not the proxied version.
- toomuchtodo 8mo agoI cannot trust that a gift link does not tie to my IRL identity I subscribe under. I can trust that archive links do not. The NY Times gets my money either way. It's an opsec concern. Trust no one. If someone wants to post gift links in every thread, just let me know who to pay to enable that, I am happy to.
- afavour 8mo agoI don't know why this is downvoted, it's the truth. NYT actually has a "gift article" functionality that makes it easy to share articles with non-subscribers.
- this-is-why 8mo agoYou are 100% correct. I find the attitude that everything should be free a bit tedious. But then again, why does the truth have to be paywalled while lies are free. I believe it is a detriment to society that we cannot publicly find reporting. Yes I know now come the cynics who will argue bias. But that’s just a failure of reading comprehension, not fair reporting doctrine. So yes. I’m with you 100%.
- unyttigfjelltol 8mo agoIs there a micropayment option or something? I wish I could friction-free, buy access to these sites al al carte without dealing with them directly or setting up a recurring subscription directly with them.
- chihuahua 8mo agoBest we can do is a monthly subscription, with every dark pattern known to man to prevent cancellation.
- blell 8mo agoThey should learn to code.
- ericmay 8mo agoCopyright isn't being circumvented - the content of the website is made available for the public and the website just grabs what is publicly available.
- boplicity 8mo agoRedistributing copyrighted content is the literal definition of copyright infringement. Using it for your own purposes, without distribution, is another story. This link was posted with intent to facilitate the distribution of copyrighted material. The person who posted it justified posting the link by saying some people don't have a subscription. I understand that some people think copyright shouldn't exist, but it clearly is being circumvented here.
- amelius 8mo agoI'll start caring about copyright when the government starts caring about my personal information that is being traded around the internet (with the help of journalism). Information is money, and we're all being stolen from.
- mrkstu 8mo agoIn the context of use on hacker news, I think the fair use exemption for public comment is a sufficient justification, which is likely why they allow its use.
- Dylan16807 8mo agoLegally it's infringement but I don't have a lot of sympathy for semi-porous paywalls getting circumvented. If they don't want free readers, they can set up a hard paywall. If they offer free samples and I occasionally take one I'm not going to feel bad about it, or worry about that specific type of copyright infringement making it more difficult for journalists to make a living.
- slopinthebag 8mo agoIf OpenAI doesn't need to respect copyright why should we?
- lioeters 8mo agoStop using archive.today, they've been found to inject malicious code. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47092006
- kristianp 8mo agoDo you mean this? https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/ https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-... the malicious code wasn't injected, it was served with their captcha. They shouldn't have used users to ddos someone's blog, but this seems like a one off attack against a perceived threat to the service's privacy. I don't condone that ddos attack, but it's been a very useful service over the years.
- c420 8mo agoHere's a more functional alternative: https://pressreleased.alwaysdata.net/ https://pressreleased.alwaysdata.net/
- stevofolife 8mo agoThe article title doesn't say "Fired". The HN title is kind of misleading.
- aswegs8 8mo ago>Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
- resoluteteeth 8mo agoIt not the original title but I'm not sure it's "misleading" > Within weeks, Binance fired or suspended at least four employees involved in the investigation, according to the documents and three people with knowledge of the situation. The company cited issues such as “violations of company protocol” related to the handling of client data.
- ocdtrekkie 8mo agoWild that Binance's primary concern was that the privacy of the people committing crimes with their service was being violated. Hear no evil, and let the money roll in.
- liamconnell 8mo agoI think NYT uses multiple titles for some articles. I had copy pasted it
- kg 8mo agoYou can see https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social https://bsky.app/profile/nytdiff.bsky.social for some examples of how the NYT frequently revises titles and abstracts after publication. Most of them seem harmless at least.
- knallfrosch 8mo agoThey A/B test titles. You can see it in the URL, where the recessive title often lives on. They may also use different titles for print/digital.
- paxys 8mo agoIsn't this like the #1 use case for crypto? Everyone wants an untrackable unblockable currency that is out of government control until the day it is used for things they don't like, then suddenly "government please control this!"
- garrettgarcia 8mo agoIt's clearly not untrackable. It's never been untrackable. That's how they know it went to Iran.
- paxys 8mo agoOnly because in this case they used a centralized exchange. The amount of actual circulation to countries like Iran and North Korea is likely many orders of magnitude higher that what is knowable.
- idontwantthis 8mo agoEvery single transaction is public information. If you carry a wallet into Iran, and it's coins are used through 20 different transactions to purchase weapons, all of those can be traced back to their origin.
- arcanemachiner 8mo agoWell, that depends on which cryptocurrency is used, doesn't it?
- cammikebrown 8mo agoNot if they used Monero
- paxys 8mo agoThat's like saying every currency note is traceable because it has a serial number. If someone hands you a dollar today can you trace it starting from where it was printed to everything it was used for until it eventually got into your hands? Yeah you can look up bitcoin wallet IDs on the ledger, but you can also generate an unlimited number of wallets, and pass coins in any combination through any number of mixers and tumblers, and exchange it between multiple currencies (some of them truly untrackable). If people or organizations want to stay anonymous in the crypto ecosystem they can very easily do so.
- LunaSea 8mo agoRemember that the CEO of Binance was pardoned by Trump after pleading guilty to financial fraud.
- ourmandave 8mo agoI wonder if the pardon bribe is less if your crime is something near and dear to the Orange King's heart.
- paxys 8mo agoIt's more than just that. > President Trump granted a pardon to Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who had spent four months in federal prison in 2024 for his role in the firm’s crimes. The Trump family’s crypto start-up, World Liberty Financial, has forged close business ties with Binance, and Mr. Zhao was a guest this month at a conference at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s club in Palm Beach, Fla.
- lavezzi 8mo agoit's more than just that: https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-stablecoin-usd1-binance-holds-87-percent/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/zacheverson/2026/02/09/trump-st... > Binance holds about 87% of USD1, the stablecoin issued by a Trump family crypto venture—a greater concentration than any other major stablecoin has at a single exchange, roughly $4.7 billion of the $5.4 billion total supply.
- pnt12 8mo agoIf we censor the names, it reads like a fascist regime from a "shithole" country.
- guywithahat 8mo ago[flagged]
- g947o 8mo agoCitation needed. Bear in mind that this guy pleaded guilty in a court case. Even if the prosecution is political, the facts don't lie.
- jstummbillig 8mo agoIf one of two options can't be regulated or tracked, that is the option that will predominantly be used by actors who have outsized interest in being regulation or being tracked.
- BenGosub 8mo agoIs Iran supposed supposed to be banned on Binance?
- arjie 8mo agoIt's a US-sanctioned country so allied nations play along with the sanctions and Binance is located within that US sphere of influence so Iran is supposed to be currently banned, yes.
- hocuspocus 8mo agoIt's not like Western(-ish) nations have much of a choice here. As soon as your banks and financial system depend on the USD in any way, it comes with a mandatory dose of US imperialism and extraterritorial jurisdiction.
- throwaway85825 8mo agoFor people doing legitimate commerce this is a pro not a con.
- hocuspocus 8mo agoAnd who defines legitimate? The same lunatics who regularly shit on international laws?
- glenngillen 8mo agoYeah, I love how my legitimate foreign business that is solely owned and controlled by 2x legitimate foreign nationals with a legitimate foreign bank account has to supply documentation proving it's not American in order to prevent the IRS just unilaterally declaring it'll tax my account as if it was a US entity /s
- carshodev 8mo agoEvery US company/citizen is not allowed to do trade with Iran due to the ITSR laws except under highly specific situations. It gets more complex if a company is multinational though. A citizen can travel to Iran but even if they buy something there on holiday if they bring it back to the US they need to go through complex customs procedures to make sure its legally brought back in.
- lacoolj 8mo agoContrary to a lot of comments here, the only way to use bitcoin (or any cryptocurrency) without tracking is to mine it yourself, and even then... Where did you get it? Purchased/transferred? Where did they get it? What else did the person with that wallet do? If the answer is "mined", even then, you have to actually do something with it, right? Buy something? Where is that something shipped? At worst you'll have to pay customs on it, and have it actually get through customs. At best, your address is in a database now. Have it shipped somewhere obscure? Video cameras are everywhere. Have it shipped to someone else's house and steal it off their porch? Again, cameras everywhere. Not have a physical item? Just a service? That's pretty much the closest you'll get to anonymous money transfer and full usage (along with whatever VPN you prefer). Cool that was a fun mental exercise. Now everyone tell me why I'm wrong!
- VirusNewbie 8mo agoI mean, I can meet you in an ally, transfer some satoshis from my wallet to yours, you hand me a wad of cash/jewels/MtG/collector funkos and you might not even know my name.
- davidwritesbugs 8mo agoBut do people actually do this? How would you find someone to give you bitcoin for your gold? Are there online markets? Honest Q
- beAbU 8mo agoTrue, but this does not happen for large transactions, due to being vulnerable to the $5 wrench attack (1) For big transactions where something of actual value is exchanged, both parties will want an escrow, and this is where a public exchange comes in. 1 - https://xkcd.com/538/ https://xkcd.com/538/
- outside1234 8mo agoProbably a bribe from Trump to Iran
- afroboy 8mo agoBinance is not an American company and sending money to Iran or Palestine or Hamas is something should not be up to Americans to decide, i personally will not accept Americans be the police of the world they did so much horrible things and terrorising Muslims for so many years. I hope for the day the world will be decoupled from dollar as universal currency. That day countries will free to trade with each other without worrying about some orange head with low IQ.
- disgruntledphd2 8mo ago> Binance is not an American company and sending money to Iran or Palestine or Hamas is something should not be up to Americans to decide, i personally will not accept Americans be the police of the world they did so much horrible things and terrorising Muslims for so many years. Doesn't matter, tbh. Regardless of the philosophical viewpoint here (which I do agree with), AML and Bank Secrecy type laws exist basically everywhere, and are no joke. They're one of the few things that bank executives go to prison for. And like, Binance were just convicted of this a few years back. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government tried to shut them down at this point. And if Binance are persona non grata to the US government then they're out of the dollar system which basically cuts them off from almost the entire banking system.
- embedding-shape 8mo ago> Doesn't matter, tbh. It does matter, for non-Americans, that America isn't the world police and doesn't dictate laws, norms and how other countries behave. Maybe it used to be relatively fringe to have this point of view, but last few years really vindicated this point of view, and I agree that many countries in the world should continue focusing on decoupling themselves from the US, this particular issue highlights one motivation for doing just so.
- mlrtime 8mo agoAmerica doesn't dictate laws in the way you describe. However if someone is claiming to be an enemy of the state, it is the the federal government's duty to protect itself and it's citizens. This is [one of] the core responsibilities of the government.
- Rakshith 7mo ago[dead]