the fact that "I hacked a website" / "I hacked a javascript library" can lead to a TWO BILLION DOLLAR theft is fucking wacko. also what the fuck do you even do with that quantity of cryptocurrency as an attacker. it's not like you can just ask some non-KYC exchange to hand you a billion dollars in any currency, monopoly money or otherwise. you might as well have stolen an aircraft carrier.
if you stole that much in bearer bonds out of a bank vault you'd be chased down by every law enforcement and intelligence agency on the damn planet but for cryptocurrency this is just an eventful thursday
@gsuberland I bought a series of nice pardons via campaign contributions
@gsuberland Pretty sure whoever nicked it will be happy to see 20% exchange rate
@davedave @gsuberland
I know what I got, no low ball offers!!1!
@davedave or 2%
Oct 30, 2026, 2:10 AM@gsuberland no one comes after you if you're Omar Little.
well that's because you broke in. Just scam them the right way and they don't.
CumEx, CumCum, ...
@gsuberland worth mentioning that before btc the world had effectively banned new bearer bonds, and it's real hard to get the old ones.
@vathpela @gsuberland Hans Gruber really spoiled that for us, didn't he?
@gsuberland Because it's not actually worth that much and everyone quietly knows that. They just have to pretend it is to keep the ponzi running.
Oct 30, 2026, 2:08 PM
@gsuberland @cstross you’d also have to drive them somewhere in a truck, which makes some parts of tracking you down quite a bit easier
@gsuberland Low-stakes heist movie that's just annoying and juvenile, like crypto itself
@gsuberland You ransom it back, there is considerable overlap between the amount of money that would make me happy for life and the amount of money someone who's just lost a couple bill will give up to get it back.
@gsuberland
so that's why ao3 is down
Oct 30, 2026, 1:59 AM@gsuberland Lots of laundry going on along the Sea of Japan.
@gsuberland either use it as ransom to get actual money or sell it on at steep discount
Oct 30, 2026, 2:03 AM@gsuberland brb gonna go steal an aircraft carrier
Oct 30, 2026, 11:18 AM@jpm @gsuberland Shouldn't be a problem, they're basically just like pet carriers, only slightly bulkier.
Oct 30, 2026, 2:14 AM@gsuberland i feel like they are trying very quickly to unload it and hop it through a multitude of exchanges in a bunch of ways before it all gets flagged as stolen in a bunch of places. but what do i know i'm just a math and security nerd. 🤷♀️ doesn't this all get logged on some blockchain(s) somewhere so places could see this was stolen when they try to unload it or exchange it for another currency?
Wait until news hits and Bitcoin tanks.
Buy Bitcoin with own money cheap.
Say opps sorry, btw here is your money back and this is your security hole we used.
Wait a while until everyone has forgotten and Bitcoin goes up again.
Sell Bitcoin for profit.
Oct 30, 2026, 2:35 AM@SuperMoosie @gsuberland
It’s only down 3.5%
@SuperMoosie @gsuberland oops sorry, it was an agent that escaped containment, we'll be more careful next time
Oct 30, 2026, 12:14 PM@ehproque @SuperMoosie @gsuberland Meanwhile, we have shut down the VM and erased it, so the money is gone for good...
@gsuberland Maybe doing all of the mundane stuff on computers was a mistake.
Well you go the defi route. Setup some swapping pools, throw it into some gambling things, polymarket, ...
And manipulate the markets to your advantage there so that you can pull out something >80% of that money washed. (If I recall correctly 80% was the cutoff for what they aim for).
also don't forget that this is most likely either a big group or a nation state like North Korea or maybe Russia. (basically anyone sanctioned and cut off from money otherwise)
@gsuberland the aircraft carrier would be more useful
Oct 30, 2026, 2:38 AM@gsuberland
Cut Trump in for 50% and you’re in the clear 😉👍
@gsuberland First thing that comes to mind in regard to "what would I do with two billion dollars" (I've also read six the last hour) from a "hack" would be market manipulation.
1) Use your own personal account to take a position, probably using margin, in some crypto shitcoin
2) Use a fraction of your stolen money to move the market using another account
3) Cash out the perfectly legal and legit earnings you've made with your personal account.
4) Repeat as your hearth's desire/greed dictates.
As with all of these, I'm not going to be convinced that there was any hack until I see something that would convince me otherwise. There's so many cases where it turned out that the "exchange hack" was in reality just those operating it doing a fast one on their customers.
Oct 30, 2026, 2:57 AM@chaekyung @gsuberland
Wait a second. Is “Yoon Chae-kyung” one of Elon Musk’s aliases?
Oct 30, 2026, 4:42 PM@chaekyung @gsuberland
That’s exactly what Elon Musk would say
@Nerde @gsuberland That's exactly what a "AI" bot would say. I'm therefore gonna have to ask you to please verify that you're not a robot.
Oct 30, 2026, 7:50 PM
@gsuberland deflationary pressure? go long on a valid coin, steal and thereby burn two billion dollars of supply, sell when price pressure hits it, maybe?
I am thinking as if crypto coins are rationally priced and that might be a mistake
Oct 30, 2026, 3:20 AM@gsuberland luckily the cryptocurrency world also has a solution for this: money laundering as a service.
Oct 30, 2026, 4:18 AM
@gsuberland yeah, but at least I’d have an aircraft carrier! Do YOU have an aircraft carrier? See, didn’t think so.
Oct 30, 2026, 6:00 AM@gsuberland oooo! an aircraft carrier? where! I could use one of those!
@gsuberland God knows, that aircraft carrier thing did not really work out for me. We sold it for two grand, but it was split 13 ways. Actually didn't even cover the medical costs for my broken foot.
stolen crypto gets "mixed" through a service or a group of crypto users and then cashed out through different exchanges:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptocurrency_tumbler
also, sometimes the point isn't how much you've got but how much someone else have lost.
@nest I'm familiar. but you don't do that with a billion dollars.
you apparently can do it with hundreds of millions, see the "money laundring" section on the linked wiki page.
Oct 30, 2026, 9:22 AM@gsuberland yes but cryptobros
Oct 30, 2026, 9:40 AM@gsuberland Time for the mainstream media to wax lyrical about the hackocalypse
Oct 30, 2026, 9:41 AM
@gsuberland Just think of all the NFTs you can buy!
Oct 30, 2026, 10:13 AM@gsuberland I guess you could theoretically still just buy loads and loads of drugs for the rest of your life though?
@daisy @gsuberland Sounds like a short but truly spectacular rest-of-life.
@gsuberland Go directly to the people running the Tether money printer and ask them to help to avoid you crashing the market with a massive crypto dump. It's not like they care about laws and having anything but crime back the funbucks they issue.
@gsuberland the trick is to be one of a handful of entities on the planet that would also be quite satisfied with stealing an aircraft carrier
@0xabad1dea @gsuberland Uncle Bob's Navy would be displeased, he's got an exclusive franchise.
Oct 30, 2026, 11:36 AMThis could come in handy
@Tiempo @gsuberland Handy? It's completely obsolete if you steal the whole carrier...
Oct 30, 2026, 11:53 AM@woe2you @gsuberland hey! You need an exit! It's not like nothing is gonna move after that stunt
Oct 30, 2026, 12:33 PM@gsuberland ngl stealling all the crypto just to have it be inaccessible to those losers would be reward enough for this one
@gsuberland idealism? the whole idea is that the tokens and the value can't be recalled, right? let it sit in a dead wallet. delete the keys. some people just want to watch a fire, and you couldn't* ask for nicer kindling.
