Hacker News Reader

Comment by dickfickling | Hacker News Reader

So, what's the most likely outcome here? Maybe Circle/Tether/etc freeze some or most of it, but say the hacker gets a billion dollars. Are they able to launder it thoroughly enough that they can eventually turn it into fiat and live like a king?

View on HN

The hackers managed to swap 700 million USD of the stable coins that were frozen beforehand, supposedly. And that doesn't account for the non-stable coin crypto they stole. I think we are looking at 2.5 to 3.5 billion here, that also aligns with what CZ is hinting at (more than a billion).

Yeah, some criminal enterprise or state probably just made billions of dollars and will now use it against us for a long time. Crypto is practically designed for money laundering, particularly prediction markets.

Crypto is a hard lesson for early adopters who believed that humanity will get actual benefit when in reality it was completely hijacked by bad actors while people got relative nothing or worse. What an incredible disappointment of a project.

Crypto is also a hard lesson for those who thought it could liberate if only everyone was using it: the amount of storage needed for ever-increasing record-keeping made it completely unrealistic to use individually, forcing you into the centralisation that they advertised you could escape from.

> the amount of storage needed for ever-increasing record-keeping made it completely unrealistic to use individually

That's not necessarily true as you can introduce extra layers to handle the storage. Why store A, B, C, D sending each other cents when you can aggregate it to once a week balance sheet changes. All of these are actually solvable tech issues even in 2012 computers.

The main failure of crypto is that it claimed to design away human corruption which in theory made a lot of sense but in practice it did the opposite - it accelerated human corruption without bad actors having to even break the rules. Just how Hitler rose to power through gaming the democratic processes crypto was gamed without anyone having to break 51% proof of work to rewrite the ledger.

The idea of running everything without oversight of humans and institutions is just fundamentally unsustainable - who are we running this system for if not for us, the people?

It’s likely state sponsored and some nation(NK is a common one) just paid for the weapons budget of the next few years

What would be the list? NK, then Russia, anybody else ?

Iran

NK, NK, NK.

Seriously, they have professionalized attacks on crypto infra to a degree that whenever you hear about a massive heist, you can be pretty sure it's North Korea.

How come these regimes can only breed excellence for illegal stuff and not solving other issues for their country.

Russia uses crypto for sanctions evasion and money laundering. They also indirectly profit of it from their domestic ransomware operators using crypto. But Russia does not gather state funds through hacking. That is pretty much uniquely a North Korean thing.

TRM Labs[0] claims it is indeed NK

[0]: https://www.trmlabs.com/resources/blog/north-korea-steals-us...

NK is literally the primary victor of Crypto as an ecosystem. They've never had an easier time funding their economy.

The previous strategy North Korea used before Crypto was to make the best quality counterfeit US dollars ever made. That got somewhat countered. So North Korea was actually going to be in a bad place funding wise. Thank goodness everyone gave them trivial access to free money through crypto!

Thanks to Crypto and the Ukraine war, North Korea is doing really well for itself. Which, to be clear, means nuclear tipped ICBMs

Curious if this finally pops tether. I kinda doubt it, but to my very mild research on the subject I feel like binance was a big part of the equation. Of course so long as the market exists it'll need a stable, and it's got the inertia, so maybe it just won't matter.

why would it pop tether? if anything, it makes tether more profitable, as they can collect the yield on the treasuries and not have to return the principal dollars which are frozen.

think of it this way - if someone steals your iphone, and you lock it, does apple pop? No, apple sells you another one. locked devices are good for apple because it causes more demand.

Is that what happens here? Tether just pocket the difference?

No lol

I would assume Binance is powerful enough to get Tether to issue new USDT and give it to Binance to replace the stolen-and-frozen USDT.

Frozen funds remain frozen, until they are unfrozen.

So mechanically Tether pockets the difference, unless they unfreeze. But as a matter of accounting, because of the unfreeze capability, the liabilities of the frozen Tether stay on the books. So they can't just spend the money. It also makes it hard for Tether to compensate the victims from the frozen funds.

The alternative would be to let Tether burn funds, but that is highly problematic for well intentioned users. Because a freeze can be challenged in court and reversed. A burn cannot.

Because Tether is an obvious fraud linked to these other obviously fraudulent companies and predicated on trust in cryptocurrencies.

It's really hard to be an obvious fraud when you've been publishing attestations for years and now you have a "full independent audit" from KPMG for FY 2025, just like Circle/USDC.

https://tether.io/news/tether-completes-the-largest-inaugura...

Read up on the origins of tether, the people who founded it, deltic bank, banned for fraud in New York. In the beginning the reserves were a lie. I have no doubt they have some reserves now, but do they have $182 billiom USD, really?

CZ from Binance was also done for… fraud but miraculously pardoned by Donald Trump (I wonder why?!) and somehow still has enormous influence and inside knowledge in spite being banned from managing Binance. He talks as if he runs the company. Hmmm.

https://ag.ny.gov/press-release/2021/attorney-general-james-...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cly1qrl9l1qo

> I have no doubt they have some reserves now, but do they have $182 billiom USD, really?

This is literally what the attestations and audits are for. BDO and KPMG both have issued opinions saying yes, they do have all the money they claim to have.

You mean this KPMG?

https://www.frc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2022/05/sanction...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8znzxe5ewxo

And this BDO?

https://www.frc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2025/11/frc-impo...

This sort of audit is pay to play and the customer has a heavy influence. I'm sorry but given they were caught lying before I don't trust the Tether people. But if you trust them and these auditors, great, you can hold Tether and be sanguine that KPMG will protect you.

Just like that EY [1], that Deloitte [2], and that PwC [3]. Yes, all of these major auditors with hundreds of thousands of employees each and probably-similar-in-magnitude clients have been sanctioned by the FRC. It's great that there is a competent regulator that can enforce regulations against all of the top accounting networks. For Tether, there are two independent auditors: BDO and KPMG. If two large auditors who take their reputation seriously both come to the conclusion that Tether has the money (and has had the money), you are just burying your head in the sand thinking everyone is committing fraud.

[1] https://www.frc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2025/04/sanction...

[2] https://www.frc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2026/10/sanction...

[3] https://www.frc.org.uk/news-and-events/news/2026/07/sanction...

Yes all these auditing companies accept money to say that another company is doing just fine and ticks all the boxes and has assets etc. They all often lie, in small ways and large. I'm not sure why you think proving all are untrustworthy means some are trustworthy?

We'll see whether Tether has the assets they claim when the next crypto winter comes. Till then I think we'll have to agree to disagree.

Hardly anyone actually uses crypto anymore, silly ideas like NFT, rewiring the financial system, asset tracking and apps on the blockchain have died, and all that is left are the last bag-holders, fraud and extra-legal financial transactions.

If the iPhone you bought can easily poof and be gone and locked somewhere, people will stop buying and using iphone and apple will pop

Freezing bank accounts was and is possible. People don't seem to be still using them.

People are but criminals are less likely to do so. Without the money laundering usecase crypto is in for another winter.

And you say that as if this is a... bad thing?

Yes. But that doesn't happen as often as in the crypto world it seems.

You misspelled "turn it into more nuclear weapons in North Korea", where Kim Jong Un is already living like a king.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com