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0 sats \ 6 replies \ @standardcrypto 4 Oct \ parent \ on: Are Treasury Companies Basically Soft Targets for Nationalisation of BTC? bitcoin
What puts the NSA in a better percentage to "sweep a fair percentage of coins" than any number of other orgs?
NSA spies on muggles, others spy on the NSA. That's how I see it.
Another problem with the NSA having stolen earlier coins, or being poised to swipe a big chunk of current honeypot custody coins, is that it's one thing to pull off a big coordinated heist. It's another thing to keep control of the coins after the heist. Just go watch any heist movie.
So sure, the bad guys steal from the good guys, but then the bad guys proceed to steal from each other and it all winds up distributed anyway.
Big hoards of coins are honeypots, whether they are at coinbase or in some secret NSA slush fund after hacking coinbase.
SIGINT/Cyber is what they are uniquely focused on, with control over any electronics mfg that also counts on the security apparatus as a customer... The Snowden Revelations were a limited hangout as to the extent of their capabilities. Their nearest peers wouldn't have nearly the supply chain or economic influence, Russia/China endeavor to keep their sensitive systems off of American wares for good reason.
I wouldn't call it a heist, it's been an operation from day 0. When Satoshi's coins eventually move it'll be long after the system is enured to Bitcoin, theories about the "CIA" creating Bitcoin are already common place so when its just another intelligence agency unmasking it'll be of little shock.
Sweeps can be as clandestine as anything else they do, could have already happened in some circumstances as far as we know... are North Korean and Russian hackers all really NK/RUS? Who's to say. It's additive to the existing apparatus of shell companies/institutions, not exclusive.
An attack on Coinbase would be counter-productive imo. Short of a technical attack, the government could crater the Bitcoin price 90% by flipping some regulatory/enforcement switches on the legacy system side of thigs, for trillions to move in largely unfettered it had to be protected along the way.
All warfare is based on deception.
Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable;
When using our forces, we must appear inactive;
When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away;
When far away, we must make him believe we are near.
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heist, operation, tomato tomahto.
what's the difference?
if there are multiple (secret) people with the capability to steal vast quantities of funds at some future point, how do you stop them defecting and doing the theft early and asconding.
The opsec for an "op" like this is a nightmare. Much easier to do a legal 6102 attack and compensate victims with fiat.
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"Satoshi's" coins would be legitimately theirs since [they] are Satoshi, sweeps... sure, the point with that more being the global hegemon nation-state window dressing is a bit different than state sponsored NK hackers injecting javascript. Such a thing would have to be done in a way that doesn't open pandora's box, and that capability exists.
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not following.
how do you do it without opening pandora's box?
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By making use of the larger intelligence apparatus without peer to choose targets carefully... like insights into dead holders, trails of coins believed to be lost, or heisting the heister to your example like NK.
Raiding a Coinbase would kill the golden goose, and shipping client level malware or straight up confiscation using their unique position would be opening such box.
For Bitcoin to achieve their national security goals, other states need to feel at least as secure holding it as they would gold (US Military could with few exceptions take lesser states gold by force if they didn't care about optics)
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This helps better understand the whole ‘Bitcoin is money for enemies’ concept
For Bitcoin to achieve their national security goals, other states need to feel at least as secure holding it as they would gold
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