News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m. Parent comment

Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by sschueller on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @08:57AM (#19858377)
How is the USD still worth anything with the incredible amount that has been printed? The fed chair himself said we can just print more money if we need it. [2] No other country can do that without going into hyperinflation.

"$12 billion in U.S. currency was transported from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad in April 2003 and June 2004, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. A Vanity Fair magazine report concluded that of this sum, "at least $9 billion has gone missing"" [1]

$12 Billion in cash!!

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_misappropriatio...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6vi528gseA

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by ceejayoz on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @09:29AM (#19858608)
> No other country can do that without going into hyperinflation.

That's simply false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_easing#After_2007

Japan, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, the Eurozone...

The EU injected €2.4 trillion in this fashion over a four year period. (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/ecb-money-p...) $12B is nothing.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by SilasX on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @09:24AM (#19858562)
Upvoting because that incident is interesting, but this is false:

>No other country can do that without going into hyperinflation.

Other CBs have significant enough credibility or special situations where they can print comparable money without setting off hyperinflation. Definitely Japan's and probably Europe's.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by ForHackernews on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @11:29AM (#19859743)
Not that $12 billion cash isn't a lot of money, but just to put things in perspective, the US government was spending about $20 billion per year just on air conditioning: https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-...

It turns out warfare is extremely expensive (see also: guns v. butter) and one of your line items is buying off local warlords.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by Dirlewanger on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @09:26AM (#19858591)
It's still worth something because the federal government says it's worth something. That's what a fiat currency is.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Binance exchange hackers steal bitcoins worth $41m by ceejayoz on Wednesday May 08, 2019 @11:41AM (#19859898)
That's not at all how it works. Zimbabwe and Venezuela's federal governments claimed their currencies were worth something until they were blue in the face.

It's worth something because the people using it feel it's worth something, and that's true for non-fiat currencies as well. Bitcoin and gold are non-fiat, but still heavily depend on demand to determine their value.

[ Parent | on HN ]