I think it's a sign of a cultural shift. Not in hacking but in perception of money.
Money used to have this unique value, representing work somebody has put in.
Nowadays real money is increasingly looking like some dumb in-game currency, generally useful only for buying cosmetics and consumables. Awarded arbitrarily, so some people and organisations have awarded themselves or cheesed out of others completely astronomical amounts of it. And on the low end you might doing three job-quests every day and still not have enough for consumables you need daily just to play the game without suffering too much.
Governments apparently are able to pull hundred billions out of their a-ses to buy bunch of tanks from whomever despite lamenting poor economy just a while ago.
In the eyes of the kid demanding 500k RL karma points is not a crime, just trying to utilize opportunity similar to those so many old folk already apparently exploited. Because there's no way they could earn it by working average job.
I think it is cultural shift in both hacking and in money. Computers and internet enabled kids to consume unlimited amount of information, it enabled them to learn, communicate and play around easier than ever. Some of them play video games and some of them play with "hacking". Hacking is something like stealing money from other kids but nowadays it is in the digital realm and not only stealing money from other kids but stealing money from everybody.
On the other hand there are cryptocurrencies which enabled them to move money around with ease and without any legal requirements. It's not like the underaged high school kid could open a bank account and then demand extortion payment to be made. The only thing he must do is to download a Bitcoin wallet.
But I agree with your assertion that the line is blurred between hard cash and digital cash including in-game currencies, cryptocurrencies plus all other digital representations of value.
>you can see its not as easy as it was 10 or 20 years before
It was never easy. In the past living standards were lower and there was less education available hence 90% of people were farmers with no education or very little formal education.
People who (like many of us HN readers) can live well playing by the rules are the NPCs.
I think both speak to the mindset of our times for a large segment of the population.