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Comment by 0xbkt | Hacker News Reader

Out of curiosity, are these hackers still demanding ransom money in Bitcoin, or say any traceable cryptocurrency?

I remember encountering similar scenarios before and they all seem to want the money in a Bitcoin address.

Why not Monero, or an alternative if there is any, which I guess makes moving the funds around much more stealthily? Please correct me if I'm wrong.

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no one is getting arrested or caught in spite of the traceability, unless the hacker is dumb enough to just deposit the BTC on an exchange immediately. The btc is split up and sent through mixers and laundered into thousands of tiny pieces and after a few years or so forgotten by anyone trying to track it.

Are they not just hiding in places which don't care about these kind of things?

All the tiny pieces could be traced in an automated way. It’s probably the lack of regulation that lets exchanges get away with not implementing better anti-laundering mechanisms.

And going after those tiny pieces would involve a lot of other people who are innocent

That's not how tumblers work. There's no way to link the input and output addresses when you go through a tumbler.

You could refuse to transact any tumbler output.

Some exchanges are refusing tumbled input. That said, it seems most of the time if you complain enough and provide more id they do anyway.

> after a few years or so forgotten by anyone trying to track it.

Help me with this, as I simply do not understand this 'forgetting' bit. Are you saying that a police agency, say FBI, is incapable of writing a (trivial?) program that tracks the coins, for as long as it takes to close the case?

> I simply do not understand this 'forgetting' bit

Statute. Of. Limitations.

Also, detective/prosecutor raise+promotion incentive structure. Cold cases don't get headlines unless it's some mass-murderer-rapist-satanist.

For smaller scale ransomware bitcoin was and still is very popular because its the easiest crypto to buy and use. So if your average target is a non-technical home or small business user bitcoin will net you far better returns.

Ransomeware still often includes live phone support and other features targeted at helping victims purchase and send bitcoins because its still a difficult and unfamiliar task for the average person.

That's so disturbing. I can't imagine going through a phone call with "tech support" trying to figure out how to send bitcoins knowing the whole time that the support person is the one who is extorting ransom from you.

It also seems like an opportunity to escalate the scam to the next level. Go to this site (controlled by the scammer) and enter your credit card to send bitcoin. Now they have your credit card too.

This is how I feel on the phone with comcast. It's just business

They're still usually asking for bitcoin.

A few months back REvil/Sodinokibi switched to Monero, but I think they're the only strain to do so.

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