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Comment by f38zf5vdt | Hacker News Reader

Banning cryptocurrency only fixes one side of the global-internet-being-security-broken problem. If you're a nation-state actor and you can still break into computer systems throughout the world, you can still:

- Manipulate and profit in foreign stock markets by short/long selling based on insider information

- Choose who gets elected by making dirty laundry public

- See military planning by the enemy, live, as it happens

- Trick critical foreign infrastructure into self-destruction

- Discover and cultivate corporate espionage assets based on what you know about their personality from emails/SMS/metadata/etc

- Plant incriminating evidence against political or corporate adversaries, for example by using their home internet connection for something nefarious

The future hell described in the article is not a future hell. It is the present hell. Ransomware is just one small part of it.

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But that only applies to targets who are "in the game." If you are a government entity or listed company or act as their agents, then you know that security is an issue and are paid well enough to make a decent effort. Whether you do or not is a different issue.

Grandma doesn't have security audits, wouldn't know how to do one, and couldn't afford it if she did. She is the victim here. She might call the police but they will file a report and forget it. The only chance of getting caught is some larger agency like the FBI picking it up and going after you. This is highly unlikely.

The only thing stopping Grandma from getting ransomed is making it difficult to pay. If your ransom depends on walking Grandma through the 15 step process of paying you, then it's unlikely to happen or be profitable.

I believe that subversion of the democratic process and economic efficiency hurts everyone, if not initially or obviously. Recent election cycles have been tumultuous.

Grandmas are currently targeted by scammers who ask for iTunes gift card numbers and not Bitcoin, I'm not sure that much will change. I've yet to hear people call for a ban on iTunes gift cards, but maybe we will get there.

I agree with your gift card point. That's definitely how they are operating right now for phone and pc repair scams. It wouldn't be a terrible idea to disallow redeeming gift cards in countries outside of the purchase.

> But that only applies to targets who are "in the game."

The problem is that any entity in a nation that you're aggressive with can be "in the game". You can steal IP from foreign companies, damage foreign infrastructure, and find the personal data of high-value persons in the datasets of otherwise "boring" companies.

^ ^ ^ If there's any Keanu-pill to swallow, it's this. Intelligence agencies don't "make us safe," they drive financial gain for insiders. I'd bet the ratio of effort spent on "market manipulation" versus "find the evil doers" to be 10:1.

Intelligence agencies exist to gather intelligence about the adversaries of state actors, not "find the evil doers". And being the bloated government agencies that they are I very much doubt they're the hyper-competent market manipulators you imagine them to be.

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