$1.5 billion was stolen, and then they went to court to pursue it. The whole thing is darkly humorous.
We talk about “decentralization,” “on-chain justice,” and “code is law” every day. But when something happens, the first instinct is still to go to court. The court issued an order requiring Coinbase (a U.S. crypto exchange), Kraken (a U.S. crypto exchange), and Changelly (a crypto exchange platform) to hand over data. Ironic, isn’t it? Sure. But it works.
When an ordinary person’s money gets stolen, filing a police report may not even get you a case. But when $1.5 billion was stolen, U.S. courts gave the green light overnight—accelerating even the evidence-collection process.
That’s how the world has always operated: the bigger the scale, the more resources you can mobilize. But from another angle, this time the court is also helping Bybit (a crypto exchange) track down the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. Objectively, it’s also paving the way for the whole industry. In the future, when exchanges get hacked or cross-chain bridges get breached, at least there will be one more route that can be taken.
What I care about isn’t whether Bybit can recover the funds. What I care about is what this will change.
Before, hackers thought, “As long as I wash the coins clean, no one can do anything to me.” Now it’s different. Law enforcement has started to learn how to trace funds on-chain, monitor exchanges, and freeze addresses. This path will keep getting wider.
Applied to regular people, there’s a principle I’ve been reminding myself of: never pretend you’re a “big player,” and don’t act like technology can shield you from all risks. If a big player gets stolen from, they have legal teams, courts, and expedited procedures. If a regular person gets stolen from, they’ll most likely only post a tweet—and then watch the scammers keep dancing on-chain.
So account security isn’t “if I’m careful enough, nothing will happen.” It’s “if something does happen, can I bear it?” “Can bear it” doesn’t mean it won’t happen—it means it won’t bring you to zero.
Today BTC is hovering around 64938, ETH around 1916, and BNB just happens to be 600. The market has no clear direction, but security doesn’t pick a day to matter.
We talk about “decentralization,” “on-chain justice,” and “code is law” every day. But when something happens, the first instinct is still to go to court. The court issued an order requiring Coinbase (a U.S. crypto exchange), Kraken (a U.S. crypto exchange), and Changelly (a crypto exchange platform) to hand over data. Ironic, isn’t it? Sure. But it works.
When an ordinary person’s money gets stolen, filing a police report may not even get you a case. But when $1.5 billion was stolen, U.S. courts gave the green light overnight—accelerating even the evidence-collection process.
That’s how the world has always operated: the bigger the scale, the more resources you can mobilize. But from another angle, this time the court is also helping Bybit (a crypto exchange) track down the North Korean hacking group Lazarus. Objectively, it’s also paving the way for the whole industry. In the future, when exchanges get hacked or cross-chain bridges get breached, at least there will be one more route that can be taken.
What I care about isn’t whether Bybit can recover the funds. What I care about is what this will change.
Before, hackers thought, “As long as I wash the coins clean, no one can do anything to me.” Now it’s different. Law enforcement has started to learn how to trace funds on-chain, monitor exchanges, and freeze addresses. This path will keep getting wider.
Applied to regular people, there’s a principle I’ve been reminding myself of: never pretend you’re a “big player,” and don’t act like technology can shield you from all risks. If a big player gets stolen from, they have legal teams, courts, and expedited procedures. If a regular person gets stolen from, they’ll most likely only post a tweet—and then watch the scammers keep dancing on-chain.
So account security isn’t “if I’m careful enough, nothing will happen.” It’s “if something does happen, can I bear it?” “Can bear it” doesn’t mean it won’t happen—it means it won’t bring you to zero.
Today BTC is hovering around 64938, ETH around 1916, and BNB just happens to be 600. The market has no clear direction, but security doesn’t pick a day to matter.