The FBI’s wanted list is out—North Korean hackers make off with nearly $4 billion, and on-chain defense only just started to wake up this year
Nearly $4 billion is the total amount combined from three separate indictments. When the FBI names three North Korean hackers, the money has already been broken down into thousands of on-chain routes and laundered clean. After reading this, all I want to say is: this year’s real incremental growth in the crypto industry isn’t on the leaderboard for bounties and raids—it’s in the “security” category.
First, look at the attackers—how professional they are. On these people’s ledgers, BTC and ETH are just a few lines of numbers: Bybit’s $1.5 billion, Ronin Bridge’s $620 million—none of it was left out. Every single one of these jobs wasn’t done by luck; they spent months waiting to exploit internal permissions. After they got in, it was cross-chain transfers, mixing, and splitting routes—an end-to-end laundering pipeline to move the funds out of reach. This isn’t a few gifted teenagers. It’s a production line.
Now the defenders. I admit: this year, they really have started to stand up. On NEAR, Intents has just shut down the token-swap channel linked to the Bitget hacker—$50 million is now trapped on-chain and can’t move. The value of intercepting like this is more real than any performance metric: stopping $50 million means, in plain terms, losing $50 million less. Based on Ronin’s $620 million, one successful interception is like recovering nearly one-tenth. At this level of defense, I think there’s still a large portion of NEAR’s value that the market hasn’t priced in yet.
On the other hand, look at the veteran L2s. ARB is trading around $0.21—still alive, with fewer people, and there hasn’t been any notable new momentum in security spending. With the same underlying tech, the money is now starting to choose chains that real users are actively using and that can actually defend against incidents. Chasing capital stacks up in candles, but can’t build bulletproof vests. This is something old players already understand.
The Dogecoin papa’s dog mascot popularity can keep rising—not because of hype calls, but because more and more of the right people are showing up and more things are getting done right.
Tonight I’m watching one thing: will that stuck $50 million find another route and run again? If it can get out, it means defense is still leaky; if it can’t, then this is the most valuable interception of the year.
🐶 Let’s take a look at the Dogecoin papa’s dog ✨🚀
Nearly $4 billion is the total amount combined from three separate indictments. When the FBI names three North Korean hackers, the money has already been broken down into thousands of on-chain routes and laundered clean. After reading this, all I want to say is: this year’s real incremental growth in the crypto industry isn’t on the leaderboard for bounties and raids—it’s in the “security” category.
First, look at the attackers—how professional they are. On these people’s ledgers, BTC and ETH are just a few lines of numbers: Bybit’s $1.5 billion, Ronin Bridge’s $620 million—none of it was left out. Every single one of these jobs wasn’t done by luck; they spent months waiting to exploit internal permissions. After they got in, it was cross-chain transfers, mixing, and splitting routes—an end-to-end laundering pipeline to move the funds out of reach. This isn’t a few gifted teenagers. It’s a production line.
Now the defenders. I admit: this year, they really have started to stand up. On NEAR, Intents has just shut down the token-swap channel linked to the Bitget hacker—$50 million is now trapped on-chain and can’t move. The value of intercepting like this is more real than any performance metric: stopping $50 million means, in plain terms, losing $50 million less. Based on Ronin’s $620 million, one successful interception is like recovering nearly one-tenth. At this level of defense, I think there’s still a large portion of NEAR’s value that the market hasn’t priced in yet.
On the other hand, look at the veteran L2s. ARB is trading around $0.21—still alive, with fewer people, and there hasn’t been any notable new momentum in security spending. With the same underlying tech, the money is now starting to choose chains that real users are actively using and that can actually defend against incidents. Chasing capital stacks up in candles, but can’t build bulletproof vests. This is something old players already understand.
The Dogecoin papa’s dog mascot popularity can keep rising—not because of hype calls, but because more and more of the right people are showing up and more things are getting done right.
Tonight I’m watching one thing: will that stuck $50 million find another route and run again? If it can get out, it means defense is still leaky; if it can’t, then this is the most valuable interception of the year.
🐶 Let’s take a look at the Dogecoin papa’s dog ✨🚀
