BREAKDOWN: Will Bitcoin or Russia Be Blamed for the Latest Ransomware Attacks?
CoinDesk Podcast Network
CoinDesk
4.8 • 689 Ratings
🗓️ 6 July 2021
⏱️ 12 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
REvil, the ransomware group behind the Colonial Pipeline attack, strikes again.
This episode is sponsored by NYDIG.
On this extended-brief style episode of “The Breakdown,” NLW discusses recent news, FUD and policy in the world of crypto, including:
- The ransomware group behind the Colonial Pipeline attack strikes again
- An increasing list of regulatory actions against Binance
- The China crackdown on crypto trading
The attack against Colonial Pipeline pushed ransomware fears to a new level. REvil, the same group behind the Colonial attack, stuck once again. Kaseya, a company providing network-management services, was the most recent victim. With one million machines infected, the media and regulators look for an easy target to blame for the increase in ransomware attacks. Who will take the fall: Russia or Bitcoin?
Binance continues to fall under increased regulatory scrutiny. Barclays Bank, one of the U.K.’s biggest, has stopped card payments to Binance. At the same time, Thailand filed a criminal complaint against the company, and the Cayman Islands said Binance would not be allowed to do business there. Though Binance is the current target, do these actions suggest a shift in sentiment from banks and regulators on crypto?
China’s crackdown on crypto continues, this time with an emphasis on trading. The business administration department of the People's Bank of China and the Beijing Financial Supervision and Administration bureau issued yet another warning about crypto trading. This warning was joined by an enforcement action against Beijing Qudao Cultural Development Limited, as well as Didi, a popular ride hailing app. Is China banning itself from crypto?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | President Biden discussed Russia again on Saturday, saying that there was no initial reason to think |
| 0:04.4 | that the Russian government was behind this, but that that was part of why he was calling in |
| 0:08.2 | federal investigators. At least for this attack so far, Russia seems more in the hot seat than Bitcoin, |
| 0:14.3 | but definitely remember that even if Russia were to take the blame, quote-unquote, it doesn't |
| 0:18.6 | mean that Bitcoin wouldn't get targeted as well. |
| 0:22.2 | Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. |
| 0:26.2 | It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. |
| 0:33.4 | The breakdown is sponsored by Nidig and produced and distributed by CoinDes. |
| 0:39.8 | What's going on, guys? It is Tuesday, July 6th, and today we are talking, well, we're talking about a lot of things. |
| 0:46.4 | It's been a long weekend. There have been a number of different topics that I thought were interesting. |
| 0:50.3 | So today is one of those extended brief style episodes where I discuss more than the length of a |
| 0:55.3 | normal brief topic, but less than perhaps the headliner story of a normal episode. |
| 1:00.0 | Let's begin, however, with our title topic. It feels like every few days, the breakdown is |
| 1:05.3 | forced to turn into the FUD Digest as we try to piece through the latest reason people |
| 1:09.5 | have to push back against the |
| 1:11.0 | growth in Bitcoin and Crypto. The newest, loudest entering to the fud playing field is, of course, |
| 1:17.0 | ransomware. In many ways, this is a rehash of an older fud, that crypto is just for criminals, |
| 1:22.4 | that is being given a new, scary, and urgent face. This was supercharged by the ransomware attack that shut down the |
| 1:28.9 | colonial pipeline earlier this year, the largest oil pipeline in the U.S. The event was significant |
| 1:33.8 | for a number of reasons. First, it was a big deal. An energy pipeline this big is effectively |
| 1:39.3 | a national security target, so it didn't just feel like an attack on a company, but an attack on a nation. |
| 1:45.2 | Second, the impacts were not only felt by regular people. They were extremely visible even to people |
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