No, the Twitter Hack Wasn't about Bitcoin

The Breakdown

Blockworks

Investing, Business

4.8 • 786 Ratings

🗓️ 17 July 2020

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on the Brief: Adjustment to bank profits in anticipation of growing debt delinquency The lowest decrease in jobless claims since March A boost in retail spending Today’s main discussion: The Great Twitter Hack, feat. Dr. Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of Elliptic Wednesday, at around 2:15 p.m. EDT, prominent Crypto Twitter accounts started sharing a similar message about a bitcoin giveaway. A couple of hours later, Elon Musk and Bill Gates were saying they were feeling generous and wanting to give bitcoin away. A couple more hours and every verified blue check mark account on Twitter was taken down. It was an attack with massive implications, if not much monetary gain. On this episode NLW breaks down: What happened Which accounts were impacted How much BTC was transferred The narrative battle of “bitcoin scam” vs. “Twitter hack” Why it might have been a state-sponsored attack Why the real intention might have been to discredit Twitter Why the (supposed) revelations about Twitter’s administrative tools could end up in a congressional inquiry Expert commentary provided by Dr. Tom Robinson. Find our guest online: Elliptic website: Elliptic.co Twitter: @tomrobin

Transcript

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0:00.0	Yesterday, one of the most significant, perhaps the most significant attack in U.S. social media history
0:07.2	occurred as every verified account on Twitter, all the blue check marks ultimately had to come
0:15.4	down as hackers took over everyone from Coinbase to Kanye West in an apparent Bitcoin scam, or at least
0:24.7	that's the popular narrative. On this episode of The Breakdown, I'll be looking at one, whether this
0:30.0	was good or bad for Bitcoin, and two, why, frankly, I don't believe it even was about Bitcoin.
0:38.0	Welcome back to the Breakdown an everyday analysis breaking down the most important stories in Bitcoin, crypto, and beyond.
0:46.8	This episode is sponsored by BitStamp and Crypto.com.
0:51.4	The breakdown is produced and distributed by Coindesk.
0:56.0	And now here's your host, NLW.
1:01.6	Welcome back to The Breakdown.
1:03.6	It is Thursday, July 16th, and boy howdy, you know exactly what this show is about because it's all that anyone is talking about.
1:12.2	The biggest hack, I think in many ways in terms of potential significance in terms of the amount of data that was compromised in terms of the implications of what hackers could do in these platforms that are our new public squares.
1:25.0	We are talking about the Twitter hack.
1:29.5	Notably, I said it's a Twitter hack, not a Bitcoin hack, which we'll get into. But before that, let's do a very brief,
1:34.4	brief, and we're going to do it in three sets of numbers. The first set of numbers is 35 billion
1:40.6	and 84%. The first number is the amount that six U.S. bank giants cut from their profits
1:47.0	in anticipation of potentially souring loans as this economic disturbance continues.
1:53.0	The second percentage is the percentage of borrowers responding to a Goldman Sachs survey of small
1:59.4	businesses who anticipate exhausting their funding
2:02.6	by the first week of August. That's 84%. Only 16% of businesses responding to that survey are
2:09.4	confident that they can keep paying staff without more support. So why are these numbers significant?
2:16.0	This is exactly where an economic crisis could become a banking crisis.
	...

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