RE: Hard Fork 19: The Future Price of Steem
Let's get some things straight:
The reported and infected machines (unique IPs) were over 500,000, out of which 250,000 were active, when I wrote my ETH/BTC article. At the moment, there are 400,000 infected machines, of which 220,000 are online. This means that a number of people (several hundred thousands) have paid or have performed clean reinstalls of their operating systems, hence the decline.
While several hundred million in BTC will produce a noticeable impact on the BTC market (although you claim it would not), it would actually have a HUGE impact on small cryptos, which are not traded in such high volumes. Exactly as you say, hackers will not go from BTC to fiat, but instead, will launder their cash through all possible cryptos, to hide their tracks.
I'm not sure why you claim that hackers need to buy BTC, this is nonsense? People are paying hackers with BTC, hence the increasing price.
Some of the hackers' addresses are known. Certainly not all. Otherwise why launder money using alt coins?
If you believe that the WannaCrypt theory is "hyperbole", then simply overlay the graphic (from the same site I linked) of the number of infected computers during the last month, with any cryptocurrency and enjoy.
Is WannaCrypt the only thing that changes the price of cryptocurrencies? Certainly not. Is it the most influential player in the last month? Oh, yes! Is this why Steem rose in value - most certainly!
Clarification - I believe I wrote victims would have to buy BTC, not the hackers. So we can agree on that :)
Re: addresses, I was referring to the addresses the hackers asked the btc to be sent to. I suppose these are only known if they were reported, so you are right we probably do not know them all.
We will have to agree to disagree though because at the end of the day, it is still a matter of opinion as we are both assuming we know what did the hackers with the funds.
We can logically assume (yes, this is not proof) that the ransom was in BTC, because it's the hardest to track and the easiest to launder, especially by coin mixing services and through unregulated exchanges, neither of which require user IDs.
What would the hackers do with the funds? Try to get them, at the end :)
Very true. But I wouldn't assume they'd be in any rush altogether :) Followed!