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pavlov • today at 10:13 AM • 8 replies • view on HN

After long soul-searching, crypto has settled on two strong use cases:

1) unregulated gambling (a.k.a. "prediction markets"),

2) funding North Korea.

Heartening to see the beautiful web3 vision come alive.


Replies

dmitriy_ko • today at 10:49 AM

You forgot ransomware

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himata4113 • today at 10:37 AM

North korea has enough cars for a traffic jam so that's definitely a win for the people's democratic republic of Korea, the only korea to exist.

blitzar • today at 10:15 AM

all this time people said it was useless ... just shows what they know

Yizahi • today at 10:45 AM

Hey, you forgot #3:

Selling sanctioned oil to India and buying unguided cruise missiles from Iran, through the Gulf state laundromats.

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karel-3d • today at 10:49 AM

I have read somewhere that ISIS mostly runs on cryptocurrency now because it's harder to block.

Oh here

> They delve in weapons and human trafficking, sometimes take part in drug smuggling, more and more engage in crypto mining and frauds related to the crypto industry - the whole Islamic State is now operating by crypto, whether it’s various European countries, West or East Africa, Asia, or such weird places like Costa Rica, Brazil or Argentina.

https://saladinaldronni.substack.com/p/recent-islamic-state-...

edit:

but it seems they have mostly moved to Monero

https://gnet-research.org/2025/02/18/combating-islamic-state...

tonyhart7 • today at 10:21 AM

lmao

rf15 • today at 10:13 AM

Supporting poorer countries, can there be a more moral course? /s

hardbass • today at 10:52 AM

That's a good sign of it's resilience if true. Why don't you want a form of money that doesn't require doxxing yourself to a state or bank?

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