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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 3, 2026

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I fear that you may have sampling bias with regards to crypto. You don't hear about the failed crypto thefts, only the successful ones. Successful theft of crypto requires some degree of intelligence and hard work, much like successful theft from bank. Not just anybody with Internet access can do it.

(I should be clear that by successful, I am also including getting away with it without being caught or facing significant punishment. I will grant that crypto theft in certain respects is easier than, for example, breaking into a bank, but unless you have perfect ironclad opsec you can't just steal money and get away with it.)

Also laundering large sums of crypto is a gigantic pain in the ass compared to most other assets since it's all public on the blockchain. North Korea isn't bad at it since they've got a very long time horizon to slowly drip the money out through certain protocols, but if you're the average hacker on the block and you manage to grab 200M off an exploit you're going to struggle to get much of that into spending money.