# Binance Hack Resilience and Crypto Security Strategy

**Podcast:** The Milk Road Show
**Published:** 2026-10-30

## Transcript

What is, as far as we know, the largest heist of any kind that's been publicly confirmed in human history happened?
What's up, everybody?
It's LG D.S.A.T.
here.
And welcome to the Milk Road Show, the daily crypto show that just four days ago was trying to decide between 100K and 70K.
And looks like we're getting our answer today.
It is October 30th, 2026.
Listen, I was not supposed to do a podcast with John today, but.
yesterday we got absolutely floored uh as the floor of all our prices got totally demolished after binance was hacked.
They were hacked for like, I don't even know what the total is.
John's going to tell me in a couple of minutes, something like $7 billion.
And the industry was quick to react, you know, Tether froze some of the funds, but the funds are being moved around by the thieves very quickly.
And everybody's kind of trying to chase them and shut down whatever they're going to use next to move it.
But this is by far the biggest crypto hack in history.
It is probably the biggest single theft in history beyond crypto of anything, because there's never really been $7 billion until, you know, 20 years ago.
So, We're going to talk about it with John.
John's going to give us a nice breakdown of that.
And naturally, we're going to talk strategy.
Like, what are you doing something like this?
You buy in this fear?
Or do you really think that we are going to get an actual lower, lower, lower, lower, low next month as people like Ben Cowan have predicted in the past?
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about them later in the show.
John, my God, man, we always do.
We weren't live this time because if anybody remembers a year ago on 10, 10, John went, John and I went live in the morning to cover the negative price action.
And then it went, it got even worse.
It got even worse like a couple hours later.
So let's hope John that after this podcast.
we do not for things don't get progressively worse because the last time we did a show like this that's what happened well hello lg it's uh it's good to be with you um i think uh a good a good thing to start with here would just be sort of recap a couple things that happened yesterday.
So yesterday started out in a very bullish way when there was an announcement that ICE, the Intercontinental Exchange, which is the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, was going to be working with TradeXYZ and Hyperliquid to begin bringing perpetual futures online in America.
Stanley Druckenmiller tweeted out about this.
I think it was like his first tweet ever.
And a lot of people thought he had been hacked.
Wasn't that fake?
Isn't his tweet fake?
I don't think it's fake.
I think it seems so fake.
Dude, it seems so happy.
Confirmed to the Financial Times that it was authentic and it seems to be authentic.
I don't know.
But then Elon Musk retweeted that and he said, interesting.
So setting all that aside, that was all very bullish, right?
Wow.
Good way to start the day.
Maybe it was fake, but as far as I know, it's been confirmed to the Financial Times by a spokesperson from Duquesne that it was from Stanley Druckenmiller.
It is an authentic tweet.
But he does still have the position.
Whether or not he really tweeted that, he does still have a position in PER, which is the hyperliquid debt.
In any event, the point is...
That was all very bullish.
Then there was an announcement in the afternoon that Polymarket had suffered a hack.
Some malicious software had been uploaded that allowed the hackers to take control of users' browser, which had permissions and stuff.
And so they were able to get, I think, a couple million dollars from Polymarket.
They had to freeze Polymarket for a while.
This is an attack that has happened before, and it's like a malicious software attack to hack people's browsers.
again and that was people's actual money that was people's actual money on polymarket those are actual user accounts that was being asked it wasn't like the polymarket bank you know or reserves right yeah yes and i think this is an important thing to like help people understand this is like when you hear the word hack you don't really know what that means or how like it can mean a lot of different things In the Polymarket situation, the analogy I've been using is that it's kind of like a burglar going in overnight with the cleaning crew and just then walking out with everything.
So everything, all the security systems function normally.
They just use a malicious piece of software in the browser to get access to something that they shouldn't have had access to.
They snuck in with the cleaning crew is kind of the way I've.
the analogy I've been going with.
I don't know, maybe this is a better one, but they went in and they got some users accounts, but I think Polymarket is now on top of that situation.
And like, they're resolving that.
And it was only a few million dollars.
So I think they'll be okay.
That was scary.
Then what is, as far as we know, the largest heist of any, of any kind that's been publicly confirmed in human history happened.
What is apparent?
right now is that hackers from North Korea were able to get access to Binance 14, which is the the etherscan name for the hot wallet that was drained.
It was one of Binance's Ethereum wallets and there were other assets in there as well.
But in any event, they got about 6.3 an estimated 6.3 billion dollars of crypto from binance um the way that they allegedly did this as far as we know this is still evolving and emerging all this could could change as the story comes out more but um there was a devops engineer at binance they got access to the their laptop and were able to get access to these wallets and they moved these funds as far as i understand right now something on the order of around two billion dollars of stable coins um of usdt and uscc has been frozen so that'll probably be recovered by binance um uh and then the rest of it they are at this time tracking as the hackers are trying to move these assets into different wallets shuffle them around hide the their paper trail and try to basically do something malicious with them or monetize the assets that they've stolen in some way I think that there's been a lot of great communication and leadership on this from Binance.
They've already confirmed that they will make users whole.
They have a insurance fund called the Seifu Fund.
Funds are Seifu.
They're going to make sure all their users are made whole, but it's a big loss to Binance.
And I think it's, you know...
adding to the fears around cryptocurrency and digital assets.
But they're working with the Secret Service on this.
They're working with law enforcement.
They're working with other players in the ecosystem.
And I think the encouraging thing about this is just like what we saw with the KelpDAO incident with Aave in April, the entire digital asset ecosystem is collaborating and rallying around each other to support each other.
um to resolve this to try to you know track the hacker to try to get this back um and you know we can talk about all this more but that's sort of like some of what happened yesterday there was a ton of news yesterday and it's very confusing and there's a lot of doubt and it's like oh was stanley drunkenmiller hacked was polymarket hacked was binance hacked the thing thing to understand about this is that no no cryptography no crypto no crypto blockchain ecosystems, no crypto protocols were compromised or broken, were hacked.
It was software in a browser for Polymarket and it was, you know, a compromised laptop from Binance.
And my understanding is that they actually, the Binance keys, their private keys signed the transaction that moved the crypto out of their wallets because they got access to the laptop and were able to do that.
So it wasn't like any cryptography broke.
Nothing is broken.
Bitcoin is not broken.
Ethereum is not broken.
Aave is not broken.
None of these protocols have been compromised or hacked in any way.
It's just there are other things around these software tools that are.
able to be compromised.
And that seems to be what happened here.
And so that's some of what's going on.
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So, but does that not still pose a huge...
threat or risk though, John, because I get, I understand what you mean.
It's like, I agree, like none of the protocols, none of that stuff were actually hacked, which is fine.
They're the ones that are getting the most attention and money for building security.
But inevitably both of these are, are some level of like user flow error.
You know what I mean?
That it's still like, this is a, these are human inattentions, let's say, and maybe things that a lot of people didn't even know.
I'm sure a lot of people listening, including maybe us are vulnerable to it the same way.
Right.
And more and more, you know, I don't even know if you call this like not even social engineering.
They didn't trick anybody.
So I don't know what kind of hack you would call both of these.
But it's still like people's devices were infiltrated.
They had access through those devices to large sums.
And despite those being on crypto protocols that, yes, they themselves are not broken.
The process itself clearly has holes.
Right.
So does that not still pose a risk?
You know what I mean?
Like, yes, quantum in itself of like breaking Bitcoin.
Yes, that's one thing.
But if nobody can use this stuff because all our devices are vulnerable, it, you know, it makes, does it not make the point where these things are well built mute?
So I think that there's a lot of elements to what you just raised here.
I'll start by saying that I end every episode of Milk Road Crypto by saying stay safe, stay educated, and stay bullish.
I say stay safe first because that does need to come first.
OpSec, operational security, is paramount to individuals and to institutions and enterprises who are doing business in any industry, but especially ours.
Crypto is born in the dark forest.
There's a fog of war.
You don't know what's out there.
You don't know who might be out there.
You don't know how they're going to attack you or when.
And we are battle-hardened as a result of that.
used to this as an industry.
We are more vetted with these kinds of things than most other industries are.
And we recover from them strongly and much more quickly and robustly, I think, than most other industries do.
There are a lot of hacks and, let's say, OPSEC issues that are happening right now on a global scale.
That are not known about because our industry happens to be one of the most public and transparent industries and honest industries in the despite what people may think.
But behind closed doors in secret, a lot of these institutions have very porous.
operational security and a lot of risks and there are a lot of things being done that just don't get a lot of attention.
Obviously, North Korea has been for a long time targeting our industry and trying to come up with ways and new ways to attack and steal funds.
I would like to see a response to that by our industry, but that's a separate issue.
But look, the point you're making is that there are OPSEC concerns.
It doesn't make the industry moot.
It just means that people need to be educated about how to protect themselves and their assets.
But there's trade-offs to all of this, right?
Like if you're going to have custody of your assets, you're going to have more responsibility that goes with that.
Some people would like that.
Some people don't.
Some people prefer to hold their assets in an ETP or an ETF to kind of like offload some of that operational security to other custodians.
which is fine, but everybody has to kind of like figure out how they want to do this themselves.
I think that the bigger risk personally is holding your value or your capital outside of crypto in something, uh, into an asset or into an industry or somewhere where.
it's way more porous and way easier to steal and be counterfeited or stolen or other things like that and again these things are happening we just don't hear about them because they're keeping them quiet and paying a lot of money to keep them quiet um so yeah look i think everybody is is going to be nervous about these things i'm very encouraged by the speed and precision of the response and the quality response and the fact that they already are sure that they're going to be able to cover the holes and they're working with international law enforcement and other industry partners to recover the funds that they can.
We'll have to keep watching for more information from Binance on this because we really don't know a lot of the details.
But yeah, I think obviously it's a scary thing, but it really just confirms the need for crypto and digital assets.
And I interviewed Chris Perkins from Franklin Templeton Crypto.
And he said that he thinks ultimately this is going to be a net benefit for crypto because it's going to validate the need for cryptographic security and cryptographic truth as.
hacks and zero-day exploits start becoming more and more common throughout technology and software systems in the world.
And then I'd also say that Hasib of Dragonfly Capital has made this point several times.
But in general, the way this goes is that when new technologies emerge that are able to break security systems, attackers win initially, but over time, that attack surface hardens.
And then the defenders win and the defense, the defended moat, like the castle walls that we build become very strong and robust and impenetrable.
Crypto is going to get attacked the most and the first.
And so it's the tax surface that we have is going to harden the most and the strongest.
And then I think a lot of other capital and industries are going to move behind that wall that we've built and hardened because they're going to realize that they don't have a way to defend themselves without our help.
And so on the long term view of this, this is going to be very constructive for crypto.
And I just want to say again, like I'm very proud of the way Binance has.
communicated about this has handled this um and we are going to emerge like michael saylor tweeted this out our industry is going to emerge from this much stronger than it was before and uh you know as we keep having these hacks we keep solving them um but eventually the castle walls will be very very strong and the defenders will win in the end and that's the team that I want to play for.
I wrote an article, a wartime Ethereum article called Bunker Mode, where I said that Ethereum does not need a bunker.
Ethereum is the bunker.
And eventually all capital, all financial systems, all monetary systems are going to realize they need protection from these external threats.
And I think that Ethereum and digital assets are going to be the place that they go for that.
John, isn't this one of those funny things?
And we're going to talk about the theft and the hack quite a bit more and have some other questions for you.
But just to bring it back to how I view things.
on the price market or the price action side, you know, a lot of people had been calling for a lot of analysts, TA people that I follow had been calling for us to go into this range, right?
That it's like, listen, we're going to, you know, we're going to stay below 80.
We'll go to the, we'll go to the 76, 77 K range.
And I'd seen a lot of analysts, not a lot, but a few analysts that I follow TA people earlier this week say, hey, like we are going to, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm setting, I'm going to set some buys in the, like in the mid nineties on Solana.
You know what I mean?
Like, like some, you know, so there's something in the charts that had alerted people to this, despite it being like a black swan.
Like how can the charts possibly predict that somebody is going to steal $7 billion?
How does that, how does that reconcile?
You know what I mean?
Like, I think that that's, what's interesting is that there's always this way that, you know, the, the, the TA somehow reflects events when the events have no way of being predicted.
Right.
And I just think that's kind of strange.
I think it's kind of strange, too.
I think that, you know, people say, like, show me the price action.
I'll show you the narrative or show me the narrative.
I'll show the price action, whatever.
Ben Cowan likes to say that narrative follows price.
A lot of these things are, you know, self-fulfilling, self-confirming.
And.
You know, I think that the thing that's really encouraging to me about all of this is that we had the largest theft of any kind in human history that's been confirmed.
And Bitcoin is at 70, it's almost at $78,000.
It like almost didn't move really.
What was the amount for FTX?
What was the amount lost?
And this amount is not lost.
And I think that that's what's important is that this theft, it's not all lost.
Some of it was frozen.
Some of it's still being chased down.
So it's not like it was immediately all liquidated.
We can talk about those details in a minute, but it's not like 7 billion was taken and then it was liquidated, removed into cash and it disappeared.
That is not what has happened.
But what was the amount for FTX, John, of like capital destroyed, like 9 billion or something like that?
I don't remember.
I think Terra Luna had a market cap, which is not the same thing as value, but Terra Luna had a market cap of around $40 billion when it went under.
I don't know how much user funds were lost in FTX.
I know that the Bybit hack was a billion and a half-ish, somewhere around there, and that was the biggest hack.
So there's a difference between a company blowing up and losing your funds or getting hacked, so this is much bigger than the Bybit.
FTX lost over $8 billion in customer deposits and $1.7 billion in investor equity.
So it's almost, it's not quite, but it's not, but that was also more tremendous because it was like, everybody thought, you know, everybody just trusted FDX and it turned out it was all scam.
So this is not, there's not, Binance is not a scam.
You know what I mean?
Like this is not what this is, right?
This is just like, there's been a theft.
So obviously it's not gonna react as negatively, but I agree with your original sentiment that it's pretty odd.
Like, it's pretty amazing that it's like, well, the biggest theft ever.
They're going to liquidate everything.
Everybody's vulnerable now.
And Bitcoin dropped from 80, 81 to 76 and a half.
You know what I mean?
Like that's, that was the damage.
Yeah, it was going up.
Bitcoin, the hyperliquid news and everything was going up.
It got up to, I think, about 81K and then it dropped down.
But, you know, look, all we've really done here is gone and touched the 50-week moving average, which is like a retest of the bull market support band.
And it seems like, I mean, so far, at least, the bull market support band seems to be holding on.
So Bitcoin hasn't like totally fallen out of bed.
The digital asset markets haven't totally collapsed.
The bull run structure, market structure isn't even broken.
Obviously, this has been insane volatility.
i'm sure that'll continue for a while i don't know what is really that volatile these days you know just looked at 82 it was almost at 82 yesterday morning or yesterday early afternoon and then as the news started to break it then all you know the bottom is like 76 or something like that so it's like that's not you know that's not even 10 percent Right.
No, but for something so tremendous, I wouldn't call that volatility.
I'd call that strength.
I don't know.
I would call it modestly bullish in different circumstances.
But yeah, look, I think the volatility I'm talking about is just like.
It's been very hard to trade Bitcoin in these last couple of months.
I think that's just something that goes along with the early bull market is that there's a lot of chop.
There's a lot of mixed opinions.
There's a lot of bears who think that the bulls are just in a bull trap, a fake out.
There's a lot of bulls that are a little bit too timid to take a big position.
And it's just part of what we're going to see anytime you switch from a bear market to a bull market.
But overall, I am encouraged by the way that Bitcoin and crypto overall have held up.
I'm encouraged by Binance's response.
And I do think that as we go forward, this is going to...
you know, the situation will get more information on this, but you know, I think that the bull market is going to continue to build.
This isn't going to kill the bull market in Bitcoin or crypto.
It clearly hasn't.
That's the thing is that I think it's like, unless there are more of these events coming in the next couple of weeks and this fabled bottom in November after the midterms, if you're listening to Sean Monday, this is kind of brought up that Ben Cowan was saying, and people really, I think a lot of bears being like, there's definitely going to be a bottom.
Like we're going to go below 57, just you wait.
That it's like, well, you're going to need like 30 of these to get there.
Right.
No, but I mean that, you know what I mean?
Like this, okay, that's pretty bad.
But it's like it, the price, you know, it knocked Bitcoin down by 6k, right?
From 82 to 76.
So it's like, that's it.
So you will need at least five more of that exact thing to get us below or whatever.
It's not five.
You know what I'm saying?
Well, although I do want to ask you something, you were talking about Michael Saylor.
Didn't the CEO of MicroStrategy resign yesterday?
I don't think it was the CEO.
I think it was someone C-suite, but yeah.
Oh, I thought it was, I thought, I guess he's the CEO, right?
Is he the CEO?
Yeah.
The sailors.
Okay.
So who, hold on.
Who's who resigned?
Sailor's not the CEO.
No, the CEO.
CFO.
The CFO quit.
Andrew King.
Why did he quit?
I don't know.
Ask him.
Why would he quit now?
All they said was there was a difference of opinion.
And I think, you know, they were going in a different direction.
You know, who knows, right?
Like you can't speculate about these kinds of things.
You can guess.
I mean, people will speculate about these things, but I don't know.
And I'm not going to speculate is what I mean to say.
But yeah, I don't necessarily have a strong take on that one way or the other.
There's been a lot of turnover.
There's been a lot of change in leadership of a lot of different organizations like Al Grand, for example, brought in a new CEO.
They've changed a lot of their C-suite.
You know, who knows?
There could be a lot of different reasons for that.
Maybe he found a different opportunity.
Maybe he just wanted to go in a different direction.
I don't really know.
But yeah, I think we should stay on.
There's nothing wrong with that.
I want to hear this video from Richard Tang, man.
It's just a weird time.
It's just a weird time for your CFO to resign is all I'm saying.
Totally.
Listen, C-suite people move all the time.
There's nothing wrong with that.
That was a week ago at this point.
So yeah.
Oh, it was really?
I think it was like the 26th of October.
Oh, I thought I could switch.
That's four days ago.
Yeah, whatever.
Okay.
Okay.
Okay.
So what's this video?
Okay.
You want us to watch a video?
Just tell me what the video is that you want us to watch.
I don't know.
We're going to watch it live with you guys.
From Binance's co-CEO.
They posted an hour ago.
I haven't seen it yet because I've been on calls all morning, but this is, this is how this is going to go.
We're going to get breaking updates on this as it comes out and it's going to come from Binance.
They're going to communicate.
So we'll see what he says.
Yeah.
Okay.
So we have this video from Richard Tang, who is the co-CEO.
of Binance and he released this.
We're recording.
It's just after 1230 Eastern.
You see my time says specific there.
He released this about two hours ago.
We're going to watch it and give our live commentary as we watch.
Hi, everyone.
Firstly, I want to thank you for the support.
Difficult times like this are a great reminder how strong our industry is when we work together.
We are grateful to our partners that acted quickly to freeze the hacked assets, to global law enforcement, who are working with hand in hand with justice.
But most of all, we are grateful to our users for their patience and understanding.
Rest assured that we are working non-stop to resolve this, to make the users whole and live up to your trust.
I want to be clear, we are committed to covering all hacked losses through our company funds.
Your assets are safe.
The good news is that we are recovering stolen assets for users.
Where is he?
Where is that?
I don't know, but he must be exhausted.
Your assets are not...
24 hours.
so they are not impacted.
What was the first thing about the first thing was Binance's whole hot wallet.
User assets are held under Binance's established security architecture.
The vast majority sits in cold wallets and are only moved into a hot wallet when a user makes a withdrawal.
One more thing I want to share, Binance has always been built for the long term.
Most of what we earn from day-to-day operations is how in crypto assets.
I feel like they should be paying us to roll this on the show.
This is just like an ad for them.
It's a commercial for Binance right now.
Good for them.
They need some PR right now.
This is precisely why we are able to absorb a lot of this size immediately with our own money.
We are working on the outstanding amount by buying the token assets.
Wait, hold on, hold on.
How much money do they have?
Because he said, we can just fill this back up with our own cash.
So $7 billion is like, just fucking doesn't matter to them.
Is that what he's saying?
Yeah, basically.
And I don't know how much money that Binance has or how much money CZ has, but I know they can do this.
Their user funds are, like the estimates are around like $160 billion of user funds.
So like getting hacked for $6 billion is a lot, or $6.3 billion is a lot, but it's not all of their user funds.
That's the point he's making is that like, this is a hot wallet that was hacked.
It's not their cold source.
not their bank right like they have way more than this and it's that's all safe so wait which wallet is it then if it's not their bank like what is the wallet then that was hacked it was a hot one it's called binance 14.
that's what this but what does it do what does that wallet what is that what was that wallet's purpose within binance they have to keep some of those assets liquid so that if people want to make withdrawals or exchanges or whatever they oh okay so it's the liquidity for those tokens like the uni and all that stuff it's the liquidity wallet for all those liquidity pool basically that's what i understood from what he just said that's yeah okay but they're not they're not yeah hold on binance is not keeping 160 billion dollars of client funds in a hot wallet on an engineer's laptop no that's i didn't think they were i'm just saying so what is this but what is this specific wallet that was vulnerable that's more so what i'm asking right is that it's like okay i get that they have their 160 billion dollars of money protected but what's this wallet then that isn't protected like you know well most of their hot wallets are protected too this just got compromised and that's the point is like one of their hot wallets got compromised that's basically what he's saying and it's uh what you know they have to have one of their why do they why do they have six billion dollars in a hot wallet listen man you've got like i have a hot wallet and it has like 300 bucks in it and i feel unsafe you know what i mean like You don't have half the planet using that hot wallet to make quick withdrawals and purchases and exchanges from.
So they have to keep some of their funds liquid for people to use it.
They don't have a better way to do that.
Like they're like, Oh, what if people want to trade some frigging uni for some USDT?
I guess the only way to do that is to have a hot wallet.
Like that's not that, that to me, that's the state of crypto in 2026.
We are, we're doomed.
Like that is like the only way to have a liquidity pool of a billion dollars of uni is to put on a hot wallet.
I'm sure they're going to revisit a lot of their operational workflows around this.
I'm not, I don't know.
The other thing too, it's important to say to the audience.
I don't know.
LG doesn't know.
I don't want to speak for finance and I don't want to suggest that they don't have great operations.
Yeah, Richard out here, man.
Richard, you're still, I'm sure you're still awake, man, from wherever you are.
This looks like a plane, honestly.
I feel really bad for you.
They've got to be exhausted.
They've been working around the clock.
CZ said one of their staff is pregnant and she's been working on this around the clock.
This is like the full court press by one of the best teams in crypto.
So good for Binance.
Well, we're playing their video.
We rarely talk Binance on our show.
So we're there.
Anyway, let's keep watching.
Let's keep watching.
Yeah, whatever.
No, no, no.
Let's watch.
Let's finish it.
We encourage you to check funds on your Binance account.
Wait for our initial proof of reserve for public verification, which is targeting on Monday.
We can reach out to our customer service with any question.
Next, I want to give you an update on our understanding of the hack itself.
Our tech and security team are still deep in investigation of the hack.
This was not carried out by one person.
Our initial investigation suggested that the security incident may have involved a compromised laptop.
However, our subsequent investigation has uncovered additional points of breach.
This was a complex attack.
The attacker had also used self-destruct mechanism that destroyed tooling and traces as they ran, making it more difficult for us to trace and investigate.
That's interesting.
Self-destruct mechanism.
The attacker used a known multi-signature protocol.
EIP 7702 to obtain on-chain execution approval over hot wallet.
The delegation did not pass through our normal approval controls and that's why we need to pause the withdrawal service to investigate, rebuild and retest the entire infrastructure system.
So what are we doing now?
First, we are rebuilding the withdrawal service and we have but and we are not switching it back until it passes rigorous testing.
We are very hopeful that users will be able to withdraw prior to the Sunday deadline, which is on track to be within 40 hours.
Secondly, we are conducting a full security review across the entire company.
Endpoints, cloud, key management, signing, everything.
Third, we are completing the purchase of the remaining assets and will verify in our proof of reserves.
We are sharing a full proof of reserves.
Okay, yes, we're buying the dip.
They're buying the dip to make it whole.
...initial view of the proof of reserves before that.
Fourth, we are working with law enforcement, blockchain intelligence firm, token issuers, and other exchanges to trace and recover stolen funds.
We'll do everything within our power to make sure that these bad actors will be held accountable.
Lastly, this is an industry-wide effort.
I would be scared for my life.
We have moved very quickly to help and support.
We'll weather this storm.
Thank you for the support and stay safe.
Thank you.
Oh, stay safe.
Stay bullish.
Oh my God, man.
That's your...
Okay, wait, wait.
I want to say something.
I want to say something.
It's you in disguise.
I want to say something.
Hold on.
I want to say something.
This is important to me.
And I don't want to be queued up for this question.
I want to say this in the records.
I want to make sure we say this.
North Korea is harassing our entire industry.
The Trump administration this August did something.
There's something in the United States in the Constitution called Letters of Mark, which basically means privateers.
And the Trump administration seems to be entertaining using this again.
the entire nation state of north korea is funding hackers to harass our industry we don't have to take this we have wi-fi too and they have things of value that can be hacked too and i'm not saying that we should do anything specifically i'm not calling for anything but they have now like harassed our industry so much i would like to see wartime ethereum That's what I would like to see.
I would like to see our industry defend itself against this harassment and this threat because there's no reason why we have to take this.
There's no reason why we can't defend ourselves and there's no reason why we can't fight back.
There's no reason why we have to just sit back and let them harass us for the rest of our existence.
I would like to see some sort of organized effort to...
you know, take, take, take this back to North Korea and see how they do if we return fire.
So I don't know.
I just, I just would like to see this stopped and I would like to see somebody fight back a little bit on this because we don't have to just take this.
We can, like I said, we're building castle walls.
We're going to defend the defenders will win, but there's no reason why we can't also, you know.
see what's going on in North Korea.
So anyway, I would like to see some kind of response from our industry about this, not just like we're going to review our security systems, but we're going to see what we can do to stop this threat and this attack so that this doesn't happen ever again.
But anyway, that's not my business.
And I'm sure they'll discuss that with law enforcement too.
You know, one of the weird things about crypto is that the longer you're in it, the more accounts you seem to end up with.
You buy in one place, trade somewhere else, earn yield somewhere else, and if you actually need capital, you end up having to sell something that you probably wanted to keep.
That's why we at Milk Road are partnering with Nexo.
These guys keep the whole thing under one account.
You can buy, trade crypto, earn interest on what you already hold, and even borrow against your capital without having to sell it.
All in one spot, all in one account, all on Nexo.
So if you need liquidity, but you don't want to give up your position, or you're already holding crypto and you want to be able to...
more with it i think nexo is worth your time we love working with them i think you will too tell them milk road sent you in crypto you can get into a project long before it lists on coinbase in tech the early window mostly belongs to vcs and companies now stay private for a decade or more alumni ventures a partner of the milk road show gives accredited investors a way in Time and CB Insights both rank them as a top 20 US venture firm.
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Venture is high risk and long term though, so read the details first.
Go to av.vc slash milkroad.
We should send you there.
We should send you there.
You know, the Citrini analyst was in the Strait of Hormuz.
Listen, this is private John Gillen reporting for duty.
Shave your head.
Get your ass over there, man.
Get to the, what is it, the demilitarized zone or whatever it is.
Get your ass in there.
Sneak in, like in the movie, The Interview, which was shot near me in Vancouver, and get your Seth Rogen and James Franco.
You sneak in there and you find that Uniswap and you bring it back.
All right?
so and you take what what a value are we going to take from that what what do you say let's take something of value from that what is that what are we going to take anything they have bro i don't know what is what what do they have what do they have north korea what do you want to get out of north korea lg we can't talk about this on youtube buddy we're going to edit all these out I don't know.
I don't know.
I'm just saying that we don't have to take this, right?
Like that's, that stands to reason, right?
Like we don't have to just defend, we can attack too.
And if they're going to constantly harass and attack us, you know, they just pissed off a guy who has many, many billions of dollars.
Also, I want to say this too about finance.
CZ was just here in New York on NASDAQ to ring the bell for a change of rebrand and a change of leadership of what's now called B&B Standard.
And a company that's trading on NASDAQ here, they're trying to be a legitimate business.
They're trying to build a legitimate global business.
And just they're building something that's important.
And they're being harassed and attacked and people are making fun of CZ and trolling Binance on Twitter and all this other stuff.
And it's like we don't have to stand for this.
We can defend ourselves.
We should defend ourselves.
There's no reason why a hostile nation state should be allowed to fund hackers to harass our industry until the end of time.
And I don't know what I'm calling for exactly.
I'm not trying to call for anything.
I don't want to get in trouble or whatever.
There's no reason why we have to take this, and they've pissed off people with a lot of capabilities, a lot of knowledge of cryptographic security, and a lot of knowledge of operational security and hacking, and they have a lot of money.
So I don't know what's going to happen with this, but there's only so far you can push people before they start pushing back, and I don't want to just be defending forever.
I'd like to see somebody start – taking the fight to North Korea and whatever form that means, I don't know, but I don't see any reason why they should be allowed to fund hackers indefinitely without our country and our industry pushing back.
And that's just something I wanted to say is it's important to me.
And I don't think that people have to take this posture of.
hiding in fear that, you know, we have to either trust the banks or they're going to lie to us and exploit us and do shady business and then write it up as a business expense.
And, oh, then we have to go try to go put our assets in crypto and just let North Korea harass us and steal from us for the rest of our lives.
We don't have to live like this.
So I don't know.
I know you're making a joke, but like, I'm actually really upset.
I'm really pissed off.
I'm rooting for Binance.
I'm rooting for CZ.
I'm rooting for crypto.
And I'd like to see us defend ourselves.
That's all.
Do you?
But don't you think I got to bring back a point you said earlier, though, that this makes the industry stronger.
Right.
Like, as much as yes, they're harassing us.
They're also pressure testing everything.
Yeah.
Right.
But that's what that's what I'm saying is you have somebody actively trying to steal all these funds, trying to fuck our shit up.
And that's a blessing, I would say.
More so as much as sucks that this stuff happens.
Like this, you're talking about the future of finances, decentralizes on chain.
That shit needs to be rigorously tested from every possible entry point in that.
All people are like, oh, there's more hacks this year than there's ever been.
And that's true.
And hopefully this is the top.
You know what I mean?
That's like, everyone's got fable now.
Everyone's got all this crazy shit and they can find all these entry points, engineer all these ways.
And hopefully that makes everybody realize that we're still super vulnerable.
And we want this to grow from.
whatever it is, $3 trillion, $2.5 trillion market cap to $100 trillion market cap, you're going to need a lot of this to get there.
Right?
And I think what you're describing is like early days of web to man, like people's Facebook accounts and Gmail accounts, that stuff was hacked all the time.
People click on, click on, people are idiots.
They'd be like, if you don't forward this email to 12 people, like all the goats are going to die or whatever.
People would click on that.
People would click on it and forward it.
You know what I mean?
And that still happens.
And, or the Nigerian Prince, you know what I mean?
How many people got got by the Nigerian Prince or Nigerian Prince scams for 10 years?
This is our Nigerian Prince era, except it's way harder.
And it needs to happen for people to build the digital financial literacy and also for the industry to realize what it's going to take for this stuff to be safe.
i'm just i'm not giving a counterpoint i'm just adding that it's like you're mad about it i think the another way to look at it is that somebody's gonna do this i strongly disagree somebody's gonna try and steal this money and these guys these guys are showing you how it can be done Sure.
So I strongly disagree with this.
I think there's a strong distinction between white hat hacking and black hat hacking.
What you're describing is white hat hacking, which I think is a good thing.
White hat hacking is designed to do exactly that.
It's designed to pressure test and stress systems, but it's not doing it maliciously or to destroy or to steal.
It's doing it precisely for the reason you're describing, which is to pressure test systems, make those security and defenses more robust and allow the systems to improve and adapt and grow and evolve because they have to continue to do that because the landscape of risks changes too.
Black hat hacking, what they are doing is not a good thing and it should not be encouraged or spun as a good thing.
The value that they're extracting belongs to people.
And it belongs to individuals who worked very, very hard to get that capital.
That capital is their labor.
It's their time.
It's their energy.
It's their life force.
That capital belongs to them in a very deeply personal way.
Protecting it is a noble thing, and recovering it is also a noble thing.
And I don't see any reason why we can't have both.
We can't.
say as an industry, we're going to make our defenses more robust, more secure, and we're going to get the value, the capital that was stolen from the lives of the people who invested in our industry back for them if we can.
And so I think that all that can be done will be done about this.
But look, I think the thing that the audience should take away from this is that number one, crypto is not broken.
The protocols will still continue to work.
The assets will continue to function normally.
They haven't been compromised.
They haven't been hacked.
We are going to learn from this.
We are going to make things more robust in this.
This is still evolving.
It's not over.
Law enforcement is still working on it.
Binance is still working on it.
They're going to continue to make announcements and share updates.
If you do have funds on Binance, your funds are safe.
They're going to cover the hole.
They have more than enough to do that.
It's going to be okay.
Don't panic.
Don't trade on emotion.
And as far as price action going, if you're looking at this being like, should I get in?
Should I get out?
What should I do?
Just don't trade on emotion, right?
Like I think there's nothing wrong with just letting the smoke clear a little bit on this and then making a decision from, place of a little bit more stability and emotion and in price action.
And we at Milk Row will continue to follow this as well.
But yeah, just like be compassionate, be kind, don't make fun of people right now and just try to try to just learn from this as much as you can and support each other as we all get through this together.
All I'm going to say on what you just said is that this is the wild West and it will be for a long time.
And listen, like you lose money from hacks and you're scared of price action.
You can feel the way you feel about those things.
And it's really terrible when it happens.
You know what you're getting into.
You're keeping your fun.
You're buying.
these silly internet tokens with all this promise and all this stuff and only only in the last year or two john even doing the show with you has there been real like okay these are becoming real things because before they weren't real honestly like a lot of these businesses all this stuff it's like it was maybe even a couple years back nobody talked about revenue because there was zero revenue only now are there businesses that actually show that they make money doing crypto things so this is only newly a legit industry And a large parts of it, the onus of it is it being open and free.
And with that comes, you want to be outside the arms of the usual jurisdictions and institutions and government reach and all that kind of stuff.
Well, you got to accept that a lot of other people are also there for the same reason.
And they're not going to be nice people.
And I'm just saying that I'm just saying that.
And this is the same sentiment when people are like, I, you know, back in the DGEN days, we're like, I have bought a board eight for a hundred K and now it's down.
And it's like, well, you should know what the fuck you were doing because this is a brand that didn't exist six months ago.
Right?
Like it's just people cry about this stuff, but it's a casino and you cannot cry here.
And even though we are in a, the casino is starting to progress into replacing the old banking system that has been around for hundreds of years.
That's great.
But simultaneously bad things will happen in that transition.
You know what I mean?
It's like you go back.
Listen, people start.
When did what was the first stock?
Right.
When somebody wanted to raise money to build ships to go to the new world and get all the spice and shit.
And then did they cry when all those ships freaking crashed and everybody died?
Probably.
But you should have thought about the fact that you're investing in some new thing that nobody's done before.
And it's going to overhaul the world economy.
And that's going to take a lot of time.
And a lot of there's going to be a lot of problems along the way.
So, you know, yes, everybody has to hold each other and hug each other when these bad things happen.
But it's like.
I don't know.
To me, it's like they are going to happen.
And if you want to play in the space, you got to be you got to be ready for that.
And you have to constantly be safe and be bullish.
And what was the third one?
Stay safe.
Stay educated and stay bullish.
Educated.
Educated is the most important part.
You know what I mean?
You can't listen.
You go on X right now.
There's millions of threads you could look up today of like, oh, you don't want to get hacked.
Here's exactly what you got to do.
Right.
And a lot of those, some of those might show programs.
Do not download those programs.
But otherwise, it's things like don't use your phone as a 2FA.
You know what I mean?
This is basic shit that people still do, man.
Like frigging some people, you know, you know what some people do when they go on vacation?
They take a picture of their written down passwords in their phone and they take.
that with them you know and that's like a normal thing that most so many people don't use password managers right there's so many people out there don't do that and that's just that's just for the normal bank account so in crypto you know there's a long way to go for this stuff and um i feel bad when these things happen but the same time i don't know i to me it makes me more bullish that it's like where everybody needs to learn from this and there's going to be some collateral yeah that's right lg's got things to say today uh anyways guys uh we're gonna wrap this up for people that are still listening at this point um i do have some um Not sad news, but news that you will not hear from me for a while.
The LG family is producing another member.
And I will not be doing the shows with John on Mondays for at least a few weeks, not a couple months while we take care of that.
So, you know, you won't hear from LG on the crypto show for a while.
I'll still be on the Stocks Channel right up until the deadline, but then I'll also be off there.
So thank you guys for listening.
And John.
you know, you're on your own now.
So smooth sailing, smooth sailing as we bought them in November.
Well, thank you, LG.
I'm very happy for you and your family.
I'm going to miss you a lot, but I'll be in touch with you.
And I'm looking forward to having another episode with you again in the future.
I'll text you at three in the morning.
All right.
You'll be getting texts from me at three in the morning about how much Uniswap we're going to buy.
All right.
Thanks, John.
And you guys have a great weekend.
Stay safe, stay educated, stay bullish, and don't cry.
Goodbye.
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