North Korea shows interest in Bitcoin
A quick rundown of a few articles on recent North Korean Bitcoin activity....
North Korea’s Bitcoin crash course has experts worried
https://news.vice.com/story/north-koreas-bitcoin-crash-course-has-experts-worried
North Korea, or rather its government, is becoming interested in Bitcoin.
"...students at a Pyongyang university, once accused of training the state’s hackers, have been given a crash course in cryptocurrencies — something that’s never happened before. It’s the first hard evidence of North Korea’s growing interest in cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin"
Federico Tenga, the Italian founder of Bitcoin startup, gave five 90-minute lectures at Pyongyang university, which likely trains the states' hackers. He gave an "extra" seminar to faculty members.
In typical North Korean fashion, "Pyongyang University of Science and Technology didn't respond to a request for comment from VICE News about the purpose of the course." I guess they should have just asked the North Korean government itself.
A potentially legitimate, I guess, use case for North Korea using Bitcoin is offered:
"The latest raft of financial sanctions imposed by the U.N. Security Council cut the country’s textile exports by 90 percent, severely restricting Pyongyang’s ability to get hard currency. Banks in China, which have been slow to stop supporting the regime, have also stopped taking money from North Korea, further isolating the country. The anonymous nature of Bitcoin, however, makes it easier to circumvent the traditional banking system."
The Vice article also references "North Korea’s Ruling Elite Are Not Isolated by By Insikt Group" at https://www.recordedfuture.com/north-korea-internet-activity/ and states that:
"In July, a report from Recorded Future, a security intelligence company backed by the CIA and Google, claimed that Bitcoin mining was taking place in North Korea based on monitoring Internet traffic coming out of the country."
Here are some interesting quotes from the afore mentioned Recorded Future article:
"....not malicious, there was a smaller, but significant, amount of activity that was highly suspect. One instance was the start of Bitcoin mining by users in North Korea on May 17."
"The timing of this mining is important because it began very soon after the May WannaCry ransomware attacks, which the NSA has attributed to North Korea’s intelligence service"
They then go on to make the point that the North Korean government have 1984-esque control over every aspect of public and private life, so they theorize about the mining operations in North Korea:
"It is not clear who is running the North Korean Bitcoin mining operations; however, given the relatively small number of computers in North Korea coupled with the limited IP space, it is not likely this computationally intensive activity is occurring outside of state control."