Bitcoin Forum

Just a thought.

The NHS in the United Kingdom has been brought to a standstill today after a ransomware attack decimated their networks. There are hundreds of thousands of sick people not getting emergency treatment during this frenzy and government cyber agencies are getting involved trying to fix and trace the attack.

Now we all know that this isn't anything to do with crypto, it's just some fucking idiots playing around with their low-end criminal lives and unfortunately their ransomware encryption virus has accidentally found itself on the network of one of Britain's largest state institutions. It's a dire situation and if they get caught they'll be fucked.

However, once it all blows over and gets fixed I reckon the authorities might start asking questions of how and why criminals can get access to payment-acceptance systems that are pretty much untraceable. This will put the spotlight on Bitcoin/crypto-currencies and their links to the underworld.

The question is, how will it affect the price?

 

No questions need to be asked, they can try and buy Bitcoin themselves. And there you go, everyone has access to Bitcoins in the same way.

I don't think it will affect the price negatively... Not that big of an issue (at least in what regards Bitcoin). Whales can and do move markets the way they please and with whatever news... But I don't think moving the market now based on these news would have a big impact.

It will go up if the victim converts fiat to XBT to pay the ransom.

It will go down later if the ransomers convert their XBT to fiat.

I didn't mean affecting the price now, I mean if authorities start putting pressure on crypto i.e. pushing for regulation on it so that they can get a tighter grip.

That's dead funny, I hope all your reserves dump! :-p

That can only happen on a tiny, localized scale. The people in Tokyo probably don't know nor care about what happend in London today, and the people in London don't know or care about what happened in Moscow today.

Yea true, my ideal scenario is BTC tanks and everyone enters into ETH, making me rich 8)

it's already a total pain to convert bitcoin to fiat so nothing much is gonna change. they'll have to be extremely good to disguise it. there's software that beats mixers now. i doubt they can be bothered to chase it this time.

they should've asked for monero.

https://blockchain.info/address/12t9YDPgwueZ9NyMgw519p7AA8isjr6SMw

looks like something's been paid already.

If the UK decides to start cracking down on cryptos (which I'm surprised they haven't considering that they're the fiat banking capital of the world and cryptos pose a direct threat to their dominance, along with the UK becoming Oceania), chances are it won't have more than $30-$50 impact on the value, depending on how aggressively UK citizens with Bitcoin holdings liquidate, but not much should change even with this.

Even if that happened, it wouldn't make you rich.

Ethereum has plans to change the coin a lot, and it's unclear what they'll do with the supply so ETH is anything but a safe haven asset.  Worst case scenario, they edit the supply way too much to keep the price stable and then you're left with an inflationary currency with too much control from the developers.

there ain't no bitcoin exchanges in the uk other than coinfloor and that doesn't bank in the uk anyway. because of this britain don't really count for much in the market.

and the nhs computer idiots are just as culpable. they must've received millions of these attacks. it only takes one person to open it. 

I doubt it'll have much of an impact on the price. Market cap is huge now, it'd take a lot more than this to move the price these days.

I can't see it having an effect.  These events aren't linked and people won't be panicking selling their BTC from this attack, nor will governments go around condemning it.

Investors are way too smart and they wouldn't let a few prankster hackers spoil their investment plans. Bitcoin now is a serious investment tool and people are now rallying behind it in full swing. I doubt this hacking cyber bullying will affect Bitcoin price.

The only effect that bitcoin will receive will be some more negative publicity because some media will relate the attack with bitcoin and many people will have a more negative image of the coin but this will only last a few days. As for the price will not affect because it´s not a news directly related to Bitcoin.

Unless they close every bitcoin exchange out there or cut off their connections with the banks; they can't stop crypto from now on.

FUD, cyber attacks, hacks, ddos, spam... Bitcoin became immune to those attacks now. Blockchain spam still can slow things down for a while but they can't sustain it for long because they'll be losing money by doing so.

If they go mad and cut off the connection between banks and bitcoin, then we are most likely to be fckd.

We are heading towards that future, ransomware attacks where bitcoin is used as kinda stealth payment method will act as catalyst for that regulatory movement.
Russia already announcement that they will legalize bitcoin next year, not because it is amazing tool, but because they want to keep an eye on Bitcoin.

The opposite will happen, this is a reason for governments to rule out the use of bitcoin, due to their use in the cybercrime sector. I don't think centralized governments such as the US/ or the EU have huge interest in such a decentralized currency, although it is the future..

These governments want to know who owns what. I suspect that America is trying to slowly destroy bitcoin to replace it with their own digital blockchain currency..

Government have already started to put tight regulation on crypto market but this doesn't mean they can completely shut down the bitcoin network. Bitcoin price have also grown significantly in recent days despite of tight regulation and surveillance government are having on bitcoin transactions.

The cyber attack on chains of hospital in UK, I believe has nothing to do with bitcoin as there were no news about bitcoin related ransom or anything similar to that.

Today koren exchanges are reaching price levels above $2050 (like how Indian markets were doing some times back), will you relate this into bitcoin's today's small pull back. I guess that must be due to some whales are booking profits or usually market gets power time to time to continue its rally which might be happening ?

Yes, nothing to do with Bitcoin, but media all over the globe FUD about Bitcoin, and not about computer security and stuff, then Bitcoin falls a bit, while Microsoft and other big computer companies stocks should be falling.

But in the long run will be good for Bitcoin, more people will hear about it and sooner or later will realize who are the ones to blame, and price will keep increasing

Unlikely to impact the price in the near term at present have greater concerns over Brexit and luckily for us the Central Bank operator is a former Canadian who is still in charge of the wheel during this crisis. As long as they keep Mark Carney I would not be overly concerned unless they do something like the UK porn ban and extend that to Bitcoin sites we should be fine.

The worst case is an extension to crypto-currencies and an amendment addition to the UK Digital Economy Bill
https://www.thesun.co.uk/living/2266135/digital-economy-bill-uk-porn-laws/
Or similar laws to the Kodi Box bans and the UK's Digital Economy Act
http://www.dailystar.co.uk/tech/news/613826/Microsoft-block-streams-Kodi-ban-UK-torrents

I haven't yet seen any backlash in Britain against bitcoin (the backlash is against the ransomware hackers). But I have seen a few comments in the American press demanding bitcoin be shut down.

It's irritating when criminals hijack a legit took like crypto. It's a pity that we haven't been able to use the last few years to get people to actuallu USE bitcoin daily, which would mitigate against attacks. But as things stand, bitcoin is just used for speculation and criminal activity.

i think while cyber attacks bitcoin, bitcoin will still stronger because have the power to prevent and as long as we can give the best support to bitcoin then i am sure that bitcoin will stay for a longer time. without supporting from us, bitcoin is nothing and bitcoin will fall into deep and abandon by people.

The NHS screw up won't have any impact on BTC whatsoever.
It's like comparing apples to oranges. People aren't going to give up on everything digital because of unrelated events.
From the governments perspective it's also unrelated. They aren't going to start regulating BTC because of what happened. However, if patient information was leaked/accessed then they might enforce tighter rules on NHS encryption enforcing them to have a more secure system. (That being said I doubt Hunt would care since his primary objective is to destroy the NHS so nothing would happen on either front).

Looks like nothing remotely negative to bitcoin has come of this attack. If anything it's just made average joe curious to find out about bitcoin, research it or whatever.

I'm confident that everything will be ok & this won't negatively impact our moon bound rocket.

Nothing major gonna happen to bitcoin. Yes they asked for payment in bitcoin for giving the access to their hacked PCs. This may increase some demand. But that wouldn't be a lot. Just consider bitcoin as a mode of payment, that's it. People should be thinking and talking about the attack rather.

If the authorities try to ban bitcoin because of the ransomware,the criminals will use every other altcoin
to get ransomes.
I don`t see any impact over bitcoin price.Let`s hope that those hackers will be caught.
 

a lot of people and websites are trying so hard these days to connect this to bitcoin and use it as an excuse to affect the price and the market makers decided NO. so it won't have any effect on it for the time being.

and we will continue as planned. in a very short time SEC will reject ETF and price will fall, then the FUD topics begin pouring in and panic sells start and in a week or so whales get bigger and price goes back above current price once again!

Exactly. If Bitcoin was not that prominent cryptocurrency then cyber criminals would use other altcoin.
If we won't have cryptocurrency at all, they would use other means of payment like they tend to do in the past:
bank wire transfers, premium text messages, pre paid voucher like Paysafecard and more.

It is idiotic when you blame Bitcoin for ransomware (which NSA or CIA leaked in the first place).

Also, MS Windows should be blamed.

Bitcoin doesn't care about the cyber attacks in the UK remember that bitcoin is encrypted and use a lot of hash that's why it cant be hack I know there's no security because it's just an illusion but still the developer and the one who invented bitcoin satoshi nakamoto is a genius . think about it he/she invented bitcoin for the sake of all people who wants to have freedom when it comes in currency.

No there were incidents like exchange hack and stolen bitcoins which impacted bitcoin market in deep negative too. But if we are talking about dull market then usually week end and week's last day, we could not find big rallies, I guess this what actually happened in last 3 days with bitcoin prices.

In adidtion to this bitcoin is not the most anonymous coin, there are some altcoins whose trial could be much harder or even impossible to track. They chose bitcoin because is more popular and easy to get but they could easily require a ramson in monero, for example.

Anything stopping them from converting btc to monero via shapeshift or one of the p2p exchanges?

I don't think bitcoin will be lost value because of cyber attack on every hacking issue,
always there are values in bitcoin many hacking issue related bitcoin in past time
 include banning usage of bitcoin but bitcoin still survive up to right now and capitalization
of bitcoin becomed more increased​.

And the question is, why would they pressure the crypto community?  The attack does not come from crypto community people, so definitely if they put the blame in cryptocurrency then they are barking at the wrong tree and would make them look bad.  Government maybe stubborn but they are not idiot.

im not 100% sure that it will... it has to get to the point where bitcoin is on the spot and associated with the darknet though. that itself may never come to pass. But if all this comes to pass then id expect that btc price might dip down a little. people who aren't already well aware of bitcoin(by people im talking about people in mass not individually) will start to try and reject it since they don't know what it is. such is the way of humanity... fear and hate with extreme prejudice what you don't know. individually people are smart collectly though... people are stupid.

Microsoft has very conveniently blamed people for not updating their software. No talk of liability for releasing buggy software in the first place.
And there is the issue of software like Windows XP, which the Company no longer "supports".

I think it will destroy bitcoin reputation so it will difficult for bitcoin to grow at some country.
Some country may ban bitcoin as illegal transaction since it can be use almost in any criminal activity !

Why even fiat currency are also traded for this type of illegal activities so what that currency got banned not, it is the users who are using it is bad way, The fault is of the users who have not secured their system with full security, that is why they got this problem.

Funny you saying this as I just read that they had a bot installed to mine Monero on the affected computers http://uk.businessinsider.com/eternalblue-nsa-exploit-wannacry-ransomware-adylkuzz-monero-botnet-2017-5?r=US&IR=T

Bitcoins value can not be affected because of these cyber attacks that is a fact, the blame should be on their it department who should have done
their jobs of updating their computer systems! Its not an issue until something bad happens like in this case.
I think the should give credit to the hacker for exposing how obsolete most of our systems are and should be security cautious at all times.