Bitcoin Forum

Twitter Poll: https://twitter.com/Chain_Bet_/status/864128151688892416

The amount paid so far is $50,000. This isn't a very large amount according to bitcoin market cap. Most of the people affected by the hack aren't willing to pay because there is no surity that by paying them, there files are secure and aren't open to further hacking. Therefore, there isn't any big change gonna happen to bitcoin value.

Is there any news that files are really being decrypted after the ransom payment?

Which block explorer the malware is checking to confirm payment?

I don't think so, it's not very likely. By now people already have experiences with ransomware and know that paying ransome doesn't actualy solve anything and its no guarantee for decription and protection from further ransome. And I agree that the amount paid, having in mind the number of infected computers is not that big.

No but it does create market caos, just because more coins are being exchanged.

not, because very soon the security holes will be patched and people stop getting infected with this ransomware and also on top of that there is only a matter of time before the hackers realize that bitcoin is no anonymous and either get caught while trying to cash out or move to an anon coin like monero.

it would be funny to find out they were using coinbase as their bitcoin wallet like the kickass guy ;D

The total amount paid right now is less than the reward mined from two new blocks so.. no.
The sum is pretty tiny and I doubt it will grow too much in the next days.

It would be interesting to hear from people that have already paid if they did receive the key from the "hackers".

Is 'WannaCry' creating a new address per user?

Wanna Crypt could have been desastrous for bitcoin's perception outside of our echochamber. Let's hope for Brad Smith's ruffle (MS Chief Legal Officer) against the code origins has some effect. Seriously you dont want to get dragged into a silly cyberwar (hitting hospitals in the UK mostly) just for fun'n'profit.

The backsleash from society would outweight any two block rewards!

And watching the top speed at which 22nd year ole hacker disarm that worm there will probably only weeks left until a public decryption tool for this is available. I know for sure I would NOT PAY these crooks a single Satoshi because: 1) have backups of data 2) more, but older backups 3) bite my shiny metal ass 4) I can wait.

Just a speculation, the global demand will increase by itself.

according to things you can read in this topic:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1916199.0
it seems like they have hard coded a couple of bitcoin addresses inside the ransomeware itself which asks for the payment in one of those addresses.

If they have hardcoded bitcoin addresses, then how do they monitor individual payments of different users?

The hack itself won't increase global demand as they didn't receive very many bitcoins, however I think it will indirectly increase demand by bringing attention to bitcoin.

Maybe each address is assigned to a user. When that user pays then that address is free to move to another user. So probably the number of ransom ware coded is quite a lot. I read somewhere in the forum, that they are following the addresses used by the ransom ware. They are calculating how much has been paid and trying follow where the money will go.

looking at the transaction amounts, each one is different because of price difference, so it is possible that the program asks them to pay exact amount of $300 for example 0.167599BTC and type in the TX ID then it uses a blockexplorer or a node to check if it is paid the exact amount and gives them the key.

the 0.167599 amount was taken from one of the addresses and you can see the amount is already unique.

There isn't any evidence of file being decrypted after payment. But what I think is that they must be giving decryption key after the payment. So, that more people pay them.
There are three bitcoin address being reported which are said to be used by the hackers.
These maybe helpful to you:
https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-income-from-wannacry-ransomware-attacks-expected-to-increase/ (https://bravenewcoin.com/news/bitcoin-income-from-wannacry-ransomware-attacks-expected-to-increase/)
https://www.google.co.in/amp/gizmodo.com/hackers-behind-massive-ransomware-have-made-an-embarras-1795195644/amp (https://www.google.co.in/amp/gizmodo.com/hackers-behind-massive-ransomware-have-made-an-embarras-1795195644/amp)

For requested $300 is easier to buy some new Laptop.

It might increase global demand for Bitcoin's head...

The sooner it passes, the better. There's enough negative press for crypto's as it is already.

New laptop wont have old files...

Obviously not. Last time I checked they had a little over 20 BTC, do you think 20 BTC will move the market so profoundly? ::)


Yes, this is what's most likely happening as discussed on the thread monitoring the ransom addresses.


If the lost encrypted files are irrelevant and the ransomware is the only problem, might as well simply format the computer, 0$ required for that.

Actually people use for long time the cloud storages for private files.
It's hard to believe for me, that a private user have any precious info as files.
The companies need to cure about the security of files.

If the user is a bitcoin user, then he should never have his wallets on the cloud.

It would be a really bad move to have wallets in the cloud, I hope nobody is doing this.

Bitcoin will be affected by this only by the negative association, the price shouldn't be affected at all.  Maybe in the early days but now it's too much of a beast.

There is no reason that the demand for Bitcoin will increase immediately due to wannacry issue. but I can ensure that more and more people will be interested in this field and start learning about it

I think, maybe demand will go down for a few days or may also increase. But and will definitely happens popularity of bitcoin also altcoins will increase, as will many new users are interested to know about bitcoin.

How 'WannaCry' has anything to do with Altcoins?

I think bitcoin will get high its demand,because they use bitcoin for being the currency they would pay for their files to be okay again. The supply will increase too  as per demand of the people.

Ahh Bitcoin, that thing that viruses use, paedophiles use to buy images, criminals use to buy weapons and drugs......

That's all the average public will see, not the advantages of the technology, but all the shite it can be used for.

It will cause a bad reputation in the average joe's mind. My collegues mentioned the news about this virus, but they're not tech people, so they had only little understanding about the whole thing. They said, that the virus uses some kind of digital money, and that's only used by criminals and hackers, so it's an evil thing. The time and the situation was not the best to start educating them about bitcoin :) The sad thing is that things like this can only slow down the acceptance of bitcoin, if average people only meet bitcoin in similar context only...

I think this will make the demand decrease for a while, and it will make the price down somewhat, we need to remember that the negative issue will make global world become very reactive and in this case some people in the world will definitely say unsafe to engage in cryptocurrency. I hope this problem will be resolved so that positive influence will make people more interested engaging in bitcoin.

Just a temporary rise . As most IT departments have already know what and how to restore sensitive data from their backups . They only need to wipe out the existing and restore what are in the back up.

It's hard for me to believe that there is a single person that doesn't have at least one important piece of info as file... Think again, if you're here you very likely have at least one precious info as a file.


... :D Don't even know what to say.


This is imprecise, even computer up to Windows 10 are vulnerable unless updated, just like any non-updated XP machine.

Pretty curious that they didn't target cash machines, now that I come to think of it...

About payments, think again. Last time I checked they already had 20+ BTC.

Agreeing, short temporary impact, if at all. And after clicking on the NO vote I can see 75% of all the other voters are of the same opinion.
Of that dozen voters *cough* maybe not very representive so far.

Global demand? Maybe not because there are few people who knows about bitcoin and just a bit who willing to pay for the hackers if you have enough bitcoin to pay it. But, layman will ask and learn about bitcoin I guess but doesn't mean they will adopt bitcoin as they will see bitcoin used for bad things.

Bitcoin is not really anonymous and I agree with you. Even on exchanges, if you transact more than a thousand dollar worth , you are subject to personal verification.

Same opinion also that this ransonware will be dealt soon. This will not increased demand of bitcoin because of this situation,demand of bitcoin will increase because more countries are now accepting and that is for sure.

I think with Wannacry Ransome Virus, there will be lot talk about in all over the world and in News and media also. When they will explain about this, they will tell it demands Bitcoins to encrypts the file so people who do not know about bitcoins now will be curious to know about this new currency. So i think this Virus has generated unwanted awareness for bitcoins which is actually good for bitcoins itself.

The question parts from a (very probably) wrong assumption: that the criminal ransomware creator is a Bitcoin fan and will hold his BTC forever.

It's more probable that he will sell the Bitcoins as soon as he can launder them in some way (selling them for cash in various parts, selling on an exchange in a country without KYC/AML regulations, etc.). So the impact will be essentially zero: the "demand increase" because of the users buying to pay the ransom is equilibrated by the "supply increase" when the criminal sells.

I'm very surprise recently to hear the news regarding a ransomware  virus that ask for bitcoin as payment. This ransomware are advertising bitcoin to the whole world. Even though the payment for ransom is still small, it really helps bitcoin market to spread around the world and bitcoin now becoming popular. :D

It is true that bitcoin become more popular but this is a bad popularity, it will increase the negative judgement from people and one day this can cause bitcoin being banned from every country, so this is a bad publicity

There ransomware is not going to add global demand because the amount is still small, and I think this incident can cause bitcoin price to fall down

It will by a small amount. Not by much though lol... It is ransomware and most people probably have backups and won't pay it. I am thinking only really a few people were hit off guard and didn't have backups, so no increase by much if at all.

What you are telling is true, Bitcoin is getting free advertisement and now more peoples let it be legal or illegal but they are now taking interest in Bitcoin and other crypto currency. But this boom is no related to this advertisement. It is due to the global acceptance of the coin