Ten years ago, when I first heard about Bitcoin, I made all the usual mistakes of those who don’t understand it. I thought it was meant for a dystopian future, which seemed nonsensical to me.
As savvy investors were buying Bitcoin at a few hundred dollars each, I was saying things like: “If there’s an apocalypse and no Internet, how would we access Bitcoin?”
That logic made sense to me back then. If digital money loses its digital world, what’s its value?
I’ve since learned that Bitcoin wasn’t crafted for doomsday but as a decentralized, immutable store of value — immune to government interference. Now, with a basic understanding and investment in Bitcoin, I believe in its growth due to scarcity and adoption, but I hadn’t really thought about security risks.
This changed last week when a message in my crypto group warned: “Hackers hijack npm packages, the biggest supply chain hack in history.”
Press pause
Charles Guillemet, CTO of Ledger, a crypto cold wallet system, advised halting all transactions.
Terms like ‘malware’ and ‘malicious code’ — my new least favorites — meant funds could be stolen without a trace.
I also learned the difference between a “hack” (unauthorized access) and an “exploit” (exploiting a pre-existing vulnerability).
While my first instinct was to secure my crypto, knowing I couldn’t do much, I simply went to bed.
By morning, the urgency faded, and a few days later, it was nearly forgotten.
I didn’t fully grasp what happened until a piece in Milk Road Crypto summarized it. Npm packages, bundles of JavaScript code, are crucial for developers worldwide. When a hacker accessed a developer’s npm account and inserted rogue code, the potential damage was vast. Luckily, it was caught early, with minimal impact — just $503.62 (Dh1,849).
The lesson? Crypto may be immutable, but the world it operates in isn’t. The Internet and devices aren’t infallible, and a single bad line of code can deplete your wallet.
Yet, much like life, the crypto world moves forward, despite risks. After Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Bitcoiners shared a podcast where he predicted Bitcoin’s rise as a global store of value.
However, Kirk noted a caveat: “Quantum is the only asterisk on all of this.” This refers to the threat of quantum computing, a technology that could eventually break blockchain encryption.
The great threat
No Bitcoin enthusiast wants this scenario. As Kirk’s podcast peers noted, if quantum computing can topple Bitcoin, it could disrupt everything. Fortunately, many projects aim to address this issue.
For now, I hope for the best, expecting a balanced outcome. Worrying about everything means doing nothing. This is the challenge of being a layperson invested in a partially understood field.
Swift efforts contained the npm situation. I trust they’ll handle larger threats too.
When it comes to crypto, trust no one.
