tw-rl

1/ How to Hack Better Like many of you, I was disappointed by the follow-through of the Twitter hackers yesterday. They seized control of the accounts of the world's most influential individuals and they went with...a Bitcoin scam?! So let's play a game: How to Hack Better.

2/ Imagine you are the CEO of a criminal organization. You have devised an ingenious backdoor hack into Twitter that will grant you complete (yet temporary) access to all Twitter accounts. "How can we make, like, a gazillion dollars off of this?" you ask your co-conspirators.

3/ "Oh, I know, a Bitcoin scam! We say 'send us Bitcoin, and we will send more back,'" Keith suggests. You sigh, rolling your eyes. "That's stupid, Keith," you reply (correctly, I might add!). "Think much bigger. We'll have immense, God-like power over the internet!"

4/ You decide to focus on the global financial markets. The volume and liquidity means you can hide in plain sight. Tanking the markets is too obvious, but pumping them, well, that's just modern politics! So you start buying up short-dated call options on airlines and cruises.

5/ You buy across hundreds of accounts with small volumes in each and in high-volume names - you need to cover your tracks. Now, for the tweets... Bill Gates: "We will have a vaccine in August!" Federal Reserve: "We will begin buying equity ETFs to support market functioning."

6/ You execute the hack, send the tweets, and watch as the markets surge to all-time-highs. Slowly, you exit the positions, capturing a massive profit for your organization. "Now this is the life!" you say, lounging on your new yacht. "Bitcoin scam?! Lol."

7/ Note: I am well aware that this may have been about more than Bitcoin, but for humor's sake, I enjoy thinking about it as a silly, amateurish broken hack-job.