Matt Levine’s Money Stuff: Crypto Hackers Are Nice Now

Poly

Yesterday “hackers perpetrated what is likely the biggest theft ever in the world of decentralized finance, stealing about $600 million in cryptocurrency from a protocol known as PolyNetwork that lets users swap tokens across multiple blockchains.” There was not much that PolyNetwork could do except ask the hacker nicely to give the money back. So that’s what it did. Poly Network tweeted a picture of a plaintive letter addressed “Dear Hacker.” “We want to establish communication with you and urge you to return the hacked assets,” it says. “The money you stole are from tens of thousands of ...