Is virtual currency 'decentralized'? Wake up, the United States is the banker with a knife, reaping billions with just one strike Zhou Hongyi recently released a heavyweight report titled "The Number One Player" in a short video, which directly shattered the "wealth freedom dream" of the virtual currency industry. After reading this report released by the National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center, the National Engineering Laboratory for Computer Virus Prevention and Control Technology, and 360 Digital Security Group, my back feels cold: we thought that things like Bitcoin and Ethereum were decentralized utopias that could free ordinary people from the control of banks and governments, but the United States has long treated you like a leek and a banker with a knife. First, look at two sets of numbers, and you will know how terrifying the scale is: The total market value of global virtual currencies is currently approximately $2.73 trillion, which is roughly equivalent to 47% of the market value of global central bank gold reserves. This means that virtual assets are no longer niche toys, but a giant cake in the global financial system. Even worse, from 2022 to 2025, the United States has confiscated over $30 billion worth of virtual assets through various cases. The cases of Chen Zhi and Zhao Changpeng (founder of Binance CZ) alone amount to nearly 20 billion US dollars. This is not scattered law enforcement, this is systematic harvesting. The report breaks down the gameplay of the United States into three chains: technology chain, rule chain, and law enforcement chain, which are interrelated and form a precise closed loop. Let's talk about the technology chain first, the United States has an absolute advantage. On chain traceability, address profiling, node control, and data analysis are core technologies that American companies and institutions hold a significant global share of. Report Name: National level hacking forces in the United States (NSA, FBI Cyber Division, etc.) are capable of brute force cracking against flaws in private key generation algorithms. The Chen Zhi case is a living example: On December 29, 2020, Lubian mining pool abnormally transferred 127271 bitcoins, and the private key defect was breached within 2 hours. All transfer transaction fees were completely consistent, and the code was clean to zero errors. This is not a job done by ordinary hackers, it is a precise surgery at the national team level. Looking at the chain of rules again, the long arm jurisdiction is played to perfection. The United States first legislates (anti money laundering laws, sanctions laws, OFAC rules), and then pulls major global exchanges into the framework. Platforms such as Binance, Coinbase, and Kraken, even if registered overseas, must comply with US regulations, otherwise they will be directly kicked out of the US dollar settlement system. What was the result? Global transaction data, user KYC, and fund flow are all under the scrutiny of the United States. The report clearly states that the United States has turned "compliance" into a weapon, and whoever does not comply will be cut off from the US dollar channel. Finally, there is the law enforcement chain, a one-stop closed loop: investigation → sanctions → fines → asset freezing → public auction and confiscation. The Chen Zhi case is the most typical: 127272 bitcoins were confiscated by the United States (worth billions of dollars at the time). After the abnormal transfer of assets at the end of 2020, it remained dormant for three and a half years and was only concentrated in US government controlled addresses in June 2024. The lawsuit will only be publicly announced during the Trump administration in 2025. The so-called 'victims' are the victims of electronic fraud in 2021-2022, and the timeline is completely mismatched - what does this mean? It's not about recovering the stolen goods for the victims, but about the United States waiting for the price of Bitcoin to rise to a high point and harvesting it all at once. The characteristics of national level attacks are also very obvious: Targeting targeted attacks on mainstream exchanges, utilizing vulnerabilities in underlying protocol mechanisms to achieve high-intensity breakthroughs. There is a 'scouting' relationship between attack behavior and subsequent law enforcement - first blacklisting, then freezing, and finally public auction. Report warning: This is not an isolated hacking incident, but a systematic harvest of the combination of technological hegemony and rule hegemony. Zhou Hongyi provided three response measures in the 360 report: Firstly, technical traceability: building a traceable chain of attack evidence that can be traced and held accountable afterwards. Secondly, risk warning: Conduct post summary and turn to mid event interception, using real-time monitoring to block abnormal transfers. Thirdly, AI confrontation: Deploy a swarm of secure intelligent agents to combat automated and high-intensity attacks. Simply put, when technological hegemony, rule hegemony, and law enforcement hegemony are combined, "decentralization" becomes a naked pursuit. Today they harvest your Bitcoin, and tomorrow they may replicate it to your digital identity, your data assets, and your cross-border payments. Virtual currency was supposed to be a tool to disrupt the financial system, but it has become a new battlefield for great power games. The United States is not a player, it is a banker, and a banker with a knife. From a global perspective, this is not a problem exclusive to the United States, but a microcosm of the struggle for technological and regulatory dominance. Europe is trying to build its own moats in GDPR and China in data security laws. But the reality is: whoever masters the core technology on the chain and formulates global settlement rules will be able to laugh the last in the next round of harvest. The question is: How much of your 'freedom' is yours when the banker brings a knife to the table? When we ordinary players were still fantasizing about getting rich in front of the K-line chart, they were already counting the confiscated loot in the background. The future of virtual currency is not about who has the largest parameters or whose community is active, but about who has mastered the "knife handle" first. Barbarian Vision Virtual Currency | Harvesting in the United States