Scott Galloway
Professor of marketing at NYU Stern and author of bestselling books including The Four and The Algebra of Wealth.
“Theft is hands down the best way to grow an economy. … $6 billion on a $30 billion economy means they grew their economy this week by 20%. … They essentially, relative to their government, paid for all government expenses for a year with this hack.”
Pivot (Kara Swisher & Scott Galloway) · Tech Strategy & Big Tech · November 2026
Context
Kara asked how much of a setback the Binance hack is, after the FBI confirmed North Korea was behind it. Scott used the hack to talk about state-backed theft as an economic strategy for North Korea, noting Binance itself lost only about 2% of its assets.
Transcript
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…bloody Friday. Binance customers pulled $3.64 billion from exchanges over the weekend when withdrawals were unfrozen. Crypto Heist, gone mainstream. Trump has really unleashed that. In recent years, especially with his backing, how much of a setback? Where are we with that? And I think tech stocks.
…about 2% of their asset under management. So it doesn't look like it's actually been that big a deal for Binance. Now, having said that, $6 billion on a $30 billion economy means they grew their economy this week by 20%. Imagine that the equivalent thefts. If we were able to pull off that type of IP theft in the United States, that means we would be able in 48 hours to capture about $6 trillion. They essentially, relative to their government, paid for all government expenses for a year with this hack. So the scale of it is so extraordinary because North Korea is quite frankly just such a rogue, a failed nation state. Every kid is going to be taught hacking and AI. That is now their core competence. The people who figured this out in North Korea grew their economy 20% this year. And the scale on the other end about just how successful our economy is is that a company can lose $6 billion and…
about the tech sell-off? Because it's really starting. I know we talk about this idea that before the big crash in 2000, everyone thought it was going to crash for a couple of years. And then there was up, up, up, and then not up. But it took a while. How do you look right now? Because you see…
Well, I mean, I'm going to be about to engage in a word salad, but let me skip to the end. I don't know.
Just don't have an app. Just don't have an utterance like that.
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