Friday night in Singapore, February 2025. The time?
It's around 10.30 and the CEO of a big digital finance company is working late.
He's got one last job ahead of the weekend, moving money from one account to another.
Pretty routine stuff.
Routine, but still needs concentration.
The money in question is in cryptocurrency and stored in a kind of digital vault.
For safety, it's usually kept offline, disconnected from the internet.
To use it, the CEO needs to bring it online, unlock it,
and move money into a more accessible vault, one that's open for business on the internet.
Think of it like moving money from a bank's underground vault up to the teller's desk.
In this case, the CEO wants to move 30,000 Ethereum,
one of the major cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin.
30,000 Ethereum is a lot.
The cash equivalent is more than 100 million US dollars.
Multiple people need to sign off on the transfer before the exchange can go ahead.
The CEO and his team individually make their checks.
30,000 Ethereum from offline vault A into online vault B. Yep, looks good.
They click the buttons to make it happen.
Done.
Then the CEO moves on.