> Is it a way for North Korea to get paid when extorting Western companies? In fact yes, this use case does seem to work.
The "criminals use Bitcoin" while true is the weakest of the arguments against the current or future success of Bitcoin. Criminals still primarily use regular ole' fiat currency for this stuff, or have more sophisticated schemes like selling artwork. In the case of North Korea they'd have to either mine Bitcoin, or they'd have to convert their currency to Bitcoin. But who would sell to take worthless North Korean money? Unless you mean they convert dollars... in which case they were just using the dollars already.
The "criminals use Bitcoin" while true is the weakest of the arguments against the current or future success of Bitcoin. Criminals still primarily use regular ole' fiat currency for this stuff, or have more sophisticated schemes like selling artwork. In the case of North Korea they'd have to either mine Bitcoin, or they'd have to convert their currency to Bitcoin. But who would sell to take worthless North Korean money? Unless you mean they convert dollars... in which case they were just using the dollars already.