Wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies that they would eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries?
Yes, but keeping coins in your private wallet is a huge hassle if you want to do anything with them. To make a transaction you need to have the entire blockchain on your hard drive stored and verified on your hard drive, and bitcoin alone is 197 gigabytes. So people rely on exchanges, and we have the beautiful solution of the worst of both worlds.
+16
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies that they would eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries?
Yes, but keeping coins in your private wallet is a huge hassle if you want to do anything with them. To make a transaction you need to have the entire blockchain on your hard drive stored and verified on your hard drive, and bitcoin alone is 197 gigabytes. So people rely on exchanges, and we have the beautiful solution of the worst of both worlds.
Wait, what? How do mobile wallets like Electrum work, then?
Wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies that they would eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries?
Yes, but keeping coins in your private wallet is a huge hassle if you want to do anything with them. To make a transaction you need to have the entire blockchain on your hard drive stored and verified on your hard drive, and bitcoin alone is 197 gigabytes. So people rely on exchanges, and we have the beautiful solution of the worst of both worlds.
Wait, what? How do mobile wallets like Electrum work, then?
Well I don't closely follow cryptocurrency so I wasn't aware of that until just now, but it appears Electrum simply acts as an intermediary between you and a server with the entire blockchain that acts on your behalf, and they don't know your private key due to the magic of encryption. So I guess people use exchanges instead of private wallets because they have more trust in the exchange not being compromised than their computer not being compromised. And I assume that since conversion of crypto and dollars is happening through the exchange it's also just more convenient to keep everything with them.
0
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I think a lot of money left on exchanges is people doing day trading, etc, as well
0
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Wasn't the whole point of cryptocurrencies that they would eliminate the need for trusted intermediaries?
Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.
Essentially the private exchange has replaced the government and regulated banks.
Except in this case the exchanges still want the government to bail them out when things go to shit. And the people who use the exchanges still want the government to regulate and prosecute the exchanges when things go to shit.
The government has ways of coping with financial disaster. This case is equivalent to a large amount of currency being physically destroyed. The government has an office for damaged currency, and banks are insured under the FDIC in case something big enough happens that prevents them from covering deposits.
Banks and carriers also carry other liability insurance in case an employee screws up and causes a loss or a theft removes a sum of money.
I mean... Banks are shit, and the system that props them up is a swirling black hole, but it's a robust system that's already survived disasters much worse than this without account holders losing their money, often even beyond the FDIC guarantee. Banks are not shit because of a deficit in trust that account holders can access their holdings.
The government has ways of coping with financial disaster. This case is equivalent to a large amount of currency being physically destroyed. The government has an office for damaged currency, and banks are insured under the FDIC in case something big enough happens that prevents them from covering deposits.
Banks and carriers also carry other liability insurance in case an employee screws up and causes a loss or a theft removes a sum of money.
I mean... Banks are shit, and the system that props them up is a swirling black hole, but it's a robust system that's already survived disasters much worse than this without account holders losing their money, often even beyond the FDIC guarantee. Banks are not shit because of a deficit in trust that account holders can access their holdings.
Banks have only survive disasters worse than this because the various international governments bailed out the banks. We've had runs on banks in the US (in 1929) and the EU is currently at risk for a bank run. The collapse in 2007 was effectively a bank run triggered by market-liquidity failures. The global banking system came right up to the edge of complete failure then, and the governments that intervened almost weren't enough.
In he US, where that collapse started, the government didn't just bail out banks. Banks pay for that service through the FDIC. The debate over the bailout was not if it should happen or not, as it was a service banks are required to pay for and is automatic when one hits a critical level of liquidity, but whether the banks should be allowed to remain in business rather than being forced to close under FDIC rules. This was, technically, a cheaper solution, but allowed a lot of wealthy people with unclean hands to keep jobs and benefits that would have been eliminated to help pay for their depositors accounts.
It's amazing how many people who brag about Libertarian principles are quick to rely on government policies and institutions when they get into dire straits.
It's like those assholes on Reddit who brag about not paying taxes but bitch when roads aren't plowed.
In he US, where that collapse started, the government didn't just bail out banks. Banks pay for that service through the FDIC. The debate over the bailout was not if it should happen or not, as it was a service banks are required to pay for and is automatic when one hits a critical level of liquidity, but whether the banks should be allowed to remain in business rather than being forced to close under FDIC rules. This was, technically, a cheaper solution, but allowed a lot of wealthy people with unclean hands to keep jobs and benefits that would have been eliminated to help pay for their depositors accounts.
The debate was absolutely on whether or not to bail them out. The FDIC insures depositors, not banks. Its a tool to prevent bank runs in the commercial banking system. While the problems we had were not in the commercial but rather the private system
+6
Descendant XSkyrim is my god now.Outpost 31Registered Userregular
Troubled Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million and cannot access most of the funds, according to a court filing obtained by CoinDesk.
In a sworn affidavit filed Jan. 31 with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Jennifer Robertson, identified as the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, said the exchange owes its customers roughly $250 million CAD ($190 million) in both cryptocurrency and fiat. The company previously announced it had filed for creditor protection on its website, but the filing itself provides greater details about its predicament.
As of Jan. 31, 2019, there were roughly 115,000 users with balances signed up on the exchange, with $70 million CAD in fiat and $180 million CAD in crypto owed overall, according to the filing.
The exchange holds roughly 26,500 bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 bitcoin cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 bitcoin cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 bitcoin gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 ether ($46 million), totaling $147 million, according to the affidavit.
The founder of an exchange died of complications from Crohn's, which is sad, but for security he was the only one with the private key. So all of the cryptocurrency on the exchange is now gone forever. Oops
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
Garry: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!
Troubled Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million and cannot access most of the funds, according to a court filing obtained by CoinDesk.
In a sworn affidavit filed Jan. 31 with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Jennifer Robertson, identified as the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, said the exchange owes its customers roughly $250 million CAD ($190 million) in both cryptocurrency and fiat. The company previously announced it had filed for creditor protection on its website, but the filing itself provides greater details about its predicament.
As of Jan. 31, 2019, there were roughly 115,000 users with balances signed up on the exchange, with $70 million CAD in fiat and $180 million CAD in crypto owed overall, according to the filing.
The exchange holds roughly 26,500 bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 bitcoin cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 bitcoin cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 bitcoin gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 ether ($46 million), totaling $147 million, according to the affidavit.
The founder of an exchange died of complications from Crohn's, which is sad, but for security he was the only one with the private key. So all of the cryptocurrency on the exchange is now gone forever. Oops
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
So, coin mining is basically guessing a random number and hoping it wins the lottery, right? Wonder if there's a way to guess at the key(s) to that exchange - and would it be worthwhile to "mine". Mineception!
Bitcoin’s “lightning torch” saw none other than Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey snatch up the ongoing payment experiment and pass it on Tuesday.
As CoinDesk reported today, users have been passing around a so-called “lightning torch” – a running game wherein each participant adds a little bitcoin to a payment, then passes it onto someone on Twitter that they trust – in order to spread awareness of the technology, widely seen as the future of bitcoin payments since payments are fast and scalable.
With Dorsey’s participation, the payment has now reached roughly 2,860,000 satoshis (worth nearly $100 at the time of press). To date, roughly 150 people have taken part in what has become a global exercise.
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
So, coin mining is basically guessing a random number and hoping it wins the lottery, right? Wonder if there's a way to guess at the key(s) to that exchange - and would it be worthwhile to "mine". Mineception!
You could try, but the entire reason cryptography works is that with current technology brute forcing these keys would take longer than the current age of the universe.
Troubled Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million and cannot access most of the funds, according to a court filing obtained by CoinDesk.
In a sworn affidavit filed Jan. 31 with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Jennifer Robertson, identified as the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, said the exchange owes its customers roughly $250 million CAD ($190 million) in both cryptocurrency and fiat. The company previously announced it had filed for creditor protection on its website, but the filing itself provides greater details about its predicament.
As of Jan. 31, 2019, there were roughly 115,000 users with balances signed up on the exchange, with $70 million CAD in fiat and $180 million CAD in crypto owed overall, according to the filing.
The exchange holds roughly 26,500 bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 bitcoin cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 bitcoin cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 bitcoin gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 ether ($46 million), totaling $147 million, according to the affidavit.
The founder of an exchange died of complications from Crohn's, which is sad, but for security he was the only one with the private key. So all of the cryptocurrency on the exchange is now gone forever. Oops
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
So, coin mining is basically guessing a random number and hoping it wins the lottery, right? Wonder if there's a way to guess at the key(s) to that exchange - and would it be worthwhile to "mine". Mineception!
Troubled Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX owes its customers $190 million and cannot access most of the funds, according to a court filing obtained by CoinDesk.
In a sworn affidavit filed Jan. 31 with the Nova Scotia Supreme Court, Jennifer Robertson, identified as the widow of QuadrigaCX founder Gerald Cotten, said the exchange owes its customers roughly $250 million CAD ($190 million) in both cryptocurrency and fiat. The company previously announced it had filed for creditor protection on its website, but the filing itself provides greater details about its predicament.
As of Jan. 31, 2019, there were roughly 115,000 users with balances signed up on the exchange, with $70 million CAD in fiat and $180 million CAD in crypto owed overall, according to the filing.
The exchange holds roughly 26,500 bitcoin ($92.3 million USD), 11,000 bitcoin cash ($1.3 million), 11,000 bitcoin cash SV ($707,000), 35,000 bitcoin gold ($352,000), nearly 200,000 litecoin ($6.5 million) and about 430,000 ether ($46 million), totaling $147 million, according to the affidavit.
The founder of an exchange died of complications from Crohn's, which is sad, but for security he was the only one with the private key. So all of the cryptocurrency on the exchange is now gone forever. Oops
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
So, coin mining is basically guessing a random number and hoping it wins the lottery, right? Wonder if there's a way to guess at the key(s) to that exchange - and would it be worthwhile to "mine". Mineception!
So, assuming 256 bit encryption, something like 5x10^51 years of computing time to brute force is what articles like to say. Expected time is actually half of that, since every key has an equal chance of being right.
Someone could try dictionary attacks and get it in a few years of computer time, IF he used a dumb password. Rainbow tables can account for stuph liek weird spellings or 13773r5 replaced with numbers and might get it in 10-15 if he used a dumb password but had some consideration for ease of attack. Nonsense word pairs and extra characters not replacing letters quickly gets to near brute force complexity, though.
Thousands of people collaborating on this with a distributed system would still have a lower money/time than just mining replacement currency.
Honestly, it might be more worthwhile to organize an intentional 51% attack and just kludge it that way, as far as I know the attack can't free those coins but can spend coins more than once, it should be possible to generate a series of double spend transactions to refund accounts. Assuming there's some way to prove who is owed what and not just turn this into an inflationary cash grab.
Realistically the fact that this is possible seriously undermines everything about crypto but that hasn't dented user trust yet, why should it now?
Hevach on
+3
FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
Bitcoin’s “lightning torch” saw none other than Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey snatch up the ongoing payment experiment and pass it on Tuesday.
As CoinDesk reported today, users have been passing around a so-called “lightning torch” – a running game wherein each participant adds a little bitcoin to a payment, then passes it onto someone on Twitter that they trust – in order to spread awareness of the technology, widely seen as the future of bitcoin payments since payments are fast and scalable.
With Dorsey’s participation, the payment has now reached roughly 2,860,000 satoshis (worth nearly $100 at the time of press). To date, roughly 150 people have taken part in what has become a global exercise.
God damn it, Jack!
When I said you were a crypto-fascist, this is not what I meant!
+20
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
I have to say, with as heavy-handed as payment processors have become in light of government pressure to crack down on sex work or other things (I had my account locked and $200 frozen and was unable to talk to a human about it for 6 weeks, because someone made a joke in the memo line), I'm increasingly seeing the argument for something like cryptocurrency.
Now if there was just a model for it that didn't consume huge amounts of electricity and wasn't managed by the worst kind of grognards.
I have to say, with as heavy-handed as payment processors have become in light of government pressure to crack down on sex work or other things (I had my account locked and $200 frozen and was unable to talk to a human about it for 6 weeks, because someone made a joke in the memo line), I'm increasingly seeing the argument for something like cryptocurrency.
Now if there was just a model for it that didn't consume huge amounts of electricity and wasn't managed by the worst kind of grognards.
There isn't. The whole point of cryptocurrency is to get around the issue of having to trust someone to handle payments. To do that you need to spend a massive amount of resources getting people obsessed with less government intervention all checking it together.
Even they have basically stumbled on how silly this whole idea is, hence all the exchanges and such.
shryke on
+5
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Eh, exchanges as a point of transfer between crypto and fiat make sense and exist otherwise - I used two when traveling recently to change USD to EUR.
The resource investment in terms of electricity comes from the type of Proof of Work blockchain that BTC operates on. If the protocol didn't require solving arbitrarily-complex Su Doku to confirm a transaction, it could be done more efficiently.
I'm not seeing it. One of the fundamental questions of a society is "who do we trust to run X"? Why would a hypothetically sane exchange be inherently more trustworthy than existing systems?
Eh, exchanges as a point of transfer between crypto and fiat make sense and exist otherwise - I used two when traveling recently to change USD to EUR.
The resource investment in terms of electricity comes from the type of Proof of Work blockchain that BTC operates on. If the protocol didn't require solving arbitrarily-complex Su Doku to confirm a transaction, it could be done more efficiently.
The entire point of that complexity is to not have to trust a central authority.
You can't have a system that doesn't trust a central authority but that is also efficient. (in terms of time, energy, etc) They are contradictory goals.
Exchanges exist entirely to get around this problem of efficiency by trusting a central authority. It's just now instead of the government it's some random guy with a laptop.
Eh, exchanges as a point of transfer between crypto and fiat make sense and exist otherwise - I used two when traveling recently to change USD to EUR.
The resource investment in terms of electricity comes from the type of Proof of Work blockchain that BTC operates on. If the protocol didn't require solving arbitrarily-complex Su Doku to confirm a transaction, it could be done more efficiently.
The entire point of that complexity is to not have to trust a central authority.
You can't have a system that doesn't trust a central authority but that is also efficient. (in terms of time, energy, etc) They are contradictory goals.
Exchanges exist entirely to get around this problem of efficiency by trusting a central authority. It's just now instead of the government it's some random guy with a laptop.
tldr's issue isn't even one of "crypto can solve this" it's the company processing payments not upholding probably a contractual obligation they're required to as a payment processor. Unless, of course, we're talking something like Paypal/venmo which isn't a "payment processor", but a money wiring company, where none of the laws actually matter and they can do whatever the fuck they want and fuck you.
Even if it's not paypal in this instance, I'm really surprised anyone uses them in 2019 when they're known to do shit like lock down accounts because "something looks fishy".
If you are not being charged something like 3%+$0.50 per transaction, you don't have a payment processor, you're using a wire transfer.
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
+2
TL DRNot at all confident in his reflexive opinions of thingsRegistered Userregular
Exchanges are a problem and require trusting a party, and the existing crypto exchanges also have problems with government regulation in terms of keeping client records, being subject to subpoena, etc, but those problems don't necessarily apply to an appropriately-designed currency and the performance of transactions using that currency.
Looking at our current situation, cash dollars being only an in-person physical mode of exchange, credit cards being subject to fees and malicious financial firms, Paypal etc being basically-unregulated and with perverse incentives in terms of banning people without recompense, as well as the various privacy concerns, are all design flaws in our current mediums of exchange.
Ideally I could transfer money to someone anywhere in the world, instantly, for free or at a trivial cost, without interference. Neither crypto nor anything else currently accomplish that.
Exchanges are a problem and require trusting a party, and the existing crypto exchanges also have problems with government regulation in terms of keeping client records, being subject to subpoena, etc, but those problems don't necessarily apply to an appropriately-designed currency and the performance of transactions using that currency.
Looking at our current situation, cash dollars being only an in-person physical mode of exchange, credit cards being subject to fees and malicious financial firms, Paypal etc being basically-unregulated and with perverse incentives in terms of banning people without recompense, as well as the various privacy concerns, are all design flaws in our current mediums of exchange.
Ideally I could transfer money to someone anywhere in the world, instantly, for free or at a trivial cost, without interference. Neither crypto nor anything else currently accomplish that.
That's not possible and I wouldn't even say ideal. Someone should be watching where all the money is going and why.
The fees are tax deductible as a business, they're essentially "fees but not actually going to cost you significantly" in the long run. Find yourself a trustworthy payment processor (a local bank or credit union you have a business account with can help you there) and use them instead of paypal or venmo or google wallet.
The problem with crypto is that it's not a central authority, it's a democratic authority. With enough bad actors, it is able to be modified. This was all "theory" until a few months ago... I forget which coin it was, but one of the blockchains was targeted successfully by an attack. The official name for this is a "Sybil Attack" and bitcoin and all cryptos are potentially at risk to it because they use the same concept as bittorrent and other P2P style technology.
So not only do crypto have all the pitfalls of central authority, they have more.
bowen on
not a doctor, not a lawyer, examples I use may not be fully researched so don't take out of context plz, don't @ me
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
The guy in the story you posted had not been taking his medications and not paying attention to his symptoms. They only figured out what he died from after an autopsy and it was obvious that he was also suffering from malnutrition which contributed a great deal to his death. Nothing in the news has provided any evidence that Mr. Cotten was suffering from any Crohn's related complications, and there was no autopsy. Like I said, if he had been that ill, he sure wouldn't have been in India opening an orphanage, because he would have been too busy puking and shitting his guts out to do anything else.
Not sure about you, but I'm speaking from experience. You have to be either undiagnosed or an idiot who ignores a treatment regimen to die suddenly from Crohn's.
Descendant X on
Garry: I know you gentlemen have been through a lot, but when you find the time I'd rather not spend the rest of the winter TIED TO THIS FUCKING COUCH!
0
Inquisitor772 x Penny Arcade Fight Club ChampionA fixed point in space and timeRegistered Userregular
Exchanges are a problem and require trusting a party, and the existing crypto exchanges also have problems with government regulation in terms of keeping client records, being subject to subpoena, etc, but those problems don't necessarily apply to an appropriately-designed currency and the performance of transactions using that currency.
Looking at our current situation, cash dollars being only an in-person physical mode of exchange, credit cards being subject to fees and malicious financial firms, Paypal etc being basically-unregulated and with perverse incentives in terms of banning people without recompense, as well as the various privacy concerns, are all design flaws in our current mediums of exchange.
Ideally I could transfer money to someone anywhere in the world, instantly, for free or at a trivial cost, without interference. Neither crypto nor anything else currently accomplish that.
a) This isn't an actual problem in the real world. The vast majority of people can transfer funds whenever they want, wherever they want. Including to other countries. This only becomes an issue when you are transferring huge amounts of money.
b) Crypto doesn't solve this imaginary problem. It sidesteps it by preventing anyone from auditing the transaction. That's not the same thing.
Nobody disagrees with the notion that you should be able to transfer your funds anytime, anywhere. When talking about reasonable sums of money, it actually isn't that hard to do this. The issue with larger sums is that you run into reporting requirements because people want to know that you're sending $5,000,000 to a different country, because you can't just move your money around and not expect to pay taxes or get checked for fraud.
Again, the system works fine for pretty much everyone, including the uber-wealthy. The only time it becomes an actual problem are when you are trying to move your money and you don't want anyone to know about it.
Which begs the question of why? And then further begs the question of what kind of society are we going to live in when the people with the most money are able to operate in a medium of exchange that has absolutely no audit trail whatsoever?
Because that is the fundamental reason cryptocurrencies ostensibly exist. They aren't solving an efficiency problem. They aren't solving an inflation/deflation/supply/demand problem. They are solving the problem of I don't want anyone to know how much money I have and what I am doing with my money.
It appears that there are no identifiable cold wallet reserves for QuadrigaCX.
It appears that QuadrigaCX was using deposits from their customers to pay other customers once they requested their withdrawal.
It does not appear that QuadrigaCX has lost access to their Bitcoin holdings.
It appears the number of bitcoins in QuadrigaCX’s possession are substantially less than what was reported in Jennifer Robertson’s (wife of allegedly deceased CEO and Owner Gerry Cotten) affidavit, submitted to the Canadian courts on January 31st, 2019.
At least some of the delays in delivering crypto withdrawals to customers were due to the fact that QuadrigaCX simply did not have the funds on hand at the time. In some cases, QuadrigaCX was forced to wait for enough customer deposits to be made on the exchange before processing crypto withdrawal requests by their customers.
After completing the analysis, it is the author’s opinion that QuadrigaCX has not been truthful with regards to their inability to access the funds needed to honor customer withdrawal requests. In fact, it is almost impossible to believe that this is the case in lieu of the empirical evidence provided by the blockchain.
If only there could be some kind of organization that could give some kind of penalty to prevent people from just keeping your money. I wonder what we could call it?
Posts
Wait, what? How do mobile wallets like Electrum work, then?
Ding ding ding ding ding we have a winner.
Essentially the private exchange has replaced the government and regulated banks.
Except in this case the exchanges still want the government to bail them out when things go to shit. And the people who use the exchanges still want the government to regulate and prosecute the exchanges when things go to shit.
It's all a giant fucking waste.
New thread title imo
Banks and carriers also carry other liability insurance in case an employee screws up and causes a loss or a theft removes a sum of money.
I mean... Banks are shit, and the system that props them up is a swirling black hole, but it's a robust system that's already survived disasters much worse than this without account holders losing their money, often even beyond the FDIC guarantee. Banks are not shit because of a deficit in trust that account holders can access their holdings.
Banks have only survive disasters worse than this because the various international governments bailed out the banks. We've had runs on banks in the US (in 1929) and the EU is currently at risk for a bank run. The collapse in 2007 was effectively a bank run triggered by market-liquidity failures. The global banking system came right up to the edge of complete failure then, and the governments that intervened almost weren't enough.
It's like those assholes on Reddit who brag about not paying taxes but bitch when roads aren't plowed.
The debate was absolutely on whether or not to bail them out. The FDIC insures depositors, not banks. Its a tool to prevent bank runs in the commercial banking system. While the problems we had were not in the commercial but rather the private system
There is no way that this dude died of complications from Crohn's. Two weeks before he went walkabout he updated his will with no indication of what should be done with the keys to the cold wallets if something should happen to him. Unless he was an utter muppet and wasn't taking advantage of the free healthcare in Canada, he'd probably be more likely to die from being hit by a car than by complications from Crohn's. And if that's the case, he wouldn't have been well enough to be in India assisting in the opening of an orphanage.
(and if you believe that story I can get you a great deal on a bridge in Brooklyn as well)
So, coin mining is basically guessing a random number and hoping it wins the lottery, right? Wonder if there's a way to guess at the key(s) to that exchange - and would it be worthwhile to "mine". Mineception!
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
Why does only one man have the password to millions? Is this some libertarian thing? Why does he have a will but not a lawyer to hand off his company?
It's the modern equivalent of buried treasure
So, assuming 256 bit encryption, something like 5x10^51 years of computing time to brute force is what articles like to say. Expected time is actually half of that, since every key has an equal chance of being right.
Someone could try dictionary attacks and get it in a few years of computer time, IF he used a dumb password. Rainbow tables can account for stuph liek weird spellings or 13773r5 replaced with numbers and might get it in 10-15 if he used a dumb password but had some consideration for ease of attack. Nonsense word pairs and extra characters not replacing letters quickly gets to near brute force complexity, though.
Thousands of people collaborating on this with a distributed system would still have a lower money/time than just mining replacement currency.
Honestly, it might be more worthwhile to organize an intentional 51% attack and just kludge it that way, as far as I know the attack can't free those coins but can spend coins more than once, it should be possible to generate a series of double spend transactions to refund accounts. Assuming there's some way to prove who is owed what and not just turn this into an inflationary cash grab.
Realistically the fact that this is possible seriously undermines everything about crypto but that hasn't dented user trust yet, why should it now?
We are not talking about the most rational individuals on the planet
God damn it, Jack!
When I said you were a crypto-fascist, this is not what I meant!
Now if there was just a model for it that didn't consume huge amounts of electricity and wasn't managed by the worst kind of grognards.
There isn't. The whole point of cryptocurrency is to get around the issue of having to trust someone to handle payments. To do that you need to spend a massive amount of resources getting people obsessed with less government intervention all checking it together.
Even they have basically stumbled on how silly this whole idea is, hence all the exchanges and such.
The resource investment in terms of electricity comes from the type of Proof of Work blockchain that BTC operates on. If the protocol didn't require solving arbitrarily-complex Su Doku to confirm a transaction, it could be done more efficiently.
The entire point of that complexity is to not have to trust a central authority.
You can't have a system that doesn't trust a central authority but that is also efficient. (in terms of time, energy, etc) They are contradictory goals.
Exchanges exist entirely to get around this problem of efficiency by trusting a central authority. It's just now instead of the government it's some random guy with a laptop.
tldr's issue isn't even one of "crypto can solve this" it's the company processing payments not upholding probably a contractual obligation they're required to as a payment processor. Unless, of course, we're talking something like Paypal/venmo which isn't a "payment processor", but a money wiring company, where none of the laws actually matter and they can do whatever the fuck they want and fuck you.
Even if it's not paypal in this instance, I'm really surprised anyone uses them in 2019 when they're known to do shit like lock down accounts because "something looks fishy".
If you are not being charged something like 3%+$0.50 per transaction, you don't have a payment processor, you're using a wire transfer.
Looking at our current situation, cash dollars being only an in-person physical mode of exchange, credit cards being subject to fees and malicious financial firms, Paypal etc being basically-unregulated and with perverse incentives in terms of banning people without recompense, as well as the various privacy concerns, are all design flaws in our current mediums of exchange.
Ideally I could transfer money to someone anywhere in the world, instantly, for free or at a trivial cost, without interference. Neither crypto nor anything else currently accomplish that.
That's not possible and I wouldn't even say ideal. Someone should be watching where all the money is going and why.
The problem with crypto is that it's not a central authority, it's a democratic authority. With enough bad actors, it is able to be modified. This was all "theory" until a few months ago... I forget which coin it was, but one of the blockchains was targeted successfully by an attack. The official name for this is a "Sybil Attack" and bitcoin and all cryptos are potentially at risk to it because they use the same concept as bittorrent and other P2P style technology.
So not only do crypto have all the pitfalls of central authority, they have more.
But he wants to reassure us that all he's invested in is bitcoin!
I'm not sure he knows how this works.
I think he did this and the forums are parsing the link in a cool new way
edit: NOPE. Apparently Hedgie was using some formatting that i have no clue what it is
It's something wonky with the mobile site.
The guy in the story you posted had not been taking his medications and not paying attention to his symptoms. They only figured out what he died from after an autopsy and it was obvious that he was also suffering from malnutrition which contributed a great deal to his death. Nothing in the news has provided any evidence that Mr. Cotten was suffering from any Crohn's related complications, and there was no autopsy. Like I said, if he had been that ill, he sure wouldn't have been in India opening an orphanage, because he would have been too busy puking and shitting his guts out to do anything else.
Not sure about you, but I'm speaking from experience. You have to be either undiagnosed or an idiot who ignores a treatment regimen to die suddenly from Crohn's.
a) This isn't an actual problem in the real world. The vast majority of people can transfer funds whenever they want, wherever they want. Including to other countries. This only becomes an issue when you are transferring huge amounts of money.
b) Crypto doesn't solve this imaginary problem. It sidesteps it by preventing anyone from auditing the transaction. That's not the same thing.
Nobody disagrees with the notion that you should be able to transfer your funds anytime, anywhere. When talking about reasonable sums of money, it actually isn't that hard to do this. The issue with larger sums is that you run into reporting requirements because people want to know that you're sending $5,000,000 to a different country, because you can't just move your money around and not expect to pay taxes or get checked for fraud.
Again, the system works fine for pretty much everyone, including the uber-wealthy. The only time it becomes an actual problem are when you are trying to move your money and you don't want anyone to know about it.
Which begs the question of why? And then further begs the question of what kind of society are we going to live in when the people with the most money are able to operate in a medium of exchange that has absolutely no audit trail whatsoever?
Because that is the fundamental reason cryptocurrencies ostensibly exist. They aren't solving an efficiency problem. They aren't solving an inflation/deflation/supply/demand problem. They are solving the problem of I don't want anyone to know how much money I have and what I am doing with my money.
Scammier explanations are more likely to be correct than legitimate ones. The more scammy the more realistic.