Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
So when is someone going to make a cryptocurrency that doesn't require an obscene amount of electrical power to generate?
Making a computationally trivial cryptocurrency is a contradiction of terms.
A currency where transactions don't require computationally significant number crunching is just a regular currency because it's now trivial to generate a chain of transactions and you have to just trust the repository storing the transaction log, rather than trusting the nature of the computational structure to prevent someone from recalculating the chain to alter history.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Yes.
Sorta.
Maybe.
If you're lucky.
And the exchange you're going through isn't actually a fraud scam.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Yes? Quite easily?
You would need an on-ramp, like a Coinbase account, where you've done some KYC and linked up your bank account. Then it might take a few days for the transfer to go through. I think you can actually do it through CashApp these days as well.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin is in the billions now. Cashing out a few thousand dollars worth shouldn't be a problem. There are some local laws that probably control what exchanges you can use, and you'll pay big exchange fees, and the KYC you did with Coinbase or whoever means you better pay your taxes because they will be telling the IRS who you are, but you should be able to find an exchange you can use.
Speculative trading is like the only thing crypto is actually used for. A side affect of that is yes, you can almost always cash out from Bitcoin.
Is it weird that crypto currencies just, like, created their own language that looks like English but makes no damn sense?
Older-school ones like bitcoin were relatively straight-forward. You didn't need to understand the math, really, to use them.
Etherium, and the etherium-based/etherium-like currencies are less a currency and more a computing platform for which the first use-case was building a cryptocurrency. I can kinda follow that post because I write software for a living but the details specific to Etherium are still opaque. And, like, as a software engineer I don't understand the initial statement. How can you send currency to a contract (a piece of software that acts like an automated account, in this case) that doesn't accept that currency? It seems like saying, "I accidentally paid the gas station attendant with $50,000 worth of casino tokens but the gas station doesn't accept casino tokens so now they're stuck in the cash register." I guess that's maybe the bug Orca was referring to? The whole post seems like a series of really dumb software engineering decisions.
Sounds like:
- the chain you sent your stuff to doesn't accept those chips right now, but it could start tracking those if we modified it, but that would be hard.
- you aren't getting your stuff back from the IN account. It can only get out the OUT account, which would need the tracking account to talk in chips to the IN account.
- If you did hack the IN account and got stuff out, other people are going to steal your stuff first.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Yes? Quite easily?
You would need an on-ramp, like a Coinbase account, where you've done some KYC and linked up your bank account. Then it might take a few days for the transfer to go through. I think you can actually do it through CashApp these days as well.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin is in the billions now. Cashing out a few thousand dollars worth shouldn't be a problem. There are some local laws that probably control what exchanges you can use, and you'll pay big exchange fees, and the KYC you did with Coinbase or whoever means you better pay your taxes because they will be telling the IRS who you are, but you should be able to find an exchange you can use.
Speculative trading is like the only thing crypto is actually used for. A side affect of that is yes, you can almost always cash out from Bitcoin.
There are quite a few stories from ~2018 about how the majority of bitcoin transactions are just people moving their own coins between their own wallets, not sure if that is still true or if the trading volume is real these days
+1
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
You can buy Crypto on services like Robin Hood. So theoretically you could sell it and someone else on Robinhood would buy it, or on a greater exchange.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Yes? Quite easily?
You would need an on-ramp, like a Coinbase account, where you've done some KYC and linked up your bank account. Then it might take a few days for the transfer to go through. I think you can actually do it through CashApp these days as well.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin is in the billions now. Cashing out a few thousand dollars worth shouldn't be a problem. There are some local laws that probably control what exchanges you can use, and you'll pay big exchange fees, and the KYC you did with Coinbase or whoever means you better pay your taxes because they will be telling the IRS who you are, but you should be able to find an exchange you can use.
Speculative trading is like the only thing crypto is actually used for. A side affect of that is yes, you can almost always cash out from Bitcoin.
Yes, buying and selling BTC (and most crypto really) is pretty simple now. Still easy to screw up and lose your money, even without the usual ups and downs in the market. Part of the reason it's so volatile is you can transfer your life savings into BTC without leaving the house - any old idiot can buy whatever they want.
The scam part comes in if the exchange in question turns out to be a ponzi scheme... see Quadriga. Or see Mt. Gox for a mixture of incompetence and malice.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Yes? Quite easily?
You would need an on-ramp, like a Coinbase account, where you've done some KYC and linked up your bank account. Then it might take a few days for the transfer to go through. I think you can actually do it through CashApp these days as well.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin is in the billions now. Cashing out a few thousand dollars worth shouldn't be a problem. There are some local laws that probably control what exchanges you can use, and you'll pay big exchange fees, and the KYC you did with Coinbase or whoever means you better pay your taxes because they will be telling the IRS who you are, but you should be able to find an exchange you can use.
Speculative trading is like the only thing crypto is actually used for. A side affect of that is yes, you can almost always cash out from Bitcoin.
I remember reading things about how exchange fees are very high, there's usually a large gap between bid and ask prices, and it can be difficult to actually get your money out of an exchange and into a normal bank account. That was years ago, though, and I was wondering if these things have gotten any better.
Speaking of, looks like Bitcoin is at an all time high right now. Wonder how high it'll go before dropping again.
I think it's similar to the price of charizard cards on eBay. They're "priced" a certain amount because the owners are convinced they're worth that much and refuse to settle for less, but hardly anyone is actually buying them at that price.
Bitcoin isn't a business where you expect turnover on your product and you need to lower the price of people aren't buying in large enough quantities. Bitcoin is an "investment". Not just in the coin itself, but in the underlying ideology.
That's also why you'll see some beanie babies with a "selling" price of millions of dollars, and though no one would ever actually pay that much for them.
Basic human psychology says that people value something more highly once they're already holding onto it. So once people are convinced that they're holding onto something that's worth $20,000 today and which will be worth $1 million tomorrow, they'll refuse to sell for anything less. Fear of missing out.
You also have to keep in mind that a lot of these investors are brand new to the world of investment, so they're appraising the situation as true believers.
For the profit to go down, you need people who need to sell a large volume right now, even if it means selling at a lower price. And when that happens, it's going to happen very suddenly.
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
+1
webguy20I spend too much time on the InternetRegistered Userregular
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
Theres been reports too of people selling to themselves to artificially inflate exchange traffic.
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
Yep, I always felt that wash trading was the only reason the prices appeared high. Actually trying to sell Bitcoin for that price? LOL, good luck with that.
Edit: you know how USD will alway have some fundamental value because US taxes must be paid using USD? Well, think ransomware and Bitcoin etc.
Special K on
+1
ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
A large portion of crypto sale is simply to move funds over international borders where such remittance is prohibited. Like, say, the main hotspot of cryot activity: China. China does not like it's citizens to move their wealth out of the nation, so crypto is an expedient way to make it happen.
Chinese citizens are only allowed to buy up to $50,000 of foreign currency a year at a financial institution. In the past, wealthy citizens have circumvented the limit through foreign investments in real estate and other assets. But the government has cracked down on these methods, according to a report by Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics firm.
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
But these days, at least in the US, Exchange E probably has Know Your Customer data on both you and Seller S. And the Bitcoin blockchain is public. So the feds can see that you sent dollars from your bank account to Exchange E, sold for Bitcoin, and sent Bitcoin to an address that later sent it back to an account at Exchange E owned by Seller S. Maybe 5 years ago Bitcoin would have been great for illegal transactions because the exchanges had no rules and law enforcement didn't know anything about it, but they are a lot smarter now. There is still the possibility of someone in the US illegally making an account on some foreign exchange that won't make them do KYC and just using that to cash out.
There are other coins like Monero and ZCash that do not make all their transactions public and yeah, they are the favorites of criminals and will probably be the first to be made illegal.
0
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
A large portion of crypto sale is simply to move funds over international borders where such remittance is prohibited. Like, say, the main hotspot of cryot activity: China. China does not like it's citizens to move their wealth out of the nation, so crypto is an expedient way to make it happen.
Chinese citizens are only allowed to buy up to $50,000 of foreign currency a year at a financial institution. In the past, wealthy citizens have circumvented the limit through foreign investments in real estate and other assets. But the government has cracked down on these methods, according to a report by Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics firm.
Which goes back to the whole "Bitcoin is only used for illegal activities" thing!
0
ApogeeLancks In Every Game EverRegistered Userregular
For the life of me I've never been able to convince myself Bitcoin actually trades at the prices given in the volumes people imply. It seems like there's essentially 2 separate metrics that are used by pump and dump advocates: "look at the volume of BTC moving around!" and "look at the spot price on the exchanges!"
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
A large portion of crypto sale is simply to move funds over international borders where such remittance is prohibited. Like, say, the main hotspot of cryot activity: China. China does not like it's citizens to move their wealth out of the nation, so crypto is an expedient way to make it happen.
Chinese citizens are only allowed to buy up to $50,000 of foreign currency a year at a financial institution. In the past, wealthy citizens have circumvented the limit through foreign investments in real estate and other assets. But the government has cracked down on these methods, according to a report by Chainalysis, a blockchain forensics firm.
Which goes back to the whole "Bitcoin is only used for illegal activities" thing!
Can't say I'm particularly sympathetic to the Chinese government... although I'd certainly prefer if foreign investment in, say, the Canadian real estate market was actually being monitored. Our KYC laws here aren't bad, but I imagine a lot of grey market currency is making it's way in and being laundered.
Basically any government that locks down foreign remittance is going to have a large underground crypto market. It's incredibly lucrative.
Yep, I always felt that wash trading was the only reason the prices appeared high. Actually trying to sell Bitcoin for that price? LOL, good luck with that.
Edit: you know how USD will alway have some fundamental value because US taxes must be paid using USD? Well, think ransomware and Bitcoin etc.
The advent of speculative trading and portfolio investment from actual investment firms has probably made the prices somewhat real.
Bitcoin investment is honestly the logical step for the stock market. As profit shares have become less and less common actual value of stocks have become hilariously uncoupled from the value of the companies they're ostensibly a share of. Bitcoin just gets rid of the facade and let's the short term perceptions and expectations of traders fully govern the hypothetical units.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
Which is where I'm confused here - at that level of value why is this guy not pulling the EEPROM out of it (or paying someone to do it for him).
Knowing how shoddily these tubes are implemented there's almost certainly a simple interface to just dump the encryption headers and brute force the password offline.
+8
DaimarA Million Feet Tall of AwesomeRegistered Userregular
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
Which is where I'm confused here - at that level of value why is this guy not pulling the EEPROM out of it (or paying someone to do it for him).
Knowing how shoddily these tubes are implemented there's almost certainly a simple interface to just dump the encryption headers and brute force the password offline.
He's probably scared that the people he gets to brute force the drive will just take the $220M worth of bitcoin rather than cracking it and handing him the info.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
Which is where I'm confused here - at that level of value why is this guy not pulling the EEPROM out of it (or paying someone to do it for him).
Knowing how shoddily these tubes are implemented there's almost certainly a simple interface to just dump the encryption headers and brute force the password offline.
He's probably scared that the people he gets to brute force the drive will just take the $220M worth of bitcoin rather than cracking it and handing him the info.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
The banking system offers numerous ways (arguably too many) for you or your heirs to access that money without the default authentication method, and has two separate safety nets if the bank itself is in danger of no longer existing (and those are only a last resort even then). Key in this case, "Somebody else tried to make a withdrawal on your account so we closed it out and burned all the money in front of him" isn't one of the reasons you might need to go down the options list.
Bitcoin doesn't even offer you a rag for your bitter tears.
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And yet I still use the banking system...
Where are you banking that this could ever be an issue?
Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer living in San Francisco, has two guesses left to figure out a password that is worth, as of this week, about $220 million.
The password will let him unlock a small hard drive, known as an IronKey, which contains the private keys to a digital wallet that holds 7,002 Bitcoin. While the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply on Monday, it is still up more than 50 percent from just a month ago when it passed its previous all-time high around $20,000.
The problem is that Mr. Thomas years ago lost the paper where he wrote down the password for his IronKey, which gives users 10 guesses before it seizes up and encrypts its contents forever. He has since tried eight of his most commonly used password formulations — to no avail.
“I would just lay in bed and think about it,” Mr. Thomas said. “Then I would go to the computer with some new strategy, and it wouldn’t work, and I would be desperate again.”
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
Which is where I'm confused here - at that level of value why is this guy not pulling the EEPROM out of it (or paying someone to do it for him).
Knowing how shoddily these tubes are implemented there's almost certainly a simple interface to just dump the encryption headers and brute force the password offline.
He's probably scared that the people he gets to brute force the drive will just take the $220M worth of bitcoin rather than cracking it and handing him the info.
I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't do that.
There are plenty of data recovery services who do enough business with reputable customers trusting them with their incredibly valuable secrets to make the fallout from stealing a client's $220M of electrofunbucks not worth the payout.
Also, that $220m carries a huge asterisk; the value is constantly shifting, and if someone tried to get that much out of the system in any reasonable period of time, it'd probably lose a shit ton of value.
Don't get me wrong, it'd still be oodles of cash and likely enough for even a small team of people to consider themselves set for life, but Bitcoin has gained like 50% 'value' in a year but also plummets 10-20%+ at the drop of a hat. Hell, I think it's in free fall right now, or at least it was recently (I glance at it from time to time out of curiosity, ever since the big 'omg 20k mooooon!' stuff from a year and change ago, or whatever it was. 2 years? Time has no meaning, it was 0-2 years ago.
Point being, "$220 million in bitcoin" is attention getting, but I'd bet they'd lose tens of millions (minimum) actually trying to get it back in hard cash, from all the horror stories on r/buttcoin and whatnot.
Having pension plan investments, registered retirement savings plans, and a tax free savings account all wobbling around over the past year is quite enough stress for me.
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
Also, that $220m carries a huge asterisk; the value is constantly shifting, and if someone tried to get that much out of the system in any reasonable period of time, it'd probably lose a shit ton of value.
Don't get me wrong, it'd still be oodles of cash and likely enough for even a small team of people to consider themselves set for life, but Bitcoin has gained like 50% 'value' in a year but also plummets 10-20%+ at the drop of a hat. Hell, I think it's in free fall right now, or at least it was recently (I glance at it from time to time out of curiosity, ever since the big 'omg 20k mooooon!' stuff from a year and change ago, or whatever it was. 2 years? Time has no meaning, it was 0-2 years ago.
Point being, "$220 million in bitcoin" is attention getting, but I'd bet they'd lose tens of millions (minimum) actually trying to get it back in hard cash, from all the horror stories on r/buttcoin and whatnot.
Having pension plan investments, registered retirement savings plans, and a tax free savings account all wobbling around over the past year is quite enough stress for me.
Assuming you don't put it all in an exchange to start the process of getting real money only to have the exchange vanish the next week with the owner vanished to a non-extradition country with all the wallet codes.
If I had a memory stick with a few hundred dollars on it that I could potentially lose forever because I couldn't remember a password, I'd probably lose sleep over it.
I accidentally left a copy of Hyrule Warriors in my cart at walmart last fall, and it was only $50 and I felt ill about it for a week.
Lose 10's of millions just getting it out?
oh noes! They'd only be left over with a hundred or two million!
I have no real opinion of bitcoin or anything surrounding its value and such; but I still felt physical pain for the person reading the article. Maybe they're absurdly rich already and it's just more money. I don't know! But to me it's almost incomprehensible amount of money, and yeah, I'd probably have a pit in my stomach until the day I died knowing that an amount of money that would guarantee that pretty much all of my descendants for functionally ever, would never have to worry about money again, just went *poof*
I mean, maybe they get out with $180 million, maybe it's 400 million, maybe it's about tree fiddy. As I said, it's likely to still be an unreasonable amount of cash for the average person, but in the grand scheme of things, I always see those articles as being akin to clickbait unless they provide a lot of context. Like the ones about the 30,000 bitcoin Pizza that was allegedly one of the first purchases with the tokens, which would be like a Billion dollars these days. Imagine eating a pizza and a decade later finding out you could have instead been worth nearly a Billion dollars?
But I'm sure there must be a recovery team worth their salt (and a hefty chunk of change) where they could be trusted with that kind of work. Someone cleared for government contracts and state secrets or major corporations or something?
First they came for the Muslims, and we said NOT TODAY, MOTHERFUCKER!
I mean, maybe they get out with $180 million, maybe it's 400 million, maybe it's about tree fiddy. As I said, it's likely to still be an unreasonable amount of cash for the average person, but in the grand scheme of things, I always see those articles as being akin to clickbait unless they provide a lot of context. Like the ones about the 30,000 bitcoin Pizza that was allegedly one of the first purchases with the tokens, which would be like a Billion dollars these days. Imagine eating a pizza and a decade later finding out you could have instead been worth nearly a Billion dollars?
But I'm sure there must be a recovery team worth their salt (and a hefty chunk of change) where they could be trusted with that kind of work. Someone cleared for government contracts and state secrets or major corporations or something?
Granted, I don't have a deep understanding of cryptocurrency, but I thought its nature precluded expertise from accessing it? What I mean is, I thought it was intentionally made to be uncrackable under any circumstances, and that was the point?
I won't lie, when it was like $20k a year or two ago (I can't remember, honestly, the past few years have alternated lasting 400 years and going by in an instant, time doesn't make sense anymore) I would daydream about had I just put a few bucks into it when it started, or before everyone started mining, just having my PC do it in the offtime, just being instantly rich. But it's no different than the lottery, its fun to imagine having $500m or whatever the powerballs get up to, but I don't ever play the lottery, and don't even live in a state with a lottery.
It all just seems pretend anyway, is what I'm saying. But what I'm also saying is that if I had the stick in my hand knowing that any meaningful amount of money was on it? Yeah.
I mean, maybe they get out with $180 million, maybe it's 400 million, maybe it's about tree fiddy. As I said, it's likely to still be an unreasonable amount of cash for the average person, but in the grand scheme of things, I always see those articles as being akin to clickbait unless they provide a lot of context. Like the ones about the 30,000 bitcoin Pizza that was allegedly one of the first purchases with the tokens, which would be like a Billion dollars these days. Imagine eating a pizza and a decade later finding out you could have instead been worth nearly a Billion dollars?
But I'm sure there must be a recovery team worth their salt (and a hefty chunk of change) where they could be trusted with that kind of work. Someone cleared for government contracts and state secrets or major corporations or something?
There are certainly reputable data-recovery services out there who deal with highly valuable and secure data. That said, based on a quick google, nobody's ever successfully cracked an IronKey. Though if the guy who owns it believes the password is following one of several password schemes he's used in the past one of those companies (or, indeed, possibly even IronKey themselves) might be able to bypass the lockout to let him try more than 10 combinations. That's probably a lot more straight-forward than trying to just straight-up brute-force 256-bit AES.
On a fundamental level I'm not solidly convinced anyone is holding what they say or think they're holding in Bitcoin. There are no reliable numbers nor any real stability.
The people cashing out at the 100k level seem to be about the plausible limit.
I mean, maybe they get out with $180 million, maybe it's 400 million, maybe it's about tree fiddy. As I said, it's likely to still be an unreasonable amount of cash for the average person, but in the grand scheme of things, I always see those articles as being akin to clickbait unless they provide a lot of context. Like the ones about the 30,000 bitcoin Pizza that was allegedly one of the first purchases with the tokens, which would be like a Billion dollars these days. Imagine eating a pizza and a decade later finding out you could have instead been worth nearly a Billion dollars?
But I'm sure there must be a recovery team worth their salt (and a hefty chunk of change) where they could be trusted with that kind of work. Someone cleared for government contracts and state secrets or major corporations or something?
Granted, I don't have a deep understanding of cryptocurrency, but I thought its nature precluded expertise from accessing it? What I mean is, I thought it was intentionally made to be uncrackable under any circumstances, and that was the point?
I won't lie, when it was like $20k a year or two ago (I can't remember, honestly, the past few years have alternated lasting 400 years and going by in an instant, time doesn't make sense anymore) I would daydream about had I just put a few bucks into it when it started, or before everyone started mining, just having my PC do it in the offtime, just being instantly rich. But it's no different than the lottery, its fun to imagine having $500m or whatever the powerballs get up to, but I don't ever play the lottery, and don't even live in a state with a lottery.
It all just seems pretend anyway, is what I'm saying. But what I'm also saying is that if I had the stick in my hand knowing that any meaningful amount of money was on it? Yeah.
Cryptocurrency is "unhackable" in that it relies on the "blockchain", which is a series of blocks of encrypted data, each containing an encrypted reference to the block before it. You actually can hack the blockchain by controlling a majority of the computing power being used to produce the next block in the chain.
However: in this case the guy isn't trying to hack the cryptocurrency. They have a set of codes in a text file on a USB drive which effectively are their ownership of some bitcoin. With those codes they can transfer the coins, such at to an exchange so they can get USD in return. But the USB drive itself is encrypted and has some native software to prevent you trying infinite passwords to decrypt it. Cracking the encryption on the drive is no joke but if you think you could eventually guess the password, bypassing the lockout system might be possible, which is what a data recovery service might be able to do for him.
Posts
Does that even really mean anything? Like, if you had a bitcoin and you wanted to sell it right now, could you actually get $22,000 deposited into a real bank account in exchange for it?
Making a computationally trivial cryptocurrency is a contradiction of terms.
A currency where transactions don't require computationally significant number crunching is just a regular currency because it's now trivial to generate a chain of transactions and you have to just trust the repository storing the transaction log, rather than trusting the nature of the computational structure to prevent someone from recalculating the chain to alter history.
Yes.
Sorta.
Maybe.
If you're lucky.
And the exchange you're going through isn't actually a fraud scam.
(it's probably a fraud scam)
Yes? Quite easily?
You would need an on-ramp, like a Coinbase account, where you've done some KYC and linked up your bank account. Then it might take a few days for the transfer to go through. I think you can actually do it through CashApp these days as well.
Daily trading volume for bitcoin is in the billions now. Cashing out a few thousand dollars worth shouldn't be a problem. There are some local laws that probably control what exchanges you can use, and you'll pay big exchange fees, and the KYC you did with Coinbase or whoever means you better pay your taxes because they will be telling the IRS who you are, but you should be able to find an exchange you can use.
Speculative trading is like the only thing crypto is actually used for. A side affect of that is yes, you can almost always cash out from Bitcoin.
Sounds like:
- the chain you sent your stuff to doesn't accept those chips right now, but it could start tracking those if we modified it, but that would be hard.
- you aren't getting your stuff back from the IN account. It can only get out the OUT account, which would need the tracking account to talk in chips to the IN account.
- If you did hack the IN account and got stuff out, other people are going to steal your stuff first.
There are quite a few stories from ~2018 about how the majority of bitcoin transactions are just people moving their own coins between their own wallets, not sure if that is still true or if the trading volume is real these days
You can buy Crypto on services like Robin Hood. So theoretically you could sell it and someone else on Robinhood would buy it, or on a greater exchange.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
Yes, buying and selling BTC (and most crypto really) is pretty simple now. Still easy to screw up and lose your money, even without the usual ups and downs in the market. Part of the reason it's so volatile is you can transfer your life savings into BTC without leaving the house - any old idiot can buy whatever they want.
The scam part comes in if the exchange in question turns out to be a ponzi scheme... see Quadriga. Or see Mt. Gox for a mixture of incompetence and malice.
I remember reading things about how exchange fees are very high, there's usually a large gap between bid and ask prices, and it can be difficult to actually get your money out of an exchange and into a normal bank account. That was years ago, though, and I was wondering if these things have gotten any better.
I think it's similar to the price of charizard cards on eBay. They're "priced" a certain amount because the owners are convinced they're worth that much and refuse to settle for less, but hardly anyone is actually buying them at that price.
Bitcoin isn't a business where you expect turnover on your product and you need to lower the price of people aren't buying in large enough quantities. Bitcoin is an "investment". Not just in the coin itself, but in the underlying ideology.
That's also why you'll see some beanie babies with a "selling" price of millions of dollars, and though no one would ever actually pay that much for them.
Basic human psychology says that people value something more highly once they're already holding onto it. So once people are convinced that they're holding onto something that's worth $20,000 today and which will be worth $1 million tomorrow, they'll refuse to sell for anything less. Fear of missing out.
You also have to keep in mind that a lot of these investors are brand new to the world of investment, so they're appraising the situation as true believers.
For the profit to go down, you need people who need to sell a large volume right now, even if it means selling at a lower price. And when that happens, it's going to happen very suddenly.
I've not seen any real evidence that substantial volumes of BTC are moving through exchanges and into actual currency at those valuations.
Theres been reports too of people selling to themselves to artificially inflate exchange traffic.
Origin ID: Discgolfer27
Untappd ID: Discgolfer1981
I'm going to assume that volume exists, but largely for short term holdings.
I want to buy goods from Seller S, so I purchase Bitcoin from Exchange E with dollars, and then I spend those bitcoin at Seller S immediately.
Seller S wants my dollars, so they take the bitcoin I just gave them, and then they sell those bitcoin for dollars to Exchange E immediately.
In the end, everyone has exactly the same amount of Bitcoin that they started with, and the only change is Seller S now has more dollars, whereas I have less. And also, Exchange E collected additional fees for processing the transaction.
But wait... if the only real change was a change in dollar amounts, then why not simply use dollars directly? Why did we bother with Bitcoin at all? Why did we pay these additional fees?
And the answer in most cases is... because the transaction was probably sketchy at best if not outright illegal, and I wanted to avoid leaving a trail. And that's what this ultimately boils down to.
Edit: you know how USD will alway have some fundamental value because US taxes must be paid using USD? Well, think ransomware and Bitcoin etc.
A large portion of crypto sale is simply to move funds over international borders where such remittance is prohibited. Like, say, the main hotspot of cryot activity: China. China does not like it's citizens to move their wealth out of the nation, so crypto is an expedient way to make it happen.
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/08/21/china-users-move-50-billion-of-cryptocurrency-out-of-country-hinting-at-capital-flight.html
It's not "crypto" but mastercard, visa, discover, and amex have artificial currency on lockdown.
But these days, at least in the US, Exchange E probably has Know Your Customer data on both you and Seller S. And the Bitcoin blockchain is public. So the feds can see that you sent dollars from your bank account to Exchange E, sold for Bitcoin, and sent Bitcoin to an address that later sent it back to an account at Exchange E owned by Seller S. Maybe 5 years ago Bitcoin would have been great for illegal transactions because the exchanges had no rules and law enforcement didn't know anything about it, but they are a lot smarter now. There is still the possibility of someone in the US illegally making an account on some foreign exchange that won't make them do KYC and just using that to cash out.
There are other coins like Monero and ZCash that do not make all their transactions public and yeah, they are the favorites of criminals and will probably be the first to be made illegal.
Which goes back to the whole "Bitcoin is only used for illegal activities" thing!
Can't say I'm particularly sympathetic to the Chinese government... although I'd certainly prefer if foreign investment in, say, the Canadian real estate market was actually being monitored. Our KYC laws here aren't bad, but I imagine a lot of grey market currency is making it's way in and being laundered.
Basically any government that locks down foreign remittance is going to have a large underground crypto market. It's incredibly lucrative.
Bitcoin is the same way: "I would use dollars if I could, but it's against the law."
Even the people hoping to invest in bitcoin long term are ultimately hoping for the chance to exchange for dollars later on.
The advent of speculative trading and portfolio investment from actual investment firms has probably made the prices somewhat real.
Bitcoin investment is honestly the logical step for the stock market. As profit shares have become less and less common actual value of stocks have become hilariously uncoupled from the value of the companies they're ostensibly a share of. Bitcoin just gets rid of the facade and let's the short term perceptions and expectations of traders fully govern the hypothetical units.
Yep, total improvement over actual money.
Edit: an estimated 20 percent of all Bitcoin, or $140 billion, is stuck in inaccessible wallets.
Libertarians actually see this as a feature. I remember Ron Paul was talking about how gold was great because if you lost it at sea it's lost until someone finds it, where as fiat can be replaced and no one cares.
Also... Why the fuck would you design a system that only gives you 10 tries? Assuming someone steals your drive, you set it up so that you lose all your data if they make 10 bad guesses. Why oh why would you do that?
Also, so it's estimated that the 80% of accessible bitcoin is worth 560 billion. I doubt there's $560 billion worth of new demand.
Locking you out after X attempts is a pretty standard security measure. If there's no limit at all then your system is open to brute-force attacks. An IronKey is a fairly simple little flash drive device. Anything more complicated than "You get X tries and then it is encrypted forever" opens it up to more complicated attacks, or hardware-based attacks. Like if you did something iphone-esque where you have to wait to try again with the waiting period growing with the number of failures... you'd need multiple components on the board inside the ironkey to make that happen and someone could potentially solder in a bypass to keep trying over and over.
But yeah, putting your money -- effectively -- in a box that can potentially lock itself forever with no recourse seems like a terrible idea.
And even that's not proof against an attacker with sufficient resources, depending on implementation.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
Which is where I'm confused here - at that level of value why is this guy not pulling the EEPROM out of it (or paying someone to do it for him).
Knowing how shoddily these tubes are implemented there's almost certainly a simple interface to just dump the encryption headers and brute force the password offline.
He's probably scared that the people he gets to brute force the drive will just take the $220M worth of bitcoin rather than cracking it and handing him the info.
I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't do that.
And yet I still use the banking system...
Bitcoin doesn't even offer you a rag for your bitter tears.
Where are you banking that this could ever be an issue?
There are plenty of data recovery services who do enough business with reputable customers trusting them with their incredibly valuable secrets to make the fallout from stealing a client's $220M of electrofunbucks not worth the payout.
Don't get me wrong, it'd still be oodles of cash and likely enough for even a small team of people to consider themselves set for life, but Bitcoin has gained like 50% 'value' in a year but also plummets 10-20%+ at the drop of a hat. Hell, I think it's in free fall right now, or at least it was recently (I glance at it from time to time out of curiosity, ever since the big 'omg 20k mooooon!' stuff from a year and change ago, or whatever it was. 2 years? Time has no meaning, it was 0-2 years ago.
Point being, "$220 million in bitcoin" is attention getting, but I'd bet they'd lose tens of millions (minimum) actually trying to get it back in hard cash, from all the horror stories on r/buttcoin and whatnot.
Having pension plan investments, registered retirement savings plans, and a tax free savings account all wobbling around over the past year is quite enough stress for me.
Assuming you don't put it all in an exchange to start the process of getting real money only to have the exchange vanish the next week with the owner vanished to a non-extradition country with all the wallet codes.
If I had a memory stick with a few hundred dollars on it that I could potentially lose forever because I couldn't remember a password, I'd probably lose sleep over it.
I accidentally left a copy of Hyrule Warriors in my cart at walmart last fall, and it was only $50 and I felt ill about it for a week.
Lose 10's of millions just getting it out?
oh noes! They'd only be left over with a hundred or two million!
I have no real opinion of bitcoin or anything surrounding its value and such; but I still felt physical pain for the person reading the article. Maybe they're absurdly rich already and it's just more money. I don't know! But to me it's almost incomprehensible amount of money, and yeah, I'd probably have a pit in my stomach until the day I died knowing that an amount of money that would guarantee that pretty much all of my descendants for functionally ever, would never have to worry about money again, just went *poof*
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
But I'm sure there must be a recovery team worth their salt (and a hefty chunk of change) where they could be trusted with that kind of work. Someone cleared for government contracts and state secrets or major corporations or something?
Granted, I don't have a deep understanding of cryptocurrency, but I thought its nature precluded expertise from accessing it? What I mean is, I thought it was intentionally made to be uncrackable under any circumstances, and that was the point?
I won't lie, when it was like $20k a year or two ago (I can't remember, honestly, the past few years have alternated lasting 400 years and going by in an instant, time doesn't make sense anymore) I would daydream about had I just put a few bucks into it when it started, or before everyone started mining, just having my PC do it in the offtime, just being instantly rich. But it's no different than the lottery, its fun to imagine having $500m or whatever the powerballs get up to, but I don't ever play the lottery, and don't even live in a state with a lottery.
It all just seems pretend anyway, is what I'm saying. But what I'm also saying is that if I had the stick in my hand knowing that any meaningful amount of money was on it? Yeah.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
There are certainly reputable data-recovery services out there who deal with highly valuable and secure data. That said, based on a quick google, nobody's ever successfully cracked an IronKey. Though if the guy who owns it believes the password is following one of several password schemes he's used in the past one of those companies (or, indeed, possibly even IronKey themselves) might be able to bypass the lockout to let him try more than 10 combinations. That's probably a lot more straight-forward than trying to just straight-up brute-force 256-bit AES.
The people cashing out at the 100k level seem to be about the plausible limit.
Cryptocurrency is "unhackable" in that it relies on the "blockchain", which is a series of blocks of encrypted data, each containing an encrypted reference to the block before it. You actually can hack the blockchain by controlling a majority of the computing power being used to produce the next block in the chain.
However: in this case the guy isn't trying to hack the cryptocurrency. They have a set of codes in a text file on a USB drive which effectively are their ownership of some bitcoin. With those codes they can transfer the coins, such at to an exchange so they can get USD in return. But the USB drive itself is encrypted and has some native software to prevent you trying infinite passwords to decrypt it. Cracking the encryption on the drive is no joke but if you think you could eventually guess the password, bypassing the lockout system might be possible, which is what a data recovery service might be able to do for him.