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Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

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Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#31

Post by runeks »

dutchbrit wrote: post #29
espadrine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principles could be relevant (although I haven't verified (or read an independent review of) the proofs). However, at least the execution is dubious: not only was a major cryptographic vulnerability found a few months ago[0], it highlighted that 1. they made their own unproven crypto hash, which is a red flag, (in production, you should always prefer crypto that has survived many years of cryptanalysis) and 2. th…

The coordinator will be open-sourced and in all seriousness, even bitcoin had a sort of coordinator in the beginning, people aren't even forced to use it/can bypass it, but it's recommended to use it for now. So your statement isn't 100% valid. Regarding crypto, you can read their response & reasoning here: https://blog.iota.org/curl-disclosure-beyond-the-headline-18... "The replacement Kerl hash function is unmodifi…

1. It doesn’t matter whether the software that implements the central coordinator is open source, because the entire challenge of creating digital money is decentralized trust. Chaumian Cash solved digital money with a central issuer long ago.

2. Bitcoin had no privileged nodes, nor does it now. All miners compete on the same terms. A central coordinator by definiton does not, or it wouldn’t be centralized.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#32

Post by [deleted] »

dutchbrit wrote: post #29
espadrine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principles could be relevant (although I haven't verified (or read an independent review of) the proofs). However, at least the execution is dubious: not only was a major cryptographic vulnerability found a few months ago[0], it highlighted that 1. they made their own unproven crypto hash, which is a red flag, (in production, you should always prefer crypto that has survived many years of cryptanalysis) and 2. th…

The coordinator will be open-sourced and in all seriousness, even bitcoin had a sort of coordinator in the beginning, people aren't even forced to use it/can bypass it, but it's recommended to use it for now. So your statement isn't 100% valid. Regarding crypto, you can read their response & reasoning here: https://blog.iota.org/curl-disclosure-beyond-the-headline-18... "The replacement Kerl hash function is unmodifi…

[deleted]

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#33

Post by comex »

dutchbrit wrote: post #29
espadrine wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The principles could be relevant (although I haven't verified (or read an independent review of) the proofs). However, at least the execution is dubious: not only was a major cryptographic vulnerability found a few months ago[0], it highlighted that 1. they made their own unproven crypto hash, which is a red flag, (in production, you should always prefer crypto that has survived many years of cryptanalysis) and 2. th…

The coordinator will be open-sourced and in all seriousness, even bitcoin had a sort of coordinator in the beginning, people aren't even forced to use it/can bypass it, but it's recommended to use it for now. So your statement isn't 100% valid. Regarding crypto, you can read their response & reasoning here: https://blog.iota.org/curl-disclosure-beyond-the-headline-18... "The replacement Kerl hash function is unmodifi…

Just to clarify, since I misread your quote and think others might as well:

> "The replacement Kerl hash function is unmodified KECCAK-384 that only converts its input and output from/to 243 trits to 48 bytes using basic two’s complement. KECCAK-384 is well vetted and researched."

"Replacement" really does mean replacement, i.e. what they substituted in after the researchers successfully attacked their original hash function. (The new one is called "Kerl" and the old one is called "Curl", which seems confusing.)

I'm not sure how asserting that the replacement is well-researched addresses the OP's point that their history of (a) rolling their own hash function, and (b) not adequately considering differential cryptanalysis, is a red flag. True, that specific vulnerability can now be considered fixed, which might not be clear from the OP's post - but it's still evidence of incompetence, which doesn't bode well for the quality of the rest of their design.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#34

Post by nadam »

thisisit wrote: post #4

> As Bitfinex has become more and more desperate, they have listed more and more crypto-currencies of questionable value, such as EOS/IOTA/ETP and so on. As per coinmarketcap.com: EOS is ranked 19, 442 million in marketcap IOTA is ranked 11, 950 million in marketcap ETP is ranked 70, 73 million in marketcap Anyone can throw some light on what these coins really are? Additionally, BTC markets: https://coinmarketcap.co…

The FUD against EOS is really strong. It is interesting that despite the FUD, its valuation is very big too. The FUD is mostly about the business behind EOS, as a technical project is solid C++ code with well thought out architecture. In fact this is the kind of project where as I got deeper into it I believe that it can work. In case of most other projects when I dig deeper, I become more and more sceptic. The reason is probably that the CTO makes this project based on his experiences in Bitshares and Steemit, so the decisions in EOS are relatively mature compared to most crypto projects. Also I find the CTO one of the most talented and most practical developer/architect in the space. (Maybe I am biased as I am a performance optimization geek, and EOS is mostly about high performance) With EOS I regret one thing: that its valuation is so high already. I still invested into it, but I would have invested much more if its valuation would be lower.

TLDR: as an investment, it is not my biggest investment, but as a technology it is my favourite in the crypto space.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#35

Post by martinko »

keypusher wrote: post #18
raverbashing wrote: post #3

LOL Even better than a Ponzi Scheme, let's just sell "shares" of this "company" (which by the way has a paper value of a very round and big ZERO) for cash Toilet paper provides better value Oh wait, he "buys low and sells high", that explains it.

Bitfinex is the largest BTC exchange in the world, over $500 million per day in volume today. Big days are multi-billion dollar volume. Like most exchanges, they take a percentage cut of every transaction. This is not a company with zero value. The "buy low sell high" arbitrage thing is from a previous, unrelated business idea posted 5 years ago to a btc forum by the founder of bitfinex. As far as I know, it never we…

Funny that comments that defend BFX, even on objective grounds, are immediately downvoted. Brigading is strong with this one.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#36

Post by martinko »

keypusher wrote: post #21

This guy has been trying to spread doubt about bitfinex for a long time, but never has much to back it up. A few months ago he went on a big campaign against Tether (tokens associated with Bitfinex), claiming they were created out of thin air. Tether then completed and released an audit by a professional, accredited team of their bank balances (1). I don't personally use Bitfinex, and it's possible some of these accu…

Seriously, makes me wonder if he is just pissed that he sold his tokens for pennies on the dollar, or somehow has short exposure to bitfinex / the crypto space.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#37

Post by keypusher »

pja wrote: post #27
keypusher wrote: post #21

This guy has been trying to spread doubt about bitfinex for a long time, but never has much to back it up. A few months ago he went on a big campaign against Tether (tokens associated with Bitfinex), claiming they were created out of thin air. Tether then completed and released an audit by a professional, accredited team of their bank balances (1). I don't personally use Bitfinex, and it's possible some of these accu…

There are two key quotes that you need to pay attention to in that document: This engagement does not contemplate tests of accounting records or the performance of other procedures performed in an audit or attest engagement. In addition, our services do not include a determination of compliance with laws and regulations in any jurisdiction. All inquiries made throughout the consulting process have been directed towar…

> Such reports assume that everything they’re told by management is true

No, they checked the balances with the banks. They verified the amount as stated was held by the bank at the time. You can see that in the section that begins "FLLP confirmed each bank account directly with the respective bank"

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#38

Post by wslh »

redka wrote: post #8
thisisit wrote: post #4

> As Bitfinex has become more and more desperate, they have listed more and more crypto-currencies of questionable value, such as EOS/IOTA/ETP and so on. As per coinmarketcap.com: EOS is ranked 19, 442 million in marketcap IOTA is ranked 11, 950 million in marketcap ETP is ranked 70, 73 million in marketcap Anyone can throw some light on what these coins really are? Additionally, BTC markets: https://coinmarketcap.co…

IOTA actually seems pretty revolutionary. I don't think it's a finished product yet but if you want some info then it's a DAG ("tangle")[1] instead of a blockchain and offers 0 fees and possibly huge scalability. There are some products already using it: RuuviTag[2], Bosh XDK Iot[3], PoC ElaadNL charging station[4], Modum[5]. Once they prove they can go without the "Coordinator"[6] I'm going to be completely sold on…

IOTA, and others, were not analyzed from adversarial known/expert researchers yet. Period. For more serious DAG oriented research you can check SPECTRE and the papers in this list [1].

[1] https://docs.google.com/document/d/1J8hehbnZWzcIUMQcxMiGbjz8...

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#39

Post by Muanh »

runeks wrote: post #28
redka wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IOTA actually seems pretty revolutionary. I don't think it's a finished product yet but if you want some info then it's a DAG ("tangle")[1] instead of a blockchain and offers 0 fees and possibly huge scalability. There are some products already using it: RuuviTag[2], Bosh XDK Iot[3], PoC ElaadNL charging station[4], Modum[5]. Once they prove they can go without the "Coordinator"[6] I'm going to be completely sold on…

> […] offers 0 fees […] I’m highly skeptical of this claim since there’s a cost to running any system. It seems more likely that they just made fees implicit rather than explicit (as in Bitcoin) but, regardless, someone needs to be paid to keep servers running.

In bitcoin you don't get paid to run full nodes. Only the miners get paid for verifying transactions. Verifying transactions is done by the users themselves with iota, so there is no need for miners and no need for fees.

Re: Bitfinex never ‘repaid’ their tokens, they started a ponzi scheme

#40

Post by xiphias »

thisisit wrote: post #14

Reading this article made me wonder - how much of the bitcoin rally is due to counterparty risks? If I remember correctly the last ramp up happened during Mt. Gox era. They were having USD withdrawal issues which resulted in BTC prices being very high on the exchange. But it din't deter them from publishing prices and making markets. Now is the case of Bitfinex suffered from a hack like Mt. Gox and are trying to stay…

There were no hardware wallets in the days of MtGox, which meant that it was extremely hard to secure Bitcoins. It got easier since then, and many people learned from MtGox (though many people haven't). Also companies take bigger care of securing their cold wallets. I would never recommend BitFinex to anyone though (GDAX and BitStamp have VC money / long history)
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