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Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

topbitcoin.lv

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Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#21

Post by akerro »

chrisseaton wrote: post #10
ryandvm wrote: post #8

One man's loss is everyone else's gain. If $500MM of a coin is irrevocably lost or destroyed, everyone just gained $500MM in value through an increase rarity. It's equivalent to the losers transferring all their coin to the rest of the network participants (in proportion to their stake).

> If $500MM of a coin is irrevocably lost or destroyed But the examples in the article are about coins being stolen, not lost or destroyed. Someone somewhere still has it and is presumably able to spend it.

>But the examples in the article are about coins being stolen, not lost or destroyed. Someone somewhere still has it and is presumably able to spend it.

quite a lot of these stolen coins were tracked down and weeks later locked by exchanges when someone tried to sell them.

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#22

Post by granaldo »

Tipping point is bulk of everything Seeing more of this further solidifies the case for decentralized exchanges

I used to remember how every hack hits the market really bad

This time every hack is like business as usual https://www.coingecko.com/en

Which is why when I get into investing in crypto. I take coin hack risk and volatility risk into account from day

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#23

Post by zaroth »

Consider this: Every single Bitcoin mined has either been lost/stolen, or will be lost/stolen, with probability approaching 1 over increasing timespans.

I’d argue that since January 2009 about 50% of the ~17M coins minted to-date are lost. But the realization that this number will asymptotically approach 100% of all coins is a bit striking.

The reasoning is simple - maintaining control of your coins is surprisingly difficult. The harder you try to secure them from theft, the more likely an accident will wipe them away. The more redundancy you keep to protect from losing them, the more they are exposed to theft. And as time goes on, the random noise of life conspires to blot your coins out of existence. And once they’re lost, there is simply no recovery.

The supply of Bitcoin is not asymptotically approaching 21M. The supply is approaching zero.

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#24

Post by TeMPOraL »

diafygi wrote: post #6
jacquesm wrote: post #4

Who says it was lost? I suspect quite a few of these 'hacks' are inside jobs to take coins from the general public and move them to the founders/owners/employees of exchanges. Yes, that's a pretty harsh accusation to make, but there is plenty of evidence that this happens with some regularity and the number of instances is high enough to make that claim. And it will continue as long as gullible people place 100's of…

My current favorite saying: "Cryptocurrencies are like poker. If you don't know who the sucker in the room is, you're the sucker."

Related, my favorite explanation of ICOs is:

"Imagine that a friend is building a casino and asks you to invest. In exchange, you get chips that can be used at the casino’s tables once it’s finished. Now imagine that the value of the chips isn’t fixed, and will instead fluctuate depending on the popularity of the casino, the number of other gamblers and the regulatory environment for casinos. Oh, and instead of a friend, imagine it’s a stranger on the internet who might be using a fake name, who might not actually know how to build a casino, and whom you probably can’t sue for fraud if he steals your money and uses it to buy a Porsche instead. That’s an I.C.O."

(from https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/15/business/cryptocurrency-b...)

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#26

Post by SamPatt »

zaroth wrote: post #23

Consider this: Every single Bitcoin mined has either been lost/stolen, or will be lost/stolen, with probability approaching 1 over increasing timespans. I’d argue that since January 2009 about 50% of the ~17M coins minted to-date are lost. But the realization that this number will asymptotically approach 100% of all coins is a bit striking. The reasoning is simple - maintaining control of your coins is surprisingly d…

I've been using cryptocurrency for over five years and haven't lost as much as a satoshi. It's no more difficult than keeping other sensitive data secure.

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#27

Post by CodeCube »

zaroth wrote: post #23

Consider this: Every single Bitcoin mined has either been lost/stolen, or will be lost/stolen, with probability approaching 1 over increasing timespans. I’d argue that since January 2009 about 50% of the ~17M coins minted to-date are lost. But the realization that this number will asymptotically approach 100% of all coins is a bit striking. The reasoning is simple - maintaining control of your coins is surprisingly d…

This is a really interesting perspective ... though, I'm sure it could be argued that, "it only makes them more rare, and thus valuable!!11!1!" ;)

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#28

Post by s_dev »

I've lost .38 Eth because of the Mist wallet on macOS.

Seems they've a password issue where the password is always wrong even if you wrote it down at the time of setup.

The suggested solution on the GitHub issues is to use a brute force attack using a python script. Such an issue just screams poor testing.

Re: Bad code may be to blame for $500M of cryptocurrency losses in seven months

#29

Post by CodeCube »

SamPatt wrote: post #26
zaroth wrote: post #23

Consider this: Every single Bitcoin mined has either been lost/stolen, or will be lost/stolen, with probability approaching 1 over increasing timespans. I’d argue that since January 2009 about 50% of the ~17M coins minted to-date are lost. But the realization that this number will asymptotically approach 100% of all coins is a bit striking. The reasoning is simple - maintaining control of your coins is surprisingly d…

I've been using cryptocurrency for over five years and haven't lost as much as a satoshi. It's no more difficult than keeping other sensitive data secure.

to be fair, by commenting on this very forum, you're already not "the norm" ... the average user can barely keep track of their password!! I'd argue that most users already have some form of 2 factor auth, because they can literally never remember their password, so they (barely) remember their password as the 1st, and then the "change password" email serves as the 2nd.

So yeah, not very good at maintaining data secure for the average person ;)

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