Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
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Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#2Article is non-paywalled for once.
Exhaustive analysis of ICO white papers shows about 1/4 contain major red flags. The bar the WSJ set is pretty low (as in easy to pass without raising flags). Any white paper that didn't plagiarize long passages, re-use others' headshots or fail to name principals, or fail mention risk basically passes.
It's also worth noting that the multi-billion dollar figure cited for total funds raised through ICOs is about as reliable as the ICOs themselves, since it's based on self-reported figures from ICOs that frequently appear out of thin air with multi-million claims of funds raised so far.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#3It's the gold rush that killed crypto-currencies. They are dead, but their gold rush enthusiasts are going to hang on for a decade hoping to recoup their pride.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#4Article is non-paywalled for once. Exhaustive analysis of ICO white papers shows about 1/4 contain major red flags. The bar the WSJ set is pretty low (as in easy to pass without raising flags). Any white paper that didn't plagiarize long passages, re-use others' headshots or fail to name principals, or fail mention risk basically passes. It's also worth noting that the multi-billion dollar figure cited for total fund…
There is a pay wall.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#5It's the gold rush that killed crypto-currencies. They are dead, but their gold rush enthusiasts are going to hang on for a decade hoping to recoup their pride.
Last gold rush for crypto was in 2013 so ~5 years.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#6- The space is littered with fraud.
- Wallets have bugs that lose hundreds of millions of dollars
- Energy consumption forecasted to hit 0.5% of the world’s electricity consumption by end of 2018
- Promoters yelling “decentralize everything” while exchanges, development teams and mining are all highly centralized
- No legal use case found to date
Blockchain is a parasite on society.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#7Article is non-paywalled for once. Exhaustive analysis of ICO white papers shows about 1/4 contain major red flags. The bar the WSJ set is pretty low (as in easy to pass without raising flags). Any white paper that didn't plagiarize long passages, re-use others' headshots or fail to name principals, or fail mention risk basically passes. It's also worth noting that the multi-billion dollar figure cited for total fund…
And that’s not even considering the many white papers that are original work, but completely wrong. Many of them propose fundamentally incorrect and exploitable systems. But of course none of the papers are peer reviewed, so if the idea sounds cool to some armchair tech nerds on reddit, off to the races you go!
Want to see something truly scary? Pick a coin, any coin, that has had a major vulnerability discovered by researchers in a peer-reviewed publication. Then go onto that coin’s subreddit and watch in amazement as a bunch of security illiterate redditors bend over backwards to invalidate the paper’s claims with conspiratorial nonsense and cries of spreading FUD.
Blind loyalty is bad enough in meatspace. In the cryptocurrency realm, it’s simply dangerous.
The crazy thing is that any one of these coins could have a double-spending vulnerability, which by its very nature would likely be undiscoverable. There could very well be some clever hacker somewhere exploiting double spends and slowly bleeding money out of exchanges.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#8- The space is littered with fraud. - Wallets have bugs that lose hundreds of millions of dollars - Energy consumption forecasted to hit 0.5% of the world’s electricity consumption by end of 2018 - Promoters yelling “decentralize everything” while exchanges, development teams and mining are all highly centralized - No legal use case found to date Blockchain is a parasite on society.
It sounds like the future to me... as currencies, not as investment objects... the similarities with our current national currencies is eerie.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#9To be fair, How many startups listed on Angel list ar in fact frauds?
No, not just illegal stuff like intershipsp for no pay but more major stuff like outright fabrication of founder bios, etc.
Re: Hundreds of Bitcoin Wannabes Show Hallmarks of Fraud
#10Can someone smarter than me try to write a formal proof that you can only have 2 of the following: distributed, fast, secure?