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SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

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Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing illegal things, mostly. If you are working a w2 job and paying taxes and paying your mortgage / auto loan... crypto doesn't really help you. Blackmail? Awesome. Buying illegal substances? Awesome. Gambling? You got it...

I’m making an assumption here that “crypto” means “crypto coin” and, perhaps further, any form of blockchain based, consensus maintained, public ledger. I don’t understand this “crypto is good for doing crime” narrative. When I’m doing crime, I strongly prefer there to be no record of the transaction. The closer I can get to an assurance there is no permanent record of the transaction, the safer I feel in deviating f…

The thing about Bitcoin right now is that it is being used for good AND nefarious purposes. So you get some level of "hiding in the noise".

Add in the ability to move it around the world easily, its liquidity and transaction volume and you have just about the perfect grey / black activity currency.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doing illegal things, mostly. If you are working a w2 job and paying taxes and paying your mortgage / auto loan... crypto doesn't really help you. Blackmail? Awesome. Buying illegal substances? Awesome. Gambling? You got it...

I’m making an assumption here that “crypto” means “crypto coin” and, perhaps further, any form of blockchain based, consensus maintained, public ledger. I don’t understand this “crypto is good for doing crime” narrative. When I’m doing crime, I strongly prefer there to be no record of the transaction. The closer I can get to an assurance there is no permanent record of the transaction, the safer I feel in deviating f…

I would argue that many criminals don’t care if you know who they are. Plus cash doesn’t “scale”. Try ransomwaring millions of computers and cashing out with untraceable money.

Criminals don’t care if there’s a record of their transactions because trans-national law enforcement is basically non existent. You got ransomwared from Ukraine? Nobody cares. Until, apparently, you cause havoc across the eastern seaboard by infecting a few corporate machines associated with a gas pipeline.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me, and possibly others, any system which I have my money invested and I can lose everything I own with no recourse due to some exploit is completely laughable and something I will never ever touch. There's a reason folks keep their life savings in a Chase bank account, because if something like this happens you have recourse to recover your money.

Then don't put your money in a newly created contract? You yourself say you keep it in a Chase bank account, you sure as hell wouldn't put your life savings in a newly created bank and trust everything to them would you? Look at what you put your money into, has it had any audits done (this applies to both tax / financial audits for brick and morter stores, and code audits to smart contracts). I will never ever inves…

I'll take an FDIC insured bank over some new cool crypto project any day of the week.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#224
post #31

A point that most crypto heads miss is that the world does not run algorithmically. Legal contracts do not work like a software program and that characteristic is a feature not a bug. Not being able to reverse transactions that were part of an exploit is in infact a bug. Businesses need that tolerance for error. You need an oracle in your system. The oracle can maintain transparency of the attestations carried out if…

I'm gonna be honest I don't know what the audience is for a product where you risk losing your entire life savings because you typed a wrong word in a smart contract rather than paying a middleman a fraction of a percent. It's almost like a sort of willful ignorance of division of labour and the concept of pooling risk.

As of today, the audience is "people trying to get rich fast".

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least to me, and possibly others, any system which I have my money invested and I can lose everything I own with no recourse due to some exploit is completely laughable and something I will never ever touch. There's a reason folks keep their life savings in a Chase bank account, because if something like this happens you have recourse to recover your money.

People have never lost their life savings when held in a bank account?

I'm just gonna leave this here:

https://youtu.be/CS9ptA3Ya9E

It's a dark comedy sketch that has an answer to your question.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#226
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can literally say that about cold hard cash. Blackmail? Pay cash. Buying illegal substances? Cash. Gambling? Get your cash out. It's all in how you use it. https://eandt.theiet.org/content/articles/2021/05/moon-missi... Anything is a store of value, wood, gold, water, dogecoin ect. If people want to accept something for something else this is a way of life. It's just sad that people only see the bad use cases. Ho…

> It's just sad that people only see the bad use cases Yeah, when 95%+ of the actual things that people use crypto for are those things, it's hard not to. Can you honestly say the "valid" uses for crypto take up more than 5% the total volume in any possible metric you can think of? It's always ransomware, extortion, blackmail, money laundering, drugs, you name it.

Do you have a source for '95%+'?

https://www.forbes.com/sites/haileylennon/2021/01/19/the-fal...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/24/overall-bitcoin-related-crim...

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#227

There are more than $100b of stablecoins — 285x year-over-year growth — with a variety of very interesting and high-quality stablecoins proliferating. And of course, Hacker News focuses on some garbage project nobody in the space even followed. How is there no discussion about FRAX, Maker's DAI, USDC, CRV's 3pool token, Liquity's LUSD, and so many other interesting projects?

There probably have been previous discussions about those projects. But yeah, the project relating to this headline is not news worthy. It's HN; go figure.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It literally does not. The world runs advised by algorithms, but not governed by them. It's a fundamental difference. When algorithms in the real world create lose-lose outcomes, people override them, which is why when your credit card gets stolen you don't end up paying for stuff. You can bake that logic into a software contract, but if the design of your system is that the totality of software contracts are the fin…

You are aware that the vast majority of financial market trading is run by algorithms that govern not advise vast amounts of capital in an irreversible way. Sometime these algorithms break or are exploited. Often in spectacular disasters. Knight lost half a billion dollars in 30 seconds. Nobody reversed though, even though it was clear error. If you have a 401k I guarantee you that a significant amount of your money…

I think quite a few people who find crypto objectionable will also consider many, even most of the weirder technological outgrowths of the stock market to be every bit as objectionable.

As we've repeatedly learned, to the detriment of most people in the world.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#229

These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.

Can there ever be 'bug free' software? As a lifelong programmer, I'm starting to think that it's impossible to write perfect software free from bugs.

Re: SafeDollar ‘stablecoin’ drops to $0 following DeFi exploit on Polygon

#230

These incidents really illustrate the main flaw of smart contracts: a single bug in your code can lead to incredible losses. I simply don't think it's possible for human beings to write good enough software for smart contracts.

Time for LawyerCoin (TM). The smart-contract is written in English (or other human language) and the oracles are powered by a bunch of lawyers who pinky swear to enforce them. I'm doing ICO next week, if anyone wants in.

We can do better than pinky swearing. Each lawyer gets mining fees when they enforce a contract fairly. "Fairly" is defined by consensus, where each lawyer is forced to predict the consensus before voting in a private ballot that is only revealed when the rewards are issued. Lawyers who predict the consensus get rewarded. If you start it off with people who are trying to be fair then predicting fairness will lead to the most reward, and it will keep going until the majority defects.

The collective is incentivized to continue being fair because if they weren't, nobody would use their coin, and the rewards issued to fair lawyers would be worthless.

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