381–390 of 577 posts
I'm so tired of people manipulating others and telling them to throw their savings into "Stablecoins" for 5-12% APR. Pure insanity.
I honestly don't understand why this coin even makes the news. At $250K it was less than a microcap penny token. It's insignificant and not worth a print.
So people who "agree" with the change can just insta-exchange their cash, and those who don't can keep their cash on version 1. Then you don't have bugs like this as easily anymore.
This whole thing will no go very far without something like an update system. The old C programmers would laugh their ass of at a code-once-and-hope mentality.
EDIT: And by rewrite I mean like how OTA updates "rewrite" things, have a coin-bootloader or something that takes care of it.
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Odd: HN is made up of the people closest to cutting-edge technology on the planet, and yet sentiment is negative on cryptocurrency. Hmmm...
It's odd indeed. This is a VC-created forum where its users reject entire sectors of new technology. Besides being anti-crypto, there also anti-google, anti-iot, and anti-any website looking fancier than something from 1996. It's a thing to accept and be entertained by I guess. The stunning lack of self awareness over here is legendary though.
Yes, indeed.
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.
The plus side is that smart contracts provide their own "bug bounty" programme. If a smart contract that handles a coin with a market cap of +50M USD has not been breached, I absolutely trust that contract to be safe.
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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…
NYSE and the SEC _chose_ not to reverse those trades but they could have. There are plenty of ways the exchange can undo those and also trade busts happen daily on every exchange.
Almost certainly if a large index etf or fund lost everything to a software glitch the trades would be reversed and even if for policy reasons they weren’t they could be. The facility exists.
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Wrong. Unlike bank deposits or treasury notes, stable coins have interest yields to outweigh inflation.
I guess as far as counterparties go, people trust a bank or the fed more.
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USDT failed a LONG time ago.
What is failure specifically? USDT (despite it's shadiness) trades at 1USDT:1$ on pretty much all exchanges and you can short it if you truly believe it'll flop anytime soon.
https://bitfinexed.medium.com/tether-is-setting-a-new-standa...
There is no such thing as a stablecoin, it's a made up term to try to lend legitimacy to new crypto scams. And I say this as someone who just bought some Ethereum in the hopes of making a profit :)
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I don't know much in the field, but formally verifiable programming methods come to mind. You'll potentially have less of a chance for contracts to be exploited (at least compared to what we have now). That said, you can't protect against infrastructure exploits as easily, mathematically flawless program or not.
Formal methods are about matching the spec. Errors in the spec are still an issue. Moreover, there is very, very little formally verified code in the world, much less than you'd believe. My former professor (RIP) oversaw the formal verification of the F-16 computer software and it still had significant bugs in the end where the specification itself was incomplete or in error. And that was a multi-year, team-scale eff…