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Did I just lose half a million dollars?

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Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#41

Post by noduerme »

ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

Wait. I'm not letting anyone off the hook for not knowing the above if they put $5 into something, let alone $500k. But even as a coder and someone who was deeply involved in crypto at one point (2011) I find it hard to make heads or tails of wtf this means. All I hear are a lot of acronyms and bizarre edge cases upon edge cases. It sounds like those arguments you'd hear between kids in junior high over magic cards or pogs or something. If this is the level of magical knowledge required to deal with these tokens, it sure seems like a sucker's market.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#42

Post by lozenge »

fxtentacle wrote: post #28
tommek4077 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans do not understand money transfer, they are still using cheques and western union. To everyone: If you wrongly send money to a mistyped IBAN it is gone.

But that's very unlikely because IBAN has a checksum precisely to prevent typos. Plus banks in Europe have a transfer reversal grave period so you just call them and they'll most likely be able to undo the transaction.

I'm not sure about IBAN, but in the UK there are multiple layers that help you avoid sending to the wrong account. However, if you do ultimately send money into an actual incorrect person's account, the only thing the recipient's bank will do is to ask them to send it back. They will not give you contact details or anything else.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#43

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

hughrr wrote: post #26
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

The problem with crypto is despite your explanation, I have no idea what any of your post means. Not any of it.

Ethereum, not crypto. Bitcoin is less complex by choice.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#44

Post by noduerme »

ur-whale wrote: post #40
hughrr wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with crypto is despite your explanation, I have no idea what any of your post means. Not any of it.

>The problem with crypto is despite your explanation, I have no idea what any of your post means. Not any of it. Not entirely sure what point you're trying to make here. Or, in other words: the exact same thing happens to my 80 year old grandmother when I explain about my android phone. Doesn't make the device any less useful.

Well it makes it less useful if your grandmother can't use it to call you.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#45

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

ab_testing wrote: post #7
ssiddharth wrote: post #5

In case you’re wondering what happened, from the thread: He sent ETH to the WETH contract, received WETH as expected. Then he wanted to do the reverse and sent WETH, but will not receive anything, because you're supposed to swap your WETH to ETH in exchanges like Uniswap, or call the "withdraw" function in the contract. For contracts that want to only work with ERC-20 tokens, you use WETH, which comes from a contract…

I think this is a problem with crypto that will forever prevent it from becoming mainstream. The average person understands the concept of money but understanding smart contracts is out of scope for a large part of the general population m

I think it is more a fundamental philosophical problem with Ethereum. They have fascinating ideas and workarounds for all sorts of issues, but in the end they keep layering complex solutions on more complex solutions.

Maybe a bit like enterprise software, just add another abstraction layer...

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#47

Post by yoavm »

westcoast330 wrote: post #38

The future of currency ladies and gentlemen. This money is literally gone. Unrecoverable. Like he took the money out to a barrel and burned it. Only he didn't get any warmth out of it in exchange.

Considering the emissions of all proof-of-work-based Blockchains, he probably warmed all of us.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#48

Post by noduerme »

goodlinks wrote: post #30
tetha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, but wouldn't smart contracts have to be as complex as a non-smart contract, if a smart contract were to replace the dumb contract? If I'm looking at the regular B2B contracts I'm supporting at work, even normal contracts are already testing people. Piling (highly complicated, mind you) software on top of that problem seems nuts and entirely not feasible.

Dont know of any traditional contract that can accidentally make money vanish. Also you can go to a centralised authority e.g. bank or court to do something about the wrong party holding the funds at any given point. You can even retrospectively apply reasonable person type arguments no?

The nearest scenario in dumb contracts would probably be wiring funds to the wrong foreign bank account. But there are usually a lot of intentionally placed checks before you do something that stupid. And even if you did, at least there's someone you can call. That seems a bit smarter, really.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#49

Post by mudita »

tommek4077 wrote: post #21
rosndo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Centralized systems work like a web of tunnels - you can’t send “nowhere” or make a huge mistake You can totally make a 1 digit typo while making a bank transfer that results in all the money being lost. Perhaps you’ll recover it after years of litigation, but that’s really not guaranteed. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/dec/07/i-lost-my-1930... E: downvoted by upset bankers? :)

Americans do not understand money transfer, they are still using cheques and western union. To everyone: If you wrongly send money to a mistyped IBAN it is gone.

I made a transfer with a mistyped IBAN once in the online interface of my German bank. The bank called me a day later and said that there’s something wrong with my IBAN, so I double-checked, realised my mistake and did the same transfer to the correct IBAN. I did not loose any money.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#50

Post by tetha »

goodlinks wrote: post #30
tetha wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hm, but wouldn't smart contracts have to be as complex as a non-smart contract, if a smart contract were to replace the dumb contract? If I'm looking at the regular B2B contracts I'm supporting at work, even normal contracts are already testing people. Piling (highly complicated, mind you) software on top of that problem seems nuts and entirely not feasible.

Dont know of any traditional contract that can accidentally make money vanish. Also you can go to a centralised authority e.g. bank or court to do something about the wrong party holding the funds at any given point. You can even retrospectively apply reasonable person type arguments no?

And that is even an argument on top I didn't even mean.

> You can even retrospectively apply reasonable person type arguments no?

Yeah. A significant part of a traditional contract revolves around defining the entities and behaviors you're actually talking about, and another part is about specifying requirements and boundaries for these entities and behaviors. However, it is entirely possible that during a conflict, the parties of the contract disagree about the meanings of the words on paper.

In such a case, you'd bring in a judge by bringing this to court, and a judge has the right to interpret the words and act in the spirit of the contract clauses, not just the words, and to deliberate about the feasibility of clauses. And that's a good thing, because this is a strong defense against scam and fraud.

Like, if something really strongly looks like a contract to buy a car, but technically doesn't say you buy the car, but also doesn't say you don't buy the car. If you get sued for not paying rent or stealing the car in such a case, you could argue you thought you owned it.

That's another, huge, topic.

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