Live data from Hacker News

Did I just lose half a million dollars?

reddit.com

201–210 of 837 posts

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#201
post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What could be more of a rat's nest than the crypto scams? As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. It's the ultimate recepticle for scammers.

> As soon as it became possible for anyone to create a token it just became a race to the bottom. Exactly. All enabled and caused by Ethereum. First the ICOs, then anyone can create their own scam ERC-20 tokens, The DAO (which got hacked and hard forked to reverse the funds), NFTs (which have nothing to do with ownership), which once you scale up all of that it basically becomes unusable due to the 'gas fees' for eve…

I'd go back further and say that the first wave - when Dogecoin and about 100 other cryptos popped up all running essentially Bitcoin networks - that was right when it went to shit. At that time you had to still know how to compile something to start your own blockchain, but if you did you'd be a billionaire now.

Ripple and other riders on the original blockchain would be the second wave of scams. That's when large scale investors started to get involved.

Ethereum is really the third wave scam where it got so easy that people who couldn't code were able to scale it out to people who couldn't even think. It was upscale retail selling to schmucks.

That would make NFTs and smart contracts the 4th wave of ponzi. The part where knockoffs of knockoffs become cheaper than a Louis Vuitton bag on Canal Street, and everyone's mother is buying crypto, and they're running ads for it on the home shopping network.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It truly is laughable. Ever heard of "Return to Sender" in case of invalid events/transactions?

YES. Weren't these supposed to be SMART contracts? My email provider is smarter than that.

First time I hear about IMAP/POP3 provider being able to "undo" emails after being sent. What provider are you using and how does that work behind the scenes? And no, gmails fake "we don't actually send it until you close the tab/wait 30 seconds so you can undo it" doesn't count.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've written middleware APIs for accepting currency in carts and casinos that interfaced with / polled bitcoind and other daemons. Why on earth would this person be calling APIs directly, and why would the daemon not just reject the transaction if it's an unexpected kind of token? Or if he added funds to the contract why not be able to remove them to the same address? I never dealt with smart contracts but even allow…

from the reddit comments, similar question, apparently every instruction adds gas fees to running the contract, so if you're going to use the contract a lot, you leave out any kind of validation. >> Wow why didn't the contract creators think this through and block requests to the contract > Because adding that check would increase the cost of every user transaction. All AMM swaps would be done with WETH so it’s the r…

Good grief, this is like machine language for money

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#204

No value was lost here... Since everyone can see this is unspendable, It's simply a donation to all other users in the form of burning coins and increasing the value of all other coins.

Sounds like a good way of inflating a bogus coin that will cause a rush on it...

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#206
post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is immutable, unless in some cases it is not. However of majority of us plebs it is practically immutable.

Isn‘t that exactly like the status quo with banks?

It's exactly the same with banks, except "we" (normal plebs) cannot actually see when it happens, as compared to blockchains where all data is public. With banks it happens all the time, but no one knows, so it doesn't make the news. When it happens in blockchains (that one time), it's very obvious so it makes the news.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

can the code be corrected though it sounds to me like the fix would be create a new map that maps account ID -> tokens, where account ID = the "sender" account where the tokens came from, and do the migration to move these 'orphaned' tokens into the right buckets. admittedly I guess that would break everything/trust if someone can just rewrite the code to say who has what tokens!

> can the code be corrected though A defining feature of "smart contracts" is that the code is immutable once deployed, and can never be upgraded or bug-fixed.

[deleted]

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#208
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't get WETH. What is the purpose of exchanging ETH, which is a token on the Ethereum blockchain, for WETH, which is also a token on the Ethereum blockchain (with the same nominal value)?

Pretty soon you'll be able to get paid interest on your WETH in WTF. WTF is a meta token based on a smart contract token based on Ethereum. With WTF, you never need to worry about where your money is. You can be assured that 100% of the time you try to redeem it you will stare at your screen for hours going WHAT THE FUCK

Incredibly, I wasn't even completely sure this was a joke. Something like this doesn't feel too far off from the madness going on in the space

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#209
It's not a great situation that this is possible but you could make a similar error for the same amount of money in your brokerage account and also have no recourse. It could be a typo in the ticker symbol, you could buy an option for the wrong month, you could buy instead of selling, you could enter an extra zero, you could not notice a multiplier for the futures, you could let a physical delivery future expire, etc. Using Interactive Brokers or other brokers with advanced user interfaces, it's even possible to turn off confirmations or do most things with just a keyboard or through an API. I don't see this situation as significantly different.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can do crazy stuff, doesn't mean you have to do it. Like the normal guy isn't trading interst rate derivates or stuff like that. Also at least with european banking, if you wringly send money to another account, it is also gone forever. A lot of scams regarding old people build up on this. We do not need to buy google play store vouchers like the americans tonget scammed.

> Also at least with european banking, if you wringly send money to another account, it is also gone forever. It's not though? The money is still legally yours and can be recovered via the legal system. Only if it is moved out of Europe into less well regulated areas it becomes a problem. This happens in every case though. If I give you cash and you take it to god knows where it can't be recovered either. If I give y…

If you send money to the wrong person and they don't give it back, you can try sue them to give it back, but there is no inherent law that they must do so.

Or am I wrongly informed? Because that's the knowledge I have from central european laws.

Post reply on HN