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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?

#221

Post by faeyanpiraat »

rich_sasha wrote: post #213
in3d wrote: post #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…

But it is. If you buy the wrong asset, you can sell it back and get most of your money back. There is a low friction “undo” button. No such thing in crypto.

Options work differently, you can lose all your money.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#222

Post by oefrha »

capableweb wrote: post #202
SwiftyBug wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m sure you’ve heard of it, but in case you haven’t, it’s called bouncing when there’s no valid inbox on the other end. Before you object, yes, you can set up a catch-all incinerator, but that’s not the default as is the case here, you have to explicitly set it up.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#223

Post by tromp »

Gigachad wrote: post #52
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

The problem is that irreversible transactions are just bad. There is no way around it. Crypto is broken at the most fundamental level. This kind of fuckup could not happen with regular banking and if you somehow did mess up you can almost always have your money recovered. There is no way to just black hole it never to be seen again.

Some cryptocurrencies make it impossible to black hole funds by requiring the recipient to prove they can spend the money they're about to receive before they receive it. Needless to say, these cryptocurrencies do not feature smart contracts.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#224

Post by faeyanpiraat »

noitpmeder wrote: post #167
toomanydoubts wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because then they would say "ok, here's crypto".

That's not usually how contracts work (in the sense of the actual law, not this smart contract bullshit).

Try enforcing anything overseas..

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#225

Post by oblio »

capableweb wrote: post #202
SwiftyBug wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> 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.

Why doesn't it count and why does it matter how Gmail works behind the scenes?

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#227

Post by 7steps2much »

rosndo wrote: post #96
dividuum wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bad example. IBAN ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Bank_Account_Num... ) for example has a two digit checksum that prevents this and similar simple typos.

How is it a bad example? Not everyone uses IBANs. And besides, big banks still have to deal with checksum-passing iban typos on a daily basis. IBANs only have two check digits.

> And besides, big banks still have to deal with checksum-passing iban typos on a daily basis. IBANs only have two check digits.

Actually the checksum was designed especially to deal with typos. As such, dealing with typo errors is usually not an issue at all.

What they do have to deal with is maliciously created IBANs though. However, if the account an IBAN should point at doesn't exist then the transaction usually just bounces.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#228

Post by capableweb »

Since no one seems to think about how this could have prevented, here is a simple way, which I've applied to lots of things in life, not just cryptocurrency transfers:

- If you're making a transfer somewhere with a large amount, do a small transfer first and verify it's working. Confirm at the receiving end before moving big sums.

- If you're calling a contract, try it with a small amount first. Verify the parameters multiple times, and verify the return values multiple times.

- If you're doing something with a huge sum of money, do it in steps instead of all-at-once. Fees won't be as big since you're already dealing with a huge sum of money anyways

- Verify verify and verify that everything went alright with the small sum before trying to do something with a big sum

- If you're tired, don't do it. Wait until you got some sleep

- If you're rushed, don't do it. Wait until you're not rushed, have a tea and think about it

- When in doubt, verify it and don't be tired

- If you're not an expert, have someone who is do verification above for you

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#229

Post by Gareth321 »

noduerme wrote: post #41
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 o…

This is indeed the level of knowledge required for even just transferring ETH to another person/wallet. There are different kinds of ETH, and if you transfer to the wrong kind of wallet, you lose everything.

Despite the protestations of advocates, this kind of thing is a major hurdle to adoption.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#230

Post by MandieD »

tommek4077 wrote: post #18
ab_testing wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

When someone accidentally sent me 200 EUR about 15 years ago it sure as heck didn’t stay mine: their bank contacted mine, which then contacted me to warn me that they would soon be pulling it back out. The sender had transposed numbers in the Bankleitzahl - the pre-SEPA number codes for German banks that are still in modern IBANs, and I happened to have the same account number as someone at that other bank (all little community Sparkassen). Those Bankleitzahlen didn’t have any sort of checksum digits, but IBANs do, preventing most of these kinds of accidents.
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