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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?

#231

Post by capableweb »

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…

It's not really edge bases, it's how contracts works, and how this contract works.

There is nothing magical here. It's a bit like avoiding the checksums that IBAN has, and then complaining that IBAN is broken. Most people interact with WETH via UIs, but for some reason this user chose not to, and got severely burned because of it.

Things that require expertise usually requires one to know acronyms and how things works underneath, the cryptocurrency space is no different.

Now I don't know what you do for a living, but it certainly isn't cryptocurrencies. I'm sure there are more industries you don't work with on a day-to-day basis, and when people who are in those industries talk with each other on a technical level, you'll see the same amount of jargon. That's just part of expertise in a subject.

For example, two of my friends are chemists, and sometimes they talk chemistry stuff when we're having dinners and stuff. Of course I don't understand most of the stuff they are saying, but I'm not gonna claim "chemistry" is "magical knowledge" just because I don't understand it, so I'm not sure why you would about cryptocurrencies.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#232

Post by 7steps2much »

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.

> To everyone: If you wrongly send money to a mistyped IBAN it is gone.

You clearly have no idea how an IBAN works. It has a checksum exactly to avoid mistyping.

And even if you send the money to an valid, but wrong, IBAN then one of two things happens:

* The account doesn't exist -> transaction bounces * The account does exist -> ask for money back, worst case go to court to recover it

But the money is not gone. There are no black holes just swallowing everything up.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#233

Post by NoboruWataya »

noduerme wrote: post #44
ur-whale wrote: post #40

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. 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.

... or if your grandmother tries to use it and loses half a million dollars.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#234

Post by tromp »

ddtaylor wrote: post #58

I love how everyone assumes that the ETH blockchain is immutable and there is nothing that can happen to undo any of this. Did everyone simply forget when the Dao had a contract bug and the ETH devs literally just rolled back the transaction?

> the ETH devs literally just rolled back the transaction?

That's when some of them were themselves invested in the Dao...

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#235

Post by dTal »

exegete wrote: post #198
dTal wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>irregardless Friendly heads up - this isn't a word, and also happens to be one of those slip-ups that people will judge you extra hard for. Say either "regardless" or "irrespective".

It most definitely is a word irregardless of your feelings about it https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/irregardless

Fine. It's not a [standard, generally accepted] word.

Feel free to disregard my advice, though; it's no skin off my nose if you don't want to sound like a "native, educated speaker".

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#236

Post by oblio »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #45
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

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, they have a fundamentally simple concept that solved the double spend and trust problems for a decentralized (sort of currency).

That part we kind of figured out, maybe it's ok, albeit super slow and power intensive, but let's put that aside for a while.

But is there a solid mathematical and cryptographical basis for everything else layered on top? I don't get that impression, it just looks like they're just plugging gaping holes because there's a gold rush to be continued!

If they're just rebuilding a crappier version of the global financial system, there's no point in the rest of us following them.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#237

Post by t8e56vd4ih »

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…

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

but yes, I find myself thinking the same with many things. especially when the disciples seem irritatingly proud of their "knowledge" which actually is just a collection of arbitrary and anti intuitive rules.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#239

Post by ohgodplsno »

Hermel wrote: post #90
pshc wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, ERC-777 tokens were supposed to fix this egregious problem by having all transfers check with their destinations (through hooks). There are also various similar extensions to ERC-20 I believe. Unfortunately, practically no one uses 777 as far as I'm aware? Certainly the OG Wrapped ETH contract doesn't, and it can't be upgraded because it's immutable.

The additional transaction fees that using ERC-777 would cost in the Ethereum network are probably much higher than someone losing half a million every now and then. So economically, adopting ERC-777 would be a step backwards.

Economically, KYC in the real world is a step backwards. Economically, laws made to restrict trading is a step backwards. There's still a damn good reason we do it, but the crypto grifters seem to only see the economical part of it for some reason.
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