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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?

#251

Post by tromp »

wruza wrote: post #9

Is this a motivation issue with crypto? Here is what I mean. Centralized systems work like a web of tunnels - you can’t send “nowhere” or make a huge mistake, but if your part of a tunnel gets shut for some reason, you’re locked. Decentralized ones are like an endless empty void with point-like islands of ownership in it. You can send anywhere, but make one mistake and it’s over. Now pepper this with our usual issues…

What would really help is if the recipient had to prove they can spend the money they're about to receive before they receive it.

Which is in fact required with cryptocurrencies using the (pure) Mimblewimble protocol.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#252

Post by ciupicri »

ggm wrote: post #104
ciupicri wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At least with banknotes if you photograph the serial numbers you can try to reclaim the value In what country?

In many countries: try Google for "recover destroyed banknote" search.

Could you be more specific please? Cause you said based on photographs. Otherwise national banks usually ask for more than half of the note. At least in that's how they do it in Germany and Romania.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#253

Post by oblio »

capableweb wrote: post #206
u-rate wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Why is it such a hot feature that you can see every transaction, though? Why do you care if I got my bank to revert one of my transactions?

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#254

Post by MrMoenty »

OtomotO wrote: post #210
7steps2much wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

There is, e.g. § 812(1) BGB in German law:

> Wer durch die Leistung eines anderen oder in sonstiger Weise auf dessen Kosten etwas ohne rechtlichen Grund erlangt, ist ihm zur Herausgabe verpflichtet. Diese Verpflichtung besteht auch dann, wenn der rechtliche Grund später wegfällt oder der mit einer Leistung nach dem Inhalt des Rechtsgeschäfts bezweckte Erfolg nicht eintritt.

> A person who obtains something as a result of the performance of another person or otherwise at his expense without legal grounds for doing so is under a duty to make restitution to him. This duty also exists if the legal grounds later lapse or if the result intended to be achieved by those efforts in accordance with the contents of the legal transaction does not occur.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#255

Post by noduerme »

kuhewa wrote: post #247
capableweb wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 work…

Currencies don't come with a prerequisite of intimate knowledge of industrial jargon that requires use on a daily basis to be proficient enough in to not lose everything.

Also, chemistry sets come with a lot of graphic warnings.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#256

Post by netrikare »

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

This can all be abstracted away, so end user doesn't even know he is interacting with blockchain tech.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#257

Post by oblio »

riffraff wrote: post #175
Earw0rm wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also cannot be a legal basis for anything, because the law doesn't treat the right or ability to enter in to contracts as an absolute. Think minors, wards, power of attorney. Contract law is one of the more mechanistic parts of the legal system, but only up to a point. There are good reasons the legal profession - even corporate law - tends to attract a different set of personality traits to software development.

there's also the concept of a contract itself being invalid even if people have some right to enter it. E.g. if you sign a contract while hanging off a cliff to give some dude all your assets in exchange for being pulled up, it is invalid in my jurisdiction. Or if the people signing the contracts did not actually understand what they were signing it can be considered invalid (which would be akin to the mess in TFA).…

In Roman Law a contract requires consent, which cannot be forced, https://www.lawteacher.net/free-law-essays/contract-law/cont...

So it's not just your jurisdiction, it's probably at least half of the entire world and I imagine even systems not based on Roman Law have something equivalent.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#258

Post by oblio »

Jenk wrote: post #196
jrimbault wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially in that real law is left for judges to interpret, and that's a deliberate feature to allow "wiggle" room.

Juries are the ultimate arbiter of law application. For this very reason.

In jurisdictions with juries. It's judges, otherwise.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#259

Post by kuhewa »

khazhoux wrote: post #77
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.

Do we really think women with grandchildren can’t understand Android phones?

Yeah i reckon some 80 year old grandmothers struggle with some Android functions.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#260

Post by noduerme »

riffraff wrote: post #186
noduerme wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Back in the day or at least when I ran my own bitcoin node, any call against the blockchain was free. This sounds like someone charging for hitting the API on a rented node, as opposed to an actual cost imposed by the currency to consult the blockchain (?) But maybe the contract-generators aren't even running their own node, just piggybacking on someone else's API. Sure. Cheaper.

AFAIU, smart contracts on the ethereum VM can be arbitrarily complex, so you pay the network to execute them, or a random user with an infinite loop would bring down the network. You are indeed renting a machine to run some code, and if you want many people to use your code you want to make it cheap. There's a trade off. You can fuck up things on the BTC blockchain too, "burning" crypto by sending it to a dead addres…

On BTC, you could send things to the wrong address, yes. But you can't send the wrong type of currency or send it to a nonexistent address. In this case it seems like the contract has created the black hole (not the Ethereum blockchain itself), but that's even more absurd since someone ultimately should have control over everything that was put into the contract, regardless of the source.
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