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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?

#371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is a symptom of the general problem of calling everything "cryptocurrency", which anchors people on the mental model of Bitcoin. You were involved in "cryptocurrency" 2011 when everything was Bitcoin or essentially just a fork of Bitcoin and all of the stuff in the comment you replied to was a few years away from existing. I think it would be like writing "applications" in the early 90s in Visual Basic a…

> I think this is a symptom of the general problem of calling everything "crypto", which anchors people on the mental model of Bitcoin. Or those of us who immediately think of AES, RSA, and Diffie–Hellman. Anyone around tech in the 1990s may also remember: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

Right you are. I just edited to differentiate from this other general problem with the nomenclature in the space.

I actually think this one leads to less confusion though, because the people who are familiar with "crypto" vis cryptography universally have enough expertise to differentiate it from "crypto" vis cryptocurrency. Whereas I would estimate that at least 99% of people who have heard of both Bitcoin and Ethereum have no idea that there are important differences in their capabilities and technology.

All the smart but non-technical people I know or read commentary from talk about cryptocurrency as a single thing, where that thing is just different flavors of Bitcoin.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#372
post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean generally accepted word? A word is or is not a word . Dont get butthurt because you were pointed wrong after trying to correct someone.

Sheesh. No good deed goes unpunished, eh? From the link: >We label irregardless as “nonstandard” rather than “slang.” When a word is nonstandard it means it is “not conforming in pronunciation, grammatical construction, idiom, or word choice to the usage generally characteristic of educated native speakers of a language.” Irregardless is a long way from winning general acceptance as a standard English word. For that…

You've clearly struck a nerve.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#373
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

No post body was provided.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#375

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think this is a symptom of the general problem of calling everything "crypto", which anchors people on the mental model of Bitcoin. Or those of us who immediately think of AES, RSA, and Diffie–Hellman. Anyone around tech in the 1990s may also remember: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto_Wars

Right you are. I just edited to differentiate from this other general problem with the nomenclature in the space. I actually think this one leads to less confusion though, because the people who are familiar with "crypto" vis cryptography universally have enough expertise to differentiate it from "crypto" vis cryptocurrency. Whereas I would estimate that at least 99% of people who have heard of both Bitcoin and Ether…

The next time I get cornered by a coinhead - a worryingly common occurrence in real life lately - I'm going to say "Oh, I love crypto! My bank uses it so I can access my account from anywhere. It's great!"

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#376
post #338
post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

Native, educated speaker here: Nobody cares and everybody understood what they meant.

I always appreciate grammatical corrections, and I know non-native speakers that do too.

A friendly correction of a non-standard word does not deserve derision.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#377
post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I do money transfers on bank accounts, I read the 10 digits 4-5 times. If the person that I'm transfering to is in the room, I ask them to read aloud their account number as I follow. The fact that you have to get 10 digits right and that a typo can result in sending the money off somewhere unknown, disturbs me a lot. It's amazing how cryptocurrencies mimicked that part about existing digital money to perfection…

Account numbers have checksums. An „off by one“ typo cannot occur.

I wouldn't trust all banks to have such things in their account numbers.

Especially in the tech age where they seem to think they're beyond physical keyboard typos and OCR errors.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#378
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside to doing this is you have to pay the transaction fee twice, once for the $1 and once for the $499,999. The transaction fee is a fixed amount irregardless of how much is being transferred, so it's definitely better to pay the fee twice than risk losing it all if you are even slightly unsure.

>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".

[deleted]

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#379
post #330

Having watched cryptocurrency from a distance via HN etc. for over a decade, I thought I had a general understanding, but this made me realize I wasn’t aware of what smart contracts really were (just looked up solidity today and details of The DAO hack). The potential for irreversible losses, fraud and security holes are much bigger than I realized. This also lead me to this video which will now be my ‘go to’ recomme…

your whole comment reads like an ad for that video

I’d say ‘recommendation’ not ‘ad’ :)

This was the related section https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?t=4637s that lead me down the rabbit hole of watching the whole thing

I have no connection other than stumbling across it after seeing this story today and thought the critique tied in well.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#380

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).

If I told you in the contract that I'd pay you in iphones, I'm pretty sure you would have to accept them as payment?
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