Did I just lose half a million dollars? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#391

Post by jlokier » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

ericmay wrote: post #358

ljm wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like a libertarian utopia. Literally everything is an individual responsibility with no wider recourse. Want validation? Other people don't want to pay for stuff they're not validating... so it's on you to be careful. Accidentally fuck up? Not our problem, that's on you for not calling the right API. Want your money back? We're not paying money to cover for other people's mistakes. You're on your own bud.

Ok… but then if you’re going to throw out these cases you should also address how markets can fix these issues, such as great customer service: “when I fucked up they helped me out, they’ll get more of my business”, or maybe insurance, or just better products that don’t have these issues. Idk why people conflate libertarianism with this hyper-individualist stuff. It really isn’t the case.

Low-cost insurance is an interesting idea that might actually work to smooth over some of the hard edges of "code is law".

It ought to be possible to craft an insurance policy that would pay out the $500k (or equivalent WETH/ETH) in cases like the one in this article, where the transparency of the ledger clearly shows that the tokens are unrecoverable.

As insurance companies are notorious for declining to pay out, the clear evidence trail would be helpful to allow the insuree to take the claim to a regular court for a human decision on its validity.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#392

Post by ur-whale » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:48 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #381

Here's an unrelated but related question: How do you store your wallet / private keys where you would be comfortable storing an amount of money that's important to you? It feels like a bunch of consumer grade options we have are kind of flaky: Flash drives are extremely undependable. I've had a few fail to read after sitting in a closet for a year. SSDs can supposedly have data loss pretty quickly if left unpowered (…

Jameson Lopp has a ton of resources on the topic (bitcoin centric, but lots of it translates immediately to other cryptos):

https://www.lopp.net/bitcoin-information/security.html

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#393

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

ljm wrote: post #339

XorNot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really can't think of an expression other then "lol" to sum up my response here for just how incredibly stupid this is, as a "platform of the future". A design which actively discourages robust programming and error handling in financial software. Wow .

It's like a libertarian utopia. Literally everything is an individual responsibility with no wider recourse. Want validation? Other people don't want to pay for stuff they're not validating... so it's on you to be careful. Accidentally fuck up? Not our problem, that's on you for not calling the right API. Want your money back? We're not paying money to cover for other people's mistakes. You're on your own bud.

You forgot to add “If you don’t like it, you’re free to create your own blockchain”.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#394

Post by detaro » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #381

Here's an unrelated but related question: How do you store your wallet / private keys where you would be comfortable storing an amount of money that's important to you? It feels like a bunch of consumer grade options we have are kind of flaky: Flash drives are extremely undependable. I've had a few fail to read after sitting in a closet for a year. SSDs can supposedly have data loss pretty quickly if left unpowered (…

keys are small, so you can just write them on paper or other material.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#395

Post by ClumsyPilot » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:50 PM UTC

kuhewa wrote: post #306

capableweb wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're gonna deal directly with the forex industry without any safe-guards there will definitely be a bunch of jargon around, have you ever dealt with the insides of forex trading before? In general, giving someone money does not require intimate knowledge of what's happening behind the scenes, that's true. But the submission is not about a normal transfer, the user is explicitly avoiding the safe-guards in place,…

> have you ever dealt with the insides of forex trading before? Why, is there a way to send currency directly and irrecoverably into a paper shredder on the inside?

If you real with trading, options and swaps without understanding them - yes, very much so

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#396

Post by rco8786 » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

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…

Agreed this is all nonsensical

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#397

Post by CydeWeys » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #381

Here's an unrelated but related question: How do you store your wallet / private keys where you would be comfortable storing an amount of money that's important to you? It feels like a bunch of consumer grade options we have are kind of flaky: Flash drives are extremely undependable. I've had a few fail to read after sitting in a closet for a year. SSDs can supposedly have data loss pretty quickly if left unpowered (…

Paper backups are the best option for this. Private keys are simple enough that a whole wallet can be printed to a single piece of paper using an OCR-friendly font.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#398

Post by rosndo » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

href wrote: post #181

rosndo wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, if you do that and the other party runs off with the money you’re screwed. You can certainly pursue the matter in civil courts, but law enforcement does not like to touch this kind of stuff at all. If the recipient transfers the money overseas, you will most likely never be able to recover it.

I don't think that's the case everywhere. In Switzerland at least, if I send you money by mistake, I can claim that money back and you would have to give it back to me, even if you have spent it already - unless you can reasonably claim that you were unaware that this money was not meant for you. As a result, if I received a large amount of money that I coulnd't explain, I would contact the sender or the bank first.…

Yeah, good luck getting that money back if the other party doesn’t want to play along. Enforcing court judgements isn’t easy in these situations.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#399

Post by NikolaeVarius » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:51 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #368

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> No one cares about what you think. 1) It's weird to say this about someone you've never met, of course somebody cares about what they think, and 2) of course you care, which is why you're posting.

No post body was provided.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#400

Post by SamReidHughes » Sun, Jan 30, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #381

Here's an unrelated but related question: How do you store your wallet / private keys where you would be comfortable storing an amount of money that's important to you? It feels like a bunch of consumer grade options we have are kind of flaky: Flash drives are extremely undependable. I've had a few fail to read after sitting in a closet for a year. SSDs can supposedly have data loss pretty quickly if left unpowered (…

You write down the N different Shamir passphrases of your hierarchical deterministic wallet on paper and store them in N different locations. Or for longevity and fire resistance, use metal foil and a punch.