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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?

#671

Post by user-the-name »

MrPatan wrote: post #295

Sure, the tech is not perfect. But it will get better over time, not worse. Soon there may be a "good version" of it that replaces a big chunk of anything financial and financializes another chunk of everything else. Or maybe not. I understand assigning a low probability to that event, but the upside is so big that it's still a bit weird to be just a hater and not make a lottery-ticket-sized investment. Or I guess th…

It won't get better. It's been here for years, it's not got better during that time. There is no sign that will change. There's no need for it to get better, because there are already enough fools using it.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#672

Post by root_axis »

disruptalot wrote: post #262
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?

Something happening once does not mean it will happen again. There have been numerous huge hacks in the past 5 years, even where the losses were from the most influential of holders and no action was taken (e.g. parity bugs). A bug and reversal occurred in the first few years of Bitcoin's existence that has effectively meant that Bitcoin won't reach the stated 21m coins exactly. It's guaranteed at this point that the…

The point is that it can happen if enough influential individuals in the eth community want it to happen, it is a social software not "immutable", and this will be further enshrined if PoS ever becomes a reality.

Bitcoin has the same problem, and cryptocoin enthusiasts are fooling themselves if they think that miners won't raise the 21m cap when the end of Bitcoin rewards start looming.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#673

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

shkkmo wrote: post #361
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Afaik bank transactions are also non-reversible. I don't think that is the main issue, although certainly it is a problem. If it bothers you, you could probably also go through some service that insures your transactions and gives you a degree of reversibility.

I am unaware of any country where this is true. Many countries have limits on how / when transactions can be recovered but AFAIK there is nowhere where bank transfers are absolutely final with no recourse.

In my country (Germany) afaik if you transfer money, the bank is not guaranteed to be able to get it back (if it has already processed it). There are other forms, for example other people can withdraw from your account and you can contest it within a certain time frame.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#674

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

oblio wrote: post #602
triangleman wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Frankly that is the best case scenario for crypto. It's similar to the dot com bubble in 1999 actually, it's 20 years later and the internet is finally somewhat useful and intergrated into our lives. Originally it was just a bubble inflated with ad revenue inflated with investor money

Yeah, but the web was instantly useful for a huge array of legitimate uses. It was never a solution in search of a problem. In 1999 the tech wasn't there but everyone could see where it was going, like all investments, it was a matter of timing. Crypto is still at the fundamental research phase and we don't even have consensus that it does more good than bad, yet.

It does good when your bank accounts get shut down, as happened to Wikileaks for example.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#675

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

oblio wrote: post #512
kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to some workshops when Ethereum was developed (sadly I decided against investing in the ICO because some aspects didn't convince me or I didn't understand them well enough). Even back then the discussion was that they were trying to do too much and it would be difficult to make it work reliably. Bitcoin deliberately chose a more conservative approach. Bitcoin also actually has a scripting language and allows f…

Domains where the basics are still being actively researched should never be part of the backbone of human society, though. Maybe they'll find solutions. Cool, let them put those solutions in practice in 2040 when all the bugs have been worked out.

Bitcoin has been working pretty well for years now.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#676

Post by root_axis »

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.

How is it at all the same? The banking system is not immutable, the chargeback for example is available to all the "plebs" and we make regular use of it when transactions go awry.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#677

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

lottin wrote: post #460
oblio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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'…

The financial system cannot run on blockchain technology, even if the technology worked well. This is because "decentralisation" requires blockchain assets to be "unconfiscable", but financing is only feasible if the assets are "confiscable" (otherwise the borrower can walk away with the money and suffer no consequences).

That doesn't seem to make sense. Don't people usually borrow money to spend it (for example to buy a house or finance their startup)? So in most cases the borrowed money is also gone and at most you can confiscate the collateral (for example the house). That is still possible with crypto.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#678

Post by asdfasgasdgasdg »

SilasX wrote: post #664
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #649

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bank transactions are mutable/reversible by design and by law. It's quite the opposite from banks.

Really? Access to the legal system doesn’t vary based on how pleb you are?

Normally you do not have to actually directly interact with the legal system to reverse a fraudulent bank transaction. The banks have internal policies to comply with the legal system, because the other outcome is more expensive for them.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#679

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

telxosser wrote: post #549
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...

It seems to me the philosophical mistake is that banking and financial system regulations came about randomly. As if these are just unintended software bugs. As if there was no reason for the regulations. So all this complexity to get around regulations but you are going to run into the reasons this regulation came about at some scale.

I'm not convinced the government regulations around finance are a net win. Might often just be wishful thinking by politicians, just decree things have to be in some specific way, rather than tackling the root causes for issues.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#680

Post by vmception »

greenSunglass wrote: post #350

why would you want to "wrap" Ethereum?

the native asset of the virtual machine lacks the expanded primitives that people are accustomed in the other assets they've created

wrapping it lets it inherit those primitives for use in other programs more easily

many programs handle the wrapping and unwrapping just-in-time behind the scenes, using a chained method call to the same contract OP used

Its pretty hard to mess up, but OP managed to

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