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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?

#771

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This is what stresses me out the most about crypto. The supposed gold standard is a hardware wallet and access is done via 12-word recovery phrase but even that is sketchy. If I'm not wrong all an attack has to do is get recovery phrase and load it into another hardware wallet if they don't have mine, this is functionality is there if the hardware wallet fails. If I've been doxxed and have several mil in crypto, thie…

Don't keep your backup fully available at your house for this reason. Figure out we way to split it up and distribute it, but with redundancy.

So like split the seed phrase into part A and B, make 3 copies of each. Rent 6 safety deposit boxes around the world for each copy of A and B?

Impractical for most but I supposed if you are protecting several million, it's worth the security.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#772
post #184

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from the reddit comments, similar question, apparently every instruction adds gas fees to running the contract, so if you're going to use the contract a lot, you leave out any kind of validation. >> Wow why didn't the contract creators think this through and block requests to the contract > Because adding that check would increase the cost of every user transaction. All AMM swaps would be done with WETH so it’s the r…

There are, of course, other industries with financial incentives against safety features. We usually regulate them. We can point and laugh at this one person, but according to the reddit thread they're the 265th person to make this mistake, and more than half of the money in the inaccessible account is not theirs.

I hadn't even thought about this. With BTC early on, the only party to really benefit from lost coins would be "Satoshi", but his coins weren't worth anything until the currency took off anyway, so it was more important and long-term profitable to build a system that didn't lead to user anger than one that would lose coins to deflate what was already a deflationary currency. It really does show how slimy the whole cryptocurrency world has become.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#773
post #697

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In decentralised finance the legal system, which in conventional finance has the power to seize the borrower's assets in the event of default, is replaced with "dumb contracts", but dumb contracts don't have such a power. Financing is basically impossible with decentralised finance.

Just because finance is decentralized doesn't mean the law doesn't still apply. I don't know where you get that idea from. Also not sure what you mean by "dumb contracts" - crypto contracts can contain code on top of text, whereas traditional contracts can only contain text. So obviously the crypto contracts are strictly superior.

The counter-party to both the borrower and the lender is a dumb contract. A dumb contract is not a legal person, and therefore it cannot initiate legal action, nor legal action can be initiated against it. Furthermore, there's no legal agreement between the dumb contract and its counter-parties, since, again, a dumb contract doesn't have a legal personality which is required to enter into legally-binding agreements.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#774
post #763

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It’s fairly easy to derive the keys yourself, don’t expect any single piece of software going dead would cause a problem. https://github.com/nilcons/crypto-key-derivation Crypto currencies will be worth jack shit in 10 years in all likelihood though..

You have a different definition of easy than I do! You have to figure out which of those your client was using at the time, and then how to convert it into a currently functional client’s private key format. Most people need to hire a specialist to figure that out.

There are standards for seed phrase generation and the big providers mostly use the same one called BIP-39 I think. That's why they advise writing the standard and wallet and some other info down with the seed phrase, a layperson likely won't

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#775

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> can the code be corrected though A defining feature of "smart contracts" is that the code is immutable once deployed, and can never be upgraded or bug-fixed.

There are actually some approaches that makes smart contracts "upgradeable" but it involves using a special base class that proxies everything through delegate calls. But yeah you're definitely right about the nature of the contracts being immutable, unless that immutable code contains some setter that delegates the function calls to some other contract. ERC-721 (NFTs) actually has a nice way of dealing with sending…

Doesn't the WETH smart contract store all the tokens it receives at its address? Doesn't anyone have the private key of that address?

It's been quite a long time since I have been playing with smart contracts and I don't actually remember what happens when a smart contract is created.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#776
post #698

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That's a super niche application, not a mass market use. And yes, I know about the supposed use for people in countries with unstable regimes but I'm not convinced at the moment. Plus that use case, being that of people generally having low disposable incomes (barring China) absolutely doesn't justify the market value of crypto at the moment.

Inflation hits the masses, or in general money supply manipulation schemes. In the last few weeks, markets tanked just because the FEDs announced they plan to increase interest rates. Is that really how we want to go on?

Cryptocurrencies are only used for speculation.

That's your best argument against regular currencies? That they're being manipulated, too? :-)

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#777
post #729

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If you wire money to a Nigerian prince, it's gone too. Doesn't mean a bank is not a safe place where to put your money.

Interesting how your example has just completely changed. But also, wiring money is a thing that laypeople almost never do. It’s nerve wracking to wire money. But the equivalent in cryptocurrency is just how it’s done. Every transaction is just a fuckup with no recourse waiting to happen.

What's so interesting? I already told you this wasn't a simple missclick. No need to reiterate.

You can dump money into a pit just as easy with the classic banking system. Where I live (EU), wiring money is the primary way of payments and money transfers. People don't use anything else.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#778
post #618

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And yet, disputing charges via your bank and issuing chargebacks via VISA/Mastercard are things that definitely exist and work perfectly fine. And as long as there is no equivalent function in crypto, it won't be suitable as a currency for general use. And no amount of mocking faux laughter will change that.

Crypto works like cash. If you lose cash, there is no one to dispute charges and issue chargeback. BTW I never had success trying to chargeback VISA for services that were not delivered. Scammers do it without problem though.

Cash transactions are done locally when you can typically inspect the object of the transaction before paying. That's why there is not the same need for these kinds of protection.

Crypto combines the worst properties of cash and wire payment into a package that has no customer protection and is almost tailor made for scammers.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#779
post #750

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Those are all things you can try, though. In crypto, again, the money just instantly disappears.

You could still appeal to the developers, it has been done successfully in the past.

Once.
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