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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?

#781
post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for that link, I see it was posted to hn, but gained little traction. It certainly puts words to my feelings around current "crypto" trends as someone (probably like moxie) that still remember the first wave of cypherpunks[1] and dreams of digital currencies. It feels strange when a lot of smart people insists on something that's obviously false in a practical, real-world sense - and it's nice to see someon…

3392pts and 1129comments is "little traction"?? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29845208

Eh, no. Thank you for that. But that's not what I found when I searched.. Strange. I found this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29860946

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#782
post #621

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real solution is better client software. Doing these checks on the client-side is free, that's where they should live. It would be stupid to put these checks in the contract, they would be very expensive and only help people using unsuitable client software.

"It would be stupid to put these checks in the contract, they would be very expensive and only help people using unsuitable client software. " You feel all client software will be suitable? I don't. There is NO WAY. Lots of people will do ANYTHING for a bit of margin, hoping for volume.

>You feel all client software will be suitable?

Of course not. There will be more advanced software for expert users that allows them to manually create potentially riskier transactions. That's perfectly fine.

Client software targeting end-users should have such checks.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#783
post #608

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Again NASA would disagree. Yeah, because NASA has been utterly fucked by the congress. Because of politics it's better for NASA to spend 5x the money on 1 reliable spacecraft than to build 5 slightly less reliable spacecraft out of which only 1 fails. Even if the economics of it don't make sense, NASA can't afford to be seen failing because because politicians will not want to fund them. I guess my point is that NAS…

Sidebar: How come such a check is so damn expensive? It should not be.

I agree with you big time. This is hopefully something we'll see addressed by smart contract platforms in the coming years or decades.

Clearly Ethereum is far from a ready product, but I think we can expect to see massive improvements when proof of stake goes live this year.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#785
post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you dont know what you are doing you should never interact with a smart contract directly. People like the guy who lost 500k should be using the frontends which interact with the contracts properly. https://wrapeth.com/

it's like telling someone never to deal with physical cash or dollar bills, only use credit cards.

no its like telling someone to not craft their own payload and call the api directly. Use the front end which handles that for you.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#786

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.

A service...like...a bank ?!?

Sure, if it is important to you? But I think there are also smart contracts/escrow services that require you to do additional things besides pushing "send".

The classic is for a trade, and the receiver has to confirm they received the stuff before the money is released.

Afaik "traditional" companies like ebay also struggle with that kind of thing.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#787
post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the service, but I would think (ianal) if somebody publishes a smart contract and says "you can buy my house via this smart contract", then that person is the counter party, not the smart contract.

Of course you can burn your crypto and send it so some random contract. You can also take traditional money, go to the woods and burn it.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#788
post #776

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? :-)

Bitcoin is not being manipulated. You may be confusing it with Bitcoin markets and Bitcoin trading. Nobody can conjure Bitcoin out of thin air or manipulate interest rates on it.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#789
post #773

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Depends on the service, but I would think (ianal) if somebody publishes a smart contract and says "you can buy my house via this smart contract", then that person is the counter party, not the smart contract. Of course you can burn your crypto and send it so some random contract. You can also take traditional money, go to the woods and burn it.

If the borrower and the lender sign a loan agreement with an intermediary, or among themselves, then sure, but this is conventional finance, not decentralised finance. In this situation the dumb contract becomes redundant. It doesn't do anything.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#790

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are allowed to login as root and delete their systems too. Yes, today's software doesn't make it easy - and the same can be said about this wallet/token; this was a complex sequence of steps in the wrong direction, not a missclick.

And a lot of ink is spilled about systems to make this very difficult, with people continuing to work to improve things. We didn't simply say "well, just don't type those characters" and move on with our lives.

Exactly like in this crypto case.
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