Live data from Hacker News

Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

wired.com

141–150 of 196 posts

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that makes any sense whatsoever.

Not if you're the sort of person who dismisses it out of hand, no. In the context of understanding that Bitcoin is the best performing asset over its admittedly small lifetime, then it just sorta kinda might just start the process of making sense to unthaw a little. This justification is only valid for certain time-scales however, and once you get into a discussion of that it can easily degenerate into cherry-picking…

> FYI he's not gambling the bitcoin, he's holding onto it

This is the type of cultish speak that makes it insufferable to listen to your sermons.

Yes, he is "holding onto" his Bitcoin. But based on the interview it represents something like >90% of his net wealth. Putting >90% of your net wealth onto an extremely volatile asset like Bitcoin can fairly be called "gambling". Some gambles have positive expected values and some gambles have negative expected values, but taking risks of such level should be called "gambling".

There is very little meaningful distinction between "holding onto" Bitcoin and "buying" Bitcoin. The fact that he already owns the Bitcoin doesn't make it any less gamble-y.

> At the "end" he will still have the same number of Bitcoin.

Nobody here claimed otherwise. You're attacking some kind of weird strawman argument.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of bitcoin use is legal. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29396/w293... > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume. Sure there's the odd dumb criminal who doesn't understand the prosecutorial implications of an immutable public ledger. But it pales in comparison, according to the actual data.

I love how you quote that, but not other lines like: "We first document that 90% of transaction volume on the Bitcoin blockchain is not tied to economically meaningful activities". How much of the actually meaningful use is legal? E.g. buying good and services, not evading laws, regulations, sales taxes etc.

Moving the goalposts. GP was only talking about illegal activity. But since you brought it up -

Global GDP is $101T. Global yearly forex volume is $2738T. So by this logic you should conclude that 96% of transaction volume in the traditional financial system is also not tied to economically meaningful activities. You're going to be disappointed if you want to believe society as a whole is any less financialized than bitcoin.

What do you think would be an acceptable percentage of speculation?

https://www.compareforexbrokers.com/forex-trading/statistics...

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The vast majority of bitcoin use is legal. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w29396/w293... > For example, illegal transactions, scams and gambling together make up less than 3% of volume. Sure there's the odd dumb criminal who doesn't understand the prosecutorial implications of an immutable public ledger. But it pales in comparison, according to the actual data.

Yes, because most of the transfers happening are speculative investment trades, arbitrage, etc. People moving money around, without paying for anything. That source says, when it comes to the demand in terms of spending crypto for goods or services: > 46% of transactions are due to illegal transactions

The 46% is a quote from an obsoleted paper, and it then goes on to explain why their methodology was flawed.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#145
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time . If I had a nickel for every system I broke with a time based prng, I’d have like 10 bucks by now.

What's the most random and wildly known way, apart from time based, to pick a seed value then?

From a developers point of view- if you are given an option to provide a seed value, you’re using the wrong api. Libraries exist to provide cryptographically appropriate rngs in every major programming language- use those instead.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#146
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time . If I had a nickel for every system I broke with a time based prng, I’d have like 10 bucks by now.

What's the most random and wildly known way, apart from time based, to pick a seed value then?

Combine the time with some other incremental hard-to-predict inputs.

Start with the time, in the milliseconds (not seconds, i.e. epoch time). Use that seed to create a random number. That random number is now your master_seed.

Once every 10 seconds, measure the temperature of the CPU, and every other temperature sensor in the system, and put that into a new random seed. Create a random number using this seed. XOR it with the mast_seed and store it as the new masted_seed.

Every time someone moves a mouse, use the timestamp and the pixel offset to update the master_seed similarly as above.

Every time a packet comes into the ethernet interface, use the timestamp and a hash of the packet contents, and update the random seed.

XOR the contents of the video buffer.

Track the timing of keyboard clicks.

There are lots of sources of entropy that you can use to make the seed effectively unguessable.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#147
post #5

The original video by Joe Grand: https://youtu.be/o5IySpAkThg

Yikes. Terrible video that showcases what's wrong with modern youtube and anti-informative entertainment videos. It could have been a three paragraph blog. I had to stop watching because of all the cringy tweenertainment funny faces and jerky body movements and hands waving all over the place.

"what if I told you, we could hack time."

me: closes YouTube.

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not if you're the sort of person who dismisses it out of hand, no. In the context of understanding that Bitcoin is the best performing asset over its admittedly small lifetime, then it just sorta kinda might just start the process of making sense to unthaw a little. This justification is only valid for certain time-scales however, and once you get into a discussion of that it can easily degenerate into cherry-picking…

> FYI he's not gambling the bitcoin, he's holding onto it This is the type of cultish speak that makes it insufferable to listen to your sermons. Yes, he is "holding onto" his Bitcoin. But based on the interview it represents something like >90% of his net wealth. Putting >90% of your net wealth onto an extremely volatile asset like Bitcoin can fairly be called "gambling". Some gambles have positive expected values a…

Its not risky if you understand it. If you don’t…then it is gambling

Re: Researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

#150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> FYI he's not gambling the bitcoin, he's holding onto it This is the type of cultish speak that makes it insufferable to listen to your sermons. Yes, he is "holding onto" his Bitcoin. But based on the interview it represents something like >90% of his net wealth. Putting >90% of your net wealth onto an extremely volatile asset like Bitcoin can fairly be called "gambling". Some gambles have positive expected values a…

Its not risky if you understand it. If you don’t…then it is gambling

[deleted]
Post reply on HN