Given how many of these exchanges have been hacked (or were fraudulent), how is it that people still use them?
Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
61–70 of 381 posts
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genius behind crypto is that it's not just the extremely gullible. I know a fair number of really smart people, academics even, that have bought into the cryptocurrency hype. It has this kind of veil of "high techness" to it that is appealing to smart-but-uninformed people (like me in 2021). I'm embarrassed that I fell for it, but on the bright side it does make me a bit more sympathetic for other people who also…
To be honest, a distributed logic execution engine is an interesting tech, it just isn't something to build any high value economy on top of.
Sure, I'll totally acknowledge that some of the distributed algorithms that have spun out of the blockchain are pretty cool, and I'll even go as far as to say that maybe someday we'll find some very cool high-value uses from them.
Pretend money, at least in my opinion, is not one of those uses.
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the gullibility here?
Thinking you can store your crypto with some 3rd party that _definitely_ won't get hacked (or """hacked"""), also thinking your crypto won't become worthless from a singular unusual event. Actually the most gullible are the people who think of cryptocurrency as an "investment" XD
It’s an investment the same way that playing the lottery is. I had a family member win ~$30MM back in the 80s, but he had played the same numbers for decades; someone who knew of this stole the winning tickets and he ended up only getting 7.5MM of the winnings after a protracted court case.
Crypto is the same thing. You put money in and you may cash out quickly with a big number, but someone who knows can swoop in and steal your money in a way that is much easier than if you used more traditional investment and banking vehicles.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#64Earlier quoted context omitted.
To be honest, a distributed logic execution engine is an interesting tech, it just isn't something to build any high value economy on top of.
Sure, I'll totally acknowledge that some of the distributed algorithms that have spun out of the blockchain are pretty cool, and I'll even go as far as to say that maybe someday we'll find some very cool high-value uses from them. Pretend money, at least in my opinion, is not one of those uses.
It’s been about 15 years now. The killer app for blockchain is Bitcoin.
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#65It's obviously not a cold wallet if it's connected to the exchange.
Cold usually means it needs multiple physical people to sign from offline devices to move it. Hot wallet usually is automated. Here it looks like the «hackers» found a way to trick enough people to sign this transaction
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genius behind crypto is that it's not just the extremely gullible. I know a fair number of really smart people, academics even, that have bought into the cryptocurrency hype. It has this kind of veil of "high techness" to it that is appealing to smart-but-uninformed people (like me in 2021). I'm embarrassed that I fell for it, but on the bright side it does make me a bit more sympathetic for other people who also…
> The genius behind crypto is that it's not just the extremely gullible. I don't know about you, but I barely follow cryptocurrency news, and I've still been hearing about major players getting "hacked" several times a year for over a decade. Either it's Mt Gox or FTX or The DAO or Bitfinex or QuadrigaCX or Terra/Luna or rug-pull meme coins or dollar-backed coins that actually aren't or any of a dozen other things. A…
Ironically I think being more educated might sabotage you more with cryptocurrency.
My parents, both smart people but neither of which know much about distributed systems or concurrent computing or cryptocurrency, see the news reports about Mt Gox or BitConnect and think "that sounds like a scam", avoid it, and put money into a Vanguard or something.
On the other hand, you have people like me (and probably a not-insignificant percentage of people on HN), who have learned a fair amount of distributed and concurrent programming, and see the "neatness" factor of cryptocurrency, and since the crypto is laundered through interesting tech, we fall for it.
I haven't touched any cryptocurrency since I fell for the unregistered security calling itself Gemini Earn [1] (so almost three years now), but I did think that stuff like Filecoin was pretty cool. Hell, I'll still acknowledge the coolness factor of stuff like Filecoin and Storj and Sia. I just think that the currency itself is wishful-thinking-at-best, and fraudulent at worst (probably somewhere in between).
I don't think I'm an especially gullible person, but no one thinks that they're gullible, so I'll acknowledge that I probably am, but I think a lot of the educated people who got into crypto got into it because they kind of had horse-blinders on when looking at the interesting tech.
[1] Not my opinion, but the SEC's for what it's worth: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-7
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, I'll totally acknowledge that some of the distributed algorithms that have spun out of the blockchain are pretty cool, and I'll even go as far as to say that maybe someday we'll find some very cool high-value uses from them. Pretend money, at least in my opinion, is not one of those uses.
It’s been about 15 years now. The killer app for blockchain is Bitcoin.
I don't know, I think some of the papers for distributed consensus might lead to something cool; if nothing else it does seem to be increasing the use of formal methods, which I think is neat.
These things can take time; it might be thirty years or more before someone does anything actually useful with the stuff learned from the crypto world.
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
The genius behind crypto is that it's not just the extremely gullible. I know a fair number of really smart people, academics even, that have bought into the cryptocurrency hype. It has this kind of veil of "high techness" to it that is appealing to smart-but-uninformed people (like me in 2021). I'm embarrassed that I fell for it, but on the bright side it does make me a bit more sympathetic for other people who also…
> The genius behind crypto is that it's not just the extremely gullible. I don't know about you, but I barely follow cryptocurrency news, and I've still been hearing about major players getting "hacked" several times a year for over a decade. Either it's Mt Gox or FTX or The DAO or Bitfinex or QuadrigaCX or Terra/Luna or rug-pull meme coins or dollar-backed coins that actually aren't or any of a dozen other things. A…
This essay scared me away from Ethereum, among other coins, for good:
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#69Bybit CEO Ben Zhou wrote on X that a hacker "took control of the specific ETH cold wallet and transferred all the ETH in the cold wallet to this unidentified address." "Control" has a specific meaning under UCC Article 12, which was ratified in 2022 and is slowly being adopted by U.S. states. It links some rights to control/possession of keys, even if a blockchain asset may have been stolen before being sold, https:/…
What is the purpose of this comment?
It is important everyone is thinking real hard about how this is different from traditional theft: there is no way to actually prove the operators didn't just steal everything themselves vs actual real hack theft.
Re: Bybit loses $1.5B in hack
#70Terrifying to imagine how much funding terrorist states might be getting by hacks like this.