What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox • Hacker News Board

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#11

Post by tomphoolery » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

efuquen wrote: post #8

nwh wrote: post #4

> But elliptic curve crypto is not one of these topics. If the code can generate a handful of Bitcoin account numbers and corresponding keys correctly, there is hardly any reason why it cannot do so for all account numbers and corresponding keys. Not totally true, not every input can yield a valid private key. The very upper ranges of the private key space are limited, as only integers 0x0 through 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…

It's funny how you took that last line completely out of context, the author was clearly tongue-in-cheek with that statement, here is the what comes immediately after that sentence: > The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

Bitcoin is an experiment, it's not meant to be a new investment product. It should be very clear to anyone involved that this is a volatile atmosphere and anything can happen. After all, it's really just a bunch of geeks with a website. There is no liability here.

That said, I do think the author was a bit naive about the Dogecoin reference. Weren't they implicated in some kind of fraud as well? Seems as though that is the primary reason why no one would store their life savings in Dogecoin.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#12

Post by ama729 » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:34 PM UTC

> The community has designated a Nobel leaurate as its nemesis, solely because he asked some inevitable questions every thinking person in his profession ought to ask.

Does someone know who he's referring to?

Edit: Thanks!

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#13

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:35 PM UTC

efuquen wrote: post #8

nwh wrote: post #4

> But elliptic curve crypto is not one of these topics. If the code can generate a handful of Bitcoin account numbers and corresponding keys correctly, there is hardly any reason why it cannot do so for all account numbers and corresponding keys. Not totally true, not every input can yield a valid private key. The very upper ranges of the private key space are limited, as only integers 0x0 through 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…

It's funny how you took that last line completely out of context, the author was clearly tongue-in-cheek with that statement, here is the what comes immediately after that sentence: > The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

[deleted]

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#14

Post by axanoeychron » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:36 PM UTC

drakaal wrote: post #7

Author put a lot of thought and work in to telling a great story, but... Would be better if it weren't built on speculation, and limited by the things the author clearly doesn't understand about crypto. Articles like this hurt the Crypto Currency movement because the things they get wrong about what did or didn't happen are speculation that just fuels fires of mistrust for what could happen. And the thing touted as s…

This argument is weak and your tone is dismissive. I think you're ascribing too much intent based on your own biases.

You can't just say 'someone doesn't understand' crypto and not explain why. It reeks of an appeal to an authority and is not conducive to discussion.

The Dogecoin mentioned at the end was a joke.

It's also disingenuous to accuse someone of trying to inflate the price (without evidence) and to say that someone is 'hurting the cryptocurrency movement'. You accuse someone of speculating and and that fuels mistrust and yet oblivious to yourself doing it.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#15

Post by nwh » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #9

I think that his points against transaction malleability are invalid: - technical one - Bitcoin clients have a 100 ms delay before they relay messages. An attacker can compile a modified client that doesn't have these limitations and successfully outrun the rest. It was shown once that an attacker managed to successfully modify most of Bitcoin transactions on the network for some time in February - social one - IIRC…

Definitely agree on both points, though I'm not convinced malleability has anything to do with their current troubles. They might have lost a few Bitcoin with that trick but it's nothing against half a billion dollars.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#16

Post by jljljl » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:41 PM UTC

ama729 wrote: post #12

> The community has designated a Nobel leaurate as its nemesis, solely because he asked some inevitable questions every thinking person in his profession ought to ask. Does someone know who he's referring to? Edit: Thanks!

I'm guessing it's Paul Krugman. He wrote a few posts questioning the value and viability of bitcoin, and was mocked for it on a number of bitcoin forums.

Krugman post: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/12/28/bitcoin-i...

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#17

Post by blatherard » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:44 PM UTC

ama729 wrote: post #12

> The community has designated a Nobel leaurate as its nemesis, solely because he asked some inevitable questions every thinking person in his profession ought to ask. Does someone know who he's referring to? Edit: Thanks!

Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics, has been very critical of Bitcoin. See, e.g. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#18

Post by nwh » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:47 PM UTC

efuquen wrote: post #8

nwh wrote: post #4

> But elliptic curve crypto is not one of these topics. If the code can generate a handful of Bitcoin account numbers and corresponding keys correctly, there is hardly any reason why it cannot do so for all account numbers and corresponding keys. Not totally true, not every input can yield a valid private key. The very upper ranges of the private key space are limited, as only integers 0x0 through 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF…

It's funny how you took that last line completely out of context, the author was clearly tongue-in-cheek with that statement, here is the what comes immediately after that sentence: > The community does not take itself seriously. Most importantly, no one pretends that Doge is an investment vehicle, a slayer of Wall Street, or the next Segway. No one would be stupid enough to store their life savings in Dogecoins.

Eh, I hear that a lot but it's fairly far from the reality. It's a two faced presentation from that community, when the price of dogecoin goes up they get behind "doge to the moon", if the price goes down it's "all for fun". To pay for the amount of mining that is going on in altcoins, people must be treating it as an investment vehicle, otherwise miners wouldn't be pulling upwards of 400BTC[0] a day out of the retched things.

[0]: Based on Middlecoin.com's performance a few weeks ago, before their hashrate dropped, they were pulling a clean 400BTC from dogecoin and friends (and this is only one single pool!). For them to be pulling 400BTC a day there must be considerably more volume going into the altcoin markets beforehand. No doubt "investors" getting in on the "next big coin" and losing out.

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#19

Post by drakaal » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:57 PM UTC

axanoeychron wrote: post #14

drakaal wrote: post #7

Author put a lot of thought and work in to telling a great story, but... Would be better if it weren't built on speculation, and limited by the things the author clearly doesn't understand about crypto. Articles like this hurt the Crypto Currency movement because the things they get wrong about what did or didn't happen are speculation that just fuels fires of mistrust for what could happen. And the thing touted as s…

This argument is weak and your tone is dismissive. I think you're ascribing too much intent based on your own biases. You can't just say 'someone doesn't understand' crypto and not explain why. It reeks of an appeal to an authority and is not conducive to discussion. The Dogecoin mentioned at the end was a joke. It's also disingenuous to accuse someone of trying to inflate the price (without evidence) and to say that…

Enough other people pointed to flaws in the explanations that I didn't feel the need to beat a dead horse about those things.

The whole article was a joke. The stuff about Dogecoin seems less a joke than the rest of the article.

It is clear the author owns Bitcoins or Dogecoins or both. I can't prove this, but I'll bet 1 cryptocoin of my choosing on it.

I don't currently own any Cryptocoins. I sold just shy of $950 after the first fall from $1000 to nearly $550. I bought 10 at $650-ish. It was a good deal, I did not make any comments about BTC while I held with out disclosing my investment in the currency. (I have some journalistic ethics)

Re: What Did Not Happen At Mt. Gox

#20

Post by kordless » Sun, Mar 02, 2014, 5:58 PM UTC

M4v3R wrote: post #9

I think that his points against transaction malleability are invalid: - technical one - Bitcoin clients have a 100 ms delay before they relay messages. An attacker can compile a modified client that doesn't have these limitations and successfully outrun the rest. It was shown once that an attacker managed to successfully modify most of Bitcoin transactions on the network for some time in February - social one - IIRC…

Agreed. It's known that Mt. Gox was auto-retrying sends after the txids didn't match.

FWIW, I submitted the 'what most likely happened' post last night: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7328219. It's a bit shorter and seems less speculative.