Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Escaping the Dark Forest

samczsun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 142 posts

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#131

Post by BTCOG »

microtherion wrote: post #41
nullc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The word you want here is "ethereum" not "crypto". Crypto is cryptography, and even if you want to redefine it as 'cryptocurrency' the sheer reckless yolo incompetence and scammyness of ethereum is not especially representative.

What IS a "representative" cryptocurrency, then, if the #2 by market cap is not representative? Would it be Bitcoin, used for such time-honored business as drug purchases and hiring contract killers? Would it be Tether, the fiat currency for people who think that central banks are excessively transparent? The one extra element that Ethereum brings to the table is computationally much more powerful contracts, which ma…

Perpetuating myth and propaganda that even the US government doesn't say about Bitcoin, I see.

Did you pay attention to the recent Bloomberg article about cryptocurrencies being the best gaining asset class of 2020, or the article about the $2 trillion dollars worth of laundered money being done using traditional USD and banks? And how much money was laundered through Bitcoin again? A money that is very hard to hide. Bitcoin has smart contracting so it would appear you're just regurgitating things you've read rather than reaching into an in-dept knowledge on this subject.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#132

Post by SilasX »

3np wrote: post #129
askmike wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> (which would be like, the regulators responsible for the computer) no one is responsible, that's the whole point. The thing runs by itself and game theory keeps it afloat - not a group of people. Else it's just like a company. That said, the protocol isn't finished and you have people involved in maintaining and upgrading the protocol. Which is in no way forced down upon everyone: once they have an update everyone…

To expand: The decision-making and communities of Ethereum (this goes both for the clients, the blockchain, the foundation and the larger community) looks completely different today compared to 2015. There has been a lot of lessons learnt, debate and churn since. If they same thing happened today, it'd play out completely differently. See the Parity Multisig hack, for one. Finally, it's a stretch to call the dao hack…

>Finally, it's a stretch to call the dao hack "arbitrage trade".

It is absolutely not. It is exactly the same from the value judgments of the ETH project, specifically "Code is Law". The DAO specifically went as far as endorsing that the software execution takes precedence over the reading of the English functionality spec.

The ETH system, but the core values of ETH, should do exactly what your arb contract specifies, and exactly what the DAO contracts specify, even and especially if that's not what the writer originally intended. To selectively reneg on that principle would be wrong for the same reason as doing it on an arb contract.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#133

Post by SilasX »

askmike wrote: post #117
SilasX wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfair enough that you can articulate why?

> (which would be like, the regulators responsible for the computer) no one is responsible, that's the whole point. The thing runs by itself and game theory keeps it afloat - not a group of people. Else it's just like a company. That said, the protocol isn't finished and you have people involved in maintaining and upgrading the protocol. Which is in no way forced down upon everyone: once they have an update everyone…

Bottom line: The core ETH team used their political influence to escape the consequences of "Code is Law", the very same criticism they made of existing legal systems -- that outside parties can come along and void the plain meaning of contracts and laws. That is the height of hypocrisy.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#134

Post by microtherion »

BTCOG wrote: post #131
microtherion wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What IS a "representative" cryptocurrency, then, if the #2 by market cap is not representative? Would it be Bitcoin, used for such time-honored business as drug purchases and hiring contract killers? Would it be Tether, the fiat currency for people who think that central banks are excessively transparent? The one extra element that Ethereum brings to the table is computationally much more powerful contracts, which ma…

Perpetuating myth and propaganda that even the US government doesn't say about Bitcoin, I see. Did you pay attention to the recent Bloomberg article about cryptocurrencies being the best gaining asset class of 2020, or the article about the $2 trillion dollars worth of laundered money being done using traditional USD and banks? And how much money was laundered through Bitcoin again? A money that is very hard to hide.…

> cryptocurrencies being the best gaining asset class of 2020

And tulips were the best gaining asset class of 1636. The existence of speculation is not proof of the soundness of the underlying asset.

> trillion dollars worth of laundered money being done using traditional USD

The difference being that I have firsthand knowledge of honest economic activity being conducted with USD. I see practically zero evidence of cryptocurrencies being used in any honest economic activity, other than speculation.

> Bitcoin has smart contracting

Yes, but my understanding is that Ethereum can handle much more complex contracts.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#135

Post by strogonoff »

vvpan wrote: post #122
strogonoff wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Handout instead of profit, few thousand instead of half a million USD value—we are moving into a more realistic territory.

I have no reason to believe that the commenter misrepresented anything. It is entirely plausible. If their friend was a liquidity provider then the value of friend's airdropped tokens would have been much greater than mine.

Being a liquidity provider is not free so we’re back to some guy claiming “my friend made half a million! rewards are vast for the brave!” and the question “but on what investment?”

I believe it’s more than fair to request specifics since we can’t know whether poster’s solvency depends on a token appreciating in value—after all, if it does, what’s a better way to maintain token value than promise millions on a public forum?

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#136

Post by strogonoff »

vvpan wrote: post #120
gambiting wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand - where is that money coming from? You said you suddenly and unexpectedly got a few thousand USD - that sounds to me like someone on the other end, somewhere, just got scammed out of few thousand USD? It can't be just investor money being randomly deposited into accounts "for the lulz"?

Nobody got scammed. It's pretty much like an IPO. The project distributed tokens, not dollars. Coinbase and a few other exchanges listed them and trading started with the tokens fetching a certain price. I sold some on Coinbase, got money - that's it. The token is a "governance token" and I, personally, don't see much value in it but I do not follow this too closely. In theory the token gives the holder a future say…

> Nobody got scammed.

Not directly, but to a hypothetical criminal with millions of USD in illegally obtained currency investing into tokens, hyping said tokens (including, of course, giveaways) and then selling tokens on a peak could look quite compelling. I presume typically laundering loses money, but in this case it could even be possible to make a profit.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#137

Post by smnplk »

seibelj wrote: post #84
rsync wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"In total, I did this with about 40 different farms. There was a time when there were several new ones every day. For a while it was pretty much a 24/7 job as maximizing apy required constantly jumping to some new hype." There is a line from a movie ... "Short everything that guy has touched"

My friend made over $500k from the Uniswap airdrop, he woke up on Thursday and realized he had another half million dollars. He sold it all immediately for stablecoins, and actually missed out on another $750k if he had waited a few hours and sold at the UNI peak. So yes, it is crazy and complex and difficult, but the rewards are vast for those that dare enter the world.

What is so complex about being lucky and receiving an airdrop on multiple addresses ? Some guys are just born lucky...

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#138

Post by 3np »

SilasX wrote: post #132
3np wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand: The decision-making and communities of Ethereum (this goes both for the clients, the blockchain, the foundation and the larger community) looks completely different today compared to 2015. There has been a lot of lessons learnt, debate and churn since. If they same thing happened today, it'd play out completely differently. See the Parity Multisig hack, for one. Finally, it's a stretch to call the dao hack…

>Finally, it's a stretch to call the dao hack "arbitrage trade". It is absolutely not. It is exactly the same from the value judgments of the ETH project, specifically "Code is Law". The DAO specifically went as far as endorsing that the software execution takes precedence over the reading of the English functionality spec. The ETH system, but the core values of ETH, should do exactly what your arb contract specifies…

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/arbitrage

> the simultaneous purchase and sale of the same securities, commodities, or foreign exchange in different markets to profit from unequal prices.

What’s being bought and sold? Who’s the counterparty?

I’m not arguing right and wrong, just that you can’t call any permissionless extraction of value from a contract “arbitrage trade”.

And again, incorrectly assuming that 1) it somehow sets a precedent 2) the people making the decision then are the same that would be making it today 3) the overlapping people would make the same decision today as then 4) the EF and core devs have a strong authority on these matters

There’s always ETC if you want to stay on the timeline where the DAO hack executed as specified without being overridden. No one forced anyone to fork.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#139

Post by brmgb »

Octopodes wrote: post #127
gambiting wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just don't understand the entire article - who is this guy? What is he doing? Why is he doing it? What are the dozens of different acronyms in this article and what do they mean? Who owns the 9.6M dollars and where was it at the risk of going? Maybe this is a good article for someone deep into crypto, but for myself, as a casual morning read - I have no idea what happened.

Honestly I just read through it like it was a cyberpunk short story. His heart is pounding as he collaborates with super-hackers all over the world in an effort to rescue some desperate person's millions. All of the jargon was totally lost on me but gave it a certain flavor.

My personal take on it is that between the anime avatar, the constant verbiage, the hero complex and the relectance to properly document things, it feels more like kids playing at finance than actual professional.

Re: Escaping the Dark Forest

#140

Post by ben_w »

seibelj wrote: post #107
pavlov wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s probably the argument that the Wolf of Wall Street used to defend his boiler room schemes. “The penny stock company issued 100M new shares for free, no one lost anything, we sold them to people who had a coincidence of wants.”

All markets have losers - another trope from the uninformed left. Markets allow people to satisfy their needs in a voluntary way.

Only with perfect information, and even then markets are NP-complete.

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1002.2284.pdf

Post reply on HN