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White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

cryptoadventure.com

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Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#131

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

birracerveza wrote: post #88
colesantiago wrote: post #49

This just proves how insecure the blockchain / web3 / cryptocurrency space is. It's good to see white hat hackers in this space trying to fix what is already broken. But sorry to be that person, just a timely reminder of the truth: All cryptocurrencies and 'DeFi projects' are ponzi scams including Orchid.

>But sorry to be that person, just a timely reminder of the truth: All cryptocurrencies and 'DeFi projects' are ponzi scams including Orchid. Seems like just an opinion to me, and a poorly opinionated one at that.

I think it's a bit pointless to argue about whether cryptocurrencies are Ponzi schemes or not.

What I would say is that most cryptocurrencies have no fundamental value, and are therefore bubbles. I don't know what the term is for when someone deliberately creates an asset bubble with the intention of profiting from it. It's something like a very long-form, deliberative pump-and-dump.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#132

Post by dahart »

heliodor wrote: post #54
saurik wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not expect to make any major expensive lifestyle changes as a result of having more money (and to the extent to which I have already been being paid better recently due to working on Orchid, I have only barely done so and usually only quite temporarily), which I realize disappoints some people who had wanted me to post a concrete picture of something expensive I purchase to help motivate others to reach for bug…

Please read this thread to see the pitfalls that might potentially lie ahead: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/24vo34/comment/c... It's about winning the lottery but still applicable to some extent, and shows how people's lives go horribly wrong.

Boy do we have the strangest hang ups over people getting lucky. Your link is mostly spinning an untrue story. It’s only a tiny collection of anecdotes, and it’s cherry picking and mostly not true.

This bankruptcy thing is a myth that seems to have been made up and won’t die. I’ve looked into this in the past and the only stats I could find that back it up are based on small winnings, not large winnings, contrary to your redditor’s claims, and the bankruptcy rates were temporary. Get this: the bankruptcy rates went down 2 years after winning between $50k-$150k, and then 3 years after that they returned back to normal. The returning back to normal from a low point was cherry-picked and reported widely as bankruptcy rates going up. Misleading, right? Here’s the Florida study this misinformation was based on: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~cle/laborlunch/hoekstra.pdf

The National Endowment for Financial Education has issued a press release about this bankruptcy misinformation: https://www.nefe.org/news/2018/01/research-statistic-on-fina...

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#133

Post by sillysaurusx »

jacquesm wrote: post #117
sillysaurusx wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People did in fact sell their children when faced with hard times, by the way. The 1920’s era was rough. https://www.ranker.com/list/story-behind-photo-of-children-f... You are asking what I would personally do. But it’s better to think of limit cases that everyone would do — such as lie to their wife for a billion dollars. Since it’s guaranteed you fall into the bucket of “everybody”, that means you can locate your…

You are still moving the goalposts. My statement is pretty simple: ethical people exist. You countered with "Everyone’s ethics have a price tag. It’s better not to pretend otherwise, since it clarifies a lot of human behavior." And have been moving the goalposts ever since. The fact that unethical people exist was never up for debate.

I had to scroll up and re-read to make sure we were on the same page.

Since you’re misquoting yourself, it sounds like you don’t want to have this debate, or you may not have realized what you said. But “The whole assumption that ethics have a price tag attached is faulty” is not at all the same thing as “ethical people exist.” It’s not a pedantic distinction; one is debating whether people will take compensation for acting unethically, even if they feel they’re the most ethical person on the planet — I think the answer is “yes” — whereas “ethical people exist” is a point no one could disagree with.

It’s a bit unexpected for you to omit your “price tag” words and then continue with my argument.

But we’re past the point that readers are having a nice time reading this. If you’d like to continue, I’m happy to do so, but we need to restrict ourselves to a high caliber of debate, if only for HN’s sake.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#134

Post by toolz »

phphphphp wrote: post #116
toolz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're poor and gambling, then you're making a stupid financial decision. So the odds of you being financially stupid seem likely to be high.

For most people, gambling isn't a financial decision, it's an entertainment decision. The value of thinking about winning (regardless of how unlikely it is) is worth the $1 cost of a lottery ticket, so labelling gambling a "stupid financial decision" is like labelling owning a TV while poor a "stupid financial decision"... but poor people deserve entertainment as much as rich people.

Gambling is not a human right, no one deserves to be able to waste resources they have no matter how much they may or may not enjoy it.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#135

Post by xeromal »

eli wrote: post #93
capableweb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure it's actually applicable. That Reddit comment is about poor people winning lots of money by chance, not smart people earning lots of money by working. The risks are very different, not to say that the scale between 2 million and 170 million is way bigger than you seem to think.

Poor people aren’t stupid

The poster you replied to didn't say stupid. He said money coming from work and money coming from gambling are going to have different outcomes.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#136

Post by alisonkisk »

saurik wrote: post #42
sillysaurusx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many lambos are you buying? More seriously, will you keep it in the bank and extract $100k a year the rest of your life? What are you going to do?

I do not expect to make any major expensive lifestyle changes as a result of having more money (and to the extent to which I have already been being paid better recently due to working on Orchid, I have only barely done so and usually only quite temporarily), which I realize disappoints some people who had wanted me to post a concrete picture of something expensive I purchase to help motivate others to reach for bug…

No post body was provided.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#137

Post by toolz »

odonnellryan wrote: post #126
toolz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're poor and gambling, then you're making a stupid financial decision. So the odds of you being financially stupid seem likely to be high.

No. People buy lottery tickets for a lot of reasons. It is a fun bit of escapism and entertainment that costs just a few dollars. You're making the assumption that everyone plays the lottery because they think it is a smart financial decision.

I don't assume nor do I have to assume anything about someones intent to know that gambling is stupid. Entertainment can be had in so many forms today that even the poorest of the poor in developed countries can have choice paralysis from having so many options. Gambling is a stupid waste of resources, if you enjoy doing stupid things I have no moral/ethical qualms with your choices, but it's still stupid.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#138

Post by hedora »

fortran77 wrote: post #68
sillysaurusx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many lambos are you buying? More seriously, will you keep it in the bank and extract $100k a year the rest of your life? What are you going to do?

He can buy half a house in Sunnyvale, California. (And after he pays his income tax, 1/3 or 1/4 of a house.) https://www.zillow.com/sunnyvale-ca-94087/luxury-homes/?sear...

Don't forget the property tax. Also, some of those are fix-er-uppers, and basic remodels are $100k's out here.

Edit: Don't want to sound too negative. This is a great windfall. Simply sticking it into an investment account should pull in financial independence/retirement by 5-20 years, depending on his age.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#139

Post by NovemberWhiskey »

__MatrixMan__ wrote: post #81
skizm wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Banks or stock exchanges would just revert any bad transactions like they do with most scams, thefts, or accidents. It is built into the current system by design.

They revert the money (if they like you), but usually if money flows one way, something else flows the other way, and they can't revert that half of the fraudulent transactions without great expenditure. Often it's not worth it and they just write it off and the whole economy bears the cost. I'm not saying it's a better or worse plan than whatever might happen under an alternative system, but just that it's not exact…

I think your premise is fundamentally wrong there. Say I buy something my credit card but it's never delivered. My bank will reverse that transaction - exactly because half of the transaction never occurred.

The way that the credit card system works in the US is fundamentally biased towards consumer protection, because that's an explicit policy objective. The same with the Direct Debit guarantee in the UK, or the various laws which limit the maximum exposure due to fraudulent use of payment cards.

And when exchanges break trades, they undo the entire transaction - you don't end up with one party out cash or shares.

Re: White hat hacker awarded $2M for fixing ETH-creation bug

#140

Post by alisonkisk »

csdvrx wrote: post #46
sillysaurusx wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So how many lambos are you buying? More seriously, will you keep it in the bank and extract $100k a year the rest of your life? What are you going to do?

Hopefully, he will just keep creating interesting things, or even maybe use that as a seed to make his next idea come true, so we can all benefit from his cool hacks! Yesterday I was reading "how to drop out", to me it seemed like a bad plan overall: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30318285 Some people want to learn to live on the cheap to drop out, or to fatFIRE (which is another way to do the same). Personally…

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