Live data from Hacker News

“Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

blog.confiant.com

151–160 of 228 posts

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because credit cards have consumer protection and laws and regulations. Crypto has none of that.

The crypto space is rediscovering the financial system from first principals. At least by the end they can hopefully appreciate that the original government controlled system actually works the way it does for a reason.

> At least by the end they can hopefully appreciate that the original government controlled system actually works the way it does for a reason.

"A religion cannot fail, it can only be failed"; I admire your optimism, but I expect that the true believers will not question whether the premise of cryptocurrencies is wrong, but rather will twist themselves in knots to find new scapegoats as to why it doesn't work the way they expected.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto space isn't rediscovering anything. Speculative investors and other noobs are discovering cryptocurrency for the first time.

All of these scams, crashes, and exploits are things that happens previously with regular currencies and have since been regulated away. Now crypto comes in with unregulated currency and runs in to every issue the regulations existed to prevent.

These scams, crashes, are exploits are non-issues to anyone with a reasonable degree of competence and skepticism. The solution is not to "fix" the system by removing user agency so that even an idiot can use it safely, but to educate users so that an idiot doesn't need to use cryptocurrency in the first place.

This criticism of cryptocurrency would be analogous to criticizing the concept of fiat currency by pointing to the inflation of the deutsche mark as an example. The cryptocurrencies being discussed here are real cryptocurrencies, they are bloated and useless shitcoins. Any credible project would not have all the bloated crap that enables the "exploits" mentioned in the article in the first place.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently building in the ability to inspect a transaction's effects before it is run directly into MetaMask. So... we'll alleviate some of the problem Soon (TM)

Problems that have been solved by regular banking decades ago. Jesus Christ the stupidity of crypto amazes me every day.

Crypto attracts a lot of statements like this and it's so ridiculous when you think about it because usually the statement applies so generally as to be virtually irrelevant. Almost every invention or new thing solves a problem that was solved already, and yet they often find success and may even become more popular than whichever way people were using to solve that problem before.

The tech community should be keenly aware of this because there are new apps, new languages, new libraries, new plugins, etc all the time, which solve a problem that was pretty much solved already.

You might counter that new things usually have to have some value proposition to gain a footing, like cheaper, faster, more reliable, etc. For one, that's not always true, but also crypto does have a value proposition like that. It's immutable, trustless, and can be anonymous. And it is even cheaper and faster than the regular banking system in some circumstances, depending on the sum being sent and where it goes.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these scams, crashes, and exploits are things that happens previously with regular currencies and have since been regulated away. Now crypto comes in with unregulated currency and runs in to every issue the regulations existed to prevent.

These scams, crashes, are exploits are non-issues to anyone with a reasonable degree of competence and skepticism. The solution is not to "fix" the system by removing user agency so that even an idiot can use it safely, but to educate users so that an idiot doesn't need to use cryptocurrency in the first place. This criticism of cryptocurrency would be analogous to criticizing the concept of fiat currency by pointing…

It's pretty well known that individuals _do_ need protections against this while institutional investors do not. When crypto gets on the news, regular, uninformed people go and dump their life savings in to it. No matter how much you tut tut and say they should have done their research, they will still do it. And preventing people from losing their life savings on scams is good for society in general.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#155
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right? It's a good thing our monetary system and financial instruments aren't complex, phew!

It's one thing to have complex payment instruments where innocent mistakes are reversible. Having them in a world where everything is permanent is another situation entirely.

Tell that to everyone who has had their identity stolen through no action of their own

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It turns out you're not the first person to realize that this is an issue. If you'd actually read up on cryptocurrency wallets before commenting, you might have found there are multiple solutions for this out already, including one of the most popular Ethereum wallets called Argent, which let's you set limits. Basically the fraud described is a twist on the classic "Musk giving away BTC" scam that's all over Youtube…

> If you'd actually read up on cryptocurrency wallets before commenting, you might have found there are multiple solutions for this out already, including one of the most popular Ethereum wallets called Argent, which let's you set limits. You're making a great example of the victim-blaming I mentioned in my comment: That anyone who is surprised by their money disappearing clearly just didn't do all of the right resea…

You ignored the part about how people are scammed using credit cards, cash, wires, etc. The problem isn't crypto - it's dishonest people developing scams to trick others into sending money. I'd bet that far more money is lost in scams using methods that don't depend on cryptocurrency rather than the ones that do. Just like with those other scams, education is a very important part of prevention.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These scams, crashes, are exploits are non-issues to anyone with a reasonable degree of competence and skepticism. The solution is not to "fix" the system by removing user agency so that even an idiot can use it safely, but to educate users so that an idiot doesn't need to use cryptocurrency in the first place. This criticism of cryptocurrency would be analogous to criticizing the concept of fiat currency by pointing…

It's pretty well known that individuals _do_ need protections against this while institutional investors do not. When crypto gets on the news, regular, uninformed people go and dump their life savings in to it. No matter how much you tut tut and say they should have done their research, they will still do it. And preventing people from losing their life savings on scams is good for society in general.

No. If you invest your money in something you do not understand, you deserve to lose it. I'm sorry you think that you need some authority to put their thumb on the scale and tell you what you can and can't do with your own money.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The crypto space is rediscovering the financial system from first principals. At least by the end they can hopefully appreciate that the original government controlled system actually works the way it does for a reason.

> At least by the end they can hopefully appreciate that the original government controlled system actually works the way it does for a reason. "A religion cannot fail, it can only be failed"; I admire your optimism, but I expect that the true believers will not question whether the premise of cryptocurrencies is wrong, but rather will twist themselves in knots to find new scapegoats as to why it doesn't work the way…

Huh? Cryptocurrencies operate just as expected, basically the same as they did ten years ago. Crypto never changed, the users did.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metamask presents a big red warning when it requests a signature for a hex ETH transaction. But most people don’t read. Or they request token approvals users don’t bother to modify.

"requests a signature for a hex ETH transaction." What an earth does that even mean? It's no wonder people keep messing this up. You need to spend half your life keeping up with the tech just to not get scammed.

You don't know what a digital signature is?

This is the equivalent of being mad at banks because you don't understand what a bank routing number is.

>It's no wonder people keep messing this up.

The type of user that doesn't understand this should not even be using cryptocurrency in the first place.

Re: “Crypto drainer” template facilitates theft

#160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think they "deserve" to be robbed but I do think at this point the sketchiness of the defi sector is pretty apparent.

I think DeFi and NFT are different sectors?

But weirdly exactly the same actors.
Post reply on HN