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The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

bloomberg.com

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Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#311

Post by ummonk »

retrac wrote: post #245
moneywoes wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t he be extradited

Maybe. That actually raises some interesting questions, come to think. A key factor in an offence is the location of the offence, which usually determines jurisdiction and the relevant laws. In the classic example of hacking an American bank from Canada, the offence occurs on the American bank's servers in the United States. That's relatively clean and simple, legally. With an Ethereum smart contract ... I'm not even…

I'd argue the offense occurs in every country where a miner is located.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#312

Post by ekidd »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #205
webmaven wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The legal system has failure modes that are just as easily exploitable, but humans can intervene and reverse the failure, make people whole, etc. The problem with smart contracts isn't that there are bugs, but that buggy results are final with little to no recourse, by design, unless you get everyone to agree to hard fork the chain (rolling the "bad" transactions back and eplacing the buggy contract) and/or the imple…

I think a lot of the appeal of crypto/smart contracts is that they are final with little to no recourse, humans can't intervene and exploit failure modes which individuals using the so-called contracts can't defend against. Corporations and wealthy individuals with influence in the writing of this legal system, with massive amounts of financial resources, with negligible moral agency, and with limited criminal liabil…

> Those who find themselves on the other side of this power disparity would often prefer to risk a potentially buggy but inviolate contract than one which they expect to be abused against them.

There is no way that AT&T, Comcast or Bank of America will ever agree to a smart contract written by an ordinary customer. As always, the companies will write their own contracts, and customers will either accept them, or leave. And if the company has monopoly power, tough luck.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#313

Post by turtledove »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #201
turtledove wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Sorry. Those are not the same. I'm cheering to see the grift coming apart. Yes, some people are losing. But the early the grift falls apart, the fewer future people get destroyed by it. I'd rather cheer seeing crypto fail, then stand by and watch it suck in vulnerable person after vulnerable person in perpetuity. Also, I absolutely do cheer the losses of bad people. If a scammer or ethnonationalist loses their…

Its the same. You have an irrational fear/hatred of decentralized peer-to-peer money. Grifts unwinding is a thing, but don’t throw out the baby with the bath water here. I fully intend on using Bitcoin for the next few decades, both as a saving and international remittance system. It’s from a place of spite. Don’t be spiteful, it makes you a bad person.

It's not the same, and you are delusional to think that I'm being irrational.

A 401k has regulations. My broker has a fiduciary duty to act in my best interest. The money invested into the markets helps power the economy.

And yes, I am spiteful towards grifters and conmen. Don't be tolerant of them, it makes you a bad person.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#314

Post by ummonk »

Brian_K_White wrote: post #86
kristjansson wrote: post #73

This is an outright copy of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-05-19/crypto-pl... . e: missed at the end of the article: > (Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.) So perhaps this is reproduced under a legit syndication deal?

It says "(c) 2022 Bloomberg Christopher Beam, Bloomberg Businessweek" right in it.

Yeah and "(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)"

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#315

Post by thethimble »

why_only_15 wrote: post #278
rootusrootus wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a consenting adult wants to deposit their money into a system that they have full visibility into, why should we stop them? We already do exactly that, e.g. Accredited Investor.

Yes but should we do it? Those rules prevent most people from e.g. investing into startups.

To state it directly, the vast majority of the population doesn’t have the capability of assessing risk in speculative investments and is disproportionately susceptible to fraud. You give the example of “investing in startups” without also describing that most startups fail.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#316

Post by sushid »

majormajor wrote: post #236
sushid wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smart contracts allow for guaranteed outcomes. Some commentary added by a random law firm does not mean that guaranteed outcomes == no need for litigation and courts. Just think of non-smart contract parallels. If a bank had an ATM, the premise is that this ATM will execute a series of commands and allow you to withdraw/deposit/transfer funds. If a nefarious back actor found a series of user input that allowed them t…

In a world where you're falling back to the legal system, why do I care if your buggy ATM is powered by a "smart contract" or by "regular" code? Why even do you care? (There have been exploits in both ATMs and smart contracts, after all.)

I primarily care because I think there's money to be made.

But I also think the shift directionally makes sense. Traditional finance (really most transactions for that matter) have moved towards fewer middlemen dependent, more democratized forms of transactions (e.g. wealthy folks can call their traders to buy/sells stock -> open to middle class -> no need to call traders -> no fee no minimum online trading). To me, not requiring institutions to maintain custody of my funds is a value add.

But most importantly, it could just be something different (that fails or doesn't fail, who knows). I don't think the web3 space NEEDS to eschew legal recourse because 1) that's not the only supposedly value add and 2) because it doesn't NEED to provide any value add for that matter. Perhaps web3 can just be the Pepsi the web2's Coca Cola. Only time will tell.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#317

Post by dropnerd »

thethimble wrote: post #315
why_only_15 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but should we do it? Those rules prevent most people from e.g. investing into startups.

To state it directly, the vast majority of the population doesn’t have the capability of assessing risk in speculative investments and is disproportionately susceptible to fraud. You give the example of “investing in startups” without also describing that most startups fail.

i understand why we might want to dissuade speculative investments, byt why is it the state's role to prevent citizens from speculating?

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#318

Post by DangitBobby »

FireBeyond wrote: post #288
jdmichal wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Broken slot machines do happen, and it's been made very clear that the player does not benefit. https://www.aol.com/2016-11-02-broken-slot-machine-dupes-wom... https://www.foxnews.com/us/not-a-winner-oregon-woman-denied-... However, this works both ways. If the mistake is in the favor of the player, they are obligated to pay out: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-slot-machine-in-las-vega...

Right, "it's been made very clear". "Malfunction voids all wins." Here, it's also been made very clear. "Code is law".

Well, no. Law is law. Code is law is a game of make-believe.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#319

Post by im3w1l »

caymanjim wrote: post #187

Forget about the exploit itself. Why are people trusting two young nobodies (Day and Kellar of Indexed Finance) with so much money in the first place? Ok, so Day has some decent academic credentials, but he's just one person. Who was doing risk analysis? Which independent experts analyzed their algorithms? Which accounting firm audited them? Where's the oversight? These two guys whipped something up, threw it out in…

> two young nobodies

It's this very attitude, that omly the annointed elite should be allowed to do anything, that draw people to crypto. Now personally I would avoid this scheme like the plague for other reasons. Smart contracts are hard to get right, and especially the ones that rely on very complicated game theorethical considerations for correct operation. And further an index fund of tokens whether manually or automatically managed sounds like a bad idea since I don't believe in the underlying tokens.

Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds

#320

Post by woojoo666 »

t_mann wrote: post #279
woojoo666 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By that token, wouldn't rugpulls be legal too?

Rugpulls, as in projects attracting funds and then absconding with them, are different from exploits in that they involve outright lies / deception. There's a (moral, at least) difference between bad intent and honest incompetence. The attacker didn't ask anyone to contribute the funds that he appropriated.

But if we're talking about bad intent, then we could easily argue that Medjedovic (the hacker) acted with bad intent in this case. It goes both ways. If code is law, then hacks would be legal but so would rugpulls. If code is still ruled by law, then rugpulls and hacks can be judged by things like intention.
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