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The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

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Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#341

Post by andykx »

blackrock wrote: post #264
Damorian wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anecdote, but I once ran a blog for many years. Country breakdown for traffic was roughly 30% China, 30% Russia, and 30% US. Almost 100% of requests out of China and Russia were hacking attempts, I assume mostly by bots. They've earned a reputation and there's nothing wrong pointing it out. If you operate a website, unless China and Russia are part of your market/audience, I'd suggest blocking them altogether.

What if all the hacking actually originated from America? They just compromised a bunch of random computers in China and Russia, running an old copy of Windows XP, and built themselves a botnet. What further evidence do you have, other than an IP address?

Why just those two countries then? Why don’t I see a thousand get requests for /wp-login from countries all around the world? Wouldn’t that be significantly more effective since you can’t simply block a range of addresses to mitigate it?

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#342

Post by def8cefe »

wolco wrote: post #290
def8cefe wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The United States didn't face a mortgage crisis purely because of housing price collapse, it was a combination of the collapse with widespread use of subprime lending. Instead of having this argument with a random guy on the Internet I suggest you read the vast amount of documentation and analysis from people in the industry. Beyond that, the Canadian banking industry did not start up in 2008, even if that's only as…

Canadian banks are stabler because of the cost and missed opportunity costs are passed on to the customer. Want a mortgage at the current rate? Great you must qualify at 2% points higher. Canada has some of the highest banking fees.

For the record, 'more stable' would have been correct here.

I'm not too upset it's harder to qualify for a mortgage here because it saved us from getting hit even harder ten years ago.

I've been banking for about 15 years and never had much to complain about. Sometimes I get an NSF fee from TD, I just call them and they reverse it as a 'one-time courtesy.' I've lost count of how many times I've done that and they've never said no. My credit card has no yearly fee and I pay $15 a month for my chequing account with unlimited transactions and E-transfers. You can go cheaper but I use debit and e-Transfer a lot. That's the sum of my personal banking fees.

For my business account I use FirstOntario's eChequing account with no monthly fee. Only thing I ever pay on this account is a $1.50 e-Transfer fee when I pay myself or others. I did have to buy shares when I opened the account as it's a credit union but they were only $25. The shares have appreciated by $10 in the few years I've had the account so I'm not complaining.

Really not that bad for me. What's your situation?

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#343

Post by komali2 »

wolco wrote: post #338
komali2 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Better censorship is what you are after? A website to censor things along the lines of how you think? A website that will protect you from racists? Deplatforming racists isn't censorship. > Save your outrage for something meanful. Big words coming from someone that didn't mention that Black Lives Matter even once in their comment, and also didn't do anything to bring more attention to North Korean concentration cam…

"Deplatforming racists isn't censorship" Isn't deplatforming racist because it creates a segregated society. Do you really want to separate society based on race? Soon we'll have schools for racist only. People will complain they when they get higher marks. You think you like the idea of social justice? What you are doing is social judgement. Bullying.. using your power over someone less powerful to make yourself fee…

> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23682619

Unsurprising.

"Free speech activists" inevitably show off their actual value system.

> Isn't deplatforming racist because it creates a segregated society.

Racism is a choice, race isn't. Racists segregate themselves from society by believing that some humans are subhuman. Can't exactly share a well with someone that believes you're an animal, can you? Certainly can't have them in a jury.

> Do you really want to separate society based on race?

Transparent strawman argument lobbed at me most times I engage an "all lives matter" type. Black lives matter = white lives don't matter, right?

> People will complain they when they get higher marks.

Why would racists get higher marks? As racists they disproportionately fail to correct for cognitive biases - they are therefore either stupid or have a mental disorder.

> You think you like the idea of social justice? What you are doing is social judgement.

The SJW bit was fairly obvious bait that you bit straight onto. Something wrong with shaming racists? Bullying the bully? And today I learned, asking a bully to leave, is apparently bullying.

> Many causes need attention.

Again, you fail to address why you are spending time commenting on this instead of solving world hunger. Why are you spending time virtue signalling at me? Don't you care about starving children?

> The next generation is going to call you fake.

No, because bigots are losing the culture war.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#344

Post by ashtonkem »

notahacker wrote: post #194
hocuspocus wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is. So why don't remittance services do it behind the scenes?

Because the converting currency X to crypto to currency Y is certainly not going to be cheaper or less volatile than a remittance service's existing forex setup which skips the middle bit, and it introduces a risky counterparty in the form of crypto exchanges.

Fundamentally bitcoin (and most other cryptos) are trying to fill two mutually exclusive goals. On one hand, they’re supposed to be the currency of the future; on the other you’re supposed to invest or trade in them like a speculative instrument to grow your net worth (hodl, mooning, lambos, etc.)

The issue is that these two can’t be filled by the same instrument effectively. Currencies need to be stable and predictable, nobody wants to discover that their paycheck has suddenly halved in value. They can inflate, but they should do that in a slow and steady manner so wages can keep up. On the other hand you want some volatility in your speculative instruments, as without volatility there’s no real opportunity to earn a profit and grow your net worth.

If something tries to be both, the results are disappointing. Either there’s no enough volatility to make traders happy, or there’s enough volatility to expose laborers or payment processors (depending on use case) to purchasing power shocks or conversion rate risks.

Unfortunately, it’s my belief that bitcoin maintains a lot of its value by trying to continually bring in new suckers (sorry, investors) in order to keep demand high without significant use cases. This kind of continual recruitment process is both fascinating, and really ruins bitcoin for anyone who wanted to use it for non-speculative purposes.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#345

Post by foepys »

regulation_d wrote: post #66
ipython wrote: post #39

Unpopular opinion: why do we care so much about making it cheaper for rich people to move money around? Do we think somehow that will “trickle down” to us mere mortals and put western union and their ilk out of business?

I don't care about Western Union. I do care about Visa and MasterCard. And I'm definitely not saying that the current generation of crypto has figured this problem out, but I am hopeful for the sake of SMB that they won't always have to pay 3% fees on cashless transactions.

The EU limited CC transaction fees to 0.3%. That's the reason why there are no cashback deals for CC here.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#346

Post by koonsolo »

moksly wrote: post #225
koonsolo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to know much about banking and large sums of money in practice. Let me give you an example which I know exists: EU airliner buys an airplane at Boeing. How do you transfer the money? This is how they do it today: They are at Boeing where the transfer needs to go through. The money needs to be transferred then and there. So airliner calls their bank to transfer the money. But there is a 9 hour differenc…

That’s not how large transfers work at all though. Banks have international agreements, or go through 3rd parties that have. You’ll also never be expected to pay right then and there, if you’re a respectable enterprise entity, the other part will expect you to pay and the funds to arrive within reasonable time, which can be half a year later. As for the transfers themselves, they are typically free. You’re such a big…

> That’s not how large transfers work at all though.

Except for the fact that this is exactly how it works today.

So you are in the airline industry? You know first hand how airliners buy airplanes. Please explain to me how it happens at your end.

Because what I explained is first hand knowledge on how it actually works. (Boeing 787 Dreamliner)

You assume, I know.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#347

Post by koonsolo »

glofish wrote: post #242
koonsolo wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't seem to know much about banking and large sums of money in practice. Let me give you an example which I know exists: EU airliner buys an airplane at Boeing. How do you transfer the money? This is how they do it today: They are at Boeing where the transfer needs to go through. The money needs to be transferred then and there. So airliner calls their bank to transfer the money. But there is a 9 hour differenc…

What you describe is the process of buying a laptop on Ebay. When you buy a plane, perhaps you have already payed months ahead, perhaps you'll pay five years later, perhaps you pay on a monthly basis, perhaps you don't pay at all but transfer the rights do to something it is all contractual obligations, sometimes money does not even trade hands etc. the idea that you would need to wait for a bank to open to transfer…

Except for the fact that this is exactly how it works today.

So you are in the airline industry? You know first hand how airliners buy airplanes. Please explain to me how it happens at your end.

Because what I explained is first hand knowledge on how it actually works (this was a Boeing 787 Dreamliner)

You assume, I know.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#348

Post by staplers »

dwighteb wrote: post #274
staplers wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happens all the time with wire transfers. It's no different. Banks don't care. Example: https://www.clickorlando.com/news/2018/05/24/central-florida...

I didn't see where the banks are at fault in the above article. It appeared that the woman received a fraudulent email on where to wire the money. This fraudulent email did not come from the banks. So, how could they be liable if she provided them bad information? GIGO. I'm not saying banks care, just this article doesn't highlight that very well.

The comment i replied to implied the current fiat system has checks and balances that can help prevent fraud and scammers.

I'm more highlighting that both crypto and traditional banking are similar in the transfer mechanism than saying banks should be held liable.

Re: The largest unknown Bitcoin wallet moved nearly $1B for $0.48 in fees

#350

Post by [deleted] »

grubles wrote: post #25
jpkoning wrote: post #16

If we both join the bitcoin network, we can exchange $1B for $0.48. If we both join set up accounts at a regular bank like RBC, we can exchange $1B for free. The point I'm making is that fees are not bitcoin's strong point. Any financial network can undercut it. What is unique about bitcoin is that not everyone can get an account at RBC, but anyone can join the more expensive bitcoin network.

Well the point is with Bitcoin you don't have to trust RBC to not freeze and/or abscond with your $1B.

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