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Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

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Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#391

Post by thebean11 »

hypertele-Xii wrote: post #368
thebean11 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protocols have bugs, yep. Audited and battle tested protocols, less often though. For example, there are hacks every day where people exploit smart contract bugs, yet there are contracts securing billions of dollars that have not been hacked. Both can be true at once. Something like this wouldn't be widely used without lots of iterations to iron out issues like that. $5 wrench attack is easily thwarted by splitting o…

If you think it's so easy, maybe you should do it to demonstrate. If you mean that it'll become easy enough over time, that's an assumption I don't buy.

Similar software already exists.. https://ens.domains/ as does other blockchain software handling tons of value..

It was probably thousands of talented dev hours, who said it was easy?

Just curious are you at all familiar with smart contracts in general?

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#392

Post by thebean11 »

woodruffw wrote: post #298
thebean11 wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more electricity is used to secure it, the more electricity is required to attack it

I think that fits more into "ridiculous economic Chinese finger trap" than "security feature." It's similar to calling gold's physical weight a security feature, but at least there's a consistent and non-economic relationship between how much gold you have and how hard it is for someone to pick it up and walk away with it. (It's also not immediately obvious that "more electricity" is needed to attack it, since a hand…

Larger pools doing that would be subtracting energy from the honest side, and adding it to the dishonest side, so the logic still holds

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#393

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

lostcolony wrote: post #334
de_nied wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is value in being able to write up an online contract (code) that is able to manage money for two parties without needing to go to a bank or some third party to act as the middleman. It's the same thing as reading the terms and conditions.

Human transactions can 'easily' be undone in a court of law, and yet are still so painful to undo as to necessitate a trusted escrow agent in many of them. This is making it so there is no "undo", and no escrow agent. There's value, for those looking to take advantage of others.

This is the fulcrum point of the argument, and until you've been on the wrong side of, bluntly, legal bullshit, you just won't get it.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#394

Post by aaaaaaaaata »

fragmede wrote: post #357
aaaaaaaaata wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The ACH banking protocol doesn't have these either. This isn't Ethereum's job. It's an L2's job. Whichever ones you choose to engage with. But, they'll all be interoperable.

Anyone that's sent crypto from Polygon to Coinbase would disagree about interoperability.

Polygon is a centralized project, and its problems are its own. Not a decentralized cryptocurrency.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#395

Post by phone8675309 »

randomhodler84 wrote: post #353
phone8675309 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles the mind that someone looked at money and thought "you know what, this is too simple, let's shoehorn in a Turing complete programming language - that'll fix it!"

It boggles the mind that someone is so lacking imagination that they couldn’t imagine a use for such technology. Ignorance is unbecoming.

Please explain to me how embedding a Turing complete programming language inextricably from a currency adds anything of value that is not offset by the pitfalls of regular users needing to not only know how to code but understand the entire ecosystem that the currency interacts with.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#396

Post by capableweb »

Qub3d wrote: post #333
capableweb wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Breaking news: "off-ramps" to centralized currencies is centralized. It's not difficult if the source of your cryptocurrencies is legitimate, while difficult if you have a hard time explaining how it's legitimate. I think the system works as intended.

I'm confused then, are you in support of cryptocurrency? Because what you're describing (the "system") sounds an awful lot like reinventing banks from first principles but much less efficiently. If that is how it's intended to function then why are we bothering with this at all? And aside from KYC issues, another recently posted article pointed out that when a single individual tried to unload around a 1500 BTC (%0.0…

> I'm confused then, are you in support of cryptocurrency?

I'm neither. I treat it as a protocol like HTTP, use it where it makes sense, don't use it where it doesn't make sense.

When I say the "system", I'm referring to the system of centralized currencies. Banks have always wanted to know where large sums come from, and where they are going to, as the government will ask them questions about it and they like to be prepared.

> And aside from KYC issues, another recently posted article pointed out that when a single individual tried to unload around a 1500 BTC (%0.03 of the coins in circulation at the time) it caused a liquidity crisis that crashed the market by 20%.[1]

Not sure what KYC issues you're referring to. They are only a issue if you're having a hard time explaining where the money comes from. If you have a legitimate source for your funds, it's a couple of emails with some attachments to pass the KYC/AML checks that the major exchanges perform. Same thing will happen with you bank, and they normally will accept the same amount of evidence you send to the exchange.

And yes, if you try to offload 1500 BTC on the open market the market will correctly adjust. That's why I wrote about the OTC offers in my initial message, that's normally how you want to offload/purchase a large amount, as it's not gonna change the pricing on the open market, as you manually match buyer/seller.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#397

Post by lostcolony »

chrisco255 wrote: post #369
lostcolony wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are all intentionally sending money; you just have had someone tell you the wrong account. Which is just as easy with crypto. And, just like with crypto, you can always reach out to the party you are trying to send money to via another means to confirm the address. When I purchased a house, I Googled the recipient, confirmed the certificate, Googled the number found on their website separately to confirm it was…

It's rare that buyers of houses and property are that thorough. On the contrary, my friend recently bought a plot of land for which the sellers did not own the title. The title company, who's only job is to verify this, completely missed it. The fake sellers made out with tens of thousands of dollars and the real owners, who are from Germany, are still haggling with my friend and trying to get her or the title compan…

>> At least with crypto, the chain of ownership is transparent and can't be faked. So validation is cheap and easy to do.

In theory. The devil is in the details; does everyone know how to validate the chain of ownership, even the most non-technical of users who must rely on the system? If not, you either will never be mainstream, or you're reliant on a trusted agent to validate on your behalf (sorta like a title company!).

And if you screw something up with crypto, there is no way to address it. The complaint of "dealing with lawyers and trying to get someone to pay for it" is a feature, not a bug. Worst case, it's no different than the crypto outcome; best case, you have recourse.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#398

Post by pinephoneguy »

dimgl wrote: post #238
chrisco255 wrote: post #11

This was a multi-week long social engineering scam targeted at Thomas. Thomas has a Discord for a drone transportation startup, and the scammers proceeded to embed themselves in the community and provide valuable labor such as web design and graphics design in order to earn his trust. Thomas's wallet is public and advertised on Twitter via his ENS domain. He had $100M+ in aETH, a derivative token provided by Aave whe…

I'm surprised anyone reading this story wouldn't conclude that the real takeaway is to just not engage with cryptocurrency at all. This ecosystem is so convoluted it just turns me off at every level.

He's doing some very advanced stuff. Stock options get very convoluted as well, just don't do things you don't fully understand.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#399

Post by randomhodler84 »

phone8675309 wrote: post #395
randomhodler84 wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It boggles the mind that someone is so lacking imagination that they couldn’t imagine a use for such technology. Ignorance is unbecoming.

Please explain to me how embedding a Turing complete programming language inextricably from a currency adds anything of value that is not offset by the pitfalls of regular users needing to not only know how to code but understand the entire ecosystem that the currency interacts with.

If you are always concerned about the pitfalls of your stupidest user, you will make a product that is only suitable for stupid users.

When you stop worrying about that, and can actually start to deploy advanced technology for your advanced users.

You can weight your argument however you want, all technology will fail some class of user. Me, I’ve been playing with this and various tech for a decade now and the sky is the limit for where this can go.

Re: Social engineering scam that nearly cost me all of my ETH

#400

Post by floodyberry- »

chrisco255 wrote: post #364
floodyberry- wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when he invites you to get in on the ground floor of an amazing opportunity, I suggest you take him up on it. He's rich so it definitely won't be a scam!

My impression of him is that he's a decent guy who got targeted by scammers who knew he was rich. I've participated in the ground floor of plenty of opportunities. Some of them work out, some of them don't. But the ones that do more than make up for the ones that don't.

Your reading comprehension is stellar!
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