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Did I just lose half a million dollars?

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Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#511

Post by dpark »

emteycz wrote: post #506
UncleMeat wrote: post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But people are allowed to interact with smart contracts. To obtain the WETH he needed to do that. This is a "why do we even have that lever" kind of situation. If my brokerage had a "permanently burn all of your money" button then it wouldn't be reasonable to just say "well, people shouldn't push that button." We can even see this with the criticism of wire fraud. Wire fraud is a huge fucking mess that occasionally c…

People are allowed to login as root and delete their systems too. Yes, today's software doesn't make it easy - and the same can be said about this wallet/token; this was a complex sequence of steps in the wrong direction, not a missclick.

People don’t usually store 500k on their PCs.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#512

Post by oblio »

kkjjkgjjgg wrote: post #274
oblio wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, they have a fundamentally simple concept that solved the double spend and trust problems for a decentralized (sort of currency). That part we kind of figured out, maybe it's ok, albeit super slow and power intensive, but let's put that aside for a while. But is there a solid mathematical and cryptographical basis for everything else layered on top? I don't get that impression, it just looks like they'…

I went to some workshops when Ethereum was developed (sadly I decided against investing in the ICO because some aspects didn't convince me or I didn't understand them well enough). Even back then the discussion was that they were trying to do too much and it would be difficult to make it work reliably. Bitcoin deliberately chose a more conservative approach. Bitcoin also actually has a scripting language and allows f…

Domains where the basics are still being actively researched should never be part of the backbone of human society, though.

Maybe they'll find solutions. Cool, let them put those solutions in practice in 2040 when all the bugs have been worked out.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#515

Post by emteycz »

dpark wrote: post #511
emteycz wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are allowed to login as root and delete their systems too. Yes, today's software doesn't make it easy - and the same can be said about this wallet/token; this was a complex sequence of steps in the wrong direction, not a missclick.

People don’t usually store 500k on their PCs.

But people run production servers on their PCs all the time.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#516

Post by floatingatoll »

can16358p wrote: post #452
sanderjd wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard to say but my guess is that no, even he can no longer pull this off. I think he used his one freebie.

Yup. One more freebie hardfork that reverses (okay not "reverses" techbically but forks away from a previous state) some mistake/hack and Ethereum would lose trust especially competition between chains (EVM or otherwise) is so high.

They would gain trust for returning all of the WETH accumulated in all of the contracts where it’s been idled due to PEBCAK, in concert with a code fork that refuses to accept such transactions. That would be a sign of maturity and intelligence to bankers, and influence their consideration of whether Ethereum might be a viable platform for their financial business someday.

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#517

Post by capableweb »

mox1 wrote: post #362
ddingus wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief, this is like machine language for money

exactly, with no-do overs. Everyone hand codes their assembly correctly on the first try right!?!!

There are plenty of do-overs, it's called the "development phase" and involves testing things on your local computer with the team.

No one gets everything right the first time, but with a lot of testing, you can actually write software that does exactly what you think it will do, and you can achieve pretty cool stuff. Remember that humans wrote the software that took humanity to the moon!

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#518

Post by jb3689 »

fredsmith42 wrote: post #444

I don't know anything about crypto. Why can't he contact someone on the receiving end of the transaction and say "I really messed up, please transfer this money back to me?". I know crypto transactions can't be undone, but a new transaction of equal value in the reverse direction could be done, right? And if not, why the hell not?

It is truly mind-boggling to me that funds can just effectively vanish in the system with no sense of recourse. And that no one thought this could go awry

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#519

Post by fortran77 »

hedora wrote: post #427
noduerme wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. I'm not letting anyone off the hook for not knowing the above if they put $5 into something, let alone $500k. But even as a coder and someone who was deeply involved in crypto at one point (2011) I find it hard to make heads or tails of wtf this means. All I hear are a lot of acronyms and bizarre edge cases upon edge cases. It sounds like those arguments you'd hear between kids in junior high over magic cards o…

From what I can tell, the underlying issue is that everything is spaghetti code written in a dynamically typed language. Ignoring that, it's nuts that the best practice is "send a little money, and see if it works". Apparently they don't even have a working transaction simulator that just runs the relevant logic on your laptop so you can see what it will do.

> From what I can tell, the underlying issue is that everything is spaghetti code written in a dynamically typed language.

We need to re-write this in Rust before there can be universal acceptance!

Re: Did I just lose half a million dollars?

#520

Post by CamelCaseName »

nextlevelwizard wrote: post #514

To be fair OP in question did not lose half a million dollars. There is no proof he could have exchnaged all that ETH into dollars.

Look, I hate cryptocurrency as much as the average HN commenter, but I think at this point it should painfully clear that there is plenty of liquidity in crypto.

$500K in ETH is really not that much anymore.

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