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Only couple days ago or so, after so many years (following it since 2011 or so) I realized only one value in bitcoin; Supporting sci-hub, that's about it, of course for some buying drugs online is an value too.
Isnt Monero used for drugs nowadays? At least at the White House Market...
The article tries to imply that the hacker had a change of heart after a public plea to return the funds. In reality, parts of the crypto community moved quickly to block transactions involving the funds and some security researchers claimed they had solid leads on tracking down the hacker’s identity. I think the hacker realized that if their identity was compromised then the legal system wouldn’t look kindly on some…
His own explanation is the one I find the most truth in. https://sites.google.com/view/hackersconfession/home/hacker-...
From what I recall, the hacker basically doxxed himself by accident by signing a message from his real wallet, linked to exchange wallets which presumably has his KYC info. From there, it was all over. Even if he could launder all that money, international authorities would find him. In fact, the writing style of his messages provide a pretty big clue where he is - Ukraine or Russia.
https://sites.google.com/view/hackersconfession/home/hacker-...
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It’s so funny to me when everyone touts crypto + smart contracts as revolutionary™ then when you follow a system implemented with them to its logical conclusions you have analogs to everything that already exists. Lawyers to audit the contracts for bugs (and yes there can be bugs in a formally verified spec as well), courts to arbitrate disagreements, and an authority to enforce rules when someone finds a security ho…
Just because there are similar mechanisms doesn’t mean they haven’t been improved on in some way. Lawyers and courts are notoriously inefficient if this implementation achieves efficiencies, even if the mechanisms are analogous, seems like progress.
Inefficiency implies that we can fathom a way to navigate the same space more efficiently. Do we? Or do we, for this mental gymnastics to work, actually have to change the space, to one where people are kind and the whole complicated system is less so?
Certainly having lawyers in big business must be efficient enough that they beat not having lawyers or else the market would adjust around that, no?
Let S = smart contract writer's code intent - smart contract compiled code meaning. If S is legally meaningful it's all over for smart contracts. There's no way to prove the contract writer's intent, the compiler itself can have problems causing divergence, and it's not even possible to prove if the idea in the writer's mind can be captured by code. You could even come up with a sort of halting problem smart contract…
- function and variable naming - social conventions around ownership - stated intent by code writers - common sense
By any reasonable standard, this was theft.
Is a door with a pickable lock always unlocked? No, that would be silly. What makes using a key on a lock different from using a lockpick. Social convention, intent of the creator, common sense, the fact that one thing is called a key, and the other a lockpick.
Someone recently pointed out that we have a "free market" in cryptocurrency, and are now spending years discovering why we have regulations, laws, contracts, courts etc. I love the idea of a digital native currency. But I also love financial protections that have grown up over thousands of years. The mints of each country could solve that tomorrow (is there a FOSS blockchain already that does a "we know there are 1 t…
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How does the crypto community encourage circumventing laws?
I don’t have time to compile a list, but if you listen to crypto proponents you frequently hear advocacy for circumventing democratically enacted laws and institutions like fiat currency, taxation, financial regulation, international regulation, etc.
The article tries to imply that the hacker had a change of heart after a public plea to return the funds. In reality, parts of the crypto community moved quickly to block transactions involving the funds and some security researchers claimed they had solid leads on tracking down the hacker’s identity. I think the hacker realized that if their identity was compromised then the legal system wouldn’t look kindly on some…
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> It’s important to remember that when you start from scratch there is absolutely no reason to believe that you are going to do a better job than you did the first time. First of all, you probably don’t even have the same programming team that worked on version one, so you don’t actually have “more experience”. You’re just going to make most of the old mistakes again, and introduce some new problems that weren’t in t…
I think this a lot about our politics now, we seem to want to tear down all the institutions and values that got us here.
Strike a "we", replace by "rich elites". "Small government" means in practice that most of what governments are doing now with taxpayer money at no-profit will be done by private for-profit companies, at a worse service level, or that regulations/regulatory agencies will be torn down.
For the first, just look at private prisons - make a lot of profit for their owners, while the level of care for the prisoners (access to healthcare, drug withdrawal treatment or education is often spotty, human rights abuse claims the norm).
For the second, look at how e.g. environment regulations were "relaxed" during the 45th.
It's all about the grifting opportunities.