Dude reuses a private key all over the place and then throws a fit when someone gets it and takes his money. This is like wanting a lock company to give you money when you bought a new house, didn't change the locks, and the previous owner walked in and took the money from under your mattress.
And here we see why crypto cannot replace the real money system for mainstream consumers.
Real people reuse passwords. They forget passwords. They accidentally get a virus on their computer. They get tricked by fraudsters.
Crypto's main selling point- complete decentralization- means there is so fixing mistakes, no means to undo fraudulent transactions. Real people don't want that.
Well if power groups block it or make it harder to use you're going to be left with the people who don't care about said rules. Keep something illegal long enough and you're going to have some people breaking the law. Simple to point the finger at them after the fact and go "see? only criminals are doing that"
Also the fact that they use it means that it's working, if anything.
I also can't see a simple way for people who can control the value of money to just give up that power.
There's a lot of braindead crypto hate on HN, but these are very real and salient points.
I work in IT. I have to reset people's passwords after a 3day weekend. The other day, an employee typed their password into a phishing email because the real person they were emailing got compromised in the middle of their email exchange.
Crypto banking is simply a nonstarter for these people. There was an article on HN about how scammers cost 10B$ last year. A bank where mistakes are permanent and irreversible will never be mainstream.
> The solution for all these and crypto, is education.
I disagree. Educated people still make mistakes, and still become victims of fraud or viruses. A blanket statement like "we just need to educate people" is a nice way to say "no one would have this problem if they were as smart as I am". But the reality is you're just as vulnerable to a zero day or a well-executed scam.
There are many solutions. None are perfect. If you ask me, demanding everyone never make mistakes is a very poor solution compared to using systems that have failsafes.
Weaving a story, which is backed up by the court system for loss recovery, is infinitely preferable to everyone throwing their hands up and blaming the end user.
If I store money in a mattress, and someone breaks in, I can report that to the police. Deposits in banks are federally backed - if there are bank hijinks, my savings are protected.
Crypto is worse in most ways (or overall worse) every way than what we already have. /edit
So I know a victim of a phishing scam. She got tricked into confirming a transaction from her bank account. She called her bank minutes after it happened, but they told her that they are not able to reverse the transaction. However, according to them they are investigating if they can do something for her based on what they call "good will".
I don't understand where the bank analogies always come from. Crypto is not a bank. Holding crypto is like holding cash. If you put it under your bed and it's stolen, do you go to the government and complain about reverting the transaction?
If you want a third-party (bank) to secure your cash so you can do that with crypto, but then you're also exposed to the counterparty risk that comes with it. But that has nothing to do with crypto or fiat or whatever. If you don't trust yourself with managing the keys, put it on Coinbase or Kranken, centralized banks. If you want full control, put in your safe, i.e. manage your own key.
There are also decentralized alternatives that offer something in the middle, e.g. smart contract or social recovery wallets.
Banks have federally backed deposit insurance. If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of it - at least if I bury dollar bills in a drum in a nearby forest, people have to do legwork to guess the location of the drum - they can't just guess numbers on a computer and when they guess right, everyone throws their hands up and goes "too bad".
If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of cash imaginable.
I posit that crypto isn't cash, or if it is, it's the worst form of it.
For me, I'm happy for my money to be stored in a bank. The bank keeps multiple back-ups of their books and is heavily regulated by our national government. If someone attempts to steal from me or commits fraud there's some recourse by notifying the bank and potentially having those criminal/fraudulent transactions reversed. No electronic inertia (i.e via crypto blockchain) for my bank to approach another and reverse a transaction.
There are also several security features to extracting money from my account: there's an account number, name, physical access to debit card, ccv, account password, OTP, pin numbers. All of which are missing in the typical crypto ccy net.
Furthermore, banks are forced to record identity information from their customers making it difficult for a nefarious actor to conceal their identity.
One advantage for crypo ccy is potentially making anonymous transactions. I don't really have anything to hide in that regard. The mundane shop at the supermarket, ebay or even buying drinks at the pub.. nothing very revealing.
If your life savings are at risk from losing a secret key or simply by someone nicking your secret key then I'd call this a "bug".
I would guess fork means code fork where your same wallet works on that seperate network. Farm usually means something that produces a yield, which either means a loan interest or a ponzi scheme.
This is nothing new. Most are aware of the general issues with crypto currency security. Interesting comment from network code maintainer..
We maintain the blockchain, which facilitates the transactions, nothing more...
If we had to revert your funds, we would have to convince the entire ecosystem to roll back the blockchain, to prior the block that moved your funds, and every transaction made since along with it... Not only that, it would then be a matter of fight between you and the thief of who got the first transaction out of your wallet...
Indeed it is how blockchain works within crypto currencies. I find it interesting that many participators (i.e. OP) don't understand how unsafe their coins are and this has to be explained as such by the commentator. Admittedly, perhaps not everyone finds interest in the same things as me.
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Real people reuse passwords. They forget passwords. They accidentally get a virus on their computer. They get tricked by fraudsters.
Crypto's main selling point- complete decentralization- means there is so fixing mistakes, no means to undo fraudulent transactions. Real people don't want that.
Ironically, if crypto was stable, it would better appeal to the general public. However, it would lose ground with its current user base.
The paradigm is incorrect. This generation of crypto will all, eventually, fail.
There's a lot of braindead crypto hate on HN, but these are very real and salient points.
I work in IT. I have to reset people's passwords after a 3day weekend. The other day, an employee typed their password into a phishing email because the real person they were emailing got compromised in the middle of their email exchange.
Crypto banking is simply a nonstarter for these people. There was an article on HN about how scammers cost 10B$ last year. A bank where mistakes are permanent and irreversible will never be mainstream.
The solution for all these and crypto, is education.
I disagree. Educated people still make mistakes, and still become victims of fraud or viruses. A blanket statement like "we just need to educate people" is a nice way to say "no one would have this problem if they were as smart as I am". But the reality is you're just as vulnerable to a zero day or a well-executed scam.
There are many solutions. None are perfect. If you ask me, demanding everyone never make mistakes is a very poor solution compared to using systems that have failsafes.
If I store money in a mattress, and someone breaks in, I can report that to the police. Deposits in banks are federally backed - if there are bank hijinks, my savings are protected.
Crypto is worse in most ways (or overall worse) every way than what we already have. /edit
> what's the problem with blocking it and returning the funds
> What's the point of seeing all existing transactions if they can't be stopped and reverted if stolen
Sounds exactly like the what the average person would think of crypto if it went mainstream.
Or if a bug in the bank’s software meant you could lose your life savings.
Or if no transaction could be reversed, even in the case of obvious offline fraud?
All these things and more can be found in the incredible world of crypto.
Which bank is this?
Why wouldn’t they be able to reverse the transaction?
What do the police say?
Obviously she has contacted the police? as (unlike crypto) the police can get involved.
If you want a third-party (bank) to secure your cash so you can do that with crypto, but then you're also exposed to the counterparty risk that comes with it. But that has nothing to do with crypto or fiat or whatever. If you don't trust yourself with managing the keys, put it on Coinbase or Kranken, centralized banks. If you want full control, put in your safe, i.e. manage your own key.
There are also decentralized alternatives that offer something in the middle, e.g. smart contract or social recovery wallets.
Literally yes. You go to law enforcement and, if they can figure out who stole it, the law allows for the return of your property.
If crypto was cash, it would be the worst form of cash imaginable.
I posit that crypto isn't cash, or if it is, it's the worst form of it.
There are also several security features to extracting money from my account: there's an account number, name, physical access to debit card, ccv, account password, OTP, pin numbers. All of which are missing in the typical crypto ccy net.
Furthermore, banks are forced to record identity information from their customers making it difficult for a nefarious actor to conceal their identity.
One advantage for crypo ccy is potentially making anonymous transactions. I don't really have anything to hide in that regard. The mundane shop at the supermarket, ebay or even buying drinks at the pub.. nothing very revealing.
If your life savings are at risk from losing a secret key or simply by someone nicking your secret key then I'd call this a "bug".
there you go
We maintain the blockchain, which facilitates the transactions, nothing more... If we had to revert your funds, we would have to convince the entire ecosystem to roll back the blockchain, to prior the block that moved your funds, and every transaction made since along with it... Not only that, it would then be a matter of fight between you and the thief of who got the first transaction out of your wallet...