10 ms·

I'm really disappointed in how the DAO heist was handled. The promise of cryptocurrencies was that they are harder to manipulate than fiat currency. If the fork

by tostitos1979 10y ago

I'm really disappointed in how the DAO heist was handled. The promise of cryptocurrencies was that they are harder to manipulate than fiat currency. If the fork succeeds (or even if it fails), I think the very notion of rolling back transactions is a step backwards. The next time there is something like the DAO, people can invest without fear since rollbacks are the modus operandi. Isn't this why people are upset with the financial system? When people invest in stuff, they need to be responsible for the results. As someone who didn't buy a house in the crazy mid-2000s, I am paying the price for everyone else's stupidity in the form of crazy low interest rates (which have fueled record home prices). But who is standing up for me? No one. I thought cryptocurrencies were leading to a better world (or at least one where the system couldn't be rigged as easily). I guess not in this instance :(

brianwawok 10y ago
I would love to hear the line of logic where if we all paid and got paid for everything in crypto currency would have spared you from the housing bust?
- viycyjcutc 10y ago
  That went way over your head, didn't it?
  - dang 10y ago
    Please don't comment like this here. Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.
- tostitos1979 10y ago
  If investors in stupid investments lost their money - all the way from investment banks down to individuals who made bad home purchase decisions, I'm pretty sure homes would cost less today. My point is that interventions have unforeseen consequences which hurt some people (typically the responsible ones).
- aidenn0 10y ago
  I think this is an argument by analogy: If bad, leveraged, investments in real-estate will not result in large losses, due to government intervention, then the real-estate market gets inflated, as when you have limited downside, your expected returns go up significantly. This also hurts less-leveraged investors (e.g. people who saved a large down-payment) as they get less house for their money, but don't gain any risk-reduction as their risk of negative-equity is much lower to begin with. If malinvestments in ETH can be rolled-back, then any risks that are reduced by potential future roll-backs[1] will be discounted by investors, which means investors who carefully vet their investments for those risks no longer gain any benefit. 1: I'm not familiar with the fork, so don't know what the roll-back criteria are, but remember, to distort the market a roll-back need not actually happen in the future, just that a significant fraction of investors believe it is likely
wyager 10y ago
Well, bitcoin has a much better track record... No political forks that undo transactions. One or two bug fix forks.
- tostitos1979 10y ago
  Agreed. Bitcoin gets the philosophy right. A fork for bug fixes is a completely different matter than for rolling back transactions.
  - CoryG89 10y ago
    They just view the transactions in question as side effects from a bug. <sarcasm> Ethical dilemma eliminated.</sarcasm>
- api 10y ago
  Satoshi's genius was to disappear. Ethereum's creators have a stake in it, which is a moral hazard.
  - zwerdlds 10y ago
    This is what ties it all together.
  - Animats 10y ago
    Now that's a good point. The biggest problem with Etherium is that many of the same people are behind Etherium, the DAO, and slock.it.
- jegoodwin3 10y ago
  Who will guard the people themselves?
zekevermillion 10y ago
I generally agree that the ETH fork is a broken promise. But if enough people adopt it, what can we say? At the same time, you are free to continue using ETH "classic" and refuse the hard fork. I'm sure there are some people who will do this, and then you may have your own blockchain.
neffy 10y ago
One way to find out why things are done a certain way, is to try not doing them that way... http://www.jstor.org/stable/2338493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/2338493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...
greendestiny 10y ago
Yeah but in reality letting half the DAO be siphoned off is vastly worse for the promise of smart contract cyptocurrency. So the 'messy' solution is the better one for what you want, but that'll never stop nerd culture seeing things as black and white.
- colordrops 10y ago
  The whole point of the blockchain is that it is black and white. Your veiled insults don't change that. Stick to wall street if you want to bend the rules.
  - greendestiny 10y ago
    I consider myself part of nerd culture, it's not an insult. The whole point of Ethereum is to build something black and white, but it isn't there yet. Either way this is a failure - the failure of the DAO to operate how the makers of contract specified is significant. Yes letting the transaction stand is boost to the confidence in the protocol at the expense of the DAO funds but it shouldn't give anyone the impression that future transactions are immune from reversal.
Taek 10y ago
Each cryptocurrency has its own culture and philosophy, and each will handle problems in different ways. Ethereum's hands-on approach allows them to innovate more aggressively. Bitcoin wouldn't touch this with a 10ft pole because the challenges behind such a scripting system were beyond anything they felt secure implementing. And now we are seeing why. But Ethereum can use hardforks to keep things ~stable despite the road bumps. Some people are really glad this is happening, and those people should stay in the Ethereum ecosystem. If that's not your style, and it's not mine, there are other coins (namely Bitcoin) that have more conservative cultures.
- mbenjaminsmith 10y ago
  I think that's entirely too apologetic. The innovation was the original protocol. They were premature (as a lot of people warned) setting up anything as massive as the DAO, someone found a way to creatively interpret the rules and make a lot of money. Instead of sucking it up as a very expensive bug bounty, they decided to manipulate the entire system -- going against the very essence of that system. The DAO's own terms state: "Any and all explanatory terms or descriptions are merely offered for educational purposes and do not supercede or modify the express terms of The DAO’s code set forth on the blockchain; to the extent you believe there to be any conflict or discrepancy between the descriptions offered here and the functionality of The DAO’s code at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation." Obviously the hacker's intent was theft but under the DAO's own terms it was a valid activity. Basically the code is law. If we're going to then interpret that law then we've created a system similar to the current systems we have, but lacking in maturity. The point of something like Ethereum is not that it can't be manipulated, it's that it doesn't need to be in order to function. It can be trusted explicitly because its functionality is not open to interpretation. If I'm not being clear enough -- what they should have done is taken this as a very expensive lesson and otherwise left the system alone. Yes, a "bad person" would have profited but the system's integrity would have been untouched. FWIW, I was an early backer of Ethereum and bought ETH during the pre-sale. I invested because I thought it was promising -- without any real expectation of return. Coincidentally I sold all of my ETH just before this hack (40x ROI). Because of the fork I would not invest in ETH again, regardless of potential returns, because Ethereum is no longer what it set out to be.
meanduck 10y ago
There is no reason to be disappointed. The guarantees are same as before. That is, Its 51% computing power that sets the next reality not a central/political/technical institution.
- vonkow 10y ago
  On paper that sounds great, but 51% computing power rapidly becomes a "central/political/technical institution" in the real world.
  - meanduck 10y ago
    There is no scenario where (eg) bitcoin's 51% computing power goes to single institution. If one govt jumps in so will the others. In fact you can jump too and vote with your computing power. And note this is not possible in fiat currencies.
    - Animats 10y ago
      The top three mining pools, all in China, have well over 50% of the hash rate.[1] [1] https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools
      - meanduck 10y ago
        And how are they single institution ? And if you dont like the distribution you can be a miner as it is required by cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is still being adopted. We should see more fair distribution or see another better cryptocurrency. Anycase cryptocurrency is the future global currency.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      That sounds like a strong statement about the ownership of the four or five entities that control most Bitcoin mining. You're quite sure they don't have a great deal of commonality? Remember that this is a completely unregulated market.
    - 10y ago
davidgerard 10y ago
CODE IS LAW until the whales lose money. Note that Buterin cashed in 25% of his ETH just before this. Just another premined altcoin scam.
- dharma1 10y ago
  Source for the 25% ETH?
  - bkolobara 10y ago
    http://themerkle.com/ethereum-developer-vitalik-buterin-sold-25-of-his-coins/ http://themerkle.com/ethereum-developer-vitalik-buterin-sold...
    - heliumcraft 10y ago
      1. This was before the the DAO was even launched by a 3rd party. 2. Can't blame the guy for cashing in a bit, wouldn't you? (and just 25%, still keeping 75%) 3. and he also donated a good portion of it to charity.
      - davidgerard 10y ago
        Cite for that last claim?
        heliumcraft 10y ago
        "I sold a million worth and donated 1/4 to charity" https://soundcloud.com/cryptoafterdark/episode-9-vitalik-buterin-the-ether-project https://soundcloud.com/cryptoafterdark/episode-9-vitalik-but... https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4g9n2a/crypto_after_dark_90_interview_with_vitalik/d2fnxdp https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4g9n2a/crypto_aft...
- splintercell 10y ago
  CODE IS LAW, but when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Code is law, but there is no law which we can't abolish, especially when the law stops serving the purpose for which the law was established.
wpietri 10y ago
An investment market is a game we agree to play with ourselves because it's useful. Long ago I worked for financial traders on early electronic trading systems. One day in our Frankfurt office there was a big commotion. Our head trader thought he had made a boatload of money. But it turned out that the trader on the other end of the trade had fat-fingered an offer. The mistake-maker stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, destroying his company. The exchange halted trading in that instrument, unwound all the trades, and started things back up again as if the mistake had never happened. I only heard of it happening that once; smaller mistakes were always the trader's problem. But for the exchange, the normal rules of the market did not override the purpose of the market, which was to facilitate certain kinds of commerce. There was just no point in destroying an entire company, and even our traders were fine with the outcome. If Ethereum's goal is a market where "people can invest without fear", then it sounds like they did the right thing. Your "caveat emptor" approach has the advantage of being ideologically simple, but it results in an economically suboptimal amount of trading. Real markets all have elaborate protections pushing them away from purity and toward economic utility. E.g., the US's stock market is a preferred place even for foreign companies to list because our strong disclosure requirements and legal protections make investors less afraid, increasing capital availability and decreasing cost. And it's not just financial markets; consider the Uniform Commercial Code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code
bradscarleton 10y ago
There are basically two types of cryptocurrency enthusiasts as far as I can tell. The first one believes that decentralized cryptocurrency and smart contracts will lead to a better world, free from the authoritarian rule of central banking and legal systems. And the second type, which is far more numerous, is hoping to to make a quick buck off of price fluctuations in the underlying digital assets. The NYT has a great article on this, where they suggest the bulk of Bitcoin users are Chinese citizens gambling on price fluctuations. And their stats seem to support this assertion: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-...
- SmurfJuggler 10y ago
  There's at least one other type you're missing: people who appreciate the utility of an electronic equivalent to cash. I pay for things with cryptocurrencies fairly frequently. I don't want every company I buy things from having my name, address, date of birth and credit card info if they don't need it. If I'm buying goods or services that don't require physical shipping, all they need to know is what I want and that the money has changed hands. Crypto facilitates those kinds of transactions.
  - tszming 10y ago
    Maybe you can just use ... PayPal?
    - sneak 10y ago
      PayPal is about as far from cash as one can get.
    - SmurfJuggler 10y ago
      PayPal, credit cards etc. all have their place, but for non-physical purchases from reputable parties I'm not sure how much you can improve on "pay money, receive thing." It would have to be a very compelling argument to persuade me that transacting through a middle-man (who then holds all my personal information and card details and also takes a cut) is better than just handing over cash and getting what I want.
VMG 10y ago
> the very notion of rolling back transactions is a step backwards I see what you did there
xorcist 10y ago
Bitcoin is an open source project. Ethereum is much more like a product managed by a corporation. The Etherum Foundation can make swift decisions where to take the project, which is both a strength and a weakness. Not all cryptocurrencies are alike because there is this fundamental difference in governance. Personally I have a hard time envisioning a successful cryptocoin that does not have a level playing field. The oligopoly of a few companies hiring most Bitcoin developers is problematic, and the Ethereum situation much more so.
- DennisP 10y ago
  Ethereum is also an open source project. Arguably it's less centralized in this respect than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is defined by a reference client, which is managed by developers who are mostly employed by a for-profit company. Anyone wanting to do another implementation has to comb through a lot of hairy C++ and match it bug for bug. Ethereum is defined by a 32-page spec, produced by a nonprofit corporation. At this point there are eight implementations, each in a different language, mostly by entities other than the nonprofit.
pjc50 10y ago
Yes, the DAO made a colossal error in shipping unverified code and are now having a bailout because .. they're "too big to fail". This is hilarious, but it's also a true statement about the importance of confidence in financial systems. (If the DAO had waited the couple of years necessary to produce a provably secure system, they would have been beaten to market by someone less secure who would have been hacked instead. Because people are incredibly keen to throw money at being early adopters of cryptocurrency systems. They're the new dotcom shares.) I'm also going to predict that a few months after the dust settles on this that another exploit is found in the DAO. What happens then?
- DennisP 10y ago
  The DAO is dead. The ether is going to the token holders, not to the DAO contract. Hopefully people have learned their lesson about putting so much in one big convoluted contract.
tim333 10y ago
> cryptocurrencies were leading to a better world The problems of the mid 2000s credit bubble and subsequent near depression were down to too much laissez-faire and not enough / smart enough regulation. Crypto currencies won't fix that - they'd be worse. Their main strength seems to be for drug dealing and cryptolocker type extortion. Regulating the money supply / interest rates through an open source algorithm/AI rather than it being done by politicians might be a way forward.

brianwawok 10y ago

I would love to hear the line of logic where if we all paid and got paid for everything in crypto currency would have spared you from the housing bust?

viycyjcutc 10y ago
That went way over your head, didn't it?
- dang 10y ago
  Please don't comment like this here. Also, please don't create many obscure throwaway accounts on HN. This forum is a community. Anonymity is fine, but users should have some consistent identity that other users can relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community at all, and that would be an entirely different forum.
tostitos1979 10y ago
If investors in stupid investments lost their money - all the way from investment banks down to individuals who made bad home purchase decisions, I'm pretty sure homes would cost less today. My point is that interventions have unforeseen consequences which hurt some people (typically the responsible ones).
aidenn0 10y ago
I think this is an argument by analogy: If bad, leveraged, investments in real-estate will not result in large losses, due to government intervention, then the real-estate market gets inflated, as when you have limited downside, your expected returns go up significantly. This also hurts less-leveraged investors (e.g. people who saved a large down-payment) as they get less house for their money, but don't gain any risk-reduction as their risk of negative-equity is much lower to begin with. If malinvestments in ETH can be rolled-back, then any risks that are reduced by potential future roll-backs[1] will be discounted by investors, which means investors who carefully vet their investments for those risks no longer gain any benefit. 1: I'm not familiar with the fork, so don't know what the roll-back criteria are, but remember, to distort the market a roll-back need not actually happen in the future, just that a significant fraction of investors believe it is likely

wyager 10y ago

Well, bitcoin has a much better track record... No political forks that undo transactions. One or two bug fix forks.

tostitos1979 10y ago
Agreed. Bitcoin gets the philosophy right. A fork for bug fixes is a completely different matter than for rolling back transactions.
- CoryG89 10y ago
  They just view the transactions in question as side effects from a bug. <sarcasm> Ethical dilemma eliminated.</sarcasm>
api 10y ago
Satoshi's genius was to disappear. Ethereum's creators have a stake in it, which is a moral hazard.
- zwerdlds 10y ago
  This is what ties it all together.
- Animats 10y ago
  Now that's a good point. The biggest problem with Etherium is that many of the same people are behind Etherium, the DAO, and slock.it.
jegoodwin3 10y ago
Who will guard the people themselves?

zekevermillion 10y ago

I generally agree that the ETH fork is a broken promise. But if enough people adopt it, what can we say? At the same time, you are free to continue using ETH "classic" and refuse the hard fork. I'm sure there are some people who will do this, and then you may have your own blockchain.

neffy 10y ago

One way to find out why things are done a certain way, is to try not doing them that way... http://www.jstor.org/stable/2338493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents http://www.jstor.org/stable/2338493?seq=1#page_scan_tab_cont...

greendestiny 10y ago

Yeah but in reality letting half the DAO be siphoned off is vastly worse for the promise of smart contract cyptocurrency. So the 'messy' solution is the better one for what you want, but that'll never stop nerd culture seeing things as black and white.

colordrops 10y ago
The whole point of the blockchain is that it is black and white. Your veiled insults don't change that. Stick to wall street if you want to bend the rules.
- greendestiny 10y ago
  I consider myself part of nerd culture, it's not an insult. The whole point of Ethereum is to build something black and white, but it isn't there yet. Either way this is a failure - the failure of the DAO to operate how the makers of contract specified is significant. Yes letting the transaction stand is boost to the confidence in the protocol at the expense of the DAO funds but it shouldn't give anyone the impression that future transactions are immune from reversal.

Taek 10y ago

Each cryptocurrency has its own culture and philosophy, and each will handle problems in different ways. Ethereum's hands-on approach allows them to innovate more aggressively. Bitcoin wouldn't touch this with a 10ft pole because the challenges behind such a scripting system were beyond anything they felt secure implementing. And now we are seeing why. But Ethereum can use hardforks to keep things ~stable despite the road bumps. Some people are really glad this is happening, and those people should stay in the Ethereum ecosystem. If that's not your style, and it's not mine, there are other coins (namely Bitcoin) that have more conservative cultures.

mbenjaminsmith 10y ago
I think that's entirely too apologetic. The innovation was the original protocol. They were premature (as a lot of people warned) setting up anything as massive as the DAO, someone found a way to creatively interpret the rules and make a lot of money. Instead of sucking it up as a very expensive bug bounty, they decided to manipulate the entire system -- going against the very essence of that system. The DAO's own terms state: "Any and all explanatory terms or descriptions are merely offered for educational purposes and do not supercede or modify the express terms of The DAO’s code set forth on the blockchain; to the extent you believe there to be any conflict or discrepancy between the descriptions offered here and the functionality of The DAO’s code at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413, The DAO’s code controls and sets forth all terms of The DAO Creation." Obviously the hacker's intent was theft but under the DAO's own terms it was a valid activity. Basically the code is law. If we're going to then interpret that law then we've created a system similar to the current systems we have, but lacking in maturity. The point of something like Ethereum is not that it can't be manipulated, it's that it doesn't need to be in order to function. It can be trusted explicitly because its functionality is not open to interpretation. If I'm not being clear enough -- what they should have done is taken this as a very expensive lesson and otherwise left the system alone. Yes, a "bad person" would have profited but the system's integrity would have been untouched. FWIW, I was an early backer of Ethereum and bought ETH during the pre-sale. I invested because I thought it was promising -- without any real expectation of return. Coincidentally I sold all of my ETH just before this hack (40x ROI). Because of the fork I would not invest in ETH again, regardless of potential returns, because Ethereum is no longer what it set out to be.

meanduck 10y ago

There is no reason to be disappointed. The guarantees are same as before. That is, Its 51% computing power that sets the next reality not a central/political/technical institution.

vonkow 10y ago
On paper that sounds great, but 51% computing power rapidly becomes a "central/political/technical institution" in the real world.
- meanduck 10y ago
  There is no scenario where (eg) bitcoin's 51% computing power goes to single institution. If one govt jumps in so will the others. In fact you can jump too and vote with your computing power. And note this is not possible in fiat currencies.
  - Animats 10y ago
    The top three mining pools, all in China, have well over 50% of the hash rate.[1] [1] https://blockchain.info/pools https://blockchain.info/pools
    - meanduck 10y ago
      And how are they single institution ? And if you dont like the distribution you can be a miner as it is required by cryptocurrency. Bitcoin is still being adopted. We should see more fair distribution or see another better cryptocurrency. Anycase cryptocurrency is the future global currency.
  - davidgerard 10y ago
    That sounds like a strong statement about the ownership of the four or five entities that control most Bitcoin mining. You're quite sure they don't have a great deal of commonality? Remember that this is a completely unregulated market.
  - 10y ago

davidgerard 10y ago

CODE IS LAW until the whales lose money. Note that Buterin cashed in 25% of his ETH just before this. Just another premined altcoin scam.

dharma1 10y ago
Source for the 25% ETH?
- bkolobara 10y ago
  http://themerkle.com/ethereum-developer-vitalik-buterin-sold-25-of-his-coins/ http://themerkle.com/ethereum-developer-vitalik-buterin-sold...
  - heliumcraft 10y ago
    1. This was before the the DAO was even launched by a 3rd party. 2. Can't blame the guy for cashing in a bit, wouldn't you? (and just 25%, still keeping 75%) 3. and he also donated a good portion of it to charity.
    - davidgerard 10y ago
      Cite for that last claim?
      - heliumcraft 10y ago
        "I sold a million worth and donated 1/4 to charity" https://soundcloud.com/cryptoafterdark/episode-9-vitalik-buterin-the-ether-project https://soundcloud.com/cryptoafterdark/episode-9-vitalik-but... https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4g9n2a/crypto_after_dark_90_interview_with_vitalik/d2fnxdp https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/4g9n2a/crypto_aft...
splintercell 10y ago
CODE IS LAW, but when in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. Code is law, but there is no law which we can't abolish, especially when the law stops serving the purpose for which the law was established.

wpietri 10y ago

An investment market is a game we agree to play with ourselves because it's useful. Long ago I worked for financial traders on early electronic trading systems. One day in our Frankfurt office there was a big commotion. Our head trader thought he had made a boatload of money. But it turned out that the trader on the other end of the trade had fat-fingered an offer. The mistake-maker stood to lose hundreds of millions of dollars, destroying his company. The exchange halted trading in that instrument, unwound all the trades, and started things back up again as if the mistake had never happened. I only heard of it happening that once; smaller mistakes were always the trader's problem. But for the exchange, the normal rules of the market did not override the purpose of the market, which was to facilitate certain kinds of commerce. There was just no point in destroying an entire company, and even our traders were fine with the outcome. If Ethereum's goal is a market where "people can invest without fear", then it sounds like they did the right thing. Your "caveat emptor" approach has the advantage of being ideologically simple, but it results in an economically suboptimal amount of trading. Real markets all have elaborate protections pushing them away from purity and toward economic utility. E.g., the US's stock market is a preferred place even for foreign companies to list because our strong disclosure requirements and legal protections make investors less afraid, increasing capital availability and decreasing cost. And it's not just financial markets; consider the Uniform Commercial Code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Commercial_Code

bradscarleton 10y ago

There are basically two types of cryptocurrency enthusiasts as far as I can tell. The first one believes that decentralized cryptocurrency and smart contracts will lead to a better world, free from the authoritarian rule of central banking and legal systems. And the second type, which is far more numerous, is hoping to to make a quick buck off of price fluctuations in the underlying digital assets. The NYT has a great article on this, where they suggest the bulk of Bitcoin users are Chinese citizens gambling on price fluctuations. And their stats seem to support this assertion: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-china.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/business/dealbook/bitcoin-...

SmurfJuggler 10y ago
There's at least one other type you're missing: people who appreciate the utility of an electronic equivalent to cash. I pay for things with cryptocurrencies fairly frequently. I don't want every company I buy things from having my name, address, date of birth and credit card info if they don't need it. If I'm buying goods or services that don't require physical shipping, all they need to know is what I want and that the money has changed hands. Crypto facilitates those kinds of transactions.
- tszming 10y ago
  Maybe you can just use ... PayPal?
  - sneak 10y ago
    PayPal is about as far from cash as one can get.
  - SmurfJuggler 10y ago
    PayPal, credit cards etc. all have their place, but for non-physical purchases from reputable parties I'm not sure how much you can improve on "pay money, receive thing." It would have to be a very compelling argument to persuade me that transacting through a middle-man (who then holds all my personal information and card details and also takes a cut) is better than just handing over cash and getting what I want.

VMG 10y ago

> the very notion of rolling back transactions is a step backwards I see what you did there

xorcist 10y ago

Bitcoin is an open source project. Ethereum is much more like a product managed by a corporation. The Etherum Foundation can make swift decisions where to take the project, which is both a strength and a weakness. Not all cryptocurrencies are alike because there is this fundamental difference in governance. Personally I have a hard time envisioning a successful cryptocoin that does not have a level playing field. The oligopoly of a few companies hiring most Bitcoin developers is problematic, and the Ethereum situation much more so.

DennisP 10y ago
Ethereum is also an open source project. Arguably it's less centralized in this respect than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is defined by a reference client, which is managed by developers who are mostly employed by a for-profit company. Anyone wanting to do another implementation has to comb through a lot of hairy C++ and match it bug for bug. Ethereum is defined by a 32-page spec, produced by a nonprofit corporation. At this point there are eight implementations, each in a different language, mostly by entities other than the nonprofit.

pjc50 10y ago

Yes, the DAO made a colossal error in shipping unverified code and are now having a bailout because .. they're "too big to fail". This is hilarious, but it's also a true statement about the importance of confidence in financial systems. (If the DAO had waited the couple of years necessary to produce a provably secure system, they would have been beaten to market by someone less secure who would have been hacked instead. Because people are incredibly keen to throw money at being early adopters of cryptocurrency systems. They're the new dotcom shares.) I'm also going to predict that a few months after the dust settles on this that another exploit is found in the DAO. What happens then?

DennisP 10y ago
The DAO is dead. The ether is going to the token holders, not to the DAO contract. Hopefully people have learned their lesson about putting so much in one big convoluted contract.

tim333 10y ago

> cryptocurrencies were leading to a better world The problems of the mid 2000s credit bubble and subsequent near depression were down to too much laissez-faire and not enough / smart enough regulation. Crypto currencies won't fix that - they'd be worse. Their main strength seems to be for drug dealing and cryptolocker type extortion. Regulating the money supply / interest rates through an open source algorithm/AI rather than it being done by politicians might be a way forward.