6 ms·

Bitcoin exchanges are fraught with risks

64 points by petethomas 9y ago

empath75 9y ago
Cryptocurrency anarchists find anarchy less than appealing when it happens to them.
- TomMarius 9y ago
  That's just the vocal minority.
- relyio 9y ago
  >Cryptocurrency anarchists Can you please elaborate on what you mean by that? Or is it a proxy-word for anarcho-capitalist?
  - psyc 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    If it is, as an anarchy-capitalist, I'm pretty happy with the ecosystem-- without government control, we have seen a lot of the worst people, including hacks and thefts, yes, and those make the systems and software stronger-- because we have a lot of good people, and a genuine meritocracy without gatekeepers keeping out everyone but the well connected.
    - relyio 9y ago
      My thoughts exactly, the space has seen considerable growth... and yes, there's some bad stuff but the market gets smarter and less vulnerable with time. It's overall a large win imo.
j_s 9y ago
It's always interesting to see HN'ers publicly share here the degree to which they've personally invested in cryptocurrency (non-deletable, non-editable after 1 hour, plus whatever other restrictions). I wonder if HN is willing to delete accounts and/or some or all of their posts? Edit: to be specific (for gtirloni's sake) - the unusual artificial limits of this site add additional exposure/risk to anyone painting a target on themself here, especially new users and/or years ago when Bitcoin was worth nearly nothing.
- pc86 9y ago
  I bought 1.5 right around $2500 because I had the money and was willing to lose it. I figured worse case scenario it's a lifetime supply of scratch off lottery tickets in one shot :) Sold it in one transaction right around $4700, so a nice return. Never buying any more unless it drops below $2k, I think.
- gtirloni 9y ago
  What's interesting about that and why would HN care if people are sharing private details of their life willingly?
  - aaron-lebo 9y ago
    It's that people should be a lot safer and aware. I've seen a guy brag about his cryptocurrency stash, and if you went through his post history he'd also talked about where he lived and his profession. If he leaked any other details (through HN or crossreferencing other sites), he might be a really vulnerable target and not even realize it.
    - contingencies 9y ago
      There are easier targets...
    - EGreg 9y ago
      I bet you that someone could write a program to deanonymize most people posting on the internet, and then cross correlate with claims about high roller stuff.
jameskegel 9y ago
This site is unusable on mobile. As soon as the scroll effects kick in the whole browser locks up and scrolling has to be done with a four second delay; when the article is 40% advertisements on mobile, I'm only going to reload the article so many times before I just give up. I don't want to be a part of this new internet anymore, everything is going to shit.
- markatkinson 9y ago
  I'm sorry to hear that but if you on mobile you should try the app materialistic
aaron-lebo 9y ago
Wow, the article talks about Moolah facing fraud charges. That was a big deal in the Dogecoin community for awhile. https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-faces-fraud-charges-uk/ https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-faces-... He's now a convicted rapist: https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-sentenced-11-years/ https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-sentence... You've also got the owner of the Dogecoin tipbot who stole a bunch of money: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-meme-currency-bot-di-1795125165 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-meme-... What a fucked up industry.
- halite 9y ago
  > What a fucked up industry. What industry isn't? Yahoo CEO had fake credentials: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-out/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-out/ind... He lied and accepted a salary. In my world, I define that as stealing. Equifax CEO Richard Smith will collect 90M http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-worth/ http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-... What a convenient time to retire. Questionable morals of Uber CEO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-resigns-under-investor-pressure-idUSKBN19C0G6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-travis-... And numerous other examples. Bad people are everywhere. Cryptocurrency is a new realm that combines tech with the economy at a different level and currently, it is like a big experiment. It might be an expensive experiment but the learnings are for sure gonna change the face of the internet.
  - gcb0 9y ago
    > ceo fake credentials no company his a ceo for his undergrad education, sadly. that's probably the nasty side effect of internal fights.
  - beepboopbeep 9y ago
    haha wow. How dismissive... This is an absurd reply.
_joel 9y ago
He kept 750 coins on an exchange? That's surely asking for trouble, granted it's shouldn't happen that he would lose anything but given the industry and their reputation then I would thought minimizing exposure on exchanges may be prudent
01096232042 9y ago
Rayed
rothbardrand 9y ago
It's the early days-- there are already "non-custodial" exchanges-- shapeshift and changelly.... and atomic swaps are just starting to be experimented with. When lightening network exchanges and atomic swaps and side chains are all perfected in 1-5 years much of the exchange risk will be gone.
- josu 9y ago
  >shapeshift and changelly Those are more like brokers rather than exchanges or "non-custodial" exchanges as you called them.
j_s 9y ago
Much of the serious damage has been done through social engineering of cell phone providers. My choice for most interesting personal hack: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-have-stolen-millions-of-dollars-in-bitcoin-using-only-phone-numbers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-ha... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402 He had kept it offline for most of the past several years, but had connected that device in recent weeks to move them somewhere more secure and sell some. Though he had locked it with a 30-character password, the hackers moved the coins off At the exchange level, a highly recommended summary of the Mt Gox debacle was discussed recently: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-... [video] | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152 There have been hosting-provider-level breaches that might be more technically interesting (Linode 2012): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355
beepboopbeep 9y ago
I love bitcoin articles. It's like ringing the bell for the cows to come home. I'll let you fine folks tell us all why the risks are no big deal and this is just another piece of the conspiracy against BTC.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  This is good for Bitcoin.

64 points by petethomas 9y ago

empath75 9y ago

Cryptocurrency anarchists find anarchy less than appealing when it happens to them.

TomMarius 9y ago
That's just the vocal minority.
relyio 9y ago
>Cryptocurrency anarchists Can you please elaborate on what you mean by that? Or is it a proxy-word for anarcho-capitalist?
- psyc 9y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypto-anarchism
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  If it is, as an anarchy-capitalist, I'm pretty happy with the ecosystem-- without government control, we have seen a lot of the worst people, including hacks and thefts, yes, and those make the systems and software stronger-- because we have a lot of good people, and a genuine meritocracy without gatekeepers keeping out everyone but the well connected.
  - relyio 9y ago
    My thoughts exactly, the space has seen considerable growth... and yes, there's some bad stuff but the market gets smarter and less vulnerable with time. It's overall a large win imo.

j_s 9y ago

It's always interesting to see HN'ers publicly share here the degree to which they've personally invested in cryptocurrency (non-deletable, non-editable after 1 hour, plus whatever other restrictions). I wonder if HN is willing to delete accounts and/or some or all of their posts? Edit: to be specific (for gtirloni's sake) - the unusual artificial limits of this site add additional exposure/risk to anyone painting a target on themself here, especially new users and/or years ago when Bitcoin was worth nearly nothing.

pc86 9y ago
I bought 1.5 right around $2500 because I had the money and was willing to lose it. I figured worse case scenario it's a lifetime supply of scratch off lottery tickets in one shot :) Sold it in one transaction right around $4700, so a nice return. Never buying any more unless it drops below $2k, I think.
gtirloni 9y ago
What's interesting about that and why would HN care if people are sharing private details of their life willingly?
- aaron-lebo 9y ago
  It's that people should be a lot safer and aware. I've seen a guy brag about his cryptocurrency stash, and if you went through his post history he'd also talked about where he lived and his profession. If he leaked any other details (through HN or crossreferencing other sites), he might be a really vulnerable target and not even realize it.
  - contingencies 9y ago
    There are easier targets...
  - EGreg 9y ago
    I bet you that someone could write a program to deanonymize most people posting on the internet, and then cross correlate with claims about high roller stuff.

jameskegel 9y ago

This site is unusable on mobile. As soon as the scroll effects kick in the whole browser locks up and scrolling has to be done with a four second delay; when the article is 40% advertisements on mobile, I'm only going to reload the article so many times before I just give up. I don't want to be a part of this new internet anymore, everything is going to shit.

markatkinson 9y ago
I'm sorry to hear that but if you on mobile you should try the app materialistic

aaron-lebo 9y ago

Wow, the article talks about Moolah facing fraud charges. That was a big deal in the Dogecoin community for awhile. https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-faces-fraud-charges-uk/ https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-faces-... He's now a convicted rapist: https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-sentenced-11-years/ https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-sentence... You've also got the owner of the Dogecoin tipbot who stole a bunch of money: https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-meme-currency-bot-di-1795125165 https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-meme-... What a fucked up industry.

halite 9y ago
> What a fucked up industry. What industry isn't? Yahoo CEO had fake credentials: http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-out/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-out/ind... He lied and accepted a salary. In my world, I define that as stealing. Equifax CEO Richard Smith will collect 90M http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-worth/ http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-... What a convenient time to retire. Questionable morals of Uber CEO https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-travis-kalanick-resigns-under-investor-pressure-idUSKBN19C0G6 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-travis-... And numerous other examples. Bad people are everywhere. Cryptocurrency is a new realm that combines tech with the economy at a different level and currently, it is like a big experiment. It might be an expensive experiment but the learnings are for sure gonna change the face of the internet.
- gcb0 9y ago
  > ceo fake credentials no company his a ceo for his undergrad education, sadly. that's probably the nasty side effect of internal fights.
- beepboopbeep 9y ago
  haha wow. How dismissive... This is an absurd reply.

_joel 9y ago

He kept 750 coins on an exchange? That's surely asking for trouble, granted it's shouldn't happen that he would lose anything but given the industry and their reputation then I would thought minimizing exposure on exchanges may be prudent

01096232042 9y ago

Rayed

rothbardrand 9y ago

It's the early days-- there are already "non-custodial" exchanges-- shapeshift and changelly.... and atomic swaps are just starting to be experimented with. When lightening network exchanges and atomic swaps and side chains are all perfected in 1-5 years much of the exchange risk will be gone.

josu 9y ago
>shapeshift and changelly Those are more like brokers rather than exchanges or "non-custodial" exchanges as you called them.

j_s 9y ago

Much of the serious damage has been done through social engineering of cell phone providers. My choice for most interesting personal hack: https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-have-stolen-millions-of-dollars-in-bitcoin-using-only-phone-numbers/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-ha... | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402 He had kept it offline for most of the past several years, but had connected that device in recent weeks to move them somewhere more secure and sell some. Though he had locked it with a 30-character password, the hackers moved the coins off At the exchange level, a highly recommended summary of the Mt Gox debacle was discussed recently: https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/ https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-... [video] | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152 There have been hosting-provider-level breaches that might be more technically interesting (Linode 2012): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137 | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355

beepboopbeep 9y ago

I love bitcoin articles. It's like ringing the bell for the cows to come home. I'll let you fine folks tell us all why the risks are no big deal and this is just another piece of the conspiracy against BTC.

deadmetheny 9y ago
This is good for Bitcoin.