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The hacker would suddenly discover the various international justice systems. The tokens would be tainted, unspendable, and worthless. A wild guess at the pot
by ISL 8y ago
The hacker would suddenly discover the various international justice systems.
The tokens would be tainted, unspendable, and worthless.
A wild guess at the potential reward for unmasking the hacker? ($950B * 0.3 * 0.001 --> ~300 M USD).
After the first such hack, companies might add a clause to the bylaws enabling the company to re-issue stock to the aggrieved party, restoring balance to the universe.
- ISL 8y agoA double-spend attack is more subtle, as the correct resolution is less clear. The law is pretty good at handling theft and fraud, though, so I suspect a reasonable solution can be worked out in short order.
- sneak 8y agoThen why call him God?
- mrep 8y ago> The tokens would be tainted, unspendable, and worthless. No they wouldn't because the whole "decentralized system" makes it so you have to get EVERYONE to agree to blacklist those tokens BEFORE THEY ARE TRADED or else it fails because the hacker can tumble those tokens across dozens of different cryptocurrencies on every exchange across thousands of accounts. You will never be able to hard fork every cryptocurrency for 1 mistake. The only hack that I have ever heard of that was successfully reversed was the DOA and that was because they had 30 days to work out a hard fork on 1 wallet! Cryptocurrencies are good for one thing only and that is blackhats.
- ISL 8y agoIt only takes a few countries imprisoning people who trade in tainted coins/tokens before they become untouchable. Public ledgers are public. If the US IRS, perhaps coordinated with Interpol, publishes a blacklist of coins, those coins are toast.
- Felz 8y agoUh, so wait. If the IRS/Interpol becomes an effective source of truth on which coins may be legally transferred and who rightfully owns them, what was the point of the blockchain?
- ISL 8y agoWe are all going to find out. At the very least, the blockchain provides a degree of global immutability that was previously impossible.
- mrep 8y agoThat immutability is terrible feature. Type one letter wrong on your wallet address and your money is gone forever. I myself have experienced something similar when a bank teller provided me with a routing number from a chase bank in a different state then I originally set up my account. Thus, my entire direct deposit pay for a month of $6,000 went to an account set for a chase routing number in a different state. Fortunately, I went to the bank soon after and they fixed it by putting the money in my proper account. If they had used a cryptocurrency, I would have lost an entire months pay.
- dmurray 8y agoYou have something like a 1 in 4 billion chance of entering a valid bitcoin address if you made a typo, whether it's "one letter wrong" or some other combination of changes (there's a 32 bit checksum). So actually this never happens.
- dnomad 8y agoThis sort of thing happens all the time. Hackers routinely attack web sites and change wallet addresses [1]. They setup fake Twitter accounts, fake web sites, muck up exchanges with fake listings, and in some cases even hold fake investor meetings. By some estimates hackers have stolen $400m from ICOs [2]. All of this nonsense is possible precisely because crypto transactions are irreversible so the currency users have absolutely no recourse. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/coindash-website-hacked-7-million-stolen-in-ico.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/07/17/coindash-website-hacked-7-mi... [2] http://fortune.com/2018/01/22/ico-2018-coin-bitcoin-hack/ http://fortune.com/2018/01/22/ico-2018-coin-bitcoin-hack/