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I would argue that the failure modes of a bank transfer are much better understood than any cryptocurrency. Or was the parity wallet multi-sig attack something
by fwip 8y ago
I would argue that the failure modes of a bank transfer are much better understood than any cryptocurrency.
Or was the parity wallet multi-sig attack something that most lay-people knew about as a risk before it happened?
- gruez 8y ago>Or was the parity wallet multi-sig attack something that most lay-people knew about as a risk before it happened? IMO that's more of a problem with smart contracts than with cryptocurrencies as a whole. if you allow anyone to write code that controls millions of dollars, there's going to be ten different implementations and a hack in one of them is virtually guaranteed. on the other hand if the multisig mechanism is part of the network protocol, there's only 1 implementation which will be better scrutinized. even if there was a bug, at least the intention is clearly conveyed and can be fixed with a non-controversial hard fork. see: bitcoin's block reward integer underflow hack vs ethereum's DAO hack.
- packet_nerd 8y agoI'm responsible for managing 30+ firewalls at my bank. If any one of them is incorrectly configured an attacker could get into our network and all that would take is a tiny incorrect detail on one line. And I'm keenly aware that I'm a mortal human being and very possibly could make such a mistake. Or the network could be compromised through any of hundreds of other ways: email, USB stick, insider attack, etc. etc. etc... And that's just my bank. Any given transaction will go through several all with similar weak points, and some of them with firewall admins even less competent than myself. To me there's just no comparison. The scale of failure modes or attack points for a bank is way way bigger than any cryptocurrency. The reason it works at all is banks have well-paid guys like myself pouring over every detail and keeping things working.
- fwip 8y agoThat's another good point, the reason the bank employs people to pore over every detail is because they're liable to make sure it works right. If I say "send $1000 to account X" and the $1000 vanishes, that's their fault. But if something goes wrong in cryptocurrency, whoops, guess I should have just known better.