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> Also why would I trust them, when there is no need to? Because your alternative is to trust the crypto infrastructure, which is far less trustworthy.
by brazzy 8y ago
> Also why would I trust them, when there is no need to?
Because your alternative is to trust the crypto infrastructure, which is far less trustworthy.
- scient 8y agoBut muh decentralization! /s In reality most of the exchanges and sites dealing with crypto were (and probably still are) built by absolute amateurs with no checks and balances on their apps from a security perspective. Its scary as hell that people trust those sites with their actual money.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoThe recent QuadrigaCX fiasco shows this very clearly. The entire exchange (one of the biggest in Canada) was somehow just running on the encrypted laptop of this one guy, and after he suddenly died in December, there is 250 million Canadian Dollars owed to 100k+ customers that nobody can recover, because the guy with the password is dead.
- 52-6F-62 8y agoMinor correction: the exchange wasn’t running on a laptop. It was run on systems you’d expect it to run on. What was stored on the encrypted laptop was all of the cold storage wallets containing the majority of the digital assets. No less idiotic, but an important factual distinction.
- semi-extrinsic 8y agoAha, this makes sense. (Wikipedia states that the exchange was running on his laptop, which I did indeed find curious/impressive.)
- arisAlexis 8y agowhat do you mean by crypto infrastructure? you mean the code or the miners? actually banks have failed in the past, this infrastructure not yet
- jayd16 8y ago>actually banks have failed in the past, this infrastructure not yet Man, what are you talking about? There's a new "$100 million in coins go missing" story every 6 months.
- packet_nerd 8y agoCrypto 101: never let anyone have your private key. No-one who religiously followed that rule has ever had their crypto stolen. Coins go missing from exchanges, which break the basic private key rule. People use exchanges for convenience because as clever as cryptocurrency is, it has no answer to the exchange problem.
- warkdarrior 8y agoCrypto 102: regular people will never use cryptocurrencies if they have to guard their private keys without a fallback in place.
- brazzy 8y ago> never let anyone have your private key. No-one who religiously followed that rule has ever had their crypto stolen. Bullshit. No "religious" following of rules can protect you against a zero day exploit somewhere in your system.
- packet_nerd 8y agoI didn't say it always will, just that it has so far.
- dorgo 8y ago>it has no answer to the exchange problem Actually, there are smart contracts which act as exchanges. Not for all currency pairs yet, but it's on the way.