19 ms·
IOTA being shut off is the latest chapter in an absurdist history
- diegoperini 7y agoOmg, I just lost my only crypto investment if this isn't fixed. The amount I lost: 100 USD
- shoo_pl 7y agoJust reading this I can see you are new to crypto. You did not lose 100 USD. You lost XXX MIOTA.
- Zenbit_UX 7y agoWeird distinction, is this a common thing in financial markets? Seems like he might have lost both if the network never comes back online. If you're a stock trader and you buy $100 in a company that goes backrupt do you lose $100 or XXX stocks?
- diegoperini 7y agoI bought monopoly money for 100 USD, hoping that they will become a thing. Then I lost my monopoly money. From my standpoint, all explanations are true, therefore irrelevant. I can no longer redeem my USD, 100 of them or less. 100 USD is gone during my gamble. The responders are wrong about my proficiency with crypto. I've been following the tech and finance side of it since Bitcoin was worth 120 USD. I've written trade bots, some fun smart contracts and even participited in Dogecoin giveaway with some doge I mined.
- britmob 7y agoYou lost $71? That’s unfortunate. Should’ve bought more than $172 of IOTA.
- nkrisc 7y agoNo you lost the 100 USD when you purchased the IOTA. What you lost just recently was the IOTA.
- pavlov 7y ago”I was a green crypto reporter approached by the press team for former beauty queen and reality TV contestant Jessica VerSteeg, who wanted to open a cannabis business in California. [...] VerSteeg wanted to use the IOTA protocol, named for its proposed functionality with internet-of-things (IoT) devices, in a coworking space for cannabis startups.” This project is peak 2017 bullshit. I can imagine the pitch deck: “It’s WeWork but for cannabis startups using IoT on the blockchain promoted by a reality TV star!”
- Blackthorn 7y agoThis project is the gift that keeps on giving when it comes to hilarity and schadenfreude. Custom hash function? Bizarre obsession with trinary? Complete centralization in a space where decentralization is the point? Constant big announcements with no substance? I love watching these guys and their supporters. It's like watching an internet cult in real time.
- Erlich_Bachman 7y agoReading the reddit is insane. It is one thing to see the creators and their bullshit and insane ideas and think "ok they are good at marketing, some people believed them, happens all the time". But it is reading the reddit that really puts you in contact with the chilling fear that comes from the sheer number of idiotic completely disconnected from reality people who flock around this project, who not only support the project itself but constantly contribute with various hairs-raising ideas one more insane than the next, and proudly show off their total disregard for objective technological landscape or any empirical logically sound reality in general.
- acpacp 7y agoThat's very much like most of the crypto projects/subs work. Lot of people with no technical understanding, completely disconnected from reality, probably owning substantial amounts of coins. Honourable mentions to subs like /r/lisk or /r/arkecosystem
- ForHackernews 7y agoYeah, I was gonna say, this pretty standard /r/buttcoin fare. The main difference with BTC (pick your flavour...) is only that the pyramid hasn't toppled (yet?).
- bdcravens 7y agoNot sure why you've been downvoted (usually HN isn't terribly pro-BTC). Perhaps it's referencing the buttcoin subreddit, which for those who don't know, is an actual subreddit that is very cynical towards cryptocurrency.
- 1337biz 7y agoTempting to buy. I bet some bullshitters are going to revitalize them.
- Moodles 7y agoStill waiting for a use case of blockchain outside cryptocurrency also.
- lawn 7y agoConsider a timestamping service that's based on mathematical proof instead of social proof.[0] But I agree, most often blockchain outside of a cryptocurrency doesn't make sense. This use case also depends on the security of an existing cryptocurrency. [0] https://whycryptocurrencies.com/timestamping_service.html https://whycryptocurrencies.com/timestamping_service.html
- RL_Quine 7y agoDecentralized timestamping is literally what Bitcoin is, there's no other way of describing it. Ordering transactions canonically is timestamping.
- lawn 7y agoMy point is that you can leverage this by inserting extra data on a transaction, so you can timestamp any message.
- zelly 7y agoA cryptocurrency is basically a timestamping service. This was mentioned in the original whitepaper. > The solution we propose begins with a timestamp server. A timestamp server works by taking a hash of a block of items to be timestamped and widely publishing the hash, such as in a newspaper or Usenet post [2-5]. The timestamp proves that the data must have existed at the time, obviously, in order to get into the hash. Each timestamp includes the previous timestamp in its hash, forming a chain, with each additional timestamp reinforcing the ones before it. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf
- nradov 7y agoSynaptic Health Alliance https://www.synaptichealthalliance.com/ https://www.synaptichealthalliance.com/
- zelly 7y agoCrytpocurrencies are not valued on its software (even though paradoxically, what makes it different from other currencies is that it's only software). Otherwise the best software would have the highest market cap, which obviously isn't the case. This is true to such an extreme degree that it doesn't even matter if the cryptocurrency is used, works, or even have a single working implementation. Seriously, there are top >100M market cap coins that have never shipped a working binary.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago> there are top >100M market cap coins that have never shipped a working binary. How do people know who has how many coins?
- zelly 7y agoAlmost every coin is implemented with straightforward, non-blinded accounting ("UTXO" model) such that everyone knows how many coins are associated with each public key. For example, this one belongs to Hal Finney (the creator of Bitcoin) and you trace the balance of and movement of coins transparently: https://blockstream.info/address/1BgoUL3Mf8vDSDU4jjpFARKBJ6zPDpa4RU https://blockstream.info/address/1BgoUL3Mf8vDSDU4jjpFARKBJ6z...
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIs there some kind of binary backing https://blocksteam.info https://blocksteam.info? Information doesn't just appear on the internet.
- zelly 7y agoBitcoin is not one of the scams with no working software I was talking about. The information comes from a leveldb database you can download from peers after installing this client: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin
- RileyJames 7y ago> “This year we’re really focused on making sure our technology is mature enough to have real, live products,” Schiener said. Outage of 12 days and counting... Why won’t anyone put us in production..
- JohnJamesRambo 7y agoI enjoy thinking about an IoT world they envisioned being shutdown for 12 days.
- alephnan 7y ago> First their custom-made hash-function was broken and you could forge transactions. Now they had to shut down their network because their wallet was hacked. This is insane because you should not be able to shut down a decentralized network.
- dylkil 7y agoit was never decentralised, they openly admitted this. They had 'plans' to decentralise it. The hype around this project was supported by nothing other than shills and bots, hoping to sucker in a few clueless noobs.
- mrtksn 7y agoIt was amazing, there were headlines all the time about something huge that happens but no one ever followed up anything. "Tokyo chooses IOTA" You assume that that city is implementing IOTA, right? If you dig deep enough you will see that what actually happens is that few people from IOTA will participate in something like a seminar with a workshop in Tokyo. It is organized by somebody in the city administration as part of some social program and there are 30 participants and what IOTA is chosen for is to be among those.
- psychlops 7y agoIt would be nice to read an attack on the technology rather than an article highlighting hater quotes on the feuding misogynist, ego-maniacal founders. Iota remains a speculative cryptocurrency. It does not rely on the technology before it and is not a copy-paste crypto like many that came out of the last boom cycle. I still think it is quite innovative. That said, it may eventually fail due to its poor implementation. The value of it on the exchanges reflects the fact that it may survive this latest fiasco.
- lalaland1125 7y agoThe article does go into the flawed technology: the hilariously poorly thought out trits, the flawed internally developed hash, the centralized nature of the system, etc etc. IOTA is to technologically flawed that it's amazing that it's worth more than $0.
- psychlops 7y agoThe trits are bizarre and introduce complexity but isn't necessarily a critical flaw. I don't see anything in the article about them. They rolled their own crypto, but later corrected it. Indeed, it has had their centralized Coordinator with plans to decentralize. Is that a flaw? Maybe, but it's also a scaling issue. The distributed proof of work is novel as well as the absence of centralized mining and transaction fees.
- jki275 7y agoThey "corrected" it when they were called out on it, while claiming it wasn't a problem, and also claiming they did it on purpose so that if someone "stole" their code they could attack and destroy anything someone else would create. Truly bizarre bullshit.
- psychlops 7y agoI don't recall reading about their rationale that way. Only the unholy way in which they defended it, while swapping it out then sequestering all iota until claimed through centralized means. Sadly, I don't think that the blind defense of flawed security is that bizarre and is all too common today. That said, it was corrected and seems solid to date.
- pat2man 7y agoThe larger issue here is that the wallet was built in a very similar way to many crypto wallets. They sort of sell the fact that private keys are not stored in a central DB as a silver bullet for decentralization. But since the private keys are copied into memory, and the software is automatically updated, the location of the key storage becomes irrelevant. The only real way to keep your keys safe is in a hardware based solution that has been audited by multiple parties. Our credit cards have that level of security, crypto wallets need at least that much.
- Aaronstotle 7y agoGood riddance, I remember during the bull run my friend was talking about Iota. I was into mining at the time and looked up how to mine it. Read about the project and knew it was scam then, not sure how it survived until now. Looking forward to the day where the shitcoins die off and there's only a handful of cryptos on exchanges/people talk about.
- acpacp 7y agoSI'm afraid that day will never come. BS in that space is just too deep. Valuations are imaginary, people involved too delusional and none of these projects are based on anything real.
- gunshai 7y ago>Read about the project and knew it was scam then I felt this way for quite a few projects and I'll be honest I felt too smart by half by passing, I don't regret my risk adverse nature though. Some of the most lucrative offers were obvious bullshit, but it didn't matter at all. Crowds were so frenetic about where the next "big project" was they didn't and couldn't comprehend that they were being fleeced. It wasn't until a buddy of mine talked about his nephew "wanting to invest in X coin because the price was low". Lot's of hype = lot's of dumb money ∴ Profits can be made on where dumb money flows.
- wyldfire 7y agoIf your cryptocoin is centralized, it's not really a cryptocoin, even if it's listed on a cryptocoin exchange. Nano is another coin with properties similar to Iota that is actually decentralized. (disclaimer: I hold some Nano)
- rellui 7y agoCool video of Nano in action https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKt9KepQQF4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iKt9KepQQF4 Learn more about Nano at nano.org.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- lawn 7y agoAnd as always claims about cryptocurrencies should be taken with a grain of salt. Nano uses delegated proof-of-stake which has a questionable level of decentralization compared to proof-of-work coins like Bitcoin. (But it's not as bad as IOTA of course.)
- kaffeemitsahne 7y agoIn a bunch of the recent IOTA threads I've seen people shilling Nano. I'm slowly beginning to understand HN's allergy to cryptocurrencies.
- cryptica 7y agoThe thing about IOTA is that it's just a reflection of the entire economy which is founded on coercion, manipulation and deception; our economy has transcended reality and reason; particularly the tech sector. There is nothing behind it but the lie is so strong and there are so many people peddling it that the market starts to believe its own lie. It's funny how quickly some capitalists will discard cryptocurrencies as worthless junk while simultaneously preaching the doctrine of "efficient markets" and not realizing the simple fact that "real markets" and "cryptocurrency markets" both exist in the same universe and are acted upon by the same market forces.
- LaineHerron 7y agoThe article says that the price of IOTA has gone up in the last 2 weeks. What does that mean? I don't see how people can be buying and selling IOTA if they are not able to send or receive it.
- greycol 7y agoBecause you can still buy and sell the coins on an exchange. It's just that you can't withdraw or deposit coins from your exchange account only trade between other exchange accounts. No wallet to wallet trades only trades of the coins sitting in the exchanges wallet (so basically trades on the exchanges private(non block chain related) ledgers rather than on the coins ledger). Actually now that I think about it I wonder what liability the exchange has in this. Obviously the exchange can't send you your coins because it's physically impossible and the value is purely speculative but currently being given value only on the exchange. Would they need to reimburse you for the 'value' of the coins if you can't withdraw? Though if we're playing a game of silly buggers I guess the exchange could put up a sell for 0.000001 cents a coin, execute the trade and immediately freeze further transactions then claim any payout would be at the last traded value (which obviously wouldn't work as there are multiple exchanges). Perhaps they could 'give access' to the exchanges wallet key with instructions that the person trying to withdraw is entitled to take out their share of the coins thus it's the account holder who is 'in control' of the coins.
- 7532yahoogmail 7y agoI am laughing ... Laughing my b u double t off at this. In 2019 I spent too many hours debating crypto as currency replacement or substitute. Never bought it. But this is like m.pythons+galaxy hitch hiker+pink-panther level of crazy dumb.