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At Poloniex, we quickly blacklisted this address. Prevents all of our users from sending money to them. Many exchanges likely can do the same thing.
by seibelj 6y ago
At Poloniex, we quickly blacklisted this address. Prevents all of our users from sending money to them. Many exchanges likely can do the same thing.
- mrtksn 6y agoWhile this is a good measure, what does it mean to the decentralization promise of Bitcoin?
- drexlspivey 6y agoIt means dont keep your money at exchanges if you want to control them
- celticninja 6y agoAlso protects the stupid. You can still send this address BTC. You just need to withdraw it to your own wallet first. Which buys the user time in which to discover it's a scam
- seibelj 6y agoPeople who use exchanges are traders (retail or professional) and hodlers who don't want to deal with the intricacies of managing 100+ coins on 50+ blockchain networks. The decentralization of cryptocurrencies is not an all-or-nothing proposition - users can choose the level of decentralization they would like based on their preferences. What I like most about decentralization is that anyone in the world can create a new crypto business on the blockchain rails, integrate with everyone else, and attract users. Of course there are real-world repercussions if your physical entity is in a locale with laws that you violate, but it is orders of magnitude easier to start a crypto exchange than a traditional bank.
- cortesoft 6y agoWon't this end up like email, though? Sure, anyone can set up their own business... however, 90% of people will be on a few large providers, and those providers will end up blocking transactions coming from unknown new providers (to prevent scams). Decentralization doesn't stop consolidation.
- seibelj 6y agoIt is much easier to set up your own cryptocurrency wallet than it is to set up your own trusted email server. Your metaphor is similar but off by a large amount. The major difference is that blockchain deals primarily with money, so email spam (useless worthless messages) is inherently less worthy of sending because doing so actually pays me, in addition to the fees you pay the network.
- Klinky 6y agoIt's not that easy to setup your own wallet. Most require you to download the entire blockchain if you want to be completely independent of a third-party.
- boring_twenties 6y agoWhat's not easy about downloading the blockchain? All you need is to have enough free space, press the button, and wait a while.
- Klinky 6y agoBitcoin is around 270GB. Monero is around 64GB. These aren't trivial downloads, and then you'll need to leave the wallet running to stay in sync or you'll have lengthy waits while it catches up the next time you run. Most people can open a credit card or bank account in 30 minutes or less. Waiting a week for a blockchain to download is a non-starter for most.
- boring_twenties 6y agoActually, it's over 300GB for Bitcoin and almost 85GB for Monero today. Regardless of that, I recently synced Monero from scratch in 3 hours, over a 802.11n network that never seems to do better than ~75Mbps. We can extrapolate that Bitcoin would be done in something like 9.5 hours. So I don't know where you got a week from. If you still don't like that, you can always use a remote node, in which case you can begin using a new account literally immediately, even better than your 30 minutes at a bank. IMHO that is a perfectly fine tradeoff for a new user who doesn't want to commit to syncing the blockchain. Nevertheless, when I deal with new, non-technical users in the Monero community, I find that they almost always prefer to run their own fully synced node, even though they understand the tradeoff (i.e., that using a remote node is probably fine). I even had a guy that has no computer, phone only, looking for help on setting up a full node on his phone. Anecdotal perhaps, but it certainly makes me skeptical of the claim that blockchain size is a big hurdle for many people at all. Oh yeah, and just for completeness: you can prune the blockchain with both Bitcoin and Monero if storage space is a concern, reducing it by something like 70%.
- H8crilA 6y agoKinda similar to like under a gold standard you don't actually pay with gold. You can, but most people just use centralised "wrappers" around gold in the form of bank notes.
- IncRnd 6y agoI don't know of any countries that are still on a gold standard.
- H8crilA 6y agoNeither do I
- ta17711771 6y agoThere is no gold anymore, mate.
- H8crilA 6y agoAny gold dealer begs to differ.
- mirimir 6y agoWell, it's not there's no physical gold, but there's still a shortage. So it's pretty easy to get spot price, even from a local shop. And if you have substantial amounts to sell, you may get spot price plus several percent. Also, I've read that silver is hot now, given the likely surge in the silver/gold ratio.
- mlindner 6y agoJust because you can stuff dollars under your bedsheets doesn't mean you can't also use a bank.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- lostmsu 6y agoIn this case you could just create a separate wallet and send BTC through it. Sounds like Poloniex does its job better than your own wallet here.
- baby 6y agoIt means that to block these funds every single recipients must block the address.
- WA 6y agoSo much for "Bitcoin is anonymous, decentralized and nobody controls it".
- Tenoke 6y agoIt is - all the exchanges in the world can't stop you from making the transaction if you want to.
- mlindner 6y agoBitcoin has never been anonymous, only pseudonymous.
- vmception 6y agoif you are having trouble getting liquid because a has-been exchange flagged your address, I wrote a guide
- boring_twenties 6y agoLink?
- vmception 6y agoMy comments history
- nseggs 6y agoHah not only that but guess which BTC just became less fungible
- Cthulhu_ 6y ago- You still don't know who (which individual) is behind the BTC address, because bitcoin is anonymous. - It is decentralized, but some exchanges process big percentages of conversions. Transferring the coins to other BTC wallets is decentralized. Moving it out of the BTC blockchain is often done through exchanges though, but there's a lot of them, and you can avoid the exchanges as well. - No, everybody controls it; it's a consensus-based system, so if enough people agree on taking things in one or another direction it will. Look up "hard fork" in the context of BTC.
- paulpauper 6y agolike trying to stop a steam roller with a mattress obv the hackers will likely use multiple addresses
- jdminhbg 6y agoThe most recent Elon Musk tweet (2:38 pm PDT; I cannot believe Twitter hasn't locked this down yet) used the same address.
- paulpauper 6y agoi saw another one 2 minuses ago. remarkable twitter has not fixed it yet.
- blisseyGo 6y agoI read somewhere that they hacked it multiple times. The first tweet got taken down and then it got posted again.
- smsm42 6y agoThe weak link here is: to run a successful scam, you need to publicize the incoming address widely. That allows exchanges to block it. If you keep the address in secret, you can't get the gullible masses to fall for it.
- paulpauper 6y agomultiple addresses, mixing, small batches, etc. there are tons of ways to evade exchange restrictions.
- smsm42 6y agoYou can, but typical spam target won't, because they don't think they need to - they think it's a legit thing so they don't need to make any effort to hide it.
- 6y ago
- Wingman4l7 6y agoCoinbase apparently did also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852054 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23852054 I'm betting Gemini also blacklisted that BTC address, especially considering that they were in the first wave of fake tweets. Really wondering now just how much BTC the attacker effectively left on the table by reusing a single wallet address, especially considering that lots of people who deal in crypto use just a handful of exchanges to send it. Would be pretty difficult to quantify, though.
- arcticbull 6y agoThat doesn't sound very decentralized and trustless. If I want to get scammed in this brave new world, shouldn't I be allowed to? Maybe I want to fund the Nigerian Prince's get-out-of-jail efforts.
- dmix 6y agoThats what Bitcoin exchanges in Russia are for.
- oska 6y agoThe block only affects people moving coins from an exchange account. Those coins are, in the final analysis, still controlled by the exchange. It doesn't affect anyone who is moving coins from an account they directly control (i.e. have the keys to).
- arcticbull 6y agoThat sounds like centralized with extra steps
- CyberDildonics 6y agoHow can you justify a statement like that? Anyone can control their transactions if they want as was just explained to you. If anything it is decentralization with extra steps.
- arcticbull 6y agoIs cash, which functions in effectively the same way, not usually recognized as centralized?
- CyberDildonics 6y agoIn this context not at all. No one controls who you give physical cash to. If someone promises you magic beans in a bar and you give them $1000, no one stops you, just as when you control a balance, nothing stops you from sending it to any address you want. I'm not actually sure what part of this is not clear.
- vmception 6y agoIf anybody here ever finds themselves in the same dilemma, use Morphtoken over TOR to swap to XMR, a completely different blockchain. This makes all the chain analysis companies and the armchair blockchain sleuths simply follow transactions on the bitcoin blockchain forever, thinking they are doing something productive with their lives, while you have hopped over to another chain that they can't track assuming they even noticed that you swapped. That was a viable last decade solution and is unfortunately centralized, this decade in 2020 you can also use the decentralized renBTC to permissionlessly lock up and mint your bitcoin as an erc20 token on the Ethereum blockchain. So now you are really liquid and have access to the entire decentralized finance economy. But again, if you really want to get government bucks and an unlinked trail, you need to sell the renBTC token for Ether and move that Ether into either Tornado.cash for a little while, or go back to the centralized solution like Morphtoken and swap the Ether for XMR as XMR has an inherently stronger anonymity set than anything else. Peace.
- dnadler 6y agoJust to be clear, this is a step by step process for how to launder money, right?
- vmception 6y agoNo, as it doesn't detail necessary reintegration into the economy. You will need to offer a service for crypto which you report taxes on. Your "customers" either pay directly in XMR which there is no trail on, or they swap the XMR back for a more likely used cryptocurrency like bitcoin or Ether, and pay you with that. So now it is. In any case as your lawyer might tell you: if the origin is illicit it is money laundering. If the origin is not illicit then its not money laundering. The irony being that it is the onus of the accuser to determine the origin, and if you do it right that is not possible to know in any scenario. Typically money laundering then is a tacked on charge, after other clear evidence is already known, to help ensure a conviction. But really at this point, its probably better if your public resources weren't spent on flagging transactions in the first place, and if the private sector was not burdened with doing this work for the state.
- miohtama 6y agoJust do a coin join transaction. These kind of blacklisted addresses can be easily bypassed.
- xvector 6y agoYou should also make the users that try to send money take a mandatory class in detecting obvious scams before continuing to use your service.
- godzillabrennus 6y agoI remember a debate in the 90’s on if consumers should have to get licensed (like ham radio operators) to use a personal computer on the internet. Maybe eternal September wouldn’t have happened...
- dx034 6y agoOne of my former employers used a security company to regularly send out very well designed phishing emails with personalized links. Clicking a link or opening an attachment got you a call with IT plus a mandatory class in how to avoid phishing. The success rate of those simulated attacks dropped drastically after the first few tries. Maybe if more companies did this it would also help fewer people to fall for it outside of work.
- MarcellusDrum 6y agoThe sad thing is that people probably stopped clicking them because they think "Its another dumb IT trick". I guess it works well enough though.
- magma17 6y agoThey can whitelist again for a certain amount.
- magma17 6y agowhy would they convert btc into usd? they are not stupid.
- Bobbcatt 6y agoWasn't BTC supposed to stop centralised authorities from controlling who can send money to whom?
- nbevans 6y agoDid you mean to say "denylist"? :upside_down_smiley:
- vmception 6y agoHow many users tried to send to this address?