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I lost all my savings in a mistaken Ethereum transaction
- mudge 6y agoPoor guy accidentally sent his funds to the wrong address, losing his life's savings. More info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/kdwg1b/i_lost_all_my_funds_with_one_idiot_mistake_i_will/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/kdwg1b/i_lost_all... And here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/ke2hxz/aavegotchi_sets_up_donations_to_help_guy_who_lost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/ke2hxz/aavegotchi... And here: https://twitter.com/mudgen/status/1338967176968069127 https://twitter.com/mudgen/status/1338967176968069127
- CJefferson 6y agoWhile I accept it's a tradeoff where other people might take another view, this is type of thing is why I personally don't want to put money into blockchains. I want mistakes to be fixable, by going to court if necessary, rather than money just being lost forever because I mistyped a character and "computer says no".
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoMight be doable to reverse transactions on exchanges, which operate like banks and will do 'shadow' transactions, because e.g. the Bitcoin blockchain can only handle a handful of real transactions per second.
- totony 6y agoThis is fixable with escrows (which etherum has on-chain I think). It's just not very used right now. Although this is about participating in contracts themselves so this is more akin to a bug in the escrow.
- ur-whale 6y agoMuch like a real world contract between - say - you and a bank when they accept your deposit, a smart contract should contain code provisions to revert the funds back to their owner if a certain set of circumstances happens in the environment (i.e. in the blockchain). For example there could be, as part of the contract, much like there are exceptional provisions in real world contract, a M-of-N sig allowing the funds to be reverted back to the sender if enough (M) people agree that it's the correct thing to do. This particular contract didn't seem to have any such provisions, which made it very unsafe. Current smart contracts aren't very sophisticated yet, this is still the stone age for programmable money. Things will improve, but in the meantime ... be safe out there.
- _fx6v 6y agoHow is it possible to improve for this situation?
- wegs 6y agoAnd in banks, all your money can be frozen by a hostile government, for example. Diversification. I DO keep all my money in Western financial institutions, but that's laziness, not out of some misguided perception of stability. If I were optimizing, I'd have some in US institutions, some abroad, some in land, some in blockchain, some in gold, etc. The US has had a nice 250-year run. Past performance doesn't always predict future performance, and more importantly, if I live 100 years, that means the US has been around for 2.5 of my lifetimes. I think that's a good indicator of the level of stability. There's perhaps a 1-in-2 chance of some major event within my lifetime, consider things like the American Revolution, Civil War, or Great Depression to be major events. Not all of those would wipe out my assets, but I'd say about a 1:5 chance of my assets being neutered or neutralized within my life. We tend to plan for the common, minor stuff (typo, guy loses $50k), and overlook big, rare events (like the current, entirely predictable pandemic).
- seibelj 6y agoBitcoin breaks $20k - HN keeps all posts off the front page, then promotes this one to the top. HN crypto hate never surprises me
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- toomuchtodo 6y agoWhy would interest in irrational exuberance for a commodity with no intrinsic value supersede posts about serious failings of the technology? Pretty hard to wax on about how crypto is the future of retail finance in a thread about someone who lost their life savings with no recourse due to a typo. Could’ve just gone to the bank if this was fiat.
- Retric 6y agoDow breaking 30k isn’t Hacker News either, you can read about that stuff on CNN if you want focus on random numbers.
- gruez 6y ago>Dow breaking 30k isn’t Hacker News either Not sure about dow specifically, but stories about stock market performance occasionally show up on the front page eg. Trading halted as U.S. stocks plummet (axios.com) S&P 500 Plunges 7%, Triggering Market-Wide Stock Trading Halt (bloomberg.com) both on https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-03-09 https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2020-03-09
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoor every time Tesla does a thing: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=true&query=tesla%20stock&sort=byPopularity&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=true&query=tesl...
- greenshackle2 6y agoA trading halt is an extraordinary event. Some particular asset or index reaching a value that happens to be a round number is not.
- ForHackernews 6y agoThis is a sad story and a good example of why the much-ballyhooed immutability of cryptocurrency transactions is an anti-feature for the vast majority of users.
- qz2 6y agoIf you did this with a bank you’d be up shit creek as well.
- anamexis 6y agoIf you did what with a bank? You can't accidentally send money to a black hole with a bank.
- gruez 6y agoBut you can? https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/how-to-avoid-invoice-theft-scam-that-cost-google-facebook-123m.html https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/28/how-to-avoid-invoice-theft-s... >Neither company explained to CNBC how they were able to recover the stolen funds. In most cases, they’re lost forever.
- anamexis 6y agoThat isn't sending money to a black hole, that's sending money to a fraudster. Granted, that is still losing money irreversibly, but it's not the same thing.
- NicoJuicy 6y agoIn Europe, you are required to return funds not meant for you.
- thatguyagain 6y agoNope, depends on the situation and which country.
- SamBam 6y ago
- fileeditview 6y agoThe most downvoted comment in the Github issue seems totally right.. why did this guy put his life savings in a crypto? Even without making any mistake this seems like a dumb move.
- howlgarnish 6y agoWhile that's a very valid question, it's not helpful to the OP.
- kordlessagain 6y agoNitpicking slightly, but "OP" is whoever started the thread in the forum where it is being discussed, not whomever wrote the original article. Only saying this because it keeps getting misused here on HN.
- wodenokoto 6y agoI think I’ve made that mistake too once or twice. Do we have a good word that covers both the author of the post or the OP of the linked thread?
- cainxinth 6y agoWhat difference does that make? We aren't tech support. I do hope he gets his money back, but he deserves some chiding as well.
- jdu9 6y agoIt is helpful for whoever is thinking of investing all their money in cryptocurrency and finds this on Google.
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- twox2 6y agoExactly. People need to know that there are many ways to make all your money go poof in crypto.
- mudge 6y agoAavegotchi setup a donation fund to help out the guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/ke2hxz/aavegotchi_sets_up_donations_to_help_guy_who_lost/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/ke2hxz/aavegotchi...
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ur-whale 6y agoGiven the guy's github avatar icon, not so sure he'll collect much (assumin the donation fund isn't a scam in the first place).
- dastx 6y agoThis is one of very few reasons why having centralised banks is going to be necessary. Whether the pros of having banks outweigh the cons decentralised currencies, is yet to be determined. Personally, I still don't believe they do. Anyway, the usual bank transaction care should still apply, especially _because_ there is no central authority to reverse charges. Normally when I send money to anyone, I check it first by sending a small amount, then I get confirmation that it's received, then I'll send the rest. I don't know if such a precaution would have made sense in this scenario (as I don't know enough about LINK or smart contracts for that matter), but it's something that I take especially serious when transacting large amounts in crypto currencies.
- cjfd 6y agoWell, it is also possible to send money to the wrong account number by bank transfer. In that case the banks also generally say that they cannot do anything about it.
- ceejayoz 6y agoWrong account is one of the three specific scenarios the National Automated Clearing House Association permits an ACH reversal for. (The others are wrong amount and duplicate transactions.)
- atian 6y agoWire transfers are a better comparison to crypto transactions, and they are less forgiving.
- jtbayly 6y agoGenerally they just fix it for you, actually.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoI don't think this is true. I think usually an obvious error like a large sum sent to an incorrect account is reversible. Though certain specific transactions such as wires are harder to recover than others such as intrabank transfers.
- sz4kerto 6y agoCan someone ELI5 who has/owns the $50k worth of crypto now? (I don't know what the GHST staking contract means.)
- evan_ 6y agoI think it’s just gone, like he’d set cash on fire... right?
- brechin 6y agoMy interpretation (not a crypto buff) is that it's like he accidentally buried a locked suitcase of cash in concrete at the bottom of the ocean. It might be recoverable, but would require extraordinary efforts.
- pwdisswordfish0 6y agoIt was never 'there' to begin with, so it's not like that, really. It's like he said, "Hey, let's play a game. Right now, everyone agrees I should have 50k quatloos to do something with. (That's not the game; that's a fact and the premise going into the game.) The game is this: I'll write a note, and let's all agree that ultimately I will no longer have 50k quatloos after I publish the note, okay?" In fact, it's so much like that, that that's pretty much what it is. (Getting it "back" is a matter of getting everyone to agree that "okay, now you have the 50k quatloos again".)
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- ur-whale 6y agoDon't know the specifics of this one, but crypto can be destroyed, e.g. : https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1BitcoinEaterAddressD...
- elil17 6y agoIts in an account which isn’t owned by any person - the account of a “contract”, a computer program made to accept money and send it out based on a set of rules. Unfortunately for this person, the program’s rules don’t let it send back out the kind of currency he added. It’s like if you tried to drop off Euros at an American bank and instead of telling you they don’t accept Euros, they put it in the cash register and, when you asked for it back, told you they can’t give out Euros. The question is whether someone can figure out how to modify the program to accept more currencies (even though the program was designed to be immutable).
- ur-whale 6y agoFunny that this makes it to HN's front page as BTCUSD touches an all time high. Maybe the OP is trying to do some sort of indirect PSA on the dangers of crypto? [edit]: in which case, here's another PSA: you can have freedom or safety. Having both is pretty darn hard. However, having the illusion that you have both is fairly commonplace.
- blakecaldwell 6y agoLet's leave real money behind and all move to crypto. It's just so easy. Can't trust banks. /s
- beervirus 6y agoSpend your life savings on a bunch of numbers. Act surprised when they evaporate.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoWhile I don't think crypto is the wisest place to vest oneself, I think you could flippantly say this about a lot of financial instruments over the years.
- beervirus 6y agoIt's one thing if you're "investing" money that you can afford to lose. Gamble it on crypto or blackjack, whatever you like. But if it's your life savings, put it in an index fund and forget about it for a few decades.
- DubiousPusher 6y agoI think that is sound advice. I think it's very unlikely however that all people will happen upon that advice and agree that it is sound. Especially unlikely with an entire industry of financial sales people who have a vested interest in selling all kind of financial products.
- oregontechninja 6y agoJokes on you, I have no savings! /S
- stefap2 6y agoOT, but what was the purpose of this transfer, expecting appreciation of currency? With money transfers, one should always send a small amount and confirm receipt, rather then sending giant amounts ?
- londons_explore 6y agoFees discourage the sending of test amounts.
- elil17 6y agoIf the Aveegotchi person is based in a jurisdictions with laws that would be favorable, one solution is to sue him. You could make the argument that he should return the money (and that creating a computer program which was unable to allow him to do so was his own fault). It’s a similar fact pattern to Citigroup v. Brigade Capital Management (which seems like it could go in Citigroup’s favor). Of course it seems like the Aveegotchi person is being really nice about this so I don’t think it would be right to sue him, but if I’d just lost my whole life savings maybe I’d think differently.
- londons_explore 6y agoYou may be right... But I would hope a court would rule that "I was experimenting with this other guys computer code and it ate my money" wouldn't lead to liability for the author of the code unless the loss can proved to be either deliberate or limited to the gain of the author (rather than the loss of the victim).
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- mekkkkkk 6y agoIt seems like this is an issue of tooling, no? If crypto by definition is to be without governance, and contracts are immutable, then you better use some damn good tools/services to make sure transfers and contracts are setup and executed correctly. Any type of silly mistake like this should be made practically impossible, since it's inherently irreversible by design. So was this guy just playing around with manual setups? Or is that perhaps the only way to do things?
- twox2 6y agoI think crypto requires low level interactions for things like this. Tooling is good for abstracting payments, but if you're using it and don't understand what's happening under the hood there are so many pitfalls.
- kerblang 6y agoWow: "the implementation is the battle-tested standard OpenZeppelin ERC20 contract...Chainlink added a few functions to support ERC-677...here's a ray of hope since the contract that owns the funds is a proxy (implemented as @mudgen's Diamond)... If you could somehow get the proxy to register the transfer function of the Chainlink contract as a diamond facet, you (or anyone else) would then be able to call it via the proxy and move the funds as if you were the owner. Aavegotchi, as any diamond, has an admin interface for changing registered functions, called IDiamondCut." Cryptocurrency is gonna need its own Certified Public Accountants.
- dfischer 6y agoIn the end doesn't change much down that path...