5 ms·

And who gets to decide which trades are rolled back? By what criteria?

by sunchild 15y ago

hollerith 15y ago
It is pretty clear that Mt Gox rolled back all trades from now to the first big unauthorized trade.
- rmc 15y ago
  So if you had already done a legitimate trade it's gone? "Sorry you made some money there, but someone else got affect by something else, so we've undone that". So much for "There are no chargebacks on BitCoin"
  - Flenser 15y ago
    When designing a system like this you have to have a veil of ignorance. There may from time to time be attacks or defects that mean some people lose a lot of money while others gain some. Not knowing which will happen to you, how would you want the system to work? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
  - mestudent 15y ago
    So much for "There are no chargebacks on BitCoin" Well this is trading through an intermediary, you can't really expect it to work that way otherwise something like this would have a lot more incentive for wrongdoers. If you really want to have no chargebacks you have to go the harder route of one on one trading, with everything that comes along with that.
    - Andys 15y ago
      And of course, one on one bitcoin trading is already alive and well at http://bitcoin-otc.com/ http://bitcoin-otc.com/
  - dataangel 15y ago
    You don't understand. There is a difference between the currency and the exchange. The exchange stores the trades internally without actually doing any bitcoin transactions until the time of withdrawal.
  - encoderer 15y ago
    I don't understand all the anger at the idea of rolling-back. Hasn't anybody trading bitcoins been watching how major equities exchanges have worked for decades? Take the flash-crash last year. Yes, if you were a lucky one who bought GE at $3/share then hell yes you wanted that trade to count. But to have an exchange it takes everybody acting in the interest of the group as well as themselves. The value to that over purely selfish motivations is that it creates a liquid market which benefits everybody involved. Part of this is the acceptance of situations like this. In cases of attack or software defect, the only real viable option is to rollback. The only people this hurts are the 1% who tried to profiteer on the situation. Not rolling back would harm the other 99%. It's an easy call. The only real tragedy would be if they cannot rollback accurately. You'd think this wouldn't be possible, but you never know... It seems as tho this site has had a known CSRF bugs for a while. This is not a hard thing to fix. It doesn't shine well upon their competence.
    - sunchild 15y ago
      Just to be clear, I'm not taking a position, only asking a question: how does the exchange layer affect the fundamental goals of bitcoin, esp. the notion that no centralized authority controls monetary policy?
      - nandemo 15y ago
        In principle, it doesn't affect that goal. An exchange doesn't control monetary policy, i.e., it doesn't set interest rates or increase the quantity of currency. Of course, an exchange can affect the value of the products it is trading. Since Mt. Gox is the biggest bitcoin exchange, if a vulnerability is found then people might stop trading there, decreasing the liquidity and consequently the value of bitcoin. But this doesn't contradict the goal you mention. As an analogy, if company ACME only trades on Nasdaq and there's a system problem with Nasdaq, some people will be scrambling to get rid of their ACME stocks so ACME's price will go down. That doesn't mean that the exchange controls the price of ACME.
        sunchild 15y ago

And who gets to decide which trades are rolled back? By what criteria?

hollerith 15y ago

It is pretty clear that Mt Gox rolled back all trades from now to the first big unauthorized trade.

rmc 15y ago
So if you had already done a legitimate trade it's gone? "Sorry you made some money there, but someone else got affect by something else, so we've undone that". So much for "There are no chargebacks on BitCoin"
- Flenser 15y ago
  When designing a system like this you have to have a veil of ignorance. There may from time to time be attacks or defects that mean some people lose a lot of money while others gain some. Not knowing which will happen to you, how would you want the system to work? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veil_of_ignorance
- mestudent 15y ago
  So much for "There are no chargebacks on BitCoin" Well this is trading through an intermediary, you can't really expect it to work that way otherwise something like this would have a lot more incentive for wrongdoers. If you really want to have no chargebacks you have to go the harder route of one on one trading, with everything that comes along with that.
  - Andys 15y ago
    And of course, one on one bitcoin trading is already alive and well at http://bitcoin-otc.com/ http://bitcoin-otc.com/
- dataangel 15y ago
  You don't understand. There is a difference between the currency and the exchange. The exchange stores the trades internally without actually doing any bitcoin transactions until the time of withdrawal.
- encoderer 15y ago
  I don't understand all the anger at the idea of rolling-back. Hasn't anybody trading bitcoins been watching how major equities exchanges have worked for decades? Take the flash-crash last year. Yes, if you were a lucky one who bought GE at $3/share then hell yes you wanted that trade to count. But to have an exchange it takes everybody acting in the interest of the group as well as themselves. The value to that over purely selfish motivations is that it creates a liquid market which benefits everybody involved. Part of this is the acceptance of situations like this. In cases of attack or software defect, the only real viable option is to rollback. The only people this hurts are the 1% who tried to profiteer on the situation. Not rolling back would harm the other 99%. It's an easy call. The only real tragedy would be if they cannot rollback accurately. You'd think this wouldn't be possible, but you never know... It seems as tho this site has had a known CSRF bugs for a while. This is not a hard thing to fix. It doesn't shine well upon their competence.
  - sunchild 15y ago
    Just to be clear, I'm not taking a position, only asking a question: how does the exchange layer affect the fundamental goals of bitcoin, esp. the notion that no centralized authority controls monetary policy?
    - nandemo 15y ago
      In principle, it doesn't affect that goal. An exchange doesn't control monetary policy, i.e., it doesn't set interest rates or increase the quantity of currency. Of course, an exchange can affect the value of the products it is trading. Since Mt. Gox is the biggest bitcoin exchange, if a vulnerability is found then people might stop trading there, decreasing the liquidity and consequently the value of bitcoin. But this doesn't contradict the goal you mention. As an analogy, if company ACME only trades on Nasdaq and there's a system problem with Nasdaq, some people will be scrambling to get rid of their ACME stocks so ACME's price will go down. That doesn't mean that the exchange controls the price of ACME.
      - sunchild 15y ago