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It's an interesting experiment in re-inventing currency trading. The lesson I'm taking away: if a currency can be stolen, it will. This is in contrast to the AC

by tlb 15y ago

It's an interesting experiment in re-inventing currency trading. The lesson I'm taking away: if a currency can be stolen, it will. This is in contrast to the ACH transfer system, where fraud or theft can be reversed with some effort. Perhaps there is no way to build a sufficiently secure untraceable, non-undoable cash system.

hollerith 15y ago
> . . . in contrast to the ACH transfer system, where fraud or theft can be reversed . . . I am not sure, but I think Bitcoin transactions can be reversed, too, if enough nodes want to do so.
cookiecaper 15y ago
Most of the compromises of Bitcoin-related systems have been made with fairly unsophisticated attacks. It's not that there's no way to build a reliable system -- it's just that people are trusting their bitcoins to services that are not tested very thoroughly. This is expected to some extent, but as the value and popularity of btc shot up, the service providers didn't flesh out the important security bits that had been omitted previously. Interested parties proceed to execute script-kiddie level attacks and make off with a nice bounty of btc. The moral of the story is that you need to be careful about where you place your valuables. Don't trust a service that hasn't been thoroughly tested and audited if you are going to store a large amount of money there.
- ChuckMcM 15y ago
  That is where my thinking is as well. Basically its easy to do one of these 'look what I coded up over the weekend' kind of web sites to prove a concept, but if you're going to deal with more than a few K bitcoins then you need to plan appropriately dor folks who are going to start sniffing around when there is that sort of value sitting there. There are various folks who provide pre-configured VM's for things (jumpbox [1] comes to mind) so presumably they could provide a site that was at least moderately safe. Of course that means money to pay for that sort of stuff. [1] http://www.jumpbox.com/ http://www.jumpbox.com/

by tlb 15y ago

hollerith 15y ago

> . . . in contrast to the ACH transfer system, where fraud or theft can be reversed . . . I am not sure, but I think Bitcoin transactions can be reversed, too, if enough nodes want to do so.

cookiecaper 15y ago

Most of the compromises of Bitcoin-related systems have been made with fairly unsophisticated attacks. It's not that there's no way to build a reliable system -- it's just that people are trusting their bitcoins to services that are not tested very thoroughly. This is expected to some extent, but as the value and popularity of btc shot up, the service providers didn't flesh out the important security bits that had been omitted previously. Interested parties proceed to execute script-kiddie level attacks and make off with a nice bounty of btc. The moral of the story is that you need to be careful about where you place your valuables. Don't trust a service that hasn't been thoroughly tested and audited if you are going to store a large amount of money there.

ChuckMcM 15y ago
That is where my thinking is as well. Basically its easy to do one of these 'look what I coded up over the weekend' kind of web sites to prove a concept, but if you're going to deal with more than a few K bitcoins then you need to plan appropriately dor folks who are going to start sniffing around when there is that sort of value sitting there. There are various folks who provide pre-configured VM's for things (jumpbox [1] comes to mind) so presumably they could provide a site that was at least moderately safe. Of course that means money to pay for that sort of stuff. [1] http://www.jumpbox.com/ http://www.jumpbox.com/