7 ms·

I like the takeaways, though I'd also add an additional one, that you should use systems that have reversible transactions. That way, when you fall victim to f

I like the takeaways, though I'd also add an additional one, that you should use systems that have reversible transactions. That way, when you fall victim to fraud, you can use the court system to recover your losses.

hashimotonomora 5y ago
randomhodler84 5y ago
This is just saying “that’s what you get for playing with crypto you degenerate”. The fact is wires can also be irreversible and you cannot use the court system as a blunt instrument outside your jurisdiction. The value transmission medium isn’t the problem here.
- amptorn 5y ago
  Can a smart contract make a wire transfer with your knowledge?
- gonehome 5y ago
  Yeah the op comment wasn’t made in good faith. Try getting your money back when getting scammed via venmo or PayPal - rarely any better, and if you’re selling you’re more likely to get scammed with those services than crypto.
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    I have done multiple clawbacks via payment processors. In each case, I escalated (vendor -> processor -> my bank -> CFPB) until the dispute was resolved to my satisfaction. In nearly all cases, no separate restitution was required: the processor or my bank was able to reverse or halt the ACH transaction before the money settled. In the handful of cases where settlement had already happened, they were able to countermand the transaction.
    - reese_john 5y ago
      Yes but, not sure this is a fair comparison. Doesn't ACH transactions take 1 to 2 business days to settle by design, as they are processed in batch and go through an intermediate clearing house ? Venmo/PayPal/Fedwire transactions should be able to settle in real time, which can be more convenient at the expense of easy reversability
      - woodruffw 5y ago
        Venmo and PayPal are, to the best of my knowledge, settled via ACH if you use a bank as your source of funds. That's what I've always done, since it provides the greatest amount of personal control over my transactions. If you use a payment card (debit or credit) with a payment service, then they might use either the payment card's network or ACH, depending on what the card issuer supports.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      I’ve had a PayPal failure, a PayPal success, an apple pay failure. It’s definitely not a guarantee. Most of the Venmo type scams where people “accidentally” send you money and ask you to send it back or pay for an item with bad funds are not reclaimable from those services based on TOS. In those cases you’d be better off with BTC.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > This is just saying “that’s what you get for playing with crypto you degenerate”. No, it isn't. It's a reminder that we have all of this financial structure for a reason. The person you're responding to didn't make any light of the potential victim or call them a degenerate. In traditional finance, you (Joe Shmoe) can't just wire someone ~100M USD, regardless of jurisdiction. There are controls, most of which have been written in blood or tears. Cryptocurrencies will also grow those controls, and we will all rightly question its value when it inevitably does.
  - bko 5y ago
    You ever heard of asset forfeiture? There's two sides to everything. Not really "owning" something is great if you're the victim of fraud, but has its downsides when you become a target and someone wants to arbitrarily capture your wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Civil asset forfeiture is a national disgrace. But it's also not a disgrace for traditional finance: it's a disgrace with respect to the latitude our justice system gives to individual LEOs and a sign that the government is willing to extrajudicially punish people instead of pursuing justice through the courts. Put another way: assert forfeiture is not some kind of "gotcha" against traditional finance in favor of cryptocurrencies. When law enforcement seizes your bank account, they're going to seize your cryptocurrency accounts too. And if you (unadvisedly) attempt to hide those assets, then you will be making their job in court much easier.
      - randomhodler84 5y ago
        Then you missed the point of this whole thing. Some of us would rather die with the keys then let the State steal funds from them. Cryptocurrency is the first technology that lets you take wealth to the grave and keep it there.
- cjlars 5y ago
  Big difference between manually initiating the transaction and amount vs accidentally signing away everything because of one obscured line of code.
hollerith 5y ago
Brought up over and over again on HN, your point is. Also healthcare in the US is generally not as good as in other developed countries.
charcircuit 5y ago
Even without reversible transactions the other person can just send you back the assets you sent them.
TacticalCoder 5y ago
> that you should use systems that have reversible transactions. OTH I'm pretty sure that if the mark had been using such systems years ago, he wouldn't have $100m+ worth of ETH now ; )
- ReactiveJelly 5y ago
  Almost nobody has $100M worth of anything, so...
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Qub3d 5y ago
  If the last lottery ticket winner hadn't bought a powerball ticket, they also wouldn't be worth millions. Beware the survivorship bias: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
  - chrisco255 5y ago
    Ethereum is a technology platform with a rich ecosystem. Investing in ETH isn't a crap shoot.
bko 5y ago
You're mixing up reversible transactions and court system. If someone defrauds you in an irreversible transaction, you can still sue that person for damages if you know who they are. Similarly if someone defrauds you in reversible transactions, you can't just wave a wand and get your money back. You can sue them if you know who they are, or you can request a reversal from your bank/cc provider (may or may not be honored) but you're not completely safe. Most fraud happens in fiat and there are real victims out here.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  > Most fraud happens in fiat and there are real victims out here. We had multiple threads about base rate error on HN just yesterday! Most financial activity happens in fiat, and so of course it stands to reason that most fraud is also done in fiat. The real question is whether the legitimate-to-fraudulent ratio is higher in cryptocurrencies than in fiat.
  - Qub3d 5y ago
    See also: the "Chinese Robbers" fallacy[1] -- just because you can find a ton of examples of fiat fraud, doesn't imply its worse -- without context it only implies its the most common form of currency. [1]:https://www.lesswrong.com/s/XsMTxdQ6fprAQMoKi/p/DSzpr8Y9299jdDLc9 https://www.lesswrong.com/s/XsMTxdQ6fprAQMoKi/p/DSzpr8Y9299j...
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Yes, that's called "base rate neglect" or "base rate bias." In a twist of irony, you can see another example of it in the distribution of terms reinvented by internet rationalists :-)
      - cipheredStones 5y ago
        "Base rate" appears multiple times in that article and is a pretty core concept in the rationalist movement. Memorably illustrating a concept is not the same thing as not knowing the technical term.
koonsolo 5y ago
I guess you haven't seen "The Tinder Swindler" on Netflix? Also here in Belgium, plenty of people are getting scammed by wire transfer, and no way to get their money back. I think you have overly optimistic view on banks or the court system giving your money back.
- skim_milk 5y ago
  How would one "accidentally" wire transfer millions of dollars? At $10k in America, KYC and AML laws force banks to step through extra layers of verification to wire such amount. It's virtually impossible for someone to accidentally wire millions, which would likely involve a mandatory in-person meeting with the bank customer to verify their credentials and purpose. If somehow you get through an in-person meeting with a bank branch manager to unwittingly wire millions of dollars, and the topic of how much money you're wiring and the exact purpose of wiring such a high amount isn't brought up, and you somehow still accidentally wire millions of dollars away without anyone ever bringing up the amount and purpose of the transaction, then I'm sure you'll still be able to recover that money back because banks are required to actually validate transactions of that size with KYC, AML, etc. laws. Only cryptocurrencies allow one the ability transmit this amount of money in seconds.
  - maneesh 5y ago
    https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/business/citibank-revlon-lawsuit-ruling/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/busi...
    - djur 5y ago
      Notice that this was Citi making a mistake in a payment on behalf of Revlon, and it's Citi that's on the hook for the excess payment, not Revlon.
    - tedunangst 5y ago
      So now for the fun question: who do I have to tweet at to get Citi to wire me millions of dollars?
rmbyrro 5y ago
Like she did with bank wire transfer fraud when she lost +300k? [1] I could find literally thousands of other stories like this in a minute scraping the web. [1] https://youtu.be/9cJxpKu_P0A https://youtu.be/9cJxpKu_P0A

hashimotonomora 5y ago

randomhodler84 5y ago

This is just saying “that’s what you get for playing with crypto you degenerate”. The fact is wires can also be irreversible and you cannot use the court system as a blunt instrument outside your jurisdiction. The value transmission medium isn’t the problem here.

amptorn 5y ago
Can a smart contract make a wire transfer with your knowledge?
gonehome 5y ago
Yeah the op comment wasn’t made in good faith. Try getting your money back when getting scammed via venmo or PayPal - rarely any better, and if you’re selling you’re more likely to get scammed with those services than crypto.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I have done multiple clawbacks via payment processors. In each case, I escalated (vendor -> processor -> my bank -> CFPB) until the dispute was resolved to my satisfaction. In nearly all cases, no separate restitution was required: the processor or my bank was able to reverse or halt the ACH transaction before the money settled. In the handful of cases where settlement had already happened, they were able to countermand the transaction.
  - reese_john 5y ago
    Yes but, not sure this is a fair comparison. Doesn't ACH transactions take 1 to 2 business days to settle by design, as they are processed in batch and go through an intermediate clearing house ? Venmo/PayPal/Fedwire transactions should be able to settle in real time, which can be more convenient at the expense of easy reversability
    - woodruffw 5y ago
      Venmo and PayPal are, to the best of my knowledge, settled via ACH if you use a bank as your source of funds. That's what I've always done, since it provides the greatest amount of personal control over my transactions. If you use a payment card (debit or credit) with a payment service, then they might use either the payment card's network or ACH, depending on what the card issuer supports.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    I’ve had a PayPal failure, a PayPal success, an apple pay failure. It’s definitely not a guarantee. Most of the Venmo type scams where people “accidentally” send you money and ask you to send it back or pay for an item with bad funds are not reclaimable from those services based on TOS. In those cases you’d be better off with BTC.
woodruffw 5y ago
> This is just saying “that’s what you get for playing with crypto you degenerate”. No, it isn't. It's a reminder that we have all of this financial structure for a reason. The person you're responding to didn't make any light of the potential victim or call them a degenerate. In traditional finance, you (Joe Shmoe) can't just wire someone ~100M USD, regardless of jurisdiction. There are controls, most of which have been written in blood or tears. Cryptocurrencies will also grow those controls, and we will all rightly question its value when it inevitably does.
- bko 5y ago
  You ever heard of asset forfeiture? There's two sides to everything. Not really "owning" something is great if you're the victim of fraud, but has its downsides when you become a target and someone wants to arbitrarily capture your wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asset_forfeiture
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Civil asset forfeiture is a national disgrace. But it's also not a disgrace for traditional finance: it's a disgrace with respect to the latitude our justice system gives to individual LEOs and a sign that the government is willing to extrajudicially punish people instead of pursuing justice through the courts. Put another way: assert forfeiture is not some kind of "gotcha" against traditional finance in favor of cryptocurrencies. When law enforcement seizes your bank account, they're going to seize your cryptocurrency accounts too. And if you (unadvisedly) attempt to hide those assets, then you will be making their job in court much easier.
    - randomhodler84 5y ago
      Then you missed the point of this whole thing. Some of us would rather die with the keys then let the State steal funds from them. Cryptocurrency is the first technology that lets you take wealth to the grave and keep it there.
cjlars 5y ago
Big difference between manually initiating the transaction and amount vs accidentally signing away everything because of one obscured line of code.

hollerith 5y ago

Brought up over and over again on HN, your point is. Also healthcare in the US is generally not as good as in other developed countries.

charcircuit 5y ago

Even without reversible transactions the other person can just send you back the assets you sent them.

TacticalCoder 5y ago

> that you should use systems that have reversible transactions. OTH I'm pretty sure that if the mark had been using such systems years ago, he wouldn't have $100m+ worth of ETH now ; )

ReactiveJelly 5y ago
Almost nobody has $100M worth of anything, so...
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
Qub3d 5y ago
If the last lottery ticket winner hadn't bought a powerball ticket, they also wouldn't be worth millions. Beware the survivorship bias: https://xkcd.com/1827/ https://xkcd.com/1827/
- chrisco255 5y ago
  Ethereum is a technology platform with a rich ecosystem. Investing in ETH isn't a crap shoot.

bko 5y ago

You're mixing up reversible transactions and court system. If someone defrauds you in an irreversible transaction, you can still sue that person for damages if you know who they are. Similarly if someone defrauds you in reversible transactions, you can't just wave a wand and get your money back. You can sue them if you know who they are, or you can request a reversal from your bank/cc provider (may or may not be honored) but you're not completely safe. Most fraud happens in fiat and there are real victims out here.

woodruffw 5y ago
> Most fraud happens in fiat and there are real victims out here. We had multiple threads about base rate error on HN just yesterday! Most financial activity happens in fiat, and so of course it stands to reason that most fraud is also done in fiat. The real question is whether the legitimate-to-fraudulent ratio is higher in cryptocurrencies than in fiat.
- Qub3d 5y ago
  See also: the "Chinese Robbers" fallacy[1] -- just because you can find a ton of examples of fiat fraud, doesn't imply its worse -- without context it only implies its the most common form of currency. [1]:https://www.lesswrong.com/s/XsMTxdQ6fprAQMoKi/p/DSzpr8Y9299jdDLc9 https://www.lesswrong.com/s/XsMTxdQ6fprAQMoKi/p/DSzpr8Y9299j...
  - woodruffw 5y ago
    Yes, that's called "base rate neglect" or "base rate bias." In a twist of irony, you can see another example of it in the distribution of terms reinvented by internet rationalists :-)
    - cipheredStones 5y ago
      "Base rate" appears multiple times in that article and is a pretty core concept in the rationalist movement. Memorably illustrating a concept is not the same thing as not knowing the technical term.

koonsolo 5y ago

I guess you haven't seen "The Tinder Swindler" on Netflix? Also here in Belgium, plenty of people are getting scammed by wire transfer, and no way to get their money back. I think you have overly optimistic view on banks or the court system giving your money back.

skim_milk 5y ago
How would one "accidentally" wire transfer millions of dollars? At $10k in America, KYC and AML laws force banks to step through extra layers of verification to wire such amount. It's virtually impossible for someone to accidentally wire millions, which would likely involve a mandatory in-person meeting with the bank customer to verify their credentials and purpose. If somehow you get through an in-person meeting with a bank branch manager to unwittingly wire millions of dollars, and the topic of how much money you're wiring and the exact purpose of wiring such a high amount isn't brought up, and you somehow still accidentally wire millions of dollars away without anyone ever bringing up the amount and purpose of the transaction, then I'm sure you'll still be able to recover that money back because banks are required to actually validate transactions of that size with KYC, AML, etc. laws. Only cryptocurrencies allow one the ability transmit this amount of money in seconds.
- maneesh 5y ago
  https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/business/citibank-revlon-lawsuit-ruling/index.html https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2021/02/16/busi...
  - djur 5y ago
    Notice that this was Citi making a mistake in a payment on behalf of Revlon, and it's Citi that's on the hook for the excess payment, not Revlon.
  - tedunangst 5y ago
    So now for the fun question: who do I have to tweet at to get Citi to wire me millions of dollars?

rmbyrro 5y ago

Like she did with bank wire transfer fraud when she lost +300k? [1] I could find literally thousands of other stories like this in a minute scraping the web. [1] https://youtu.be/9cJxpKu_P0A https://youtu.be/9cJxpKu_P0A