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> I'm wondering how it is then that theft by wire fraud is a serious problem these days. The article touches briefly on that. Some wire transfers can be revers

> I'm wondering how it is then that theft by wire fraud is a serious problem these days. The article touches briefly on that. Some wire transfers can be reversed. It becomes more difficult when money starts moving around jurisdictions, but at least it's possible. Essentially no crypto transactions can be reversed.

gzer0 5y ago
If this is the case, how was North Korea able to wire fraud $81 million USD from the Bank of Bangladesh [1] ? Why was this wire transaction not reversed? Apparently, they were about to get away with $1 billion USD but the hacker entered the global SWIFT code incorrectly by 1 character and so it was caught. The fact that North Korea made off with $81 million USD, however, is rather unsettling, and even more so the fact that this was not reversed / caught. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169
- roywiggins 5y ago
  They recovered $18m of that by grabbing one of the accounts it got sent to in the Philippines, so it was actually partially reversed.
- rags2riches 5y ago
  They did of course not wire the money directly to North Korea. It was a multi-step process of money laundering, involving currency exchanges, cash and casinos, in several jurisdictions. Every authority along the way must be on board with the reversal. When the chain is broken, as when cash is laundered at a casino, somebody will be left holding the bag. You can't reverse the cash back out of thin air. Had all the money been found still sitting pretty in an account, I assume things would have eventually been all settled.
littlestymaar 5y ago
> Essentially no crypto transactions can be reversed. Bitcoin transactions are hard to reverse (not strictly impossible, as shown by the recent example, and a few others of the same vein, but it requires to arrest the key owner and seize the key, which is obviously kind of hard) but practically all other cryptocurrencies are centralized enough to allow for transaction reversal (The ethereum hard fork after the DAO hack is the practical example of this). And I'm not even talking about weak chains for which an attacker can even reverse transaction against everybody else's will[1]… [1]: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/29/ethereum-classic-hit-by-third-51-attack-in-a-month/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/29/ethereum-classic...
- sophrocyne 5y ago
  I'll bite. > centralized enough to allow for transaction reversal You can argue that the developers held outsized influence over the consensus mechanism early in Ethereum's lifecycle. You can also debate their recommendation & push to hard fork to a new ledger that undid the hack. But to argue that it is anywhere close to 'centralized' today is disingenuous at best. It should be impossible for any one agent to change the record, but it is the nature of blockchains that consensus holds as "accepted fact". In the event a blockchain is ever relied upon for anything of social importance, the ability for consensus mechanisms to fork away from "systemic ruin" is a desirable trait. I'm one of the few that argue the DAO Hack was a proof of concept for an ultimately 'required' capability for any critically important blockchain systems.
  - littlestymaar 5y ago
    > But to argue that it is anywhere close to 'centralized' today is disingenuous at best. Ethereum devs have absolute power on ethereum. Things like EIP 1559, or Ethereum 2 illustrate this point really clearly: miners have zero power, neither do full nodes. No matter what the algorithms (which can be patched anytime anyways) say, power is a social thing and in the case of Ethereum, the devs have literally complete power over it. The storage is decentralized, the computation is decentralized, but power clearly isn't (and with PoS, it will become more centralized even on an algorithm point of view).
    - DennisP 5y ago
      EIP 1559 was immensely popular among everyone in the community besides miners. The same is true of proof-of-stake.
      - littlestymaar 5y ago
        With “the community” being the name for a bunch of online forums whose admins are… Ethereum devs. How surprising… The foundational decentralization feature of a cryptocurrency is the fact that the blockchain is edited by a distributed network of competing people: yes I'm talking about the miners. If the miners have no power in your system, then their is no practical decentralization because mining is the only thing actually decentralized in a blockchain!

gzer0 5y ago

If this is the case, how was North Korea able to wire fraud $81 million USD from the Bank of Bangladesh [1] ? Why was this wire transaction not reversed? Apparently, they were about to get away with $1 billion USD but the hacker entered the global SWIFT code incorrectly by 1 character and so it was caught. The fact that North Korea made off with $81 million USD, however, is rather unsettling, and even more so the fact that this was not reversed / caught. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169 https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-57520169

roywiggins 5y ago
They recovered $18m of that by grabbing one of the accounts it got sent to in the Philippines, so it was actually partially reversed.
rags2riches 5y ago
They did of course not wire the money directly to North Korea. It was a multi-step process of money laundering, involving currency exchanges, cash and casinos, in several jurisdictions. Every authority along the way must be on board with the reversal. When the chain is broken, as when cash is laundered at a casino, somebody will be left holding the bag. You can't reverse the cash back out of thin air. Had all the money been found still sitting pretty in an account, I assume things would have eventually been all settled.

littlestymaar 5y ago

> Essentially no crypto transactions can be reversed. Bitcoin transactions are hard to reverse (not strictly impossible, as shown by the recent example, and a few others of the same vein, but it requires to arrest the key owner and seize the key, which is obviously kind of hard) but practically all other cryptocurrencies are centralized enough to allow for transaction reversal (The ethereum hard fork after the DAO hack is the practical example of this). And I'm not even talking about weak chains for which an attacker can even reverse transaction against everybody else's will[1]… [1]: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/29/ethereum-classic-hit-by-third-51-attack-in-a-month/ https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2020/08/29/ethereum-classic...

sophrocyne 5y ago
I'll bite. > centralized enough to allow for transaction reversal You can argue that the developers held outsized influence over the consensus mechanism early in Ethereum's lifecycle. You can also debate their recommendation & push to hard fork to a new ledger that undid the hack. But to argue that it is anywhere close to 'centralized' today is disingenuous at best. It should be impossible for any one agent to change the record, but it is the nature of blockchains that consensus holds as "accepted fact". In the event a blockchain is ever relied upon for anything of social importance, the ability for consensus mechanisms to fork away from "systemic ruin" is a desirable trait. I'm one of the few that argue the DAO Hack was a proof of concept for an ultimately 'required' capability for any critically important blockchain systems.
- littlestymaar 5y ago
  > But to argue that it is anywhere close to 'centralized' today is disingenuous at best. Ethereum devs have absolute power on ethereum. Things like EIP 1559, or Ethereum 2 illustrate this point really clearly: miners have zero power, neither do full nodes. No matter what the algorithms (which can be patched anytime anyways) say, power is a social thing and in the case of Ethereum, the devs have literally complete power over it. The storage is decentralized, the computation is decentralized, but power clearly isn't (and with PoS, it will become more centralized even on an algorithm point of view).
  - DennisP 5y ago
    EIP 1559 was immensely popular among everyone in the community besides miners. The same is true of proof-of-stake.
    - littlestymaar 5y ago
      With “the community” being the name for a bunch of online forums whose admins are… Ethereum devs. How surprising… The foundational decentralization feature of a cryptocurrency is the fact that the blockchain is edited by a distributed network of competing people: yes I'm talking about the miners. If the miners have no power in your system, then their is no practical decentralization because mining is the only thing actually decentralized in a blockchain!