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And this is what really ruins crypto to me. With no actual legal protection, no trust, "code is law", am I expected to keep up with every pull request? And of c

And this is what really ruins crypto to me. With no actual legal protection, no trust, "code is law", am I expected to keep up with every pull request? And of course these exchanges are completely opaque on top of that.

notch656a 4y ago
Both criminal law and code are vast enough that the fraction I understand of either is closer to zero than the entirety.
- deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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rafale 4y ago
This is not crypto, this is Enron, Theranos and Madoff. In DeFi, you check the code once, and that's what gonna run (exception being proxy contracts, but those are a red flag in itself).
- anon291 4y ago
  People need to understand that money is debt. That is the source of all currency (yes, even gold and other 'hard' currency). If people cannot freely create it, then it's useless. The key is that you ought to be able to gauge the money creator on their trustworthiness, which hopefully you know as a member of a small community. Or, if you are creating money on the open market to large numbers of people, often it's useful to make your case to a nexus of trust (i.e., a bank) so that more people will accept your money Unfortunately what happened here is a fraudster latched on to a movement that decried centralized trust and said that he is trustworthy and, when asked, pointed to some code that no one could inspect or understand. Simpletons believed him because they believed in the 'trust the code' hype, and believed his money was real. They were wrong. But at the end of the day, expecting code to replace the core human emotion of trust, the source of money, is ridiculous.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >But at the end of the day, expecting code to replace the core human emotion of trust, the source of money, is ridiculous. No, the point is for code to replace the institutions/people that people trust (ie. trusting the bitcoin network's consensus code, rather than a central bank), not "replace the core human emotion of trust".
    - spookthesunset 4y ago
      Which works great until the core developers decide to rollback the “code is law” blockchain because there was a transaction they didn’t like. As it turns you still need to trust humans even in the world of “code is law”
      - boring_twenties 4y ago
        Not really, the community ultimately decides whether to accept such decisions via distributed consensus. In this case a huge majority went along with it, but a minority did not; see Ethereum Classic, which still kinda exists
    - sifar 4y ago
      >> No, the point is for code to replace the institutions/people that people trust Knowing how computing hardware and software works, I wouldn't put more trust in code either - in fact it would be less.
  - tedk-42 4y ago
    Money is money. Debt is money from the future. Seems you don't understand.
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      there is no money, it is all debt, he is right. Unless you carry around golden coins.
      - 4y ago
- gcr 4y ago
  Remember what happened with the 2016 Ethereum DAO? Even expert programmers aren't able to check smart contracts for all possible issues.
  - CuriousCosmic 4y ago
    That's what happens when you decide to write your smart contract language in what is basically javascript and your smart contracts are interpreted in a stack based VM. Doubly so when your contract execution is entirely determined by the order in which Tx happen to get accepted. It's actually sane when your contract is written in a non-turing-complete language with strong typing and the smart contract system has deterministic execution (i.e. you know the result when you submit the Tx and if the result would be different, the tx fails, preferably without charging you). I'm convinced that one of the main issues with most smart contracts is that they have such weak guarantees and the guarantees they do have are brittle and hidden behind complex, opaque proofs & constraint systems.
    - bogomipz 4y ago
      >"That's what happens when you decide to write your smart contract language in what is basically javascript and your smart contracts are interpreted in a stack based VM." What was the language and why did running it in a stack based VM lead to this? I'm curious about the intersection of the language and the type of VM it ran in.
      - rwmj 4y ago
        Solidity. The Wikipedia article has some more information on the problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity#Criticism
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    The DAO “hack” was just a legitimate transfer of wealth from weak hands to smarter hands. Code is law. All “bugs” are law too. The only people who stole anything where the devs who reversed the ethereum blockchain…
gruez 4y ago
There's many reasons to hate smart contracts, but this isn't one of them. The article is talking about changes to a codebase that's closed source and deployed with little scrutiny. None of this is applicable to reputable smart contract projects, which are open source and require some sort of consensus and/or vote for code changes. Using this as an argument against smart contracts makes as much sense as using the elections in russia as an argument against democracy.
- gcr 4y ago
  Your very post says it -- "reputable." In this field, no matter the technology, reputation and trust are everything amidst fears of rug pulls and scams, and smart contracts don't replace the need for social trust. It's hard to name any crypto organization that was seen as more reputable than FTX before this happened. If we can't even trust someone with SBF's track record, what's left?
  - nullc 4y ago
    thats so wtf to me-- from my perspective it was obviously squirrly from the start. The guy showed up out of nowhere... suddenly being promoted by throwaway reddit accounts, claiming to have made more than ten billion on trades where claiming a million dollar payoff would have been surprising and dubious. Their exchange specialized in offering almost anonymous retail traders access to leveraged trading on the most dubious of cryptocurrencies stuff popular exchanges won't carry and they carry a lot of bullshit. They even had varrious weirdo products 'index funds' including one called 'shitcoin index'. When FTX acquired a derivatives clearing house I used, I pulled 95% of my account value out right away. I also warned my friends to stay away from FTX or anything related when I had the chance-- which wasn't often because it wasn't something most bitcoiners I encountered were particularly aware of (as mentioned, their service was more of a casino than an exchange-- big leverage for the most volitile crap). So while I get how people that might have been in the right media bubbles might have thought it was reputable... but generally? Not a chance, at least not from my perspective. Was the media critical? No-- there are reports that negative stories about SBF and FTX were actively suppressed in some newsrooms and it's already the case that scamcoiners are actively suing people who criticize them, so that's a big incentive to say nothing when you see a fraud.
throwaway4837 4y ago
Do you currently keep up with every clause in every contract and law? Doesn't seem like a new problem.
- 8note 4y ago
  I generally have to accept contract changes before they apply to me? And I'm given an opt out method before they apply
chrisco255 4y ago
This is just old-fashioned fraud. SBF had a Jane Street (trad fi) background. FTX didn't operate a blockchain or develop any blockchain technology on their own. They operated a trading platform that was run on Python and SQL. Then they embezzled funds and hid the trail.
spookthesunset 4y ago
Crypto only exists because it is unregulated. If it had to play by ethical, moral rules the entire space would collapse. The sole purpose of crypto is fraud. You take away the fraud and you get nothing but a solution in search of a problem.
- everfree 4y ago
  Do you really believe that when Satoshi originally sat down to write the Bitcoin source code, he was thinking "I am going to write an open source software tool that's purpose-built for committing fraud"?
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Who even knows who Satoshi is? It could be the original scammer… who really knows?
    - astrange 4y ago
      I'm still hoping it's Paul Le Roux.
  - throwaway290 4y ago
    There's a reason the people behind Bitcoin chose a throwaway name. I guess you named that reason.

notch656a 4y ago

Both criminal law and code are vast enough that the fraction I understand of either is closer to zero than the entirety.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

rafale 4y ago

This is not crypto, this is Enron, Theranos and Madoff. In DeFi, you check the code once, and that's what gonna run (exception being proxy contracts, but those are a red flag in itself).

anon291 4y ago
People need to understand that money is debt. That is the source of all currency (yes, even gold and other 'hard' currency). If people cannot freely create it, then it's useless. The key is that you ought to be able to gauge the money creator on their trustworthiness, which hopefully you know as a member of a small community. Or, if you are creating money on the open market to large numbers of people, often it's useful to make your case to a nexus of trust (i.e., a bank) so that more people will accept your money Unfortunately what happened here is a fraudster latched on to a movement that decried centralized trust and said that he is trustworthy and, when asked, pointed to some code that no one could inspect or understand. Simpletons believed him because they believed in the 'trust the code' hype, and believed his money was real. They were wrong. But at the end of the day, expecting code to replace the core human emotion of trust, the source of money, is ridiculous.
- gruez 4y ago
  >But at the end of the day, expecting code to replace the core human emotion of trust, the source of money, is ridiculous. No, the point is for code to replace the institutions/people that people trust (ie. trusting the bitcoin network's consensus code, rather than a central bank), not "replace the core human emotion of trust".
  - spookthesunset 4y ago
    Which works great until the core developers decide to rollback the “code is law” blockchain because there was a transaction they didn’t like. As it turns you still need to trust humans even in the world of “code is law”
    - boring_twenties 4y ago
      Not really, the community ultimately decides whether to accept such decisions via distributed consensus. In this case a huge majority went along with it, but a minority did not; see Ethereum Classic, which still kinda exists
  - sifar 4y ago
    >> No, the point is for code to replace the institutions/people that people trust Knowing how computing hardware and software works, I wouldn't put more trust in code either - in fact it would be less.
- tedk-42 4y ago
  Money is money. Debt is money from the future. Seems you don't understand.
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    there is no money, it is all debt, he is right. Unless you carry around golden coins.
    - 4y ago
gcr 4y ago
Remember what happened with the 2016 Ethereum DAO? Even expert programmers aren't able to check smart contracts for all possible issues.
- CuriousCosmic 4y ago
  That's what happens when you decide to write your smart contract language in what is basically javascript and your smart contracts are interpreted in a stack based VM. Doubly so when your contract execution is entirely determined by the order in which Tx happen to get accepted. It's actually sane when your contract is written in a non-turing-complete language with strong typing and the smart contract system has deterministic execution (i.e. you know the result when you submit the Tx and if the result would be different, the tx fails, preferably without charging you). I'm convinced that one of the main issues with most smart contracts is that they have such weak guarantees and the guarantees they do have are brittle and hidden behind complex, opaque proofs & constraint systems.
  - bogomipz 4y ago
    >"That's what happens when you decide to write your smart contract language in what is basically javascript and your smart contracts are interpreted in a stack based VM." What was the language and why did running it in a stack based VM lead to this? I'm curious about the intersection of the language and the type of VM it ran in.
    - rwmj 4y ago
      Solidity. The Wikipedia article has some more information on the problems: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidity#Criticism
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  The DAO “hack” was just a legitimate transfer of wealth from weak hands to smarter hands. Code is law. All “bugs” are law too. The only people who stole anything where the devs who reversed the ethereum blockchain…

gruez 4y ago

There's many reasons to hate smart contracts, but this isn't one of them. The article is talking about changes to a codebase that's closed source and deployed with little scrutiny. None of this is applicable to reputable smart contract projects, which are open source and require some sort of consensus and/or vote for code changes. Using this as an argument against smart contracts makes as much sense as using the elections in russia as an argument against democracy.

gcr 4y ago
Your very post says it -- "reputable." In this field, no matter the technology, reputation and trust are everything amidst fears of rug pulls and scams, and smart contracts don't replace the need for social trust. It's hard to name any crypto organization that was seen as more reputable than FTX before this happened. If we can't even trust someone with SBF's track record, what's left?
- nullc 4y ago
  thats so wtf to me-- from my perspective it was obviously squirrly from the start. The guy showed up out of nowhere... suddenly being promoted by throwaway reddit accounts, claiming to have made more than ten billion on trades where claiming a million dollar payoff would have been surprising and dubious. Their exchange specialized in offering almost anonymous retail traders access to leveraged trading on the most dubious of cryptocurrencies stuff popular exchanges won't carry and they carry a lot of bullshit. They even had varrious weirdo products 'index funds' including one called 'shitcoin index'. When FTX acquired a derivatives clearing house I used, I pulled 95% of my account value out right away. I also warned my friends to stay away from FTX or anything related when I had the chance-- which wasn't often because it wasn't something most bitcoiners I encountered were particularly aware of (as mentioned, their service was more of a casino than an exchange-- big leverage for the most volitile crap). So while I get how people that might have been in the right media bubbles might have thought it was reputable... but generally? Not a chance, at least not from my perspective. Was the media critical? No-- there are reports that negative stories about SBF and FTX were actively suppressed in some newsrooms and it's already the case that scamcoiners are actively suing people who criticize them, so that's a big incentive to say nothing when you see a fraud.

throwaway4837 4y ago

Do you currently keep up with every clause in every contract and law? Doesn't seem like a new problem.

8note 4y ago
I generally have to accept contract changes before they apply to me? And I'm given an opt out method before they apply

chrisco255 4y ago

This is just old-fashioned fraud. SBF had a Jane Street (trad fi) background. FTX didn't operate a blockchain or develop any blockchain technology on their own. They operated a trading platform that was run on Python and SQL. Then they embezzled funds and hid the trail.

spookthesunset 4y ago

Crypto only exists because it is unregulated. If it had to play by ethical, moral rules the entire space would collapse. The sole purpose of crypto is fraud. You take away the fraud and you get nothing but a solution in search of a problem.

everfree 4y ago
Do you really believe that when Satoshi originally sat down to write the Bitcoin source code, he was thinking "I am going to write an open source software tool that's purpose-built for committing fraud"?
- spookthesunset 4y ago
  Who even knows who Satoshi is? It could be the original scammer… who really knows?
  - astrange 4y ago
    I'm still hoping it's Paul Le Roux.
- throwaway290 4y ago
  There's a reason the people behind Bitcoin chose a throwaway name. I guess you named that reason.