3 ms·

How can it be stolen in it's entirety within 30 seconds? I'm sure there are plenty of people who would genuinely love to know.

• ChuckMcM 14y ago
  There have been a number of highly publicized Bitcoin thefts from various exchanges. Repudiation is something that is made harder by its design (not saying it isn't possible, just harder). So if you get inside access to the computers in that bank and you can effect legitimate transactions out, I've heard (but not witnessed) that it takes about 30 seconds to get enough confirmations back to make a transaction durable. (if this is not the case then I'd love to add that to my understanding of the protocol). A centrally managed currency like the dollar (as an example) doesn't have that issue because transferring assets from federal reserve might make you a trillionaire briefly but they would turn around and transfer them right back. Stealing gold (as a reference standard for currency) does have that issue, except that physics made such a theft much harder to pull off. Offline storage of an encrypted wallet is fine, although in a functioning economy there will be pretty constant transactions flowing in and out of the depository bank but that is one of the cool things about doing the exercise, you can walk through the scenarios and say "Ok, if this were the case you would need maybe a 'fractional' offline wallet where you could bring a portion online and leave the bulk offline. I'd love to read about a design for that. When you consider the steps that folks went to in order to penetrate Iran's nuclear facilities, there are similarly challenging places like banks, and depository banks are especially juicy targets.