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"We noticed the hot wallets dwindling but assuming it was members moving their funds off site during the DDOS, we loaded all the cold balances onto the site so

by x0n 12y ago

"We noticed the hot wallets dwindling but assuming it was members moving their funds off site during the DDOS, we loaded all the cold balances onto the site so that users would not have withdrawals interrupted during our periods of up time.This fatal mistake allowed Ambiorx to continue to drain the site." -- World's stupidest bitcoin exchange admins, or some of the ballsiest? Inside job?

Lazare 12y ago
I wonder if any Excoin admins could explain why hot wallets and cold storage exist? "World's stupidest bitcoin exchange admins, or some of the ballsiest? Inside job?" That's always the question, isn't it?
bhouston 12y ago
One person on the inside to convince the team too do these stupid moves seems reasonabke but some people are dumb, so who knows.
Animats 12y ago
As I pointed out the previous three times this happened to a Bitcoin exchange, these operators seem to be totally clueless about basic bookkeeping and financial controls. Consider a typical large supermarket. Cash, credit cards, coupons, and merchandise are being handled. There are multiple cashiers, usually more than one shift of staff, cash drawers, safes, cash pickups from an armored car service. That's a lot going on. If there's a $10 bill missing, it will noticed within hours. Where it went will probably be figured out the same day. If someone is stealing, management will usually find out who, how much, and when. The Bitcoin crowd has a much simpler problem. They're all online, they don't have a staff of people handling money, and they don't have as many special cases as a supermarket does. (Travelers checks, returns, check cashing, etc - Bitcoin exchanges don't have to deal with that.) Most Bitcoin exchanges are doing a few transactions a minute. Bigger supermarkets do more than that. Yet the Bitcoin crowd consistently botches it. The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college.[1] This isn't rocket science. [1] http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental-training/internal-controls-payable http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental-traini...
- Johnie 12y ago
  Agreed. I could not care less what happens to these individual exchanges. But the long term damage to the industry as a whole is troublesome. We can't keep arguing against regulation while allowing this to happen by not self regulating.
- jackgavigan 12y ago
  > The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college. This isn't rocket science. To quote somebody who has forgotten more about cryptography and digital currencies than probably the entire population of Bitcoin startup founders put together will ever know, many Bitcoin founders take "offense at the very notion that there might be something to be learned from several millenniums of financial services best practices."[1] What's really interesting for me is that VCs seem happy to invest in such startups. It's one thing when a small, bootstrapped exchange/wallet provider gets hacked. It'll be a different story when a major, VC-backed one gets done. 1: http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-February/006256.html http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-Febru...

by x0n 12y ago

Lazare 12y ago

I wonder if any Excoin admins could explain why hot wallets and cold storage exist? "World's stupidest bitcoin exchange admins, or some of the ballsiest? Inside job?" That's always the question, isn't it?

bhouston 12y ago

One person on the inside to convince the team too do these stupid moves seems reasonabke but some people are dumb, so who knows.

Animats 12y ago

As I pointed out the previous three times this happened to a Bitcoin exchange, these operators seem to be totally clueless about basic bookkeeping and financial controls. Consider a typical large supermarket. Cash, credit cards, coupons, and merchandise are being handled. There are multiple cashiers, usually more than one shift of staff, cash drawers, safes, cash pickups from an armored car service. That's a lot going on. If there's a $10 bill missing, it will noticed within hours. Where it went will probably be figured out the same day. If someone is stealing, management will usually find out who, how much, and when. The Bitcoin crowd has a much simpler problem. They're all online, they don't have a staff of people handling money, and they don't have as many special cases as a supermarket does. (Travelers checks, returns, check cashing, etc - Bitcoin exchanges don't have to deal with that.) Most Bitcoin exchanges are doing a few transactions a minute. Bigger supermarkets do more than that. Yet the Bitcoin crowd consistently botches it. The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college.[1] This isn't rocket science. [1] http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental-training/internal-controls-payable http://www.georgiacenter.uga.edu/courses/governmental-traini...

Johnie 12y ago
Agreed. I could not care less what happens to these individual exchanges. But the long term damage to the industry as a whole is troublesome. We can't keep arguing against regulation while allowing this to happen by not self regulating.
jackgavigan 12y ago
> The Bitcoin crowd needs to get some people who have passed Internal Financial Controls 101 at a 2-year business college. This isn't rocket science. To quote somebody who has forgotten more about cryptography and digital currencies than probably the entire population of Bitcoin startup founders put together will ever know, many Bitcoin founders take "offense at the very notion that there might be something to be learned from several millenniums of financial services best practices."[1] What's really interesting for me is that VCs seem happy to invest in such startups. It's one thing when a small, bootstrapped exchange/wallet provider gets hacked. It'll be a different story when a major, VC-backed one gets done. 1: http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-February/006256.html http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2014-Febru...