astoor

8 ms·

31.
by astoor 5y ago
Good analogy - portscanning and email spoofing was considered a relatively benign issue decades ago, but would be quite serious now and does lead to jail time, and I'm sure the same will be true with cryptocurrencies (unless you'r
32.
by astoor 5y ago
A big chunk of the people working in the "office blocks" of "saving, lending, derivatives, FX and insurance companies" are there to deal with support and exceptions. This is a feature not a bug - if something goes wrong
33.
by astoor 5y ago
> "it is really difficult to see any real meaningful interest in doing things properly ... is this a feature or a bug?" There is no incentive to do anything properly in cryptocurrency development because it puts monetisation
34.
by astoor 5y ago
So within 7 years of the start of Bitcoin, pretty much every original Bitcoin developer had become disillusioned, with claims like it was "an experiment" and "has failed"[0]. We're now heading towards 7 years since
35.
by astoor 5y ago
He's the bad guy of the story because he's a billionaire who made a $1.1Gb at the expense of the ordinary people living in the UK at the time. He forced mortgage rates, for example, to shoot up to 15%, with crippling monthly payme
36.
by astoor 5y ago
> Blockchain is about never trusting anybody. This is a common misconception - blockchain still requires trust, it simply shifts trust from central authorities to more nebulous entities such as anonymous developers, shady mining cartel
37.
by astoor 5y ago
No, DApps didn't change into NFTs, and yes, DApps and ICOs still exist. But DApps and ICOs are not the current "revolutionary" "game changing" drivers for "line goes up" in the Ethereum world. Similarly I&
38.
by astoor 5y ago
Plausible deniability is one of ways the cryptocurrency schemes have continued for so long without collapsing - members can convince themselves that Bitcoin/Ethereum/etc. aren't ponzi/pyramid schemes because they "d
39.
by astoor 5y ago
This exhibits many of the classic signs you are in a cult - believing "crazy" things that non-cult-members would not believe, suspending rational thought processes and deferring to charismatic leader(s), and blaming objects of per
40.
by astoor 5y ago
I haven't seen any profitable cryptocurrency companies which do anything genuinely useful for non-crypto people in the real world - all the profitable ones are inward-looking, i.e. engaged in "building out the ecosystem" (or
41.
by astoor 5y ago
There's plenty of services which map Bitcoin addresses to real-world entities, e.g. Chainalysis Reactor, so coming up with a list of addresses to freeze/sanction would be the easy part.
42.
by astoor 5y ago
Not really like-for-like though - in this case a more appropriate saying would be "don't let a licenced professional purveyor of meat with provenance trails judge unlicenced masked street-vendors of meat-like substances of unknown
43.
by astoor 5y ago
Just a thought: could Gerald Cotten have also been a stolen identity, as his co-founder Michael Patryn was (Michael Patryn was actually "Omar Dhanani who was convicted on identity theft charges in the U.S. and served 18 months in Feder
44.
by astoor 5y ago
Note that this wasn't a case of the money being lost because the key was lost when the owner died as per the initial headlines - in this case the money simply wasn't there in the first place: "Quadriga likely never invested t
45.
by astoor 5y ago
It seems like withdrawals were in cash: "Quadriga used an unusual teller-window system for customers to withdraw their money. Rather than pay customers via bank wires, they were told to come to a nondescript building in Laval, Quebec t
46.
by astoor 5y ago
It won't be the people at the top leading the revolt. It never is. They'll have creamed enough off to be safe whatever happens. It'll be the people at the bottom. They might not have large individual "investments",
47.
by astoor 5y ago
From the now-deleted BBC article[0] he allegedly turned $50 into $10,000 in 5 days, but doesn't say with which coin(s) and/or token(s): "Fifty dollars turned into $500 (£369) three days later," Mr Hassan said of his fina
48.
by astoor 5y ago
If enough people don't like the changes in an open source system, they can get together and fix it or fork it. I see a number of others comments mentioning the already working (non web3) solution Mastodon - and that's a great exam
49.
by astoor 5y ago
> "Nitter can only archive (and update) data Twitter allows them to access." That's exactly what you'd expect from a Twitter archive site. The author's point was that this is the same tech you'd need for
50.
by astoor 5y ago
"This time is different. It’s not just speculation, it’s about community." (from article) "Let me assure you that this is not one of those shady pyramid schemes you've been hearing about. No sir. Our model is the trapezo
51.
by astoor 5y ago
Do you even have any incentive to find employees that won't steal, if you've already made off with millions in pre-mine or up-front no-commitment investment? Cryptocurrency and DeFi is one giant moral hazard.
52.
by astoor 5y ago
> "the crypto ecosystem looks more like 2000 than the current software market because most of the software companies today worth billions generate hundreds of millions of revenue" The big difference between the dot-com bubble
53.
by astoor 5y ago
I believe the last verified communication from Satoshi (before the account was compromised) was "I'm not Dorian Nakamoto" in 2014: http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour... . E
54.
by astoor 5y ago
Just to clarify, the article is about the court case where he wants some transactions on the Bitcoin SV blockchain reversed. The question relating to whether he is Satoshi, and therefore owns Satoshi's 1.1M Bitcoins on the Bitcoin Core
55.
by astoor 5y ago
"They've all refused Wright's demands, though a firm called nChain Ltd is 'said to be working on a modification to the existing BSV client software, which would enable someone who owns but cannot access the BSV to regai
56.
by astoor 5y ago
The fact that cryptocurrency schemes like DAOs allow people to raise vast sums of money in very short spaces of time with no evidence of anyone involved having the ability, skills or even intention of delivering anything, seems to be fundam
57.
by astoor 5y ago
Will be interesting to see how this, as in the whole DAO space, works out. Part of the problem with the ICO craze in 2017* is that the founders got all the money up front without having any obligation to do anything, so the tiny minority of
58.
by astoor 5y ago
It is very refreshing to see this from a primarily technical angle. In common with many HN-ers, I actually did a lot of cryptocurrency and blockchain dev work 5+ years ago, and was actually very exited about it at first, before realising wh
59.
by astoor 5y ago
There was an article[0] which estimated that the entire global banking system (down to lamps on desks in offices) used 100Twh a year, whereas Bitcoin used around 30Twh a year (for a relatively insignificant volume of transactions). I don&#x
60.
by astoor 5y ago
The author believes "a Twitter where your popular tweets earn you money" would be a good thing? Twitter is already full of people trying to shout the loudest - how can adding a financial incentive to shout even louder make thing

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