A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted
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@dkf Depends on the crypto (some are fast by design; some are fast just because there's way more miners than spenders) and whether the exchange does actual trades or virtual trades.
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Zaif cryptocurrency exchange loses $60 million in recent hack
The Osaka-based cryptocurrency exchange discovered hack two days ago, and is working to secure funds to reimburse affected users.
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Wait, algorithmic trading is "abuse"? Huh?
The bigger problem is the hordes of people on Russian Telegram (the chat application) servers that get together and pump-and-dump a new currency almost every day. And that doesn't use algorithmic trading at all.
But instead of looking at that, they would looking at whether you can script transactions, which is perfectly fine and dandy pretty much everywhere including the NYSE and NASDAQ? WTF.
Firstly, they're not saying "all algorithmic trading is abuse", they're saying "algorithmic trading has many known abuse patterns" in regular markets and some additional ones in crypto markets. I don't see how that statement is new or revolutionary, observers of regular markets have been saying it for a long time. See FINRA requirements for algorithmic trading in regular markets and Wikipedia 0, 1.
Regular markets have complex monitoring systems trying to detect and stop those patterns in a typical cat-and-mouse fashion. The crypto exchanges in this report have far less monitoring of these issues. And some of them have additional problems with customer identity because they let you open an account without identity verification. For example, Tidex and Bitfinex (the scamlords generating Tether) let you open an account with just an email address, which makes it much easier to create multiple bot accounts and orchestrate abusive trading schemes.
Secondly, the report is pretty clear that you can abuse the market without using algorithmic trading, I just didn't quote that section because the post was getting too long:
The OAG asked trading platforms to describe what, if any, policies were in place to define, detect, prevent, or penalize suspicious trading activity or market manipulation, and to provide a description of trading behavior that the platform believes constitutes manipulative or abusive activity. While participating platforms expressed their commitment to combatting market manipulation, only a few reported having a formal policy in place, defining the types of conduct the platform believes to be manipulative or abusive, and outlining how such trading behavior is to be detected and penalized.
Each participating platform maintains a policy prohibiting a single user from opening multiple accounts, a restriction which several platforms claimed helps prevent manipulative conduct (like fraudulent wash sales). […] Where a platform – for example, Bitfinex – neither requires documentation to execute a virtual currency trade nor takes active measures to block access via VPN, there is reason to question the effectiveness of that platform’s efforts to address manipulative or abusive trading activity.
The industry has yet to implement serious market surveillance capacities, akin to those of traditional trading venues, to detect and punish suspicious trading activity. A platform cannot take action to protect customers from market manipulation and other abuses if it is not aware of those practices in the first place.
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Kraken declared that market manipulation “doesn’t matter to most crypto traders,” even while admitting that “scams are rampant” in the industry.
And that's not all they said:
// The link in that onebox includes
europe=true. I wonder if it makes any functional difference to you Americans?
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I mentioned this in the Discord, but one of my colleagues have been running an Monero mining rig in the office for a few months, on an old company computer. We thought it was getting a bit warm in there, and yeah, he's been "running the most inefficient space heater" as Blakeyrat put it. And it was worse than I thought. So, he's wasting company resources (power) and lowering the quality of the room I am working in to mine Monero on a... Pentium G860 (Sandy Bridge).
This is the kinda stuff that makes the other colleague in the office (who is heavily into crypto) call him an idiot. Because of 1) wasting company resources for personal gain and 2) mining on hardware that gives fuck all money. At least the crypto-nerd does his mining at home (which he claims is good for heating the house during winter) on old servers (so lots of computing power). Not shitty old desktop computers from 7 years ago.
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@Atazhaia said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
one of my colleagues have been running an Monero mining rig in the office for a few months, on an old company computer
That's the sort of thing that should get them a little trip to HR for a formal reprimand. But in the meantime, you “accidentally” switch that machine off by just pulling the power plug out. I've been known to do the same thing at work, but that's usually when the device in question has an annoyingly loud fan…
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@dkf It's at least better than last year's shenanigans where he ran mining on the brand new expensive computers "just to see how viable it is" and then happened to leave it running over the xmas holiday season. Which stopped after me and the crypto nerd put some pressure on him about how it was a Very Bad Idea. I can't remember if that got reported or if it was just threatened with, though. This time it's an old shitpile computer that would be trashed, so the hardware isn't an issue. It's more wasting electricity and causing my office (which already has a notoriously bad air quality) to have a slightly worse quality.
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@Atazhaia said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
wasting company resources for personal gain
I wonder when the first lawsuit will hit the courts when a company claims ownership of someone's Buttcoins because they were mined on company computers (using company electricity).
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@TimeBandit said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Zaif cryptocurrency exchange loses $60 million in recent hack | ZDNet
Anyone who lost money in that hack deserves it. Zaif has been in this thread more than once. They were the ones who had a "glitch" that gave away coins for free:
$20 trillion in free bitcoin: Exchange glitch allows traders to claim cryptocurrency for $0
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And since we are looking back on past fuckups, let's revisit the companies mentioned in the article "top 4 Japan Crypto exchanges"
Original post: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1310295
First revisit: https://what.thedailywtf.com/post/1345724
Number 4: SBI Virtual Currencies
Still claiming to be "bank backed". They seem to have finally opened in June? They still tied themselves exclusively XRP (Ripple). The much lauded currency was valued at $3USD/coin, and was expected to keep that value if not exceed it. What's it worth now? $0.406306 USD
Oops.
Number 3: Zaif
See above
Number 2: bitFlyer
Last we checked I rated them
hasn't fucked up yet. They were even going on a hiring spree bringing on 150 Wall Street Hotshots to help them Be The Best. That was May 2018.And then ONE FUCKING MONTH LATER, they halt taking on all business and all operations, because they completely bombed their security evaluation by lying on their initial application-- doing nothing to prevent anonymous users from using the system (such as signing up with a PO box)-- and also cronyism on the board.
The FSA said it found several problems related to bitFlyer’s security system, including a lack of measures in place to prevent money laundering and unauthorized access. One agency official, according to the Wall Street Journal, said the inspections found problematic accounts, too, like one registered using a post-office box as a mailing address.
The agency also said that bitFlyer board members were mainly friends of the exchange’s chief executive, Yuzo Kano, a former trader at Goldman Sachs who co-founded the company.
Further, the FSA said that when bitFlyer registered with the government last year, it provided false information about its plans to prevent ‘antisocial forces’ (organized crime) from using the exchange.
These regulatory woes have certainly come at a bad time for Kano. Earlier this year he hired more than 150 Wall Street experts to help grow his exchange. For now, the bitFlyer’s future remains uncertain.
They promised to be back up and running by their next evaluation, July 23. They haven't yet as of Sept 20. That's encouraging.
Number 1: Coincheck
These were the ones that kept getting smacked by regulators, then lost $530M in coins, then had to refund hundreds of millions of dollars to coin holders. There were glowing articles about "This is a textbook shinning example of how to bounce back from a hack".
Well, anyways, they didn't; within a month they were taken over by Monex:
Coincheck have signed the deal worth $33.5 million
I'm bad at math. Is $33.5M greater than $530M ?
--
So once again, that's the current state of the top 4 BEST of the BEST of exchanges Japan has to offer. Almost seven months to the day since they were declared the "top 4":
- One couldn't follow through their plans to be a bank-banked, multi currency exchange-- and is now backed only by a coin worth a fraction of what it was expected to be
- One has had MULTIPLE massive screwups and hacks. Anyone would be insane to trust even a penny with them again
- One has been smacked multiple times by Japan's equiv of the SEC, to the point where they were ORDERED shut down-- and missed their "relaunch once our security is fixed" date by 2 months
- One is just fucking gone
Crypto! The way of the future!
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The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret
This week's major bitcoin bug was even worse than developers let on – it could have been used to effectively print more bitcoin.
The bug originally rocked the bitcoin world when it was reported the vulnerability could be used to shut down a chunk of the network.
While this sounded bad enough for many, it turns out developers for Bitcoin Core kept a second, bigger part of the bug a secret. As disclosed through an official Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) report, an attacker could have actually used it to create new bitcoin – above the 21 million hard-cap of coin creation – thereby inflating the supply and devaluing current bitcoins.
Because of the disastrous implications of the bug, developers decided to keep it a secret, buying themselves time to fix the exploit and urge miners and users to upgrade their software.
[…] while Bitcoin Core, litecoin and several other coins that were based Bitcoin Core's code have released a patch for the exploit, others have not – and might still be vulnerable to the inflation bug.
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@DCoder I see Amazon isn't the only company who can't count stock...
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
and might still be vulnerable to the inflation bug.
Inflation is a feature!
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
One of the local Nepalese guides assisting the group, called Lam Babu Sherpa, died making the dangerous trip, even though he was an experienced climber who had reportedly reached the mountain's peak many times before.
Just so we know where we've got to, this company is still encouraging climbers to search for some digital tokens that have no proven value whatsoever, even though one experienced person involved in their placing lost his life in the process.
Source: @alexandrascaggs / https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/09/25/1537848003000/The-ICO-behind-the-tragic-Everest-stunt-is-now--airdropping--tokens-from-rockets/
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SEC, CFTC Charge Bitcoin Futures Firm 1Broker With Securities Law Violations
The SEC and CFTC are suing bitcoin derivatives trader 1pool and CEO Patrick Brunner for violating federal law with a security swap scheme.
According to the SEC’s complaint, 1pool Ltd. a/k/a 1Broker, registered in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and its CEO Patrick Brunner solicited investors from the United States and around the world to buy and sell security-based swaps. Investors could open accounts by simply providing an email address and a user name – no additional information was required – and could only fund their account using bitcoins. The SEC alleges that a Special Agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, acting in an undercover capacity, successfully purchased several security-based swaps on 1Broker’s platform from the U.S. despite not meeting the discretionary investment thresholds required by the federal securities laws. The SEC also alleges that Brunner and 1Broker failed to transact its security-based swaps on a registered national exchange, and failed to properly register as a security-based swaps dealer.
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@boomzilla well timed.
‘99.73 Percent’ Loss: Ari Paul’s $1 Million Bitcoin Price Bet Looks Doomed
Cryptoasset investment firm BlockTower CEO Ari Paul has lost 99.73 percent of his $1 million Bitcoin price bet as the 2018 bear market claims fresh victims. BlockTower CEO Ari Paul has lost 99.73 percent of his $1 million Bitcoin price bet as the 2018 bear market claims fresh victims.
Paul, who on December 21, 2017, purchased Bitcoin options on LedgerX for $3600 each, currently faces receiving around $10 when the calls expire in three months’ time.
Together, the 275 purchases amount to under $3000, less than the price of a single contract paid in week three last December as Bitcoin prices hovered around $13,000.
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
The SEC also alleges that Brunner and 1Broker failed to transact its security-based swaps on a registered national exchange, and failed to properly register as a security-based swaps dealer.
I love that the entire line of thinking of anything Bitcoin is this:
We can do this Amazing Idea we just came up with!
Uh, that's actually a very old idea you just re-invented. And it's illegal to do.
Nah, man, see, we're BITCOIN!
Don't do it. It's illegal.
WE DID THE THING, EVERYONE! Come with your
to make 
(and totes not 
)
Hi, you're doing illegal thing. You're under arrest.
HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN TO ME?
Prison.
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This person was going along pretty well until they lost their credibility right about here:
@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Nowadays McAfee Anti-Virus is one of the best anti-virus products around.
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Ethereum Security Lead Joins Effort to Oust Blockchain's Big Miners
Security lead for the Ethereum Foundation said today that he supports swift action to remove ASIC mining hardware from the ethereum platform.
"You're doing our pointless work faster than your competitors and hoovering up too much of the fictional reward. BANNED."
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret
Because of the disastrous implications of the bug, developers decided to keep it a secret, buying themselves time to fix the exploit and urge miners and users to upgrade their software.
This is what happens when you ask your users to update nicely:
Bitcoin hard fork nightmare becomes reality after testnet splits
The Bitcoin testing network has suffered an unintentional hard fork, as much of its blockchain remains exposed to a dangerous inflation bug.
A week ago, Bitcoin developers disclosed a glaring vulnerability in the network that could’ve led to a series of abrupt chainsplits. Well, it appears this scenario has begun to play out.
The good thing is that the incident took place on a controlled testnet, not the Bitcoin BTC mainnet.
Alarmingly, those operating a huge percentage of Bitcoin nodes are yet to deploy the new (safe) versions of node software. Current estimates state that anywhere from (around) 50 to 86 percent of the Bitcoin network is running on unpatched nodes.
On Bitcoin’s testnet, a protected blockchain that exists independently of the main network, things are slightly different. It has way less nodes – around 1,200 vs. Bitcoin’s 9,000-plus. This centralizes the network and makes it more vulnerable.
But, assuming a similar number of testing nodes aren’t patched, the split does indicate the same thing could very well happen to Bitcoin’s main blockchain.
After the testnet split, Bitcoin devs were forced to perform emergency surgery on the Bitcoin infrastructure. They managed to keep the crucial testing network alive by running it for hours on the laptop of a Lightning Labs team member.
Noteworthy:
Reminder that "fixing" this exploit involves adding 600 milliseconds to the confirmation of each block. So miners have an incentive to not patch so they gain a competitive advantage on their peers. Laffo.
Source: /r/buttcoin
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
kept a second, bigger part of the bug a secret. As disclosed through an official Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) report
isn't that EXACTLY WHAT YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO DO WHEN FIXING A BIG CVE?
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@DCoder Chinese miners never upgrade. Bitcoin's fucked.
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Bwuh???
Edit: Oh, that YouTube video that's apparently playing? No, that's just a picture of a YouTube video playing, rest assured.
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https://i.imgur.com/o5XYsun.png
Oh, that comment that's apparently quoted? No, that's just a picture of a comment being quoted, rest assured.
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@Lorne-Kates said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
assured
I'm assured it is not insured. And neither is my car now, apparently.
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https://blog.sia.tech/sia-proof-of-work-reset-24b5ec439625
SIA: we're ok with ASICs, and we're even going to make our own ASIC!
(Bitmain builds an ASIC)
SIA: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! WE SUDDENLY HATE ASICS!
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@blakeyrat I just noticed that Medium oneboxes have the author's internal Medium ID instead of their name. That's silly of them.
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We don’t view blockchains as a democracy, we view them as a source of stability. We like decentralization because it prevents groups outside of our control from making decisions that we don’t like. Decentralization is valuable because there is nobody in control, and we weren’t comfortable releasing an update that threatened to rip the community in half.
The doublethink is strong with this one.
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
We don’t view blockchains as a democracy, we view them as a source of stability. We like decentralization because it prevents groups outside of our control from making decisions that we don’t like. Decentralization is valuable because there is nobody in control, and we weren’t comfortable releasing an update that threatened to rip the community in half.
The doublethink is strong with this one.
For some reason I kept reading that as "decolonise"
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@Applied-Mediocrity said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
The doublethink is strong with this one.
The author does seem to be a poster child for how to hold large numbers of flat contradictory ideas in your head before breakfast.
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This seems tangentially relevant to the numbers-are-money thread:
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@blakeyrat said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
SIA: THIS IS AN OUTRAGE! WE SUDDENLY HATE ASICS!
I have no idea what running shoes have got to do with bitcoins... probably to run away from angry
suckersinvestors?</
>
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@topspin said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
This seems tangentially relevant to the numbers-are-money thread:
Are tree leaves worth their weight in diamonds? Top economists have not commented!
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"Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich."
"But we have also," continued the management consultant, "run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut."
"So in order to obviate this problem" he continued, "and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and... er, burn down all the forests. I think you'll all agree that's a sensible move under the circumstances."
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@Applied-Mediocrity I'll admit to thinking of that scene when I wrote the leaf comparison.
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
The Latest Bitcoin Bug Was So Bad, Developers Kept Its Full Details a Secret
Because of the disastrous implications of the bug, developers decided to keep it a secret, buying themselves time to fix the exploit and urge miners and users to upgrade their software.
'Bitcoin Bug' Exploited on Crypto Fork as Attacker Prints 235 Million Pigeoncoins
Using a major bug found and fixed on bitcoin last month, an attacker was able to print 235 million coins on "pigeoncoin."
[…] an unknown attacker successfully took advantage of the bug on September 26th, showcasing in the wild how it could have been used on bitcoin by printing 235 million coins worth about $15,000.
[…] while the severe inflation bug was patched on bitcoin, other coins that have borrowed bitcoin's public code over the years are still vulnerable (if they haven't corrected their code). If exploited, the bug gives an attacker the ability to print as many coins as they want, going even above the hard-coded limitations on supply cryptocurrencies often have and decreasing the value of all the other coins investors hold.
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When dogecoin started out as a joke but has become real and you’re not sure anymore if pigeoncoin is not a joke. Mad world.
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
235 million coins worth about $15,000
Mmm, that's the high yield per-crypto-coin value right there.
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On September 26, 2018, Senior Judge Rya W. Zobel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, entered an order holding that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has the power to prosecute fraud involving virtual currency and denying the defendants’ motion to dismiss the CFTC’s amended complaint.
The CFTC’s amended complaint alleges that since at least January 2014, the defendants operated a fraudulent virtual currency scheme in which they solicited customers to purchase a fully-functioning virtual currency, MBC, by repeatedly making false and misleading claims about its value, usage, trade status, and financial backing. As alleged in the amended complaint, Defendants lied that MBC could be bought, sold, donated, used to make purchases, and was actively trading. To give the illusion that MBC was a safe bet, Defendants also lied that MBC was backed by millions of dollars in gold, and would be used to stabilize the economies of twenty-two countries, as alleged in the amended complaint. The amended complaint also alleges that Defendants misappropriated customer funds by conning people into giving them more than $6 million for what Defendants represented was a fully-functioning virtual currency.
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
One of the local Nepalese guides assisting the group, called Lam Babu Sherpa, died making the dangerous trip, even though he was an experienced climber who had reportedly reached the mountain's peak many times before.
Just so we know where we've got to, this company is still encouraging climbers to search for some digital tokens that have no proven value whatsoever, even though one experienced person involved in their placing lost his life in the process.
Source: @alexandrascaggs / https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/09/25/1537848003000/The-ICO-behind-the-tragic-Everest-stunt-is-now--airdropping--tokens-from-rockets/
The sherpa knew it was a dangerous job when he signed up for it. Undoubtedly he'd led climbs before, and sooner or later, that sort of dangerous job can catch up with you. In the case of climbing Mt. Everest there's really no way to make it "safe"... it can be made as safe as possible but there's inherently still some danger.
While accidents like that are unfortunate, it's not reasonable to say that they killed him.
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Gentlemen, mark your calendars. The currency of the future is going down thanks to someone with a spare … $50.
Hey all, On Oct 13, 3:00 CDT, 4:00 EDT 1:00 PST I'm going to do a 51% attack against the cryptocurrency Einsteinium (i'll do the biggest, most established coin I can afford to attack, I'm putting in $50 of my money and if you want to donate you can 18YvVAxEMYxowSYEmWVtY75ZUdKXXk2vQc (If that's against the rules feel free to remove it Admins)) :
- Demonstrate how easy these attacks are for anyone to do.
- Generally teach people about the nuts and bolts of these attacks and potential mitigations.
If you want to watch it, https://www.twitch.tv/geocold
Event link: https://www.twitch.tv/events/NyJSsF3hQkGHdnsKA2f4JQllSource: Tell HN
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Gentlemen, mark your calendars. The currency of the future is going down thanks to someone with a spare … $50.
Hey all, On Oct 13, 3:00 CDT, 4:00 EDT 1:00 PST I'm going to do a 51% attack against the cryptocurrency Einsteinium (i'll do the biggest, most established coin I can afford to attack, I'm putting in $50 of my money and if you want to donate you can 18YvVAxEMYxowSYEmWVtY75ZUdKXXk2vQc (If that's against the rules feel free to remove it Admins)) :
- Demonstrate how easy these attacks are for anyone to do.
- Generally teach people about the nuts and bolts of these attacks and potential mitigations.
If you want to watch it, https://www.twitch.tv/geocold
Event link: https://www.twitch.tv/events/NyJSsF3hQkGHdnsKA2f4JQllSource: Tell HN
: (posts) Damn, only got 49%. (exit stage left)
: Hey! Where'd our money go?!? We wanted a show!
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Yep, our finance is working just fine, don't worry that it takes more than five weeks to process your order…
Source: @ButtCoin
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@DCoder said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
Yep, [bitfinex's] finance is working just fine
… somebody spoke too soon.
And a comment from the same PR goon as above:
Source: /r/bitfinex
Reminder: Bitfinex is also the galaxy brain pushing the Tether clusterfuckscam, which has been mentioned in this thread multiple times.
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This is a lot less important than the Bitfinex thing above, but it deserves to be immortalized nonetheless:
Source: /r/bitcoin
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@DCoder Make it so.
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Coinbase lets you buy and sell USDC stablecoin | TechCrunch
A few weeks after Circle announced the launch of USD Coin (or USDC for short), Coinbase also announced that customers can now buy, sell, send and receive
But if you want to short cryptocurrencies without sending your USD back to your bank account, you can now convert your tokens to USDC. This way, it’ll be easier to buy cryptocurrencies again in the future. And maybe you can avoid paying taxes by hiding your tokens from taxation authorities…
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@izzion said in A fool and his not-really-money are soon parted:
A USDC is a token that is worth exactly 1 USD
So... it's exactly like a US Dollar, but shittier.
A major cryptocurrency exchange is trolling the New York attorney general
A crypto stunt gone tragically wrong
Federal Court Finds that Virtual Currencies Are Commodities | CFTC
https://theblockcrypto.com/tiny/bitfinex-suspends-all-fiat-deposits
