http://www.deepdotweb.com/2014/02/13/silk-road-2-hacked-bitcoins-stolen-unknown-amount/

2/13/2014 7:45:51 PM

I haven't followed what's happened other than it looks bad.

Good write up at the top of what's happened:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7232175

It looks like it's all fixable. It is still up 40 times from what it was a year ago for the speculators I cashed out fully around the start of the year.

[Edited on February 13, 2014 at 7:57 PM. Reason : a]

2/13/2014 7:49:23 PM

2/13/2014 10:58:31 PM

I haven't cashed out, but I don't have much in there these days. Maybe 4 or 5 mBtc. Keeping an eye on it though, if it gets where I think it's bottoming out I might buy a little bit, just to play.

2/14/2014 11:28:03 AM

So bitcoin is a scam, right?

[Edited on February 14, 2014 at 3:18 PM. Reason : ?]

2/14/2014 3:18:24 PM

no, but it's a major scam-enabler

also it's very difficult to switch between Bitcoin and fiat money and *that* part of the Bitcoin economy is full of scammers

2/14/2014 9:18:56 PM

Quote :

""

Precisely.

^and precisely.

2/15/2014 11:30:12 AM

Quote :

"also it's very difficult to switch between Bitcoin and fiat money and *that* part of the Bitcoin economy is full of scammers"

this describes a lot of gambling websites. funny, huh?

2/15/2014 5:09:23 PM

I fail to see how Coinbase is anything but very quick and easy to go back and forth between fiat and btc.

2/18/2014 12:54:12 PM

Coinbase is literally the best of a sorry bunch. At this point, it's no more frictionless than paypal, and tbh a whole hell of a lot more volatile.



I keep seeing this argument spin circularly:


"Bitcoin is way better than Fiat, and easier, too!" (no, it's not)

"Bitcoin's technology is so fantastic, think about all the possibilities!" (no worthwhile technological application has surfaced in 5+ years, meanwhile we're looking at constant hacking issues)

2/18/2014 8:36:41 PM

Isn't bitcoin a fiat currency (if you even want to call it a currency?)?

Seems like the idea of bit coin would be better suited as a mechanism to validate existing currency transactions. Like when a merchant exchanges money digitally, it also performs the crypto currency operation. Seems like using BTC as a validation mechanism rather than trying to make it a currency itself is a better use of the technology/idea. Not sure how this would work on the banking level with all the micro-transactions they have to do though. This might be too much openness for the shadier aspects of big-finance (but that'd be a good thing for the rest of us).

2/18/2014 8:47:47 PM

Quote :

"Isn't bitcoin a fiat currency"

not backed by any government, so no

2/19/2014 12:59:33 PM

So do i need to buy some of these soon or what?

2/19/2014 3:30:49 PM

^^^ I already covered earlier why it wouldn't work at a banking level.

You don't need a new, over complicated technical solution for FX currency trading "validation" because the market already exists, and is highly efficient at performing multiple things that bitcoin can barely perform one in.

There is literally so much at play in pre and post trade booking that happens that bitcoin just doesn't even support and people in the community have no fucking clue about.



MtGox down in the 260s. Fucking hilarious.

2/19/2014 11:40:32 PM

^would you clean up this post a little? I think I'm interested in what you're saying but it's hard to follow.
Let's eat, grandpa. vs. Lets eat grandpa!

Also, what's the "literally so much at play in pre and post trade booking that happens that bitcoin just doesn't even support..."?

2/20/2014 9:33:39 AM

http://www.wral.com/durham-baker-to-begin-accepting-virtual-currency/13406862/

2/20/2014 11:19:04 AM

Mt Gox is a joke and has been since all this started three years ago. Most others are around the $600s.

Quote :

""Bitcoin is way better than Fiat, and easier, too!" (no, it's not)"

I grant you that it's hard for most people to get bitcoin, but once you have bitcoin there are some interesting payment flows that are implemented.

Technically bitcoin was interesting to me--I implemented a proof of work middleware for login based on the hashcash pieces for a startup I was at a few years ago. I saw the parallels of the block chain with how git version history is implemented and thought the solution to distributed transaction verification was interesting.

When I saw the articles about Silk Road in 2011 and bitcoin was $3 a pop I bought $1000 worth. Guess how much that $1000 made me?

It's almost as if you're trying to convince yourself how smart you are for staying out of it when 2 days of digging could have told you it was the easiest speculative investment you could ever make. On top of that businesses are continuing to adopt it at an accelerating rate and you still think it could never work. I think the speculative ride is over, currently own no bitcoin, but certainly think it's hear to stay for at least half a decade.

If I was going to buy some RC toys from China, which a lot of people in my office do, I'd rather use bitcoin than my credit card. That's the type of transactions for which it seems perfect. Particularly the fringe that couldn't get an account with another payment processor because of size or sketchiness.

[Edited on February 20, 2014 at 12:41 PM. Reason : a]

2/20/2014 12:36:20 PM

^^^ Sorry for the run-ons, iPad + late night = poor grammar.

There's no need to use bitcoin as a "transaction validator."

There are pre-trade and post-trade processes that occur for every single FX trade that eliminate the need for some machine to tick a box. Multiple eyes, multiple validations. No one who operates in the bitcoin world seems to even know or grasp this concept. This is what keeps FX trading honest. People checking other people's work. Not a machine that couldn't give a shit.


^ Again, congrats for making money speculating on bitcoin while you still could. What I've articulated over and over still stands and will not change. There are better solutions for peer to peer payment that exist today, that have much more credibility, much more security, and will stand the test of time. Bitcoin as a currency is still a failure. Bitcoin as a speculative vehicle from here on out will continue to be a failure.

2/20/2014 9:36:21 PM

/thread

2/20/2014 10:42:51 PM

How do you cash out your bitcoins?

2/20/2014 11:02:13 PM

morelike shitcoin

2/20/2014 11:16:55 PM

^^by flushing your hard drive down the toilet

2/21/2014 1:10:08 PM

I primarily used Coinbase for selling. It goes right into your banking account in about 2 days in my experience.

2/21/2014 1:23:37 PM

Quote :

"When I saw the articles about Silk Road in 2011 and bitcoin was $3 a pop I bought $1000 worth. Guess how much that $1000 made me? "

Post the statement.

2/21/2014 6:25:58 PM

I smell bullshit

2/21/2014 7:35:20 PM

now's the time to get into the market and strike it rich

2/21/2014 8:42:41 PM

2/22/2014 7:05:06 AM

BTW Bitcoin transactions aren't verified by a "machine that couldn't give a shit" but rather by a whole network of clients, and if you wanted to cheat the system you'd need a rogue network with more processing power than the legit one (the "51% problem"); this will mostly be problematic if the participation of Bitcoin miners declines: http://radar.oreilly.com/2014/02/bitcoin-security-model-trust-by-computation.html

The problem that Mt. Gox succumbed to was accepting Bitcoin transactions as good before the network had verified them (because it takes at least 10 minutes), allowing a rogue user to broadcast a slightly different transaction more quickly, get that one verified, then complain to Gox that it didn't get the Bitcoin so it gets a new transaction: http://buttcoin.org/mtgox-sinking-ship

2/22/2014 9:26:03 PM

Quote :

"When I saw the articles about Silk Road in 2011 and bitcoin was $3 a pop I bought $1000 worth. Guess how much that $1000 made me? "

100 pesos?

2/22/2014 10:40:54 PM

^^ Right. Of course I understand that, but was simplifying for conversation's sake.


'A network of machines that couldn't give a shit' vs 'a machine that couldn't give a shit' is really immaterial.

2/23/2014 3:21:15 PM

Quote :

"When I saw the articles about Silk Road in 2011 and bitcoin was $3 a pop I bought $1000 worth. Guess how much that $1000 made me?"

totally happened, nothing else has ever happened as hard as this happened.

[Edited on February 24, 2014 at 1:18 PM. Reason : ]

2/24/2014 1:17:41 PM

Quote :

"There are better solutions for peer to peer payment that exist today, that have much more credibility, much more security, and will stand the test of time. Bitcoin as a currency is still a failure. Bitcoin as a speculative vehicle from here on out will continue to be a failure."

What are they? I want to send $20 to Africa, how do I do it? What is insecure about bitcoin itself?

2/24/2014 2:18:12 PM

Quote :

"I want to send $20 to Africa, how do I do it?"

You'd probably already be using M-Pesa instead of bitcoin considering it's near impossible to convert .05 bitcoin to local currency.

2/24/2014 2:49:10 PM

I WANT TO SEND A HUNDRED DOLLAR BUCKS TO EARTH

the fuck "i want to send money to africa"

get out of here

[Edited on February 24, 2014 at 3:05 PM. Reason : christ jesus]

2/24/2014 3:05:00 PM

^ Considering sending small amounts of money without paying a $45 wire fee is one the biggest growth potentials of bitcoin, go fuck yourself.

2/24/2014 3:11:33 PM

why don't you pick up your telephone and ring them up

hello, first bank of africa

i'd like to send your continent a couple of sawbucks

or four fins if the conversion is favorable

2/24/2014 3:16:25 PM

Quote :

"^ Considering sending small amounts of money without paying a $45 wire fee is one the biggest growth potentials of bitcoin, go fuck yourself."

i lived in another country but was paid by our US entity and would have loved to been able to transfer money around with no time delays / fees - the expat community is fairly large

2/24/2014 3:23:18 PM

bitcoin is going to be the next Beanie Babies

2/24/2014 8:07:13 PM

I bet there were a lot more than 21 million beanie babies

2/24/2014 9:50:34 PM

http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2014-02-24/news/47635633_1_bitcoin-foundation-bitcoin-prices-mark-karpeles

Mt gox done. From riches to rags.

2/25/2014 12:57:53 AM

mt gox was a shitshow from day one. glad to see it gone. sucks for all the ppl that had money stuck in there. but honestly, they were dumb for not pulling it out a long time ago.

can't wait to see how low the value drops. great time to buy in.

2/25/2014 12:45:30 PM

how do you buy in? what's the secure way to do it?

2/25/2014 1:39:13 PM

^

Locally https://localbitcoins.com/
or with coinbase: http://www.coinbase.com

2/25/2014 2:26:56 PM

Dont think it was posted above,

Rise (breakfast place) at Southpoint is taking bitcoins now.

2/25/2014 2:35:12 PM

Quote :

"can't wait to see how low the value drops. great time to buy in."

What are you buying? some binary on a server?

Now that 1 million coins disappeared what does that do to the final tally of bitcoins.

[Edited on February 25, 2014 at 6:20 PM. Reason : .]

2/25/2014 6:19:27 PM

The coins weren't missing: They were stolen and are now in the wallets of the thieves.
However, some Bitcoin is effectively missing, stored in wallets for which the private keys have been lost, and overall a majority of Bitcoin has never been spent: http://readwrite.com/2014/01/13/what-happens-to-lost-bitcoins

Anyway, what you buy is a certain amount of value in a bitcoin wallet, which is listed in the blockchain (kept by all miners) and infeasible to forge.

What Mt. Gox did was fail to verify transactions properly, using just the txn ID, with a faulty custom wallet implementation: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2014/02/16/bitcoin-transaction-malleability/

2/25/2014 6:41:37 PM

All MtGox fiat and coin...

2/26/2014 8:48:24 AM

Getting a nice bump from what I got over the last few days.

2/26/2014 1:07:53 PM

If I buy on coinbase, do I run the risk of them shutting down or all my shit getting stolen?

2/26/2014 1:40:08 PM

not the same way as what happened on Mt. Gox

because their wallet implementation (much like the standard wallet) isn't vulnerable to that attack


[Edited on February 26, 2014 at 2:46 PM. Reason : how Mt. Gox all began

2/26/2014 2:34:26 PM