https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cx2844nvwx8o
I thought security was meant to be one of the big pluses of crypto investments
I thought security was meant to be one of the big pluses of crypto investments
Largest digital heist in history
- Thread starter golden_blunder
- Start date
They didn't technically hack into the security features, they tricked somebody into sending the assets to the wrong address. The equivalent of opening a link asking you to enter your bank details.
There's a reason why that field is absolutely filled with scammers.
It is, its its strnegth, and also its weakness.
Because if you feck up and send funds to the wrong place, there is no way of reversing the transaction. That is what happened here, and it goes back to the very essence of security. You can have all the systems you want, but human error can still screw you, we are always the weak link.
Which is why good security systems are supposed to take that into account at least to a certain extent.
you thought wrong!
Quite the opposite. Banks offer multiple layers of protections for your deposits, even from yourself.
Just one of the reasons crypto makes for a shite currency.
How can it be a large theft if the loot itself is absolutely worthless?
It's not worthless, it's just not worth as much as it says on the tin. Well, some of it may well be worthless.
It is worthless. You can’t do anything with it, other than trying to scam others into buying it. The product itself has absolutely no inherent value whatsoever.
It's not worthless if you can sell it to someone. Crypto is worse than pointless, but that doesn't make this worthless (as in "not worth any money"), or not a valuable heist.
I guess it depends on what one would call valuable then. But we’re basically in agreement, I guess.
Yes I think so.
Social engineering is a big part of hacking though isn’t it?
Yes it is but hacking in the purest sense is cracking into something, which didn't happen here.
This event could have just as easily happened to a bank moving US dollars around, except there'd be no point because it would be moved straight back.
Bubbles are great that way. Right up to the point where they burst.
Andrew Squiggle stacking those SATS
Digital currencies and blockchains are the future of moving money. Actually the present. The success attracts large criminal groups. A bank not prepped in blockchain tech is useless and about to be left for dead within 3 years.
You are pretty clueless many of these companies are legitimate and the future of AI …finance….Gaming…Plenty of scam companies for sure but even the US government is pivoting towards them and the USD is the number one Fiat currency!
They're the present? Do you realize what an infinitesimally small portion of all daily transactions are made using crypto?
Oh okay, so you can't be reasoned with. I see.
I can guarantee you that this will not happen.
And that only includes transactions where they are used as a currency for buying goods or services? Transactions where traders transfer the currency between each other has little to no meaning in the real economy.
As far as I can see, there are like 1.1-1.3 million Ethereum transactions per day? Visa does like 0.7 billion per day. And it doesn't seem like Ethereum is doing any more transactions in 2025 than they were doing in 2021. Visa is doing more every year.
Do you realise fiat currency moves around in the same way it did in 1970. It takes days for international money movements. It’s laughable. It won’t be the case within 3 years guaranteed. The writing is on the wall for how you see current financial norms. The US government is already seeing to that. Course the UK will follow several years behind once they work out how to tax it more.
volume, not transactions
Yes it won’t as all major banks are already building blockchains they’ve been introduced to by crypto!
Okay, then that should tell you something about the usefulness of Ethereum for the modern financial system, if it has more volume traded on a seven-hundredth of the number of transactions. And when that number of transactions hasn't moved in four years. That is not the sign of a useful currency. And to be fair to it, it's not a currrency; it's a commodity.
volume means what it means
Ethereum is crap yeah
You do realize that money transfers are not where banks makes the bulk of their income right?
Visa isn't a currency.
The global FX markets do about $8 trillion a day. Crypto hasn't yet begun to make a dent in it. It will get there but the big custodian banks don't even recognise it on their balance sheets today, that's how far away we are.
Eth isn't the future of payments any more than Btc is. Too slow and too expensive.
it’s the life blood of these institutions let’s not try are demean it to pretend crypto introducing new tech to archaic institutions isn’t the start of a new future.
Yeah but SUI isn’t slow or expensive…xRP will prob have a big future in this space if only because of its links to Trump.
Yeah I know. I was giving an example to show that crypto accounted for more than an infinitesimally small amount of transactions. I know it doesn't rival traditional finance. It's just not infinitesimally small anymore.
You've stated a version of "ETH isn't the future of payments" to me before and I will always agree with that, you don't need to keep telling me.
Heh.
Crypto currencies have been around for almost 20 years already and still you almost never see them used in day to day transactions. Their main use is still for actors that are trying to get around regulations like for example in online gambling when unlicensed operators target regulated markets or in outright illegal activities. What makes you think that the next 3 years will be so much different than the past 20 years and why would it make banks go out of business when only a very small amount of their income comes from transaction fees?