1. CoinDash did not publish the address of the contract in advance of the ICO:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/6nsy6x/coindash_w...
2. Allegedly, CoinDash ignored issues brought up by a software contractor / code reviewer:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethtrader/comments/6nrxk5/never_mis...
> In reviewing their crowdsale code, I found multiple bugs and many errors. I've been ignored since I brought up the problems with the CoinDash team three days ago.
Bitcoin succeeds as a scarce and sovereign wealth management tool but once you give away the private keys, you lose those advantages.
BTC's network protocol service is not unique, and thus not scarce in the least. I.E. other protocols/network designs/token-ledgers offer the same service as BTC in addition to fixing the vulnerability to BTC's hashing algorithm which has led to the ASIC attacks on the Bitcoin network which just lead to centralization by the hardware producers.
The only party benefitting from the cashback scheme is, of course, the middleman. By offering it, they give you an incentive to use the card more, which in turn gives the vendors more incentive to accept it. More card use equates directly to more money for them.
One of the hugely compelling benefits of cryptocurrencies is they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut and driving up costs for the parties actually partaking in the transaction.
But clearly people want this type of guarantee so I think the cryptopunk dream of having every human being owning a bitcoin wallet aligns poorly with what real world human beings want.
Everytime I read about long term adoption of cryptocurrency by the masses I always end up asking myself the same question: "Why would a random person for whom money is not a political statement care about any of that? What's the added value?" As far as I'm concerned I still haven't found a satisfactory answer to this question.
Don't all bitcoin transactions require a transaction fee in order to get processed these days?
So obviously there's going to need to be a credit backed middle man to guarantee your transaction so the seller doesn't get screwed by a double spend.
Eth is slightly better, but it still takes something on the order of 10m to confirm a transaction, and it doesn't look like it can get anywhere near the speed needed for a coffee purchase.
Without more efficient means of off-chain transactions (such as payment channels) the cost of on-chain cryptocurrency transactions is typically much more expensive than credit card transactions (except for very large amounts, as credit card transactions charge a percentage, and cryptocurrency transactions have a fee not related to the amount transacted).
For some of the cryptocurrencies those fees are currently somewhat hidden, as you don't directly pay them as transaction fees, but as miners get a block reward that contributes to inflation. If you include the miner revenue a Bitcoin transactions currently costs about $20 in average: https://blockchain.info/charts/cost-per-transaction
A credit card transaction costs me 2$ (which is used to provide me great service, including insurance against unauthorized use): Somehow this is a bad thing?
Yes, if the recieving bank won't honour a cash-back then it will come out of card processing fees, but that's more like insurance than anything else. I wouldn't say that insurance is without worth.
Also, BitCoin has transaction fees. Except rather than being used for insurance, they provide a (very poor) profit motive for miners to continue keeping the network hashing rate high. The reason it's clearly a poor profit motive is that the popular markets around BitCoin are secondary markets (selling graphics cards rather than doing the mining yourself).
Which is why so many of the business “accepting” cryptocurrency do so only through a middleman who converts it immediately back to national currency for the business, charging a fee for the service.
As long as there is no difference between the cash price and card price, it's rational for a customer to use a card with rewards. And I have never seen anything outside of gas with differential pricing. And you know what? I just avoid those gas stations as much as possible, because I can pay a similar price at another station and get my cash back.
1. The only party benefitting from the cashback scheme is, of course, the middleman. While prices will go up in the long term, consumers who use cash-back cards do benefit in the short term over those who don't. If you make a transaction in cash or with a debit card which you could have made with a cash-back card, you are leaving 3% on the table. I am extremely skeptical that an individual boycott will be effective. Maybe take your 3% and pool it to lobby for better banking regulations?
2. they entirely eliminate the necessity for such middlemen taking a cut - AFAIK, all cryptocurrency includes some sort of transaction fee.
The beneficiary of this scheme, as with most schemes to lower prices to undercut the competition, is me.
1) It costs them money to use 2) No cashback
It would be interesting to test a cryptocurrency where the recipient payed the fee, and could optionally send cashback. I'm not exactly sure how this would work, but the incentive structure would more optimally aligned for everyone involved.
Right now she will only accept the first month payment by credit card. Cash, check, or ACH for recurring payments. ACH costs $.99. If everyone decides to pay credit card she will raise cost by $5 (almost 3% of the charge).
Only if you don't count the online exchanges as middle men. Right now I still pay 3-5% to convert fiat to digital money, depending on where my fiat comes from.
The theoretical future where nobody needs to convert between digital coin and fiat isn't here yet.
So its an extra little 3% tax on the poor, or at least the less financially literate.
Of course it's sad for people who invest money they can't afford to lose, but really "investing" in cryptocurrencies is more like playing roulette than anything else and they should've known better.
I really wonder what cryptocurrencies will look like 10 years from now. Will they still exist? Will they have taken over the world as some predict?
Given how easy it is to irrevocably lose your coins I really have a hard time imagining how this could become mainstream. At best I could imagine using bitcoin through some third party that would take care of your wallet for you. We'd call it a bank or something.
Like any decent business thinker you don't see the rough edges of your focus. Sometimes when you do it can cripple you. But then again most business fail.
News like this are common for any emerging markets and technologies. Same amount of volatility was probably present in the first years of dollar, and same amount of insecurity was present while banks and credit cards were still being established.
I wonder how much different the crypto-currency conversation would have been if they appeared around the time when dollar lost its gold convertibility.
Take a look at the purchasing power of the US dollar over the last century. http://bit.ly/2ushyfu
I'm not suggesting crypto is a better store of value, but there are surely better alternatives than the U.S. dollar for long term investments.
Even for short term holdings intended to transact with, wouldn't it be nice to not rely on a bloated, corrupt, violent corporation (AKA the US Gov)?
That said this is only true if you have faith in your government.
Which is precisely why you don't leave money sitting in a 0% savings account. You invest it in equity, not a currency. Fiat is designed to lose value through inflation. Thats how the system works.
Expecting to hedge against inflation by dumping your money in another currency is insanity. The only way is through actual economic growth.
For just about everything else, cryptocurrencies are crap, just a worse version of something that already exists. They're not a panacea, you can't throw a blockchain at everything and make it better.
You understand not everyone has that privilege right? Not everybody has access, the capital, or the identification to a first-world bank.
That's right, they don't exist, and this argument is bullshit.
2. Not all properties are relevant or even desirable: For example, I could live without POW or a fixed cap.
3. That being said, let me give you an example of a currency that could realistically be adopted by a government: a centrally controlled currency (the central bank is the only miner) but the blocks are validated by the citizens.
Here you could have the inflation rate specified through a smart contract (e.g. 3%). The only way to print more money would be to to ask the nodes to vote on an amount that will be included in the next block.
No. $1 during the gold standard was different than $1 after we left it. Now, our central bank (the "Federal Reserve") aims to inflate our currency at +2%, every year. After 80 years (roughly a US lifetime), $1 at birth is worth $0.20 at death. And central banks can't always keep monetary policy under control.[1]
We just hit $20 trillion in US federal debt. It's set to continue to grow as baby boomers continue retiring. Congress has no spine to make large cuts in spending (for defense, discretionary, or entitlement programs). There are a handful of very large states in the same condition. The debt will continue to grow reasonably fast while the GDP of our economy has lagged.
$1 USD may say "$1" on the front forever, but the purchasing power of a dollar isn't likely to stay as strong as some other currencies. It's worth even less if large, important international transactions (like for oil/gas/weapons) are done less and less with the US dollar (@see "Bretton Woods" and "petrodollar").
If someone steals your gold the logistical complexities are much more onerous to being caught. Again, a 3000 year problem almost entirely solved.
The risk of the medium of value is priced into the medium itself.
If you took some time to figure out the answer, it may be valuable. Or not. You could be right.
> because $1 = $1 like forever
Correct. What about compared to a basket of good?
Without these people, how have Venezuelans got any chance of getting bitcoins in the first place?
On a side note showcasing the ridiculousness of some of these ICOs, [1]"Useless Ether Token" (UET) raised around $45k and literally doesn't do anything.
[1]: https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/useless-ethereum-token/
This time it's a "hack" where someone gained unauthorized access to a webpage and modified it somehow?
IMO if there were ever a case for hardforking around problems it should be for the latter and not the former. Maybe Ethereum could publicly declare itself to be a "not-too-centralized" consensus-audited-by-this-particular-committee-of-humans.
The majority aren't outright scams (willful intent to defraud), but most are capital grabs with virtually no chance of being successful businesses.
EDIT: Apparently from https://etherscan.io/address/0x6a164122d5cf7c840D26e829b46dC... , which is something I don't have the depth of knowledge to assess for myself.
is the important figure. At the bottom you can see the transactions coming in.
First incoming transaction seems to be from Jul-17-2017 01:01:21 PM. View all > last page.
When deals are large enough, sometimes they are even executed as a set of "tranches" (large set of smaller transactions over time) so the transfer isn't easily traceable and counter-parties remain largely unknown.
Its essentially a cryptocurrency risk management system where one user takes on all the profit/loss of cryptocurrencies price change so that other user (fund) pegges their wealth to USD
https://medium.com/@mnaei/are-you-selling-50-of-your-cryptoc...
At this point, it probably takes good judgement to make money in crypto. You can't just throw fiat at anything & expect to walk away rich.
One of the reasons criminals are all over crypto is because they're valuable.
When Willie Sutton was asked why he robbed banks he replied: 'Because that's where the money is'.
I'd say caveat emptor.
Edit: Looks like the title was updated. :)
'Reminder: if someone makes a token sale that gives discounts to large buyers, this can be circumvented via collective-buying smart contract.'[0]
I think people are going to start understanding how to navigate the new investment waters. It's going to take time. I still don't have as many sources of info in the area as I'd like. That too -- if the market continues to develop -- will change in time.
[0]: https://twitter.com/VitalikButerin/status/886191450727297024
One possible solution would be to use Twitter pinned tweet to also announce the address, however it's questionable how many people would actually cross check.
Doesn't http have enough redundancy checks built in to make this pointless? The only time to really do a checksum isn't on a browser download, it's when you push it over some serial connection, or android adb or something else.
But you're right about serving the data & checksum from the same source. I don't see what extra layer of security or integrity it adds. Someone tampering with server file system, or the data transfer (MitM) inherently has the access they need to inject their own MD5 into the HTML.
Furthermore it's very much possible to get corrupt data over HTTP if you have a poor connection and download a big file.
If you want a really secure "checksum" you best bet is probably a GPG signature file from a wildly distributed and trusted key.
I mean, not unexpected: hit the softest part of the chain, which in this case seems to be a webserver rather than the crypto/contract. Just trying to make sure my understanding is correct.
If only the crypto-currency world had laws and the institution of justice...
A law isn't going to magic peoples coins back if they hit send to the wrong address.
This is why I think wide adoption of cryptocurrency is a bad idea. Complete computer security is nearly impossible (I want to say completely impossible but I'll end up in an endless debate about single use offline computers printing out paper wallets).
Also, just because you're not an expert does not mean that you have any excuse to be completely clueless and make stupid mistakes.
Personally, I find it exceptionally naive that these startups think they can handle payment processing, payment storage, and their core product at the same time. If you're a startup, at least two of these will be ignored for favor of another. One of them makes you money/users, the others don't.
But also, if it's really as easy as replacing some arbitrary address with another I'm surprised Coindash wasn't more careful.
If the ICO implements that, there's no protection from someone replacing the ICO address.
If buyers use escrow contracts, they have to confirm their transactions before the ICO closes, so for typical hard-capped ICOs you don't have much time to verify things. When the crowdsale's website is displaying wrong information, there's no other source, and the sale is rapidly approaching a hard cap on contributions, there's not much you can do.
A better defense against this type of attack is to use the Ethereum Name Service, and publish the address well in advance. It would also help to use crowdsale structures that don't incentivize a mad rush, such as:
1. someone writes a url to the chain
2. others post a (url/hash/date time) of the output of the url
3. then people could post an image with their face and a blockchain address. could be a form of ID.
Although, you should probably avoid all ICO's =p
Now reads "tampered", but "tempered [sic]" would seem to have been appropriate if really was the message sent to investors. Funny how the subheadline had the typo before as well.
What would have worked, however, would have been to pin the ICO address to the blockchain in advance. Same concept.
EDIT: so, apart from posting the address across as many channels as possible, and telling people to cross-check, what options are there? You could announce addresses way beforehand and have them send ETH to the final address once you release it, using that as a signal.
