[HN Gopher] $570M worth of Binance's BNB token stolen
___________________________________________________________________
$570M worth of Binance's BNB token stolen
Author : labarilem
Score : 130 points
Date : 2022-10-07 11:51 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.cnbc.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.cnbc.com)
| throwoutway wrote:
| What tech is a cross-chain bridge? Is it code running on the
| Ethereum chain or something else?
| helen___keller wrote:
| cross chain bridges, from my understanding, are layer 2
| protocols that live on 2 chains at once using validators.
| Basically, you have nodes staking coins on both chains and they
| attest that the coins coming out of one side of the bridge are
| matched by coins going in the other side of the bridge
|
| So for example you send some $FOO tokens to a contract on the
| ethereum side then get out $WFOO (wrapped foo) tokens from a
| contract on another chain.
|
| I've been interested in these protocols for a while as a
| possibility of making crypto actually scalable and not a
| pyramid scheme (basically, imagine a network of interoperable
| chains powered by stable tokens like USDC, and using inter-
| chain protocols to transfer USDC between them as needed for
| load balancing).
|
| That said, reality hasn't quite met my expectations, not yet
| anyways.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| What makes a blockchain necessary is having both
| decentralization and generalized distrust as hard
| assumptions.
|
| How do you manage not having to trust the bridges in such
| scenarios?
| helen___keller wrote:
| the bridges operate on the same general principle as proof
| of stake (mutual distrust of nodes through a protocol that
| involves staking coins)
|
| The difference of course, is that if there's a flaw in
| proof of stake generally it means one person might control
| transaction flow and collect some transaction fees; if
| there's a flaw in a bridge then someone prints money and
| destroys bridge ecosystem
| smoldesu wrote:
| > the bridges operate on the same general principle as
| proof of stake
|
| Quick amendment here - _most_ of the bridges operate on
| these principles. There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies,
| trading pairs and L2 chains that have zero accountability
| whatsoever. It 's not written anywhere that these bridges
| have to operate without trust, and many of them straight-
| up _don 't_.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Proof of stake comes with a number of issues but let's
| put that apart.
|
| PoW and PoS are means to achieve distributed consensus.
| It works for cryptocurrencies because writings to the
| blockchain are _performative_ (what 's written is true
| because the act of writing it makes it true). This can
| only work _inside_ a given blockchain and only for its
| own cryptocurrency.
|
| Which means it cannot be used to ensure anything that
| happens outside that blockchain. In particular all
| blockchain usage for certifications, traceability, of
| NFT-like things are essentially nonsensical. Similarly, I
| don't see how it could work for writings that happens on
| other blockchains. Whatever is written on blockchain A
| cannot be considered true in blockchain B without
| breaking the security model of blockchain B by making
| blockchain A a trusted third-party.
|
| Where does a distributed consensus mechanism comes into
| play here?
|
| Maybe it would be clearer with an example? Let's say
| someone wants to move X tokens from blockchain A to
| blockchain B, and that at the time of the move, X
| A-tokens are equivalent to Y B-tokens (trusting the
| exchange rate in itself is all another problem, but let's
| put it aside). How would that go?
| helen___keller wrote:
| > Whatever is written on blockchain A cannot be
| considered true in blockchain B without breaking the
| security model of blockchain B by making blockchain A a
| trusted third-party.
|
| To be more specific, when I said "like proof of stake",
| what I meant is that there's a trusted pool of validators
| but the individual validators are not assumed to be
| trustworthy (only the pool in aggregate), and the
| validators use a adversarial staking model to punish
| dishonesty.
|
| In the case of bridges, that pool is external to the
| chain. So yes, there is external trust happening.
|
| I'll try to address your example, but I've researched
| this a while ago so I'm sure I could be off the mark.
|
| For your example, lets say we're moving A-token in
| A-chain to wrapped A-tokens in B-chain, so we can easily
| assume it's a 1:1 exchange rate by construction. User
| moves 100 A-tokens in A-chain to a bridge smart contract
| and as data passes the address of their B-chain wallet.
|
| A subset of validators in the trusted pool (chosen via
| some distributed protocol) together sign a multi-sig
| transaction that authorizes the bridge contract in
| B-chain to mint 100 wrapped A-tokens and send 99.9 of
| them to the destination address that the bridging user,
| and collect 0.1 of them as fee.
|
| (If transaction were dishonest, a larger subset of
| validators would together sign a transaction purging
| those validators' stake in the pool; so the subset of
| validators chosen are honest out of desire to keep their
| staking capital and earn the 0.1 fee)
|
| That's at a high level how it works. If you want the full
| details I recommend finding a technical writeup for a
| popular trustless bridge.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| Thanks a lot for taking the time to write all this to
| explain clearly :).
|
| As I feared, these mechanisms do break the assumptions
| that would make a blockchain useful in the first place.
| So it is not actually possible to move tokens from a
| blockchain to another in the security model that this
| technology exists for.
| helen___keller wrote:
| Mostly agreed, except
|
| > that would make a blockchain useful in the first place
|
| This is generally a matter of opinion :) But you are
| correct that it has a completely different security /
| trust posture compared to the underlying chain, so you
| can't simply say "ethereum works and solana works,
| therefor this bridge from ethereum to solana works"
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| I have an ignorant question, which will demonstrate my ignorance
| of both crypto and fiat.
|
| Was money "Stolen", or "additional tokens generated"?
|
| What I mean by that is: If I have a chair, and you come and take
| my chair, you've stolen my chair.
|
| If I am carrying $200 in cash, and you take my $200 in cash,
| you've stolen my cash.
|
| (if I write a nice piece of music, and you copy it, you've
| performed "copyright infringement" and we can discuss whether
| that is "theft" or not in legal vs semantic / colloquial terms)
|
| In this _particular_ case, were _specific_ tokens
| /crypto/something taken out of someone's wallet, OR were
| additional seemingly-valid tokens generated "out of thin" air?
| Was it a transfer or generation issue? Was some entity _directly_
| negatively affected through a specific loss, or were many
| entities affected by subsequent inflation due to tokens being
| generated?
|
| Does my question make sense to anybody but me? :)
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| I haven't read the article, so I don't know if it's out-right
| theft or theft due to inflation (devaluation of legitimate
| tokens).
|
| Traditionally, scarcity of digital music does not give it
| value, whereas scarcity of digital tokens does give it value.
|
| Are you asking at what point does inflation start to hurt
| others?
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Thanks - no, my question was in this instance specifically,
| were existing tokens moved out of specific wallets thus
| immediatelly injuring specific entities, or were they
| generated and thus in a more diffused and deferred way hurt
| entire ecosystem.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _scarcity of digital music does not give it value, whereas
| scarcity of digital tokens does give it value_
|
| They're both scarce in the same way.
| MerelyMortal wrote:
| > They're both scarce in the same way.
|
| No, they are not.
| nemomarx wrote:
| In these cases, stolen usually means that existing tokens were
| moved around in some way. In this case, it looks like they
| hacked a bridge connecting one tokens protocol to another
| 'chain' and redirected tokens there - not sure if they were
| swiping them out of a wallet at rest or redirecting trades
| people were doing.
| finnh wrote:
| The term you are looking for is "rivalrous good".
| [deleted]
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Here is the only part of the article that matters:
|
| > The hack was caused by a bug in the bridge's smart contract
| that allowed hackers to forge transactions and send money back
| to their crypto wallet
|
| The bridge is BSC Token Hub:
|
| https://www.bscscan.com/address/0x00000000000000000000000000...
|
| This smart contract holds coins. A bug allowed someone to forge
| transactions with the result that they could move coins off of
| the contract and into to wallets that they control.
| cwkoss wrote:
| Code is law. There are no such things as bugs in smart
| contracts. Just unforeseen implications of the chosen
| contract.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| No, those are definitely bugs. The program was obviously
| not intented to allow forged transactions, just like so
| many I/O layers were not intended to incorrectly accept
| malformed malicious input.
|
| Even actual human laws have bugs and exploitable
| vulnerabilities. We simply call them loopholes instead.
| There's even a very lucrative market for them, dominated by
| professionals like lawyers and accountants.
| icambron wrote:
| I'd say a bug is behavior not intended by the contract's
| author. Laws can have bugs too.
|
| What I do think is that you can't really call it "forgery"
| or "stealing", just like using a loophole in a law isn't
| illegal.
| palata wrote:
| Question makes perfect sense. My understanding is that hackers
| could forge transactions and send money to their wallet. So
| they took the money from many wallets and moved it to one (or
| many) of their wallets.
|
| Nobody can cancel those transactions, even if everyone can see
| them. That's by design (and that's what makes it great for
| criminal use-cases, among other things).
| palata wrote:
| Wait, maybe not. Seems like it was taken from the BNB chain.
| Not sure if that's "created out of thin air", though... maybe
| closer to printing money from the central bank? Not sure xD
| cersa8 wrote:
| These bridges seem to be the weakest links in crypto.
| mikeyouse wrote:
| The entire crypto ecosystem seems insane to me. So for your
| money to be safe - you need to be sure that largely anonymous
| devs wrote bug-free code on some of the most complex parts of
| implementing already complex logical proofs. Oh and the Red
| Team has hundreds of millions of dollars of incentive to line-
| by-line your code and exploit it. Yeesh.
|
| This thread linked elsewhere here is par for the course -- so
| many things done right in the code, but one important thing
| done wrong:
| https://twitter.com/samczsun/status/1578185275062132736
| latchkey wrote:
| You could say this of any "important" code though.
|
| https://everydayastronaut.com/mars-climate-orbiter/
| mikeyouse wrote:
| Right - but I'm not personally trying to orbit Mars and 0%
| of my net worth is tied up in NASA contractors getting
| their units right, so that code quality doesn't impact me
| at all. Also no hopelessly conflicted VCs are underwriting
| Superbowl ads to get me to store my money with the next
| Climate Orbiter.
| latchkey wrote:
| Early days of the internet, people were afraid to put
| their credit card into a website.
|
| The main reason we are not afraid to do this today is
| because we usually get a refund if there is an issue.
| This is subsidized with the profits the credit card
| companies make from that 16%+ APY they charge people with
| revolving debt.
|
| Credit card companies do all sorts of silly
| advertisements and cards get hacked all the time...
|
| We can go in circles on these comparisons all day long.
| We have a choice... either keep the status quo, or try to
| work towards a future where we don't have to give up our
| privacy and information in order to just buy something on
| the internet so that we can have ads follow us around.
|
| Whether cryptocurrencies are that solution, is
| irrelevant... the part where people are working on these
| sorts of things at all, is what I care about. I
| personally, would rather be able to provide liquidity and
| take out a loan without having to ask permission first.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| A mars orbiter doesn't have adversaries.
| latchkey wrote:
| Gravity is a bitch.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Writing programs that work is indeed hard. I suspect that
| the folks writing code for space exploration are good at
| their job. But it _is_ different dealing with adversarial
| behavior.
| latchkey wrote:
| > But it is different dealing with adversarial behavior.
|
| That's your opinion. Integration tests on another planet
| are just as hard as integration tests across a crypto
| bridge. One can even argue that an integration test on
| another planet is more difficult.
| jongjong wrote:
| This is because such bridges rely on proofs derived from other
| blockchains over which validators have no visibility. These add
| a huge amount of complexity and increase the attack surface.
| Simpler bridges such as capitalisk-dex
| https://github.com/Capitalisk/capitalisk-dex (written with only
| 5K lines of code including dependencies) have a lot smaller
| attack surface. The principle behind it is to rely on the
| security of underlying blockchains instead of adding a separate
| proof mechanism on top; DEX validator nodes have direct
| visibility over participating blockchains and work directly
| with on-chain data so they can verify everything directly using
| each blockchain's native cryptographic clients.
| kirse wrote:
| Isn't this the purpose behind tech like State Proofs on the
| Algorand network, i.e. trustless cross-chain activity is
| basically solved at this point + deprecates the need for any
| intermediary trusted bridges:
|
| https://medium.com/algorand/algorand-state-
| proofs-707d64038e...
|
| https://developer.algorand.org/docs/get-details/stateproofs/
| jcpham2 wrote:
| Is this stealing or double spending? The original concept was
| that double-spends were impossibru because proof of work.
|
| Then someone pointed out hilariously the origins of BNB "token"
| in the first place - because ETH 2.0 PoW edition (not Ethereum
| Classic (ETC) that's a whole different boondoggle) recently
| migrated to PoS...
|
| Nevermind this is dumb
| mgraczyk wrote:
| It's not double spending, and BNB has nothing to do with ETH
| migrating to pos
| darkteflon wrote:
| If memory serves, BNB itself was originally created and
| distributed to Binance customers as part of an attempt to make
| them whole for BTC losses from a hacking incident.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Wasn't that bitfinex? With the BFX token?
| jcpham2 wrote:
| ding ding ding
| yieldcrv wrote:
| I don't think your memory serves correctly
| hey2022 wrote:
| BNB2 incoming!
| hamiltonians wrote:
| none of these people ever get arrested or caught. perfect crime
| avrionov wrote:
| Some of them of caught and arrested:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Bitfinex_hack
| datalopers wrote:
| is it a crime or is it working as intended? code is law after
| all.
| TheKnack wrote:
| I got an email that is made to appear as if it's from Binance
| today, having never interacted with Binance in any way. The email
| looks like it could potentially be an actual Binance email
| someone has copied and modified.
|
| The actual sending domain for the email is sg.djamo.ci. Most of
| the links in the email are bit.ly redirects to https://bina-
| defi.net/markets/. Whois lookup for this domain only results in
| "Whois record is unavailable at this time." The server IP appears
| to be hosted in Germany at a hosting provider called Xsserver
| Gmbh. Links to "Binance.com", Unsubscribe, etc. in the email
| point to sg.djamo.ci and don't work (either that or my Pi-Hole is
| blocking them).
|
| Everything on the web site prompts the user to connect their
| wallet. I can't tell if this is an elaborate phishing attempt to
| drain people's wallets, or a legitimate site that's set up in a
| way that look suspicious.
|
| Edit: The footer of the email says the following, in spite of
| none of the links in the email going to the legitimate
| Binance.com site
|
| _Kindly note: Please be aware of phishing sites and always make
| sure you are visiting the official Binance.com website when
| entering sensitive data._
| hey2022 wrote:
| This doesn't even look like an elaborate phishing attempt. It's
| a pretty standard tactic:
|
| 1. make an email look legitimate
|
| 2. point to an unrelated scammer-owned domain
|
| 3. steal user's financial details (be that a wallet, visa card,
| bank account, etc).
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| FabHK wrote:
| Who was the victim? Were additional BNB minted? So everyone
| (every holder of BNB, that is) suffered some loss through
| inflation in proportion to their holding, theoretically?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| no victims
|
| just a slight supply inflation (binance smart chain deflation
| is greater than this over any month time span), about $80
| million was successfully moved to censorship resistant
| blockchains but as they ran out of liquidity they had to move
| into censorable stablecoins, which were frozen for their
| addresses
|
| all validators on binance smart chain disabled all block
| production and have subsequently updated to freeze the minting
| function and also disable the hacker's address
| knrz wrote:
| samczun has a thorough Tweetthread explaining how this hack
| worked, if you're looking to dive deep into the nerdy rabbit hole
| https://twitter.com/samczsun/status/1578167198203289600?s=46...
| beoberha wrote:
| he is often the first person to debug hacks. Such an incredibly
| great mind.
| [deleted]
| yborg wrote:
| So how does one launder a half-billion dollar heist like this?
| Asking for a friend.
| dzdt wrote:
| Create NFT's with your real identity that can pass bank KYC and
| sell them for huge amounts of tumbled crypto to your hacker
| identity.
| muttled wrote:
| Even if you manage to hide your tracks digitally on the chains,
| you still have millions of dollars you have to get out of a KYC
| off-ramp. You could possibly setup some sort of web service
| that offers something for crypto, but you'd have to believably
| falsify tons of customers and what you sold them. Again, this
| is assuming you've managed to perfectly hide the digital tracks
| and there's not an aggregated clear migration of the flow
| between the stolen funds and amounts ending in your account.
| Shady art and real estate deals are used in "real life", so
| maybe you could have some sort of NFT or metaverse thing going
| on. It'd be very difficult to pull off even over a long period
| of time, and you'd have a lot of people from all walks of life
| watching those funds, waiting for you to make a single mistake.
| logicchains wrote:
| >you still have millions of dollars you have to get out of a
| KYC off-ramp.
|
| Come to Dubai, buy some mansions with crypto (some real
| estate developers accept crypto), sell those mansions for
| USD, and voila.
| paulpauper wrote:
| tornado cash, cross chain , etc. plenty of ways to evade
| tracking
| jrm4 wrote:
| Tornado Cash might work here; it's a so-called "smart contract"
| (worst named things ever) that's designed precisely for this.
| ynbl_ wrote:
| paulpauper wrote:
| If they are smart enough to pull this off, they are probably
| smart enough launder it. And you don't need to launder all of
| it. Just $20 million is enough to live like a king for the rest
| of your life.
| from wrote:
| The Bitfinex hack shows that this is not always the case. I
| get the impression that the two nitwits did the hack
| perfectly but just assumed that mixing with alphabay would be
| enough. Then they transferred BTC into exchange accounts
| under their real names.
| ZiiS wrote:
| In a non-fiat system why would you need to?
| Railsify wrote:
| To get a currency that you can pay taxes with, or buy
| traditional securities.
| toss1 wrote:
| If it is totally non-fiat, where you can buy housing, food,
| fuel, devices, luxury items, etc., etc., etc., you would not
| need to cash out to fiat.
|
| But seriously, in the current world, if we have a half-
| billion dollars "worth" of legitimate (or laundered)
| cryptocurrency, what can you do with it in the real world,
| especially contrasted to what we can do easily if we have a
| $$half-billion in legit $, EUR, PS, or Y= deposits?
|
| I don't think we could even buy a Tesla or a pizza anymore.
| Maybe some things on Craigslist that take crypto?
| maupin wrote:
| A quick Google search finds that (it is claimed anyway) you
| can buy quite a few items from Amazon or Walmart at
| shopping.io
| from wrote:
| Go on Alibaba and you will find that a surprising number of
| companies take BTC or USDT. The next step in the laundering
| process is fairly obvious.
| intunderflow wrote:
| I would assume they'll try and push as much value into a
| currency that's meant to be untraceable (such as Monero or
| Zcash), move the money around a few wallets for safety, then
| start drip feeding to exchanges and claiming they got into the
| currency early by mining and are cashing out.
|
| At least if I was going to risk a heist like this it's roughly
| what I would do.
| from wrote:
| 1. Deposit to Tornado Cash using a script
|
| 2. Wait a year
|
| 3. Withdraw in batches (not all at once)
|
| 4. Move to Dubai
|
| 5. Find some sketchy guys who charge ~20-30% to go crypto ->
| wire transfer and don't care about source of funds
|
| 6. Work with those guys to come up with documentation to
| placate compliance officers
|
| This may not work forever because Dubai is probably going to
| have a big crackdown due to getting put on the FATF greylist.
| This also works in some Eastern European countries.
| hey2022 wrote:
| I thought Tornado Cash already spits out untraceable crypto.
| So it's not enough to use a mixer? Would you not be able to
| slowly withdraw from Tornado Cash and just exchange for fiat?
| from wrote:
| Imagine you steal 10,500 ETH. Then you deposit it into
| Tornado Cash. Then a year later a new address withdraws
| exactly 10,500 ETH from Tornado Cash (100 ETH at a time).
| That would look pretty suspicious.
|
| Exactly you should slowly withdraw from Tornado. But you
| cannot use companies like Coinbase Gemini et al because
| they will ask about source of funds after a certain amount
| which you obviously do not want to reveal and coins that
| pass through Tornado are tainted now due to Tornado getting
| put on the OFAC list so they may freeze your accounts. So
| that's where the sketchy people come in.
| paulpauper wrote:
| all you need is plausible deniability . If the govt.
| cannot prove you stole, then they cannot just prosecute
| you for using tornado cash (as far as the US is
| concered). Of course, exchanges may refuse to accept your
| coins if they are tied to tornado cash.
| from wrote:
| Any US person who has interacted with Tornado Cash after
| the OFAC designation has commited a felony (IEEPA
| violation). That means all funds tracable to it can be
| subject to forfeiture, and if you are directly receiving
| amounts of money from Tornado that substantially exceed
| your income for the past couple years you make the
| governments forfeiture case even easier. You are right
| that they may not be able to charge you with the initial
| crime. That is why you would want to leave the US for a
| jurisdiction that doesn't care about those kind of things
| and work with people who aren't regulated.
| papercrane wrote:
| My understanding is that exchanging crypto that's gone
| through a mixer, especially Tornado Cash, is getting more
| and more difficult. The major exchanges don't want anything
| to do with coins that have gone through a mixer. That's
| where a sketchy guy who charges a large percentage comes
| in.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| The government will ask you where you got the crypto from.
| This is why NFTs became huge. It's conceivable enough that
| you bought some for $100 and sold them for $10,000. When in
| reality you're just wash trading between your clean and
| dirty wallets.
| lm28469 wrote:
| This is good for bitcoin
| matthewaveryusa wrote:
| Changpeng "there's also a few more votes regarding how the hacked
| funds should be handled will be voted by the community"
|
| Oh I see how this works now
| scifibestfi wrote:
| I hate to say it, but it's looking more and more like the Bitcoin
| maximalists will end up being proven right in the end.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| in what way? right about what in particular?
| rglover wrote:
| Yeah baby https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RaAgI7eZMg
| robertk wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/xxyaow/this...
| sneak wrote:
| Binance's BSC chain implementation is not open source, however -
| it would be relatively straightforward for them to make a new
| release that arbitrarily rewrites history (like ethereum did).
|
| It's not like the people running the BSC daemon are critical
| about the code. It's a blockchain run by a central dictatorial
| authority, if there is a "critical update release" then the nodes
| will upgrade.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| yes already happened long before your post
|
| the upgrade disabled the bridge minting method, and also
| disabled transfers from the hacker's address
|
| now they figure out what was wrong with the bridge and
| preventative measures
| glofish wrote:
| Crypto losses always remind me of Kramer and Jerry talking about
| losses.
|
| - Not a problem. It is a write-off for them.
|
| - How is it a write-off?
|
| - All these big companies do it - they just write it off!
|
| - Write what off? You don't even know what a write-off is!
|
| - Maybe I don't but they do. And they are the ones writing it
| off!
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEL65gywwHQ
| masterof0 wrote:
| I missed Kramer. And yes, they will probably "write it off", I
| wonder if only BNB is going to be affected or if their stacking
| platform is also halted.
| eloff wrote:
| Crypto really is a golden age of opportunity for hackers. When
| else in history could you rob a bank anonymously from your
| mom's basement for $570M. Cashing it out without getting caught
| is a little on the tricky side, but not impossible, especially
| if you live in, or cash it out in an untouchable jurisdiction
| like Russia.
| farisjarrah wrote:
| Its also a golden age for people who understand code and
| smart contracts and are willing to take advantage of others
| without breaking any laws. A few of the major "hacks" lately
| have simply been taking advantage of errors in how smart
| contracts were coded.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Cashing it out all at once , yeah, other wise is not too bad,
| you could use online casinos, coin mixers, fake businesses,
| NFTs, etc...
| nostrademons wrote:
| It's even better if in the future crypto becomes
| _legitimate_. Then you just have a pile of ill-gotten gains
| that you can use as ordinary money.
|
| Huge fortunes have been built this way, notably Gould and
| Kennedy.
| pen2l wrote:
| Reading Satoshi's writings and comments I often got the
| impression that his intentions were pure. But it is and
| should be painfully obvious that the only things crypto has
| principally enabled or made efficient are sophisticated
| scam work/ransomware, background sex work, and drug trade.
| To really top it off: it was all at the expense of a small
| country's carbon footprint.
|
| So I keep having this thought that if Satoshi really is
| worth his salt, he would transfer his existing funds (of
| about 50 billion USD) to an assortment of charities because
| such an action would be quite the statement in declaring
| that the crypto experiment has been an abject failure and
| it's time to stop wasting our time and move on. Better he
| make this impactful statement, better him the person who
| started it all be behind the action to finish it, than to
| have to continue in this painful and agonizing path we are
| on.
| yieldcrv wrote:
| > But it is and should be painfully obvious that the only
| things crypto has principally enabled or made efficient
|
| how have you quantified that, and how would you go about
| doing so? It isn't obvious to me. It also seems like your
| standard is quite flexible, like even if you quantified
| that use and didn't find the results you wanted, you
| would say that the subset of transactions that did fit
| your results were "enabled" and "made efficient".
| palata wrote:
| I think it's not that hard:
|
| - Number of scams/crimes enabled by crypto in the last
| decade: a ton - Number of constructive, noncriminal use-
| cases observed in the last decade: zero
|
| By "constructive", I mean a use-case for which it is the
| best solution, which rules out every single blockchain
| use that is not a cryptocurrency. And the
| cryptocurrencies are the ones enabling the crime and
| scams.
| jbirer wrote:
| This tells me that you misunderstood Satoshi's
| motivations completely, filling in your own ones instead.
| His goal was to create uncontrollable and indestructible
| money, not "save the world" or create "morally just money
| for puritan purposes". And he did do just that.
| GLGirty wrote:
| If Satoshi is cryptohacker turned drug lord Paul LeRoux,
| you can wait a while for that.
| pen2l wrote:
| Which he obviously isn't; Le Roux was nothing more than a
| crime boss, thought to be more technically adept than
| what a sober look at things would suggest (E4M's source
| code was stolen from his earlier employer).
| sireat wrote:
| Why do you say obviously?
|
| I am really curious why Le Roux has been ruled out even
| by the author of the book about him "The Mastermind" by
| Evan Ratliff - quite a good read.
|
| Le Roux seemed like a good candidate to be Satoshi - a
| Windows C++ programmer with serious crypto knowledge(most
| other crypto oldschoolers were on Linux/BSD), as the book
| states he liked adopt other persona on forums, he
| obviously had a strong anti-government bent,
|
| so far that is not much but more importantly he was
| dealing with his real life crime empire and had baskets
| of money laying around the house.
|
| it is hard to imagine Satoshi not spending some money
| once BTC got over $1 - unless he was really really not
| worried about money. Of course he could have just lost
| the keys...
|
| There has to be some crucial detail which book does not
| mention why Le Roux is ruled out so conclusively.
|
| I'd be curious if any code similarity analysis has been
| done on old LeRoux codebases and original Bitcoin code.
| pen2l wrote:
| Satoshi and Le Roux both coded C++ but the code they
| wrote is very different, stylistically and otherwise
| (tabs vs. spaces, commenting style, approach to things
| like RNG). Linguistics tics are different in writings.
| Satoshi has an academic streak to him, he's probably some
| unknown dude in Germany. La Roux sometimes made
| grammar/spelling mistakes, Satoshi was pretty much always
| perfect. It's also strange that Le Roux, being a criminal
| kingpin with lots of operations, never implemented BTC
| use in any of his enterprises... why did he choose not
| to?
|
| When the Dorian saga happened, Satoshi posted on
| p2pfoundation to clear up that Dorian wasn't him with his
| original account, I think Le Roux was in prison at that
| time. He's still in prison, he's been cooperating with
| the US government. US is definitely not letting him go
| anywhere for the shit he's done, everything from drug
| cartel work, helping Iranian and North Korean governments
| acquire weapons, etc.
|
| One more delicious detail: Le Roux in a letter to SDNY
| judge wrote that he wants to invent ways to mine BTC
| efficiently. Really it comes down to the fact that Le
| Roux was involved with a whole bunch of stuff, and when
| you have this much surface area to scan you'd think you
| could come upon with just one strong piece of evidence...
| but there is nil, he's just another criminal warlord,
| luckily now in the custody of the US government:
| https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-
| ca2-20-03410/pd...
| Fatnino wrote:
| But he's dead and his keys lost
| skrebbel wrote:
| What if he lost it all? I bet satoshi generated tons of
| bitcoin while testing his miner that went straight to
| /dev/null and just kept that blockchain when going live
| because of why not
| samatman wrote:
| This is not what happened. The genesis block is the first
| publicly mined block, by definition. Nothing which
| happened before it is part of the blockchain.
| lampshades wrote:
| The Godfather movies showed this method of legitimatization
| well.
| yellsatclouds wrote:
| adbachman wrote:
| > untouchable jurisdiction like Russia
|
| When the international organization can point directly to you
| as now holding $100M+ worth of crypto tokens and you're in a
| "jurisdiction like Russia," then the international
| organization isn't who you should be worried about.
| nurettin wrote:
| In soviet russia, government worries about you.
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