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Monero Project admits thieves stole 6-figure sum from a wallet in mystery breach (www.theregister.com)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago (53 children)

The linked article (and so AutoTL;DR) is not very accurate. If you’re interested in this incident, read the original post, which is short and compact. General media articles are only quoting or re-quoting this thread, typically with some misunderstanding.

Specifically (about this post): Among other things, multisig is only suggested; nothing has been decided yet.

Generally (in many similar articles): Probably a specific local machine was hacked, though no one really knows yet what happened. It’s unlikely that the Monero network itself was hacked.

Since I’m a Monero supporter, obviously I tend to say good things about it, but frankly, the ironical fact here is, Monero is so privacy-focused that when something like this happens, it’s difficult to identify the attacker—i.e. by design Monero also protects the identity of the attacker. Some Monero users are having this weird, paradoxical feeling: it would be nice if we could catch this evil attacker, but being able to catch the attacker would be in a way very bad news for Monero (if you know what I mean) 😕

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (27 children)

You have to be quite stupid to support crypto in 2023, after Luna, Ftx, NFTs, all the rugpulls and explicit pump and dumps, you morons just keep coming back for more. That last paragraph is pure comedy gold - you're so close to self-awareness it's hilarious.

All stablecoins are not stable and a scam, algorithmic ones can't work, since they mimic death spiral financing, and the other ones just gamble their clients money
Every non-stable coin is just a bigger fool scam, since there is no use case for crypto, so no way to derive a non-speculative value (beyond selling illegal drugs, 419 scams, and couple of enthusiasts trading it personally as donations and the like)
Crypto destroys customer protections, to do a rollback a few bad transactions you have to convince the entire chain to back you and force a fork, creating an alternative, competing version of the economy
All consensus mechanisms are geared to allow the wealthy to control the crypto economy, whether it's proof of stake, work or storage, since you can buy all those things with money. They also waste inordinate amounts of energy which translates to an exorbitant transaction cost compared to payment processors like Visa or MasterCard
Crypto gives great privacy protections to anonymous criminals and scammers and destroys privacy for anyone using the system as a honest user. If you used your crypto wallet as a bank account, anyone with whom you interacted on the blockchain in a non-anonymous capacity (like, idk, your boss at work, sending you your salary) knows your wallet address, and can figure out where your money is going. You can't hide your dildo purchases or campaign contributions from your employer, no matter how many intermediate accounts you create, there will always be a trace. How fun
Crypto aims to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks, when most attacks nowadays are done through social engineering, which crypto makes trivial, due to it's write-only nature. 419 "Nigerian prince" scammers love crypto - because just like their other favorites money transfer through Western Union or MoneyGram and gift cards it's an irreversible payment method. If you pay with your bank account or PayPal, you can dispute transactions or get a chargeback, aside from forking the whole chain there ain't no way you're doing that with crypto. This also makes it perfect for retail scams.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You're partially correct with some of these points.

Theatge amount of energy you mention is really only relevant to proof of work. You've mentioned proof of stake etc - so you should know that. The energy requirements for "proof" techniques such as PoS is negligible

Reversing transactions are 'hard'/infesable - and so in a way they do help scammers - but I think it's a false equivalence. It helps everyone. In my mind it's like says "encryption helps terrorists", that may be true, but it helps us all.

Regarding on chain transaction transparency, there are some chains that are like this (bitcoin), and there are some chains that are not (monero). There's also ways to anonymise transactions through mixers etc if you do care about that. Although, I don't know of anyone that gets their salary into their crypto wallet.

Overall, regulation is slow! But it's getting there. I don't think crpyto will solve all of.humans problems, but I might just help with some. It's going to be interesting seeing how it all plays out - people thought it was going to be here and gone in a year, but it's been over a decade now.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Theatge amount of energy you mention is really only relevant to proof of work. You've mentioned proof of stake etc - so you should know that. The energy requirements for "proof" techniques such as PoS is negligible

It can't compete with payment processors. Proof of stake is also basically just oligarchy, while proof of storage is a waste of hardware. All of them center their validation process on big money investors, who either have a lot of hardware or a lot of money to stake.

Although, I don't know of anyone that gets their salary into their crypto wallet.

So it would be useless for things normal money is useful for? Where's the revolution in banking that I heard about? Banking the unbanked?

Regarding on chain transaction transparency, there are some chains that are like this (bitcoin), and there are some chains that are not (monero).

Here you provided users privacy at the cost of making criminals completely untraceable. Bravo.

How about a bank account, where people who know you won't know your transaction history but police can catch people participating in organized crime?

I don't think crpyto will solve all of.humans problems, but I might just help with some

Which ones? I have not heard of one use case, only excuses from you guys.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

TradFi has a few wealthy individuals that control banking

You say PoS is an oligarchy, but it still offers anyone to participate in markets they previously were unable to. For example, providing liquidity and getting a cut of transaction fees - this is something TradFi has a monopoly on, but now everyday people can get a cut. You're right that people with more money will have a bigger cut - but it's still more equal than TradFi

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