
Bitcoin exchanges are fraught with risks - petethomas
http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/bitcoin-exchanges-risks/
======
aaron-lebo
Wow, the article talks about Moolah facing fraud charges. That was a big deal
in the Dogecoin community for awhile.

[https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-
faces-...](https://www.coindesk.com/former-dogecoin-exchange-ceo-faces-fraud-
charges-uk/)

He's now a convicted rapist:

[https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-
sentence...](https://coinjournal.net/ryan-kennedy-convicted-rape-
sentenced-11-years/)

You've also got the owner of the Dogecoin tipbot who stole a bunch of money:

[https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-
meme-...](https://gizmodo.com/reddit-users-lose-real-money-after-meme-
currency-bot-di-1795125165)

What a fucked up industry.

~~~
halite
> What a fucked up industry.

What industry isn't?

Yahoo CEO had fake credentials:
[http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-
out/ind...](http://money.cnn.com/2012/05/13/technology/yahoo-CEO-
out/index.htm) He lied and accepted a salary. In my world, I define that as
stealing.

Equifax CEO Richard Smith will collect 90M
[http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-
net-...](http://fortune.com/2017/09/26/equifax-ceo-richard-smith-net-worth/)
What a convenient time to retire.

Questionable morals of Uber CEO [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-
ceo/uber-ceo-travis-...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-uber-ceo/uber-ceo-
travis-kalanick-resigns-under-investor-pressure-idUSKBN19C0G6)

And numerous other examples. Bad people are everywhere. Cryptocurrency is a
new realm that combines tech with the economy at a different level and
currently, it is like a big experiment. It might be an expensive experiment
but the learnings are for sure gonna change the face of the internet.

~~~
beepboopbeep
haha wow. How dismissive... This is an absurd reply.

~~~
hackerboos
Classic whataboutism.

------
j_s
Much of the serious damage has been done through social engineering of cell
phone providers.

My choice for most interesting personal hack:

[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-
ha...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurashin/2016/12/20/hackers-have-stolen-
millions-of-dollars-in-bitcoin-using-only-phone-numbers/) |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13592402)

 _He had kept it offline for most of the past several years, but had connected
that device in recent weeks to move them somewhere more secure and sell some.
Though he had locked it with a 30-character password, the hackers moved the
coins off_

At the exchange level, a highly recommended summary of the Mt Gox debacle was
discussed recently:

[https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-
nilsson-...](https://davidgerard.co.uk/blockchain/2017/09/17/kim-nilsson-of-
wizsec-how-the-bitcoins-were-stolen-from-mt-gox/) [video] |
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15272152)

There have been hosting-provider-level breaches that might be more technically
interesting (Linode 2012):

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3654110)
|
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655137)
|
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3655355)

------
j_s
It's always interesting to see HN'ers publicly share here the degree to which
they've personally invested in cryptocurrency (non-deletable, non-editable
after 1 hour, plus whatever other restrictions). I wonder if HN is willing to
delete accounts and/or some or all of their posts?

Edit: to be specific (for gtirloni's sake) - the unusual artificial limits of
this site add additional exposure/risk to anyone painting a target on themself
here, especially new users and/or years ago when Bitcoin was worth nearly
nothing.

~~~
gtirloni
What's interesting about that and why would HN care if people are sharing
private details of their life willingly?

~~~
aaron-lebo
It's that people should be a lot safer and aware.

I've seen a guy brag about his cryptocurrency stash, and if you went through
his post history he'd also talked about where he lived and his profession. If
he leaked any other details (through HN or crossreferencing other sites), he
might be a really vulnerable target and not even realize it.

~~~
EGreg
I bet you that someone could write a program to deanonymize most people
posting on the internet, and then cross correlate with claims about high
roller stuff.

------
_joel
He kept 750 coins on an exchange? That's surely asking for trouble, granted
it's shouldn't happen that he would lose anything but given the industry and
their reputation then I would thought minimizing exposure on exchanges may be
prudent

------
beepboopbeep
I love bitcoin articles. It's like ringing the bell for the cows to come home.

I'll let you fine folks tell us all why the risks are no big deal and this is
just another piece of the conspiracy against BTC.

~~~
deadmetheny
This is good for Bitcoin.

------
rothbardrand
It's the early days-- there are already "non-custodial" exchanges-- shapeshift
and changelly.... and atomic swaps are just starting to be experimented with.
When lightening network exchanges and atomic swaps and side chains are all
perfected in 1-5 years much of the exchange risk will be gone.

~~~
josu
>shapeshift and changelly

Those are more like brokers rather than exchanges or "non-custodial" exchanges
as you called them.

------
jameskegel
This site is unusable on mobile. As soon as the scroll effects kick in the
whole browser locks up and scrolling has to be done with a four second delay;
when the article is 40% advertisements on mobile, I'm only going to reload the
article so many times before I just give up. I don't want to be a part of this
new internet anymore, everything is going to shit.

~~~
markatkinson
I'm sorry to hear that but if you on mobile you should try the app
materialistic

------
01096232042
Rayed

------
empath75
Cryptocurrency anarchists find anarchy less than appealing when it happens to
them.

~~~
relyio
>Cryptocurrency anarchists

Can you please elaborate on what you mean by that? Or is it a proxy-word for
anarcho-capitalist?

~~~
rothbardrand
If it is, as an anarchy-capitalist, I'm pretty happy with the ecosystem--
without government control, we have seen a lot of the worst people, including
hacks and thefts, yes, and those make the systems and software stronger--
because we have a lot of good people, and a genuine meritocracy without
gatekeepers keeping out everyone but the well connected.

~~~
relyio
My thoughts exactly, the space has seen considerable growth... and yes,
there's some bad stuff but the market gets smarter and less vulnerable with
time. It's overall a large win imo.

