
Hackers nab $500k as Enigma is compromised weeks before its ICO - etherti
https://techcrunch.com/2017/08/21/hack-enigma-500000-ico/
======
che_shirecat
How to make money in ethereum, from high to low risk:

1\. Dump the leftovers of your bi-weekly software engineering paycheck into
buying ETH, BTC, or whichever altcoin is popular this week. It went up 5000%
in the past, it's got to keep growing right?

2\. Participate in an ICO and stock up on whatever platform token they're
hawking. It's more profitable if you get in early due to some presale
mechanism (hopefully here you aren't sending your hard-earned digital currency
to a hacker's wallet). Sell these tokens about 4-5 days after the sale closes,
before the hype dies down and the bagholders realize they're holding sand.

3\. Even more profitable is kicking off your own ICO. Go through the checklist
- fancy HTML5 theme that you can buy off of Themeforest and edit the HTML a
bit for the landing page, create a Slack channel/Twitter account/subreddit,
write a "whitepaper" that is easy enough for the shmucks you're targeting to
understand, yet replete with enough pseudo-academic crypto jargon and
irrelevant/unnecessary mathematical symbols to get the shmucks nodding their
heads and pretending to understand how this particular algorithm/equation
based on the "turing-complete ethereum blockchain" will "change the world" or
"bank the unbanked" or, more importantly to them, appreciate 500x in value.
Don't forget listing the members of your team and advisors, ideally with as
much credential signalling as you can - "MIT," "Stanford," "Comp Sci Phd,"
"McKinsey," all work here, fake it till you make it and make sure you list
Vitalik Buterin on your list of advisors just for that extra bit of technical
legitimacy. Use centuries-old sales tactics to pitch your ICO - butter up your
target audience's sense of superiority by emphasizing exclusivity - they're
the only clever ones, they're the genius computer nerds who understand the
1000x potential of your algorithm, they're the ones that are breaking free of
the shackles of regulated securities. Create a sense of urgency with a ticking
timer on your landing page, a 24-hour window to buy your monopoly money, a
subtle/not-so-subtle hint that the earlier you get in, the more you'll make.

4\. You could always just put on your black hat and rob these extremely soft
targets blind. The simpler the method, it seems, the better. Plus, there's
absolutely no risk of ever being held accountable - that's the beauty of
anonymous cryptocurrency!

~~~
arkitaip
turning your comment into a 10-week pdf course as we speak, just gonna pick a
theme over ath theme forest brb

~~~
JamesLeonis
Why do the work _before_ getting paid? Take out an ICO and let them "preorder"
your course!

~~~
jsloss
While you say this in jest, it is actually a good idea. The pre-sale part. Get
a sense of a market need before you dive in.

Caveat being you've done the work to be able to add authentic value to the
people you're selling too. (which is where most ico's break down)

~~~
nathancahill
The value is that the course itself is hosted on the blockchain. It's
distributed and decentralized. /s

------
crypt1d
This might as well be a scam created by the CEO himself. I mean, who in this
'crypto world' would be stupid enough to use the same, previously compromised,
password on all his accounts?

P.S. there was a story on reddit (can't find it now unfortunately) about how
the attackers tried to deposit the money to Bittrex but luckily someone
alerted them and the exchange froze the account. So there is still some hope
that funds will be returned.

~~~
mhluongo
Why would he do that when he'd make more on the actual token sale?

~~~
will_brown
Well he just walked away with $500k and got more press than he could have ever
paid for.

I've never heard of Enigma before today, hell I still don't have a clue what
they are going to actually do besides an ICO, but I know they have just
implemented best practices security and it's a safe bet to make money. I think
PG calls this a submarine.

~~~
quoquoquo
> got more press than he could have ever paid for

This is very clever. When the theft loss is dismal compared to the money
raised, it only gets more press and more people buying the coin!

------
richardknop
Another ICO, another scam. I am not sure I feel bad for people who are
gullible enough to send their hard earned money to these "companies". They
have one PDF whitepaper and a generic Wordpress template website with some
buzzwords, based in Cayman islands or some other tax haven for money
laundering. And expecting to get rich from that.

~~~
wott
I am unconvinced that hard earned money is 'invested' in those companies. The
target demographic is not hard working class.

~~~
hendzen
The target demographic is gullible, greedy software engineers who have a lot
of disposable income but lack experience in conducting due diligence on
speculative investments. Basically, Hacker News readers. Why do you think
there are so many ICO related posts on this site? It's not accidental.

~~~
justadeveloper2
I'm glad to hear skepticism--I always considered these e-coins to be the
perfect scam to attract Millenial technocrats and then fleece them.

------
kirualex
How to make quick money in 2017: \- Create a startup in the blockchain world
\- Make an ICO to raise money \- Get "hacked" \- ... \- Profit!

~~~
keymone
i think with crypto you could even safely drop the "Get hacked" and "..."
steps.

~~~
EGreg
In 2020 you'll be able to drop the first part too.

------
jstanley
From what I can tell, the ICO wasn't hacked as such. The ICO customers were
just scammed.

Edit: title is better now

~~~
etherti
The attackers gained control of the official website, slack channel, Twitter
handle and mailing list. That's even worse than what happened to coindash.

~~~
nabla9
It's just scam if attackers are insiders.

~~~
jethro_tell
who says they aren't? Seems like a pretty simple trick.

------
djhworld
_Enigma is building a decentralized, open, secure data marketplace that will
change how data is shared, aggregated and monetized to maximize collaboration.
Catalyst is our first product and the first application running on our Enigma
protocol. Powered by our financial data marketplace, Catalyst empowers users
to share and curate data and build profitable, data-driven investment
strategies._

So much said that explains so little.

------
CryptoPunk
HackerNews gets an unrepresentative picture of the token market. The only
stories that get to the frontpage are the ones concerning hacks. But that's
not the whole picture. There are a huge number of token sales happening, and
the vast majority are not being hacked. This is certainly newsworthy but it
needs to be put into the context of how many token sales occur.

~~~
whipoodle
OK, but there are a _lot_ of these. I get that it's not all of them, but the
ratio has got to be terrible.

------
tlrobinson
I'm not sure I buy the premise that every service needs its own coin. Surely
in most cases it would be better to just use the most widely used, most stable
coin?

If the concept of cryptocurrency is going to survive I think there needs to be
one or two clear winners to eventually bring some stability to their value.

Of course, not issuing your own coin doesn't leave as much opportunity to get
rich quick off a bit of hype.

~~~
chatmasta
In the case of ethereum backed coins, every service does not _really_ have its
own coin, but rather a derivative of ethereum. As long as the coin is
tradeable for general ETH tokens, it must fundamentally be pegged to the price
of ethereum, even if it's traded separately on exchanges.

There are obvious downsides to that, but it's a tradeoff for ease of
development. You can create your own "coin" \-- really just a (set of) smart
contract(s) -- with simple tooling provided by the ethereum ecosystem. This is
the real genius of ethereum; there is no "one use case" for it, but rather
many, limited only by imagination. As more contracts are added to the ethereum
ecosystem, ICOs funnel money into ETH, and ETH as a whole benefits from the
ever increasing number of derivative services.

~~~
joosters
The technical details don't matter, all that's important is that coin X can't
be spent on product Y without going through an exchange and paying conversion
costs. It's plainly inconvenient and dumb. There's a reason why all real-world
shops accept the local currency and not their own made up one.

------
JohnKacz
Sorry for the uneducated question here, but I've wondered how those who steal
crypto-currency "launder?" their ill-gotten coin. More specifically, how do
they not get caught since the blockchain records everything? Take it out
really quickly? Move little bits around to obscure ownership in some kind of
shell game? Am I just totally off-base with my understanding?

~~~
Pfiffer
You're not far off, I think it's usually done through a mixer:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mixer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin_mixer)

~~~
asddddd
That works, but you can also just deposit to an exchange/service, withdraw on
another chain (i.e. btc -> eth) and repeat this a few times. Unless there's a
large target on your back, even doing this once will effectively destroy any
paper trail - especially if it's an offshore exchange that uses subpoenas for
toilet paper (most of them?).

------
ritarong
It's amazing that this has happened multiple times before and yet people have
not learned to be more careful. Greed and FOMO.

~~~
ringaroundthetx
The attack vectors are getting more sophisticated, but it is also a different
standard applied to cryptocurrencies:

Fraud in legacy payment networks is hundreds of millions per year, with an
occasional outlier of 80 billion, the only difference is that it isn't
international news every single time. $500,000 thefts are happening every
single day in fiat currencies, in person, banks, over electronic networks like
ACH/checks, Wire, SWIFT, IBAN etc.

Square Inc's annual report cites a couple huge thefts they have had to deal
with which have and could materially affect their business of creating
merchant tools. They lost like $5 million in one swipe and its just buried in
a boring annual report. $500k in one crypto OPSEC issue and you question the
entire concept? Cmon thats mentally disingenuous

You'll just have to keep that in mind if you want to have any kind of
objective view of this reality containing cryptocurrencies

------
anovikov
As a Russian proverb goes, "a thief stolen a thief's hat"

~~~
PeachPlum
That's an interesting concept but I can't find anything about it.

I found this : [http://kv-journal.su/content/vor-u-vora-ukral](http://kv-
journal.su/content/vor-u-vora-ukral)

"the thief stole from the thief"

I can't find anything hat related, though I wish I could

~~~
notdang
Te most used variant is : Вор у вора дубинку украл
[http://slovarick.ru/211/](http://slovarick.ru/211/)

However later is more popular what the grandparent wrote: Вор у вора шапку
украл

~~~
Grue3
The hat version is probably a result of synthesis with another saying: "the
thief's hat is burning" (на воре шапка горит).

------
joosters
It just sped up the inevitable losses from another scammy ICO. In this case,
the hackers made the process more efficient.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Yes, but its not how much money you lose that matters, it is how much fun you
have while losing the money that matters. These hackers robbed the customers
of a valuable roller coaster life experience.

Sincerely,

Las Vegas Gaming Commission Marketing Manager

------
jacquesm
Ah, the good old 'the hacker did it' story. Never fails. I suspect a pretty
large fraction of the 'hacker did it' cases are inside jobs.

------
ascendantlogic
This is getting a lot of traction because anything related to crypto evokes
really strong responses here, but this was a phishing attack. The fact it
happened in the crypto space is largely secondary.

People get phished and get tricked into handing out bank account and credit
card details _all the time_. It's not even newsworthy unless it happens on a
large scale. This is only newsworthy because of the fact that it's crypto so
people equate this with some sort of deficiency with the technology and/or
ecosystem. That's not the case.

~~~
surrey-fringe
Excuse me, but Bitcoin is ENCRYPTED and SECRET

~~~
ascendantlogic
it was encrypted and it was secret. They tricked people into giving them
money. The currency is the only variable here.

I do understand you're being sarcastic, though.

------
nickbauman
Cryptocurrency is probably doomed because the makers of cryptocurrencies have
a fundamental conceptual disconnect with money: what it is, why it works and
what it represents. Money only works when you have a powerful state actor
enforcing the legality of the transaction. When you try to escape that, you
get at best a parallel system that still goes back to the state for help in
keeping functioning or a system prone to failure, fraud and speculation. To
whit yet another one of these incidents.

~~~
CPLX
Perhaps. Another way of looking at it is that they have an intuitive and
successful connection with the mechanics of gambling.

Cryptocurrencies and ICO's as they stand today conceptually have a lot more in
common with the old urban numbers rackets[0] than they do with the concept of
currency.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_game)

~~~
justadeveloper2
I had an uncle who used to "carry money" for numbers rackets in NY which I
think means he was involved in racketeering. I don't claim to understand how
it worked, but I know the winning numbers were related to the winners of
certain horse races. The state lottery pretty much put an end to it.

------
wickedlogic
User machine, not blockchain, security will continue to be the biggest risk in
all these systems.

With gold for example, stealing the physical assets takes effort, resources,
time, equipment, etc.

With digital assets, that is not the case... and our current level of system
security is not adequate in the slightest. It is a challenge we are still
largely ignoring today, but crypto currencies will require it be fixed, or
better-risk-managed at any rate.

(not advocating gold over digital, but people continue to hand wave the actual
risks)

------
SirensOfTitan
As with most things security, people tend to be the weakest link in the chain.

This type of issue could be solved in a lot of ways. I think a solution
wherein:

1\. ICOs use a standard 'escrow' contract wherein ether and coin get held by
the contract for 7 days or so before either party can withdraw the opposite
pair (where either can back out).

2\. Building some standard 'ether address' widget that verifies the type of
contract an address is. A user-wallet would usually be a warning sign.

~~~
jstanley
That wouldn't solve this problem. Did you read the article? The ICO investors
were tricked.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
And how wouldn't it solve the problem? (1) would act as a more safe instrument
for sending money to addresses you don't regularly interact with, (2) would
attempt to make the address type much more apparent to the user so they don't
send to addresses they aren't familiar with.

~~~
jstanley
Just because you invent a special type of escrow contract that makes it harder
to steal money doesn't mean an attacker would use it... he would just instruct
users to send money to his own contract and bypass all of the protections
you've invented.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
When did I mention an attacker should use this? How does that argument make
sense at all?

Legitimate ICOs should take on use of these widgets and contracts, educating
users in the process to only send to particular contracts. This requires a
great deal of improved hygiene for ICO providers and education for consumers,
but there’s no easy foot forward here.

~~~
eswat
One problem is that the correct contract to fund an ICO might even change
during the ICO (as it has happened with EOS) and the current way these
“businesses” are communicating these contract changes is pretty poor.

So yeah, we definitely need improved hygiene that addresses the pain points of
trying to do these funding events through a blockchain.

------
option
The ICO concept is fundamentally solid and is more efficient then traditional
funding sources. What currently lack is the implementation. Both technological
and legal frameworks need lots of work, but I bet it'll happen

~~~
the_stc
Really? I hope we will enter a post-ICO era of fundraising. Tokens simply do
not make sense in most cases, nor do new chains. In my startup, we're issuing
Token-Shares (Blockchain Bearer Shares) that pay dividends[1]. I think
something like this will be the future. Let people actually own and share in
the profits of the enterprise. The share prices can still 10x or more, so
there is still a benefit to early investors. Plus focusing on actual business
fundamentals.

1: If you want more blockchainy tech, the dividends get paid into the smart
contract owning the shares, automatically.

~~~
trhway
first time i can't get whether it is sarcasm or not.

~~~
the_stc
Absolutely not sarcasm. Why would ICOs giving out tokens with no equity be
superior to a tokens that have equity and receive dividends?

~~~
vkou
If you sell equity, and will pay dividends, why not just do an IPO? The SEC
will treat you as a security anyways.

~~~
the_stc
We're doing a blockchain IPO because the subject we deal with has significant
legal issues in most countries (details in profile). We're operating as an
extrajurisdictional company to get around these issues, with an anonymous
founding and executive team.

~~~
trhway
without any intention of going into discussion of other aspects (personally
i'm for legalization of drugs, sex, etc.), isn't investing and receiving
dividends here would make one a kind of pimp?

~~~
dragonwriter
Legally speaking, what is proposed for the app directly would probably fall
afoul of pimping/solicitation laws in most jurisdiction which have such laws.
Whether it's the moral equivalent of what people think of as pimping or
pimping as most commonly practiced is, well, ultimately subjective.

For an investor, it's probably detached enough that general
conspiracy/organized crime laws are more applicable than pimping/solicitation.

IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and even if I was and it was, you probably
shouldn't take legal advice from pseudonymous accounts on internet discussion
forums.

------
hathym
ICO is the new ponzi scheme

~~~
pc86
Only if you use ponzi scheme (incorrectly) interchangeably with "scam."

~~~
bandrami
Or correctly, in the sense of "a system that requires constant new investment
to achieve payouts"

~~~
SippinLean
If you think that's all it takes to satisfy the definition of a Ponzi scheme,
you're incorrect. That would even be an oversimplification for a Pyramid
scheme.

I'm not sure why this has to be corrected for _every_ crypto thread on HN. We
get it, someone _has_ to comment on every crypto post "Ponzi scheme,"
"tulips," or the like (regardless on whether or not such a generic comment is
especially relevant to the thread) but simply calling it a "scam" gets the
unoriginal point across without making you seem so misinformed.

~~~
bandrami
Equally, "your side" could save a lot of time by saying "This asset bubble is
different" and leaving it at that.

------
raesene6
This looks like another in a series of ICOs which are not being handled with
appropriate security controls.

When people are planning on taking in millions of dollars of investment in an
easily traded, easily stolen, digital currency, they've got to expect
attention from relatively well funded/motivated attackers.

Unfortunately many of the founders of these ICOs don't seem to be that well
setup in this regard as some of the disclosed hacks, including this one,
aren't exactly advanced.

------
OscarTheGrinch
Initial Clown Outwitting

~~~
659087
That's a bit unfair to clowns.

The term "investor" in relation to ICOs could be replaced with the term
"mark", and the whole thing would be a lot more accurate.

------
paultopia
OMG. People, PLEASE STOP WITH THE RANDOM NEW CRYPTOCURRENCIES.

~~~
asidiali
...OMG actually dipped and is a good buy right now...

~~~
loopdoend
Yes, this is actually a thing:
[https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/omisego/](https://coinmarketcap.com/assets/omisego/)

------
EternalData
There's a boom and a bust cycle when it comes to new technologies -- doubtless
blockchain will have to go through the buzzsaw just like the early commercial
Internet did in the early 2000s.

~~~
vkou
The commercial internet brought an unprecedented increase in the speed of
communication.

Blockchains... Bring a secure, distributed ledger. That's nice, but this isn't
Amazon replacing the Sears catalog.

------
EGreg
Question: in light of the SEC decision regarding the DAO, is there any way to
do an ICO that doesn't run the risk of later the whole company being shut down
for not registering securities? Like maybe opening the company in Crypto
Valley, Zug?

Is there a way to _do a public offering_ of tokens? Or does it necessitate all
the same reporting that a publicly listed company has?

Could still be worth it! Because the investors control even less of your board
than in Snapchat IPO.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Yes: Do an ICO like a kickstarter. It's not illegal. The tokens just need to
not be financial instruments. You can say "Buy my tokens to fund my project."

~~~
EGreg
Wait, what? Can lawyers please weigh in on this?

There are the Howey test on the Federal level, and then there is also the Risk
Capital Test in several states.

Precedent can very easily go towards the direction that people have a
_reasonable expectation_ of the tokens going up in value, making them
securities in the eyes of at least the Risk Capital Test. In fact club
memberships became securities under this test!

[http://www.theselc.org/which_states_apply_the_risk_capital_t...](http://www.theselc.org/which_states_apply_the_risk_capital_test_when_deciding_what_is_a_security)

~~~
ringaroundthetx
Many people buy Nike shoes to go up in value. Nike Inc. purposefully limits
the quantity.

Are Nike shoes therefore securities? It is an open ended question and yes
where we are in this country a future court could rope something like that in
too before Congress gets around to forcing regulatory clarity.

Tokens can be products. It is what you sell them for and how you sell them and
how you interact with that market, and how others interact with that market,
that determines if something is a security. But is isn't a single one of those
factors in isolation that makes it a security.

------
tdb7893
I wish that passwords like this stopped being the main form of authentication.
I guess I'm not sure what's a better way (I like the physical object + pin of
my credit card but that's probably not practical for all Web authentication)
but it seems pretty obvious that passwords are broken in their current form
unless you use a password manager, which can be a hassle

~~~
laumars
This is where two factor authentication comes into play. Then you can have
something you know (eg password) and something you own (eg phone).

I quite like using Google Authenticator for my 2FA.

~~~
tectec
There are also problems with that:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15068567](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15068567)

~~~
luke3butler
That's not Authy/Google Authenticator. That's social engineering their way
into getting a persons text messages for SMS 2FA.

~~~
chatmasta
If you can compromise the iCloud account of an iOS user (pretty sure iOS 2fa
is only SMS based), then you can install google authenticator on your own
device.

I'm sure it's more complicated than that in reality, but if you have SMS
access, you only need to find one weak link in the chain including
iCloud/google, email provider, app provider, etc.

~~~
15155
> install google authenticator on your own device.

You sure can, but will you then have the requisite TOTP secrets?

~~~
joosters
No. iCloud backups don't contain keychains, where the Google authenticator
stores its seeds.

~~~
chatmasta
Doesn't iOS keep keychain synced with iCloud keychain? Or at least, it's user
configurable. I'm pretty sure I opted out of it.

Good news is according to apple [0], you can protect your icloud keychain with
a six digit code required to move the keychain to a new device.

[0] [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204085](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT204085)

------
drngdds
Do the victims ever get their money back after these cryptocurrency
hacks/scams? I know crypto transactions are irreversible by nature, but do the
coins ever get seized by law enforcement and returned to their owner? If not,
that seems like a major problem. (I know they got around the DAO hack, but
that's a unique case.)

~~~
ringaroundthetx
No, one thing that has been a partial remedy is that the token sale creators
give the new token to the people that sent money to the wrong address anyway.
It isn't really dilution to the founders so its easy to remedy.

Case in point, Enigma was trying to raise $50,000,000 which they haven't even
initiated yet. This was only going to result in 50% of the tokens in the hands
of the public. So buyers would have new tokens and trade that amongst
themselves and other people, Enigma would have $50m a lot of that for the
founders, and Enigma would also have the other Enigma tokens which would also
be valued at $50m which they could use for rewards or selling into the market
in the future, all depends on how the market grows.

The hackers get their $500k bug bounty and would have to have equally as bad
OPSEC to get caught.

The deterrents aren't really there right now, it isn't necessarily a problem,
I don't really think the state is necessary here and I wouldn't want them to
use my pooled resources on this given the cost of their investigations.

------
jmilloy
Can we get the title fixed? The editorialized title is misleading/inaccurate.
(edit: Thanks, it's fixed now.)

~~~
joosters
In what way? The company's website, email lists and other property was
compromised and investors lost 500k, seems pretty clear to me.

~~~
ndespres
Well, it seems unfair to say "investors lost 500k" if they weren't really
investing in the ICO so much as taking the bait on a phishing email, which is
what it sounds like happened. If a hacker took control of their domain and
Slack, and socially engineered people into sending funds into the hackers'
personal accounts (which is what it sounds like has happened), Enigma never
really had the funds to lose in the first place themselves.

~~~
joosters
The title merely states that hackers stole $500,000. It does not say they
stole it from Enigma. They stole it from people trying to invest in it - hence
"investors lost 500k" seems perfectly apt.

------
tzz
There are a lot of scams on the web, but you don't blame the HTTP protocol.
There are a lot of email scams, but you don't blame SMTP. Sad to see the
dominant view of this community is against any type of cryptocurrency.

~~~
Steeeve
If you're an NBA player, you spread the word about gold digger scams. If
you're midlevel management you spread the word about timeshare scams. If
you're a retiree, you spread the word about tech support scams. If you are a
techie, you spread the word about blockchain investment scams because we're
the target market for those scams.

Scammers do their best to associate themselves with our communities because
positive discussion at a place like hackernews is seen as "well, all those
smart techies trust it..."

------
NicenJehr
> 3\. Weekly password rotation, and daily rotation in the week leading to the
> token sale

this seems useless

------
dmtzz
what does nab mean?

~~~
dvlsg
Just in general? It means to "grab" or "take" (or in this case, "steal")
something.

~~~
dmtzz
thank you.

------
mycosis
we need to put a hold on all cryptocurrency startups until we figure out what
the hell is going on

~~~
damnfine
Just like immigration?

/s

~~~
softawre
that was the joke.

------
senatorobama
So what, just a couple of years worth of work at Google as a SWE.

~~~
bkolobara
The problem is that most people tricked into "investing" in such platforms
probably don't make anything like a software engineer at Google. This loss
hurts them a lot.

~~~
SirensOfTitan
Even knowledgeable people can fall victim to attacks like this.

~~~
justadeveloper2
Smart people are often the easiest to scam because they believe they can't be
scammed.

~~~
wsc981
I am not sure they are.

If we look at the Nigerian '419' scam, apparently the emails are written in
bad English to filter out the smarter people that are unlikely to fall for the
scam anyway. The reason is that handling the response on such an email is
labor intensive and the people behind those scams prefer to only use labor
when chance of success is high.

See: [https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-
do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-
scammers-say-they-are-from-
nigeria/?from=http%3A%2F%2Fresearch.microsoft.com%2Fpubs%2F167719%2Fwhyfromnigeria.pdf)

------
throw2016
Its appears crypto currencies have escaped the technical domain and have
landed plum into nigerian scam territory.

The crypto currency ecosystem has become toxic and irrational propped up by
ignorance, desperation and blind greed

I wonder what arguments will be made to third world countries at the next
climate change summit when a large number of our population seem to be
squandering electricity without pause in the hope of riches.

The only way any crypto takes off in the world we live in is if some powerful
vested interest sees some use for it, at which point all the speculators
having spent the better part of the past decade pushing fantasy narratives
about freedom etc will sell out every single tall claim made for a dime. Those
who do not understand history and in this case economies are condemned to
repeat it, and badly.

