
Blockchain Graveyard - jordigh
https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/
======
fbuilesv
Funny, after reading the article I decided to go to Coinbase to see the
Bitcoin prices, and this is what I find:

 _We have reason to believe you reside in a country in which Coinbase is
prohibited by law from doing business (Iran, Islamic Republic Of) per the
sanctions imposed by the U.S. Treasury Department 's Office of Foreign Assets
Control. As a result, we’ve unfortunately had to close your Coinbase account._

I'm not Iranian and I'll comply with their KYC requests, but every day
Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal. I thought this is what we were
trying to avoid in the first place.

PS: Happily, I had no funds on the account. I hope this helps as a reminder to
others: keep your money in your own private wallets.

~~~
pjc50
> Coinbase feels more and more like PayPal

> Coinbase is prohibited by law from doing business

The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the
problem here. Or the US attempts at global jurisdiction for KYC, take your
pick.

Paypal is not _gratuitously_ bad. Every annoying decision they make is because
they're backed into a cost-minimising corner by fraud and compliance problems.

The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully _caveat emptor_ ,
and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to put
off non-ideological adopters.

~~~
wyager
>The premise that bitcoin frees you from normal legal requirements is the
problem here.

It does. Coinbase != Bitcoin. Conflating the two is like conflating Gold with
EZPawn.

>and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft

Source? I buy things with bitcoin quite frequently. With even a modicum of
judgement, it's easy to sniff out scams. This is also what reviews are for.

~~~
pjc50
?

Using bitcoin to send money to Iran from the US remains illegal even if
there's no institution in the middle.

Source for theft and fraud: [https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-
Graveyard/](https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/)

~~~
oarsinsync
> The bitcoin community believe that purchases should be fully caveat emptor,
> and as a result there's a high level of fraud and theft which is going to
> put off non-ideological adopters.

> Source for theft and fraud: [https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-
> Graveyard/](https://magoo.github.io/Blockchain-Graveyard/)

The site you've linked seems to be talking about thefts, similar to losing
your credit card and someone running rampant with it, not purchase fraud.

In the case of credit cards, someone's still paying for it, it's just not you.
There's no reason why this same system can't be applied to Bitcoin, without
having to change anything in the protocols. It's just an extra intermediary in
the middle who suffers the loss instead of you.

Got any sources that relate to purchases per your original?

------
Uptrenda
Friendly reminder that people still aren't using decentralized exchanges in
2016 even though Coinffeine (Crypto / USD), Bitsquare (Crypto / Bank), and
Bithalo (Crypto / Crypto) exist which are all quite mature now.

Technically we've had the smart contracts to solve these trust problems since
2013 but still nobody is using them. Mostly the problem is these projects
haven't received the funding (or attention) they need so there's no money to
build momentum and overcome the initial brutal networking effect. It's also
surprisingly hard to bootstrap an exchange, much less a next generation
exchange using smart contracts (first hand experience) because of the serious
engineering required, especially when you can probably make far more money
with a traditional exchange by cutting corners.

I think there will eventually be a legitimate VC backed company who fixes this
horrible security mess but for now we're forced to watch history repeat
itself. Sorry for the rambling post hacker news, but as a guy who tried to fix
these problems myself after Mtgox was hacked and failed for non-technical
reasons, it's depressing to keep seeing the same hacks and thefts in the news.
Startups in the FinTech space really need to stop being such hypocrites and
learn what Bitcoin has to teach us.

Protip: Bitcoin is a lot deeper than a currency or consensus system. It can
also be used as a general purpose philosophy for designing high security
systems in general.

~~~
HappyTypist
I think the reality is that most people want a directly responsible entity to
whom they can get support from.

~~~
riprowan
... and since the premise of Bitcoin was to free users from precisely these
third-parties, it seems that Bitcoin is a bad use-case for these people.

~~~
Steltek
But "these people" are also "most people". "Most people" also don't use PGP,
for many reasons, but IMO chiefly that it's hard to manage keys without
outside (centralized) help. If Google managed PGP keys for you, there'd be
little problem with muggles sending and receiving encrypted (albeit insecure)
email.

Since Bitcoin needs a critical mass to be successful, centralized exchanges
and wallets are needed to build it up so it's generally useful.

------
Animats
Only two marked "insider"? There have been more than that. There were several
incidents where the insiders initially claimed they were robbed, but that
didn't hold up upon closer examination.

In the altcoin world, "take the money and run" is almost standard operating
procedure. Remember Paycoin?

------
kang
There were around 40 cryptocurrency exchanges till early 2013, which were
studied for causes of their failure.
[http://tylermoore.ens.utulsa.edu/fc13.pdf](http://tylermoore.ens.utulsa.edu/fc13.pdf)

------
nextstep
Some of these incidents didn't completely destroy the company or
cryptocurrency. For instance ShapeShift.io is on the list but they recovered
from their theft incident and are now going strong.

------
nness
I hadn't realised there were so many institutions and so many breaches...

~~~
Uptrenda
Trust me, there's even more than the OP listed. This post gives a good history
to some of the older thefts:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=83794.0)

------
ryanmarsh
Was relieved to not find Coinbase on the list.

~~~
amenghra
He's the former security director at Coinbase. There could be NDA issues, or
maybe not.

------
orbitingpluto
This just in, thieves steal cryptocurrency just like real currency.

The "protocol related" is by far the most concerning of course.

~~~
croon
Indeed. It's called "wallet" for a reason. If you don't protect it, it gets
stolen.

------
blubb-fish
Yesterday I noticed that blockchain.info wallet now asks for an E-Mail address
and features a JS based UI which doesn't render properly in Tor Browser. At
least not from scratch.

Anyway - just would like to state that I am actually using BTC as a currency -
to buy stuff :)

------
deftnerd
A bit off topic, but I found that page theme and layout very enjoyable to
read. Good design

~~~
symmetricsaurus
Except that the text gets cut off on a 4 inch iPhone in portrait mode.

~~~
throwanem
Switching orientation to landscape and back fits it properly to the viewport.
That this should be necessary is vaguely silly, but at least it works.

------
herbst
Pretty sure Mintpal was a exit scam and not only a hack.

~~~
xorcist
Very likely, along with many others. The official SR2.0 explanation doesn't
make sense, for example. Many of the early online wallets were set up
completely anonymously. Maybe they were not set up to be scams but the
temptation must be considerable when no one knows who you are.

