Parity calamity! Wallet code bug destroys $280m in Ethereum There's a lot of hair-pulling among Ethereum alt-coin hoarders today – after a programming blunder in Parity's wallet software let one person bin $280m of the digital currency belonging to scores of strangers, probably permanently. Parity, which was set up by Ethereum core developer Gavin Woods, admitted today that a user …
The following devices in my house have received software updates:
1. My computer, my phone, my tablet, my router: these, I accept. They are obviously computers.
2. My TV, a pair of speakers: now this starting to get a bit silly.
3. My wall socket timers, my thermostat: really? Has the nature of time and temperature drastically changed?
4. My drum kit: ok, it's far more talented than I am, and doesn't actually need me to play: but still... complex...
But now... to top it all... money needs a software update. Money. Jesus Christ! I'm sorry, but either we're all fucked, or I'm too old. I hope the latter, but suspect the former.
Yep, remember when they first came out - a whole 5MB. Replaced one of the two 8" floppy drives in the SuperBrain microcomputers (running CPM and CIS COBOL apps); made the world of difference to program response times (COBOL code overlays). Still needed one floppy for data comms back-up* when the acoustic-coupler modems wouldn't work**. My first distributed system :)
* - stiff envelope and in the mail
** - had to write my own transmission checking and error correcting code; even with that sometimes the lines were just too noisy.
Whippersnapper.
I remember coding forms.
Much later we had access to punched cards and only computer support staff handled the 1/2" tape reels. The 8" floppy was later, for reloading microcode on a cold boot. So were Winchesters.
You jest.
This is the first personal computer I used (at South Bank Poly):-
http://www.z80.eu/images/intellec8.jpg
Admittedly you only had to program in a JMP instruction to get it to run a PROM routine to accept input from a paper tape reader... which could then be used to load the Intel Assembler.
I tried to find an image of the computer we had at school in the early 70s and failed. It was red, IBM and resembled one of their supermarket tills. It was programmed in numbers - none of yer high level languages. But it could do stuff, and we could write and debug programmes there and then. Otherwise we had to use special pencils on cards that were sent off in a pack to the university's computing centre and which came back with a result ( or more often an error) a week or two later..
That's quantities of money; this is actual currency. Different.
How different? The majority of money is numbers in a ledger (which has been electronic for the last 40+ years), cash is only a fraction of all money that exists: MB + M0 - M3 + MZM).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply
Value is more likely to be preserved if a currency has :
(1) Reliable ledgers.
(2) An entire nation / economy of workers who are contractually paid with that currency. (Who is obliged to accept bitcoin?)
(3) The issue of new currency (lending) is restricted to new assets that devalue slowly (not worthless used computer processing).
(4) New currency can be created according to demand. If supply of a currency is artificially restricted (like Bitcoin) or is tied to a rare asset (like gold), this can restrict lending and economic growth, causing people to switch to alternatives.
Except all cryptocurrencies are primarily anonymisation systems. They often are Ponzi schemes, speculative and aid criminal activities more than €500 notes.
They have a poor and elitist method to generate more "virtual coins".
Any connection to actual money is tenuous as they are more used as an anonymous alternative to IBAN or PayPal, or by speculators.
I'm tempted to do a Nelson impersonation. Ha! Ha!
Mines the one with a leather wallet containing EU physical tokens to replace barter and plastic cards for terminal or web based Electronic funds transfer.
The ONLY problem cryptocurrencies address is ANONYMOUS REMOTE funds transfer. The technology creates new problems (not scaleable, poor coin supply control, speculation like Tulips).
Mage, most are not anonymous, as every transaction is recorded in the blockchain and known exchanges can be subpoenaed to obtain transaction records. As opposed to the many banks that laundered money for drug cartels and destroyed records becore being investigated.
The problem they solve is having all your money in the hands of the 1%, making them rich, and paying an arm and a leg for the privilege.
Systems like Bitcoin Cash are fast and scalable. Personally, I still appreciate real cash as well for true anonymity, though I suspect it will be harder and harder to make it counterfeit-resistant.
in 1998 i had a Compaq monitor. A monitor! not a computer ! that needed a software update.
One morning we found that all blue was gone. Only the red and green channels worked. this was old school picture tube analog VGA 640x480. We unplugged the vga cable checking for a bent pin and replugged it. Nope. Blue was gone. Did some joker turn down the blue using the menu ?
Pulling up the on screen menu froze the monitor completely. The computers screen disappeared and the menu box was all garbled pixels.
Power cycle the monitor : all back to normal.
The little 8K cpu responsible for the control menu had locked up and turned down the blue gain. Trying to pull up the menu froze it completely. a cold start and we were back in business.
Seriously? It's already bad our computers can lock up. now we have to deal with crashing firmware in screens ?
"Encrypt Once Read Never- because something broke and now you can't!"
ah ah. I remember a bloke, in a scientific computing lab, who was used to edit all his marvelous programs in Fortran with "vi -x", back on Unicos from Cray.
Turned up, with the first crypto wars, and the US forbidding shipping any crypto outside US, the function eventually got removed from Unicos.
He never got access back to his sources. Good riddance.
"I feel a snigger coming on. Imagine the Bitcoin price will halve tomorrow. Risk and all that."
So despite this having exactly nothing to do with bitcoin, or any bitcoin wallets, or anything other than a particular multi sig wallets for ETH, it's apparently going to cause a massive crash. Even ETH had only a minor bump from this, while BTC seems to have not even been affected.
Now, as for silly buggers trusting wallet software that has already been compromised and had funds stolen (with an integer overflow attack) is a fair point. And I'm not quite sure how they managed this latest clusterfuck, but I expect it'll be another "coding for dummys" level error.
Oh, and there are plenty of ways to trade BTC. including the usual derivatives. If you're so sure that the price is going to tank, short it and make a killing. If you're sure enough to post you should be sure enough to trade.
If your physical wallet got blown overboard into the sea, would you be happy if someone within earshot laughed and expressed the wish that all your capitalist vapour-paper be snuffed and permanently inaccessible?
Not sure why you accrued a couple of downvotes, I'd like to point out it wasn't me!
Anyway, I wouldn't, but I don't think you can fairly compare the loss of physical cash with speculative blockchain currencies, with essentially fictitious values until (and if ever) converted into a real currency or other store of value, and I don't think that people can expect sympathy when playing with what are clearly unregulated investments, in volatile markets, with an unproven technology platform - all of which were true and obvious for all blockchain currencies before this latest snafu. This is nothing new - go back three and a half years to the Mt Gox disaster, when about $400m of bitcoins were stolen through a flawed exchange platform, with no comeback for the people who thought they were the rightful owners.
So, harsh and unsympathetic I may be, but I still laugh, and given the nature of blockchain currency investors, I don't think that any widows or orphans will be the losers from this latest blockchain screwup. And I would guess it won't be the last. There's at least five large blockchain currencies now, and over 700 others. Given that most of those will be crappy, me-too efforts, most will curl up and die, probably taking a lot of supposed value with them. I don't mind if people wish to speculate in those currencies, but it is very high risk, and they still won't get my sympathy when their millions turn to smoke.
I don't suppose you'll now join me in having a good laugh?
Real currencies are guaranteed by governments. Who through good governance try and keep the value of them fairly predictable. Governments do things like insure your savings so if your bank goes bust you don't lose your money.
If a government starts to guarantee virtual currencies then problems like this story won't be a big issue.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
