ShivaX
3689
Then they’d need a new exit strategy.
rei
3690
lol on the eth blockchain
Menzo
3691
For those of you who’d like to put your money where your mouth is, you can now short Bitcoin via an ETF.
This is the part of the “hack” I don’t understand. He borrowed a bunch of make-believe money to buy different make-believe money. Then he voted to give all the make-believe money to himself and repaid the loan.
He’s now “stolen” $80 million dollars. However, to get actual real money you can use to buy things, someone needs to buy his now worthless “beans”. Who the fuck is buying these beans for real money? Who would be so stupid?
When these investors buy beans, before the attack, where does that money go? Can’t they just take it back? Does it sit in some fund waiting for the attacker to exchange the fake money for real money?
Like I can say I stole $80 million worth of Q-Tee Threenies. That’s our new fake money. I stole $80 million of it from you all. I have that in this database right here. Who is going to buy it from me for USD?
To the people who owned the beans beforehand, or if they’re newly minted, to the minters.
But in this case, in my understanding (I think this is actually a relatively old attack), what they stole wasn’t beans but the project’s ETH reserves.
Rather,he borrowed a bunch of make-believe money (1) to buy different the governance tokens of different make-believe money (2). Then he voted to give all the make-believe money (1) held by the issuers of the other make believe money to himself and repaid the loan using part of that make believe money (1)."
Would you accept payment in Deus Ex credits?
A different kind of bean that people still inexplicably value
Indeed, but while on at least some view worthless, it’s not inherently worthless because of the attack. It can still be sold for something on the “open” market, and its value won’t have materially changed from before the attack. Though clearly to the extent these attacks diminish confidence in the entire ecosystem, and large liquidations move the price in themselves, it’s not entirely uncorrelated.
I’m assuming the attacker will sell all of the currency he took on any exchange that will give him a value on that coin before it hits the news. He may even have taken a position to deliver the coin at a certain value.
All of this is just really stupid if translated into the real world context. “I’ve more than 50% of the money in this bank, so I’m legally entitled to vote that all of the money in the bank should be mine”.
I suspect it’s a difference of degree only. I would hazard a guess that if I was personally responsible for over 50% of the deposits at a major (real) bank then I’d have pretty significant influence with that bank. The threat to transfer my holdings and reduce total deposits by 50% in one fell swoop would make bank management somewhat attentive I’d imagine.
JoshL
3700
It’s more like if you owned 50.1% of a corporation and decided to sell the rest of the corporation to yourself for $1. Totally legal, but you’d get sued by the minority shareholders, and they’d probably win.
So it’s like that, but if the minority shareholders had no rights and no way to recover their losses. It’s the libertarian dream!
And you’re doing this in the span of a few hundred milliseconds, so you’ve taken control, voted to give yourself all the money, and withdrawn it before a human blink of an eye.
13 seconds according to the article.
This happened back in April, turns out. That dumb coin has been worthless ever since.
The “attacker” is really just a corporate raider. Buy up enough shares to gain control of a company and then sell off the valuable assets. Profit!
In this case, the valuable asset is make believe money but crypto currency can still be cashed out for USD.
Gordon Gecko is alive and well in the cryptocurrency world.
DraiAC
3704
Banking being a real industry with actual concentration limit regulations and safety and soundness regs means this would never happen. So actually a big degree of difference; whatever one may think of banks and the shitfuckery they have done (and it’s been a lot!), this scenario is not a possible one for a bank.
I mean, it’s not legal, which is why they would win.
Well in your example, the rest of the shareholders at least get a share of those assets!
In this case it’s rights without limitation. It’s totally preposterous, but also exactly what cryptocurrency is.
Haven’t watched Squid Game (?), but this looks apropos
Lantz
3708
Got a few threads this could go in but putting it here because it does cover some of the more technical side of things.
