Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

[doublepost=1466187350][/doublepost]

 

[Peter Tschipper]

@Peter Tschipper :

Their announcement explicitly says "with NO ROLLBACK".

They're making a soft-fork to lock up the stolen funds, then later plan to hard-fork to return the specifics funds to their owners. Not quite a rollback if you ask me. But still a controversial intervention of course.
It will be instructive to see whether the majority get behind this.

OK fair enough, but it still sounds like complicated too big to fail bail-out to me. Whatever they did, clearly failed, the people who wrote up the contract or setup they DAO, or whatever it was, didn't do a good job and the investors lost their money. There are no guarantee's to investing but now what they're doing is saying, if it's really big, we can't allow such a loss to happen, we're protecting the investors afterall (and really preventing a big black eye to etherium). I think etherium would do better in the long run to let the chips fall where they fall, take the hit, and move on. IMO what they're doing is basically making the same mistakes our own political and central banking systems have made over the years, bailing out poorly run banks and businesses which in the short run saves the investors, jobs and of course all important votes, meanwhile over time the rot sets in and now what do we have?

 

[cypherdoc]

http://rhg.com/notes/lower-for-longer-the-new-normal-of-chinas-fdi-balance

 

[Mengerian]

It seems KNC is shutting down. According to http://xtnodes.com/#block_explorer the last block found was https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/block/416133 which is over four days ago.

XT Nodes (and Nodecounter.com) is wrong. KNC's last block was 416649. KNC blocks listed here: https://www.blocktrail.com/BTC/pool/kncminer

It seems that KNC flagging both CSV and BIP 109 support together has screwed up XT Nodes' detection algorithm somehow. BIP 109 support is not falling like their graph shows.

 

[cliff]

What kind of folks give up so easily in the face of adversity? http://coinjournal.net/slock-says-daos-journey/
^The "meh" attitude is totally a red flag!

Also, Tual stating nothing was lost seems ignorant at best and double-speak at worst. First, the ability to fork-out a rollback is probabilistic as to whether that actually happens AND its speculative as to whether its a healthy move (i.e., its a bad idea if it proves fatal or damaging to the credibility of the project).

Secondly, setting aside the possibility of a fork, imagine you own a bunch of shares of ExampleCo. Imagine that ExampleCo.'s sole asset is gold and that its stolen (b/c the manager left the window to vault open (who puts a window in a vault room?)). If I understand what happened w/ the DAO correctly, it appears that the DAO lost some of its underlying assets (ether) irrespective of the DAO tokens. Returning to ExampleCo, it would seem that ExampleCo's shares would become worthless if its gold were to be stolen. I don't see why this example doesn't hold true for theDAO with the theft of ether. What am I missing (honest question)?

 

[cypherdoc]

This is not good;

c) the attack was only possible due to a design pattern commonly used across all smart contracts in Ethereum.

http://coinjournal.net/slock-says-daos-journey/
[doublepost=1466190971][/doublepost]And so, seemingly, this marks the end to the DAO experiment. The concept of Decentralized Autonomous Organizations will undoubtedly rise again, hopefully with a stronger emphasis on security, but this first attempt has fallen on its face. The only thing to do now is wait to see if they can fulfill their promise of returning investor funds.

 

[Zarathustra]

Good for Bitcoin imho.

It has a touch of schadenfreude but I think it's good news for Bitcoin and a conservative approach to digital currencies. As I said before, Ethereum seems to be a lot of hype with a lack of real use cases and I don't see the urgent need for a Turing complete script language.

Maybe it gives Mr. "29 Softforks parallel" and his crew something to think about. Don't add thousand unnecessary lines of code to Bitcoin. Defend Bitcoin as the thing it is: Decentralized, digital money.
And Coinbase might rethink their "Oh that's so easy to script for" approach. As you see it's also easy to make huge fucking mistakes.

I've got downvoted heavily on reddit for that but I don't want brogrammers doing funky things with my money. And I don't care that the GUIs look so pretty and the websites are so Web 2.0 (I know, that's already an ancient buzzword) around Ethereum.
[doublepost=1466160555][/doublepost]
Yep. Just a flaw in a "smart contract". Thank's, I think I can live without these smart contracts every child can script in a few hours...

https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4oko89/maybe_it_gives_mr_29_softforks_parallel_and_his/

 

[Inca]

Really glad I trimmed my eth holdings back by 75% when I did. Still managed to 'get out' at 16.59 USD with the rest. It is deep diving now. In the long run it will be fine. But who knows what price it could hit in the next few days.

Another thought: the hacker responsible (who presumably shorted on an exchange) may be responsible for eventually helping strengthen ethereum, but currently has massively damaged eth in terms of adoption over the next few months and hugely in price damage to market cap..this should be bitcoin bullish but perhaps the press stink could be crypto negative in general enough to exert some influence on bitcoin investors.

Vitalik must be having a very bad day

So chaps, regarding bitcoin, any thoughts on where we go next?

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

lol
I think I said that that earlier in this thread: Bitcoin has a crisis because there is resistance to a hardfork to change the blocksize limit, why do people think the change from PoW to PoS in Ethereum will be easier? And if you look trough /r/ethereum it seems to be a topic...


And the vexatious word "consensus" is all around as well. Feels almost like home.

Oh man. I'm sorry but I'm glad I might not have to listen to the Ethereum fans so much anymore in /r/btc.

 

[freetrader]

OK fair enough, but it still sounds like complicated too big to fail bail-out to me. Whatever they did, clearly failed, the people who wrote up the contract or setup they DAO, or whatever it was, didn't do a good job and the investors lost their money. There are no guarantee's to investing but now what they're doing is saying, if it's really big, we can't allow such a loss to happen, we're protecting the investors afterall (and really preventing a big black eye to etherium). I think etherium would do better in the long run to let the chips fall where they fall, take the hit, and move on. IMO what they're doing is basically making the same mistakes our own political and central banking systems have made over the years, bailing out poorly run banks and businesses which in the short run saves the investors, jobs and of course all important votes, meanwhile over time the rot sets in and now what do we have?

I do agree with this to a large extent.

They are certainly caught between a rock and a hard place, and I concur with those who say this does place a large question mark over newfangled smart contracts. Might be a good thing to instil caution, so that something like this doesn't blow up and take down a huge corporation.

I also don't quite believe that the necessary lessons (on security, on verification of such contract software etc.) will really be learned if people do not lose what they put at risk.
Instead, I think the Ethereum devs will find themselves increasingly at the centre of calls for similar interventions.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

In the long run it will be fine.

If Bitcoin played it's cards right there won't be another blockchain close to Bitcoin.

 

[freetrader]

What kind of folks give up so easily in the face of adversity? http://coinjournal.net/slock-says-daos-journey/
^The "meh" attitude is totally a red flag!

I just see a very unprofessional attitude during the incident from that company. I would ascribe what I've seen to extreme ass-covering (I would imagine a few phone calls threatening legal action must have been received?) and gushing paranoia ("identify everyone with an opposing viewpoint") after witnessing their project go up in smoke. Not sure how I would react in similar circumstances, perhaps there were a few over-reactions in there too. But generally, they don't inspire much confidence, and I am glad I made a berth around it.

They do seem to stake a lot of hope in the efficacy of the proposed forking solution, despite the fact that it doesn't seem to have a guaranteed outcome (Vitalik certainly leaves it up to the community to decide on). So, if I were an investor I would not be much re-assured at this stage.
[doublepost=1466193150][/doublepost]

So chaps, regarding bitcoin, any thoughts on where we go next?

We're still going to the moon. Rocket engines still need testing and some boosters have been ordered.

 

[AdrianX]

[doublepost=1466187350][/doublepost]

the biggest shock of this whole thing for me is to see Vessenes is still in the crypto space.

 

[Tomothy]

So, my understanding is that bitcoin, by itself, using scripting, can be turing complete.
How would I look into understanding bitcoin with scripted transactions?

 

[molecular]

""
The DAO devs decided to make it difficult to take funds out of The DAO. So they did not give people the option to "just take funds out." Instead, a DAO investor gets to create a new "child DAO" and move her funds into the child and keep them there for 27 days -- there is no direct withdrawal."

^ red flag?"

(sorry, screwed up the quoting)

sure it's a red flag. At first I didn't want to eth into theDAO, but when people told me I could "take it back out at any time, so why not park it there", I tried with a token amount. Then I tried getting the token amount back out and discovered it wasn't so easy and quick . I left it at that.

 

[solex]

I was just reading Vitalik's communication about the DAO on /r/Ethereum because I am interested in how the Ethereum dev's react to this flaw in their scripting language. Hitherto I have not paid much attention to the DAO because I think that cryptocurrency as the future of money is far more important than smart contracts, especially at this early period. Anyway, what I did not expect was a likely explanation for the "worse than usual doublespeak" from @jonny1000 which @Dusty highlights here:

Lol, you are claiming that if nobody asks for a 2mb HF then an HF can be scheduled, while if the HF is actively requested from the community then it must be ignored.

That's worse than usual doublespeak, the brainwashing you were submitted to is really powerful!

Perhaps a psychologist reading this thread can opine about how much affinity a subject shows by using the word "we" three times in a short paragraph.

So, my theory is simple. @jonny1000 has jumped ship, or at least has a larger investment in ETH than BTC, and is arguing for a 2MB HF in BTC to only occur when nobody is asking for it, simply as the best route to arrest Bitcoin's ecosystem growth. He is here because this is where on-chain / main-chain scaling momentum exists, especially as the Classic slack has quietened down.

 

[cliff]

@molecular - Yeah, at least you knew. I feel bad for the folks that lost here notwithstanding due diligence best practices. For me, I just didn't feel good about buying into an agreement to agree about something agreeable in the future run by folks I didn't recognize. Hype and panic are real forces - a little momentum can make it easy to get caught up in anything. Its always good to take a breath and get a good lay of the land first. See Art of War, Chpt 1 (some might find a little humor w/ this reference). The fog was too thick here for me. That said, I don't think a rollback is a good option.

 

[jbreher]

Random thoughts on the DAO debacle:

"Hah Hah!"
- the bully kid on the Simpsons

Tinfoilhattery:
What if it was one or more of the Slock.it folk that performed the recursive withdrawal?

"The code the only official terms of the contract"
- the DAO terms & conditions, paraphrased

"Gee, I guess there may be possible negative side effects to Turing complete money"
- me

I agree with the above - I've heard virtually nothing of Peter Vessenes since meeting him 2013. And he's talking insightful tech? Get out!

I'd not seen this before - made me chuckle. (Hope it's not too soon): http://intheoreum.org/#welcome

There is no good way out of this. Ethereum loses at least a year's worth of trust. If the bail-out is performed, it marks only the start of such manipulations. If not, a different huge set of current holders become disillusioned. Oh well, sux2BU.

 

[VeritasSapere]

[doublepost=1466184183,1466183504][/doublepost]@cypherdoc You say that most people will lose money in cryptocurrency, and that we should not allow our ideology and emotions to cloud our financial investments. Would it not make sense for you to invest a small percentage in Bitcoins competitors, even if it is just one percent. From a strategic point of view this does make sense right?
@VeritasSapere
You're assuming I'm making am emotional and ideological choice not to diversify. I don't think I am having been in this game for so many years. For all the reasons I've mentioned above as to why i don't like eth. The lowest risk for me is to stay where I am in Bitcoin.

I tend to hedge a lot, it seems more risky to me to have all my eggs in one basket. To me it seems like investing in multiple cryptocurrencies would be more rational, it does not have to be Ethereum. I suppose if you are right and Bitcoin will remain by far the most dominant single cryptocurrency, I will still profit, just not as much as you would under that scenario. That is a price I am at least happy to pay for the security I think such a hedge affords.
[doublepost=1466203441][/doublepost]

Secondly, setting aside the possibility of a fork, imagine you own a bunch of shares of ExampleCo. Imagine that ExampleCo.'s sole asset is gold and that its stolen (b/c the manager left the window to vault open (who puts a window in a vault room?)). If I understand what happened w/ the DAO correctly, it appears that the DAO lost some of its underlying assets (ether) irrespective of the DAO tokens. Returning to ExampleCo, it would seem that ExampleCo's shares would become worthless if its gold were to be stolen. I don't see why this example doesn't hold true for theDAO with the theft of ether. What am I missing (honest question)?

Because the DAO shares are traded separately they are not directly linked to the value of the assets lost. The DAO could potentially be worth more then the assets held because of the current or speculative value of the divedent payments for instance, or maybe even because of the voting power they incur.

 

[cliff]

@VeritasSapere - I agree that theDOA could be worth more than the assets, but realizing that sort of depends on income generation potential, good will, various other projections, plans, and analyses not yet born. Consequently, w/ this particular business, given its new-ness, I'm not sure a valuation of it could be based on anything but the assets. Anyway, you make a fair point (thanks for making it). I was talking in generalities to avoid getting into pesky valuation models, but here we are.