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Millions of Dogecoin Stolen Over Christmas
Kenseilon writes "The Verge reports that millions of Dogecoins — an alternative cryptocurrency — was stolen after the service DogeWallet was hacked. DogeWallet worked like a bank account for the currency, and the attackers modified it to make sure all transactions ended up in a wallet of their choice. This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing. It brings to mind the incident where bitcoin exchange service GBL vanished and took a modest amount of Bitcoins with them. While not a similar case, it highlights the difficulties with trusting service provides in this market."
Who cares?
Dogecoin was originally a satire "cryptocurrency" anyway, the fact that it got "hacked" just prove the point even more.
Such theft. Much mad. Very suprise. Wow.
// TODO: Witty Signature
A joke from the beginning
They shoot unicorns, don't they?
Sent from the iPad I found in your car.
Sounds like the electronic equivalent of printing your account number on all the deposit slips at the kiosk inside the bank.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again.
At least this time it's of a currency worth very, very little, so losses aren't that great and there are even more great minds thinking about how to solve cryptocurrency security problems. The end-user human will always be the weakest link, and the trust that the end user places on others always the most vulnerable part.
Colin Dean Go a year without DRM
"target"
And as usual, people who trust their Crypto Currency to a web based service (especially one with such a short history to it, and no clearly defined security practices) end up getting their shit stolen. Really now, if you want your crypto coins (be they BTC LTC or whatever) safe keep them in a private wallet and encrypt it, don't load your fortunes onto some website, then complain when they get hacked.
This is kind of like carrying around a giant wad of cash in your pocket and then being mad when someone mugs you, keep a small amount of 'working cash' readily available, and keep the rest of it in a safe place. The same logic that you'd use with real money should apply to virtual money.
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
I see what you did there . . .
In a bit of shameless internet panhandling, I accept Litecoin Donations at Lbd2oH9QsthD1GfuUXPyka12YxvWJYnBVf
This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing.
FUD!
Tip: HOST YOUR OWN WALLET!
It's digital currency and one of it's greatest features is that nobody can take it away from you. Trust online repositories and wallets as un-secure for the next few years and keep as little as possible in them.
Transfer coin to off-line storage with backups and you're golden.
So they come up with a crypto-currency that makes it where you don't have to trust a bank to keep track of your money. So what is they first thing people do? Put it in a bank, of course. Except, being unrelated, the bank does not have to repay your losses if they get hacked or robbed.
Keep multiple copies of your wallet. Keep them password protected. Keep them in separate physical locations.Keep nothing in a wallet that is not YOUR wallet and which you control.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I still can't tell how much of this is a joke and how much is real...
What's next? Dolancoin, featuring a crudely drawn homicidal duck? Frycoin, urging people to quietly and quickly accept the "money"?
Regardless, any of these is basically the same as Monopoly money. Next, we'll have reports of how a truckload of monopoly money got stolen. It'll be just as relevant, if not more, since something happened to someone (said truck was stolen).
I had a fraudulent charge appear on my card this month for $600. Guess how much i'm out, zero. Got my replacement card in two days.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
That's nice. I don't pay interest charges on credit cards, ever, and the store charges the same price card or cash.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
I wouldn't expect to see a report like this if someone had managed to steal 15 bitcoins.
That's not a bad deal.
I get 1% back as cash for everything that goes through my card.
It also means I've got two months of mortgage interest saved as well.
The monetary system is designed to function like one bank. With one bank, deposits are just transferred around. There's no drain on reserves since the deposits are the reserves. So when something is stolen, the bank doesn't pay for it. It can simply create more deposits and transfer them to the victims. These are simply accounting entries. The bank likes to make you think someone has to pay for it, but that's just so they can whine about how much they're suffering when they're really not, the only cost is the electricity involved in deleting one computer entry and adding another.
Commercial banks do not just "print more money" when it's stolen.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Except for gas, everyone using anything to pay is putting up money for credit card fraud. The cash customers (mostly) pay just as much as the credit customers. Our local co-op basically begs you to use cash, but cannot charge a different price without violating their contract with the processor.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I pay with cash at local businesses for that reason, but big chains? Who cares.
SJWs are the new boogeyman. -Me
No they just print more money when they feel like it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
No, only the Fed does that, and they're very insistent about that monopoly.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Why would that be? If you suddenly realize that I have more money, do you have to raise your prices even if your production costs haven't increased, just because ... you can? So inflation is purely psychological? What if your psychology changed so that you didn't measure your worth relative to me, but simply by what made you happy, independent of me?
Fractional reserve banking - It's not printing money, it's a little more complicated, but the end result is not that different.
Never happened. True story.
1) Create Dogecoin miner client.
2) Get other people to install miner
3) Client also secretly finds Bitcoin wallets and sends them to me.
4) Profit? Yes profit!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Some found a need to steal DOGE. It is tradeable and actually worth something... this only bolsters that conclusion..
I think Dogecoin is a joke and was intended as such but with all the alt coins I stay confused...
I am mining Bells. I thought they were more fun anyway...
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
That's not even what the quantity theory of money says. Your theory is very naive and not supported by evidence.
When a bank creates a loan, it creates money out of thin air. There's no connection between money and assets.
When the stock market goes down, does that mean the value of my money goes up? Since assets just decreased? So prices at the grocery store should deflate?
You have $100 worth of goods. I have $100. Now someone steals my $100, and uses it to buy your goods, say. Then the bank creates $100 and gives it to me. You buy more of the same amount of goods you just sold for $100. But suddenly, because I have $100 that I didn't have before, you have to raise your prices? Why? Your cost didn't change. The only thing that changed was your knowledge that I had been given $100? And that alone makes you devalue your money, even though your costs didn't change? That's psychology, pure and simple. There's no necessity for you to devalue the money. It's a choice, one that you shouldn't make.
Maybe I lack "the vision thing", but as someone who uses PayPal and another similar service to accept payments, I don't see them being driven out of business anytime soon by Bitcoin.
I'm currently paying a couple of percent on each transaction, which seems fair for the service my customers and I are receiving. There are lots of alternative services in the payment sphere (I've used two others in the past), and the fact that they all have similar fees and offer similar services makes me think there's already enough competition to have driven the fees down to what's fair for the service they provide.
I think my customers like having an intermediary like PayPal to go to if there is a problem. Also, from this merchant's point of view, the fact that the value of Bitcoin swings so wildly makes it an unattractive basis for payment. So, although Bitcoin may put a little pressure on PayPal and its ilk - which isn't all bad - I can't see it ever replacing them completely. If anything, PayPal, et al, may just eventually begin transferring Bitcoin as a new service. You can bet they're already at least thinking about it.
Shouldn't competition nullify that?
Say you write software, and you charge $100/hour. $100 is stolen from me, used to buy one hour of your time. I am given $100, created out of thin air. Why would you now charge me more than $100 for an hour of your time? If you did, why wouldn't someone else see an opportunity to undercut you and charge the same $100 that he charges now? So why would I pay more for your time than I could get from another who didn't raise his prices just because some money was created to reimburse me?
Adding $100 to circulation makes little difference, because there is over 10 billion times that amount of currency in circulation. So you would expect, of course, prices to go up by around one ten-billionth, much less than noticeable.
The problem is if the government decides to manufacture tons of money. Let's go high for the sake of making a point, say $500 million trillion. So now the government can pay all its bills and then give everyone a billion dollars and we're all happy and rich, right?
Well, if I'm rich, I'm not going to work any more. I don't need no stinkin' job. I'm going to take my billions and grab a few mansions and some awesome cars and tech and maybe an island, right after I get my last Big Mac at Mickey D's.
I pull up to the drive-thru, but nobody is there. Oh, wait, everyone's a billionnaire and doesn't need to work. But who's going to satisfy my cravings for two pieces of meat in thick buns with secret sauce? And then it dawns on me... if I can't get a Big Mac, I can't get a gourmet meal. I can't go into a Best Buy. I can't find a realtor to sell me those mansions. Crap, well this sucks.
But surely everyone has a price, right? I have a lot of money, someone will make me a Big Mac for a million dollars, I'm sure of it. Well, ok, someone takes me up on the offer. And I suppose someone will take time away from their rich lives to be my realtor for 100 million dollars. And the guys down at the local TV store will work for a few million an hour. And it turns out, my billions are draining quickly this way... I guess I need to go back to work, so long as I can make a few million an hour myself.
This is hyperinflation. This is what happens when the government adds money to the economy. Of course, this isn't all that great. Now the $50,000 savings account our family has been working our lives toward is practically worthless, and those who have saved nothing in life, or haven't even attempted to find a job, have as much as we do.
So we can't just pump hundreds of trillions into the economy. If and when the decision is made to manufacture more currency, it will be in much smaller amounts. But the same economic principles hold, just in proportion to the total amount of money in circulation.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
The $100 reimbursed to you is not created out of thin air, it is subtracted from the balance sheets of the credit card company. The hour of bought time represents extra assets created (this part is out of thin air). The asset:dollar ratio has increased, meaning the dollars per asset has decreased, i.e. you can now buy more with each dollar and the next hour of software development will cost you $99.9999999999.
Of course that is the situation under perfect knowledge. What really happens is that it takes time for these changes to become 'known' by the economy. Further, governments keep printing more dollars to deliberately devalue their currency to avoid the paradox of thrift where the economy grinds to a halt (so that hour of programming will really be $100.00000001).
Banks are hacked and abused as well, but this is never published. What happened to Dodgecoin once is probably peanuts when compared to what happens to credit card companies every year.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
This is not a problem unique to cryptocurrencies. This particular incident is one that can be chocked up to kids not using php properly. Bad website implementation is not the fault of any cryptocurrency, be it one for pomeranians, or human beings.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
How could you forget cat turds?
Not really, the problem is that it drastically devalues the currency to have thousands of competing currencies. It made it a major PITA in the early colonial days as each colony had it's own currency and even banks had their own.
Except that: if you look closely:
- bitcoin is the most popular one. it's actually used for buy/selling only.
- litecoin is what comes as a distant second.
From that point onward, almost any other alt-coins is a very minor player, which is more or less only used for speculation, and only traded on exchanges. You have to convert them into more major coins (like Bitcoin or Litecoin) before being able to do anything remotely useful with them.
Same as in your colonial example:
Alternate currencies abound, scams are everywhere, but overall people settle around a few stable solutions.
I honestly don't see any of the current attempts (BitCoin Included) being a stable or viable long term digital underground currency.
Slow doen these things take time.
What we need now is payment processors accepting bitcoins on behalf of merchant and paying local currencies to the merchant: like coinbase, bitpay, coinjar, etc. (other will come using local currencies as time passes).
What we need is merchant slowly starting to accept bitcoins (well technically accepting EUR, USD or whatever the local currency is, but with payment processed in bitcoins thanks to payment processors. But you basically got the idea). On-line merchant that decide to add "bitcoin" (coinbase, bitpay and co) in addition to the other payment option they have (bank-to-bank SEPA transfers, PayPal, Google Wallet, Amazon, etc.)
As bitcoin gains presence, it will get more and more used.
As more transaction are done for such buying/selling, the flow of currency will increase.
Thus on-line commerces will start to have a bigger impact on the value than speculation on exchange platforms.
That will make bitcoins' price dominated by their use rather than pure speculation.
Eventually the bitcoin exchange rate will look less like a roller-coaster and more like most fiat currencies.
But all this takes time. It won't happen overnight, It won't probably happens before a couple of years.
Same with the other coins: some will gain acceptance eventually (Litecoin, very probably. I would like Primecoin to get some mainstream action. Peercoin seem to have stayed for longs period of time), others will always remain the play thing of speculators and scammer (Doge is very likely to remain such).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Well, to be fair, it's pretty hard to do much trading of crypto-coins at all if you're just going to keep them in your private wallet all the time.
But not impossible. And actually been done.
There are services like localbitcoins or bitcoin.de, which aren't exchanges per se, but help bitcoin users find each other and trade bitcoin for fiat money.
localbitcoins has an optional escrow services (but you're still allowed to do private-wallet-to-private-wallet transaction if you want).
bitcoin.de is only exclusively wallet-to-wallet.
There are also people trading via forums, via chatrooms, etc.
The only current problem with wallet-to-wallet trading, is the *current* impossibility to implement some level of consumer protection.
(hence the optionnal escrow service of localbitcoins).
But that is simply due to current implementation, it's not a technical limitation.
With things like multi sig...
Maybe I haven't thought everything through well enough, but I'm not quite sure I understand why we couldn't just *require* all transactions to be pushed or pulled from each person's private wallets -- with all exchange sites simply acting as middle-men issuing the various transaction requests? Couldn't you use something akin to PGP with a public/private key pair involved, protecting each request happening between two anonymous parties, but skipping the whole step of making someone place funds on a wallet managed by the site so withdrawal or deposit actions happen on those?
this is exactly the kind of stuff that could be set-up with a multi-sig extension - the typical 2-out-of-3 scheme.
Indeed, it something similar to localbitcoins, but with the escrow implemented with signature as you suggest. Instead of "funding the transaction" (sending the coins to an intermediate escrow) like currently implemented, the escrow simply acts as a 3rd key in a 2-out-of-3 scheme. The coins never actually reach the escrow, you don't need to trust the escrow to forward the money. The only thing you'ld need is to ask the escrow to work as a referee when there's a dispute between the 2 other sides of the transaction.
Currently needed improvements:
- add support for 2-out-of-3. The current bitcoin protocol supports it in its scripting language. But it is not implemented in the nice point'n'click Qt interface. The only way to broadcast such transaction would be to use low-level API. What would be needed are a couple of dialogs to handle the transaction in the Qt interface (and maybe a simpler command in the command line interface).
- create such an escrow (Or persuade localbitcoins to move their escrow to this newer technology).
Other alternative:
look at the recently featured slashdot article about multi-sig.
It was used the other way around. Coins are deposited on an on-line wallet. But end-user has an extra key which can be used to invalidate potentially fraudulent transactions and evacuate the coins in case of problems.
Such methods could be used to insure additional protection on online exchange site (like mtgox, btc-e, cryptsy).
the interest of such setup is that the trading platform can perform trades on your behalf (buy/sell orders) while you're offline by having a set of keys, all the while you have an extra set of keys to react in case things start to go crazy.
That's one of the problems with this whole thing, IMO, and I hope better solutions are developed for it soon. I can't really trade my LTC, for example, until I move it to a wallet sitting on one of the web sites where it can be bought and sold. Being in the USA, my options for that are very limited if I want ways to convert it into US dollars. I've used www.litetree.com since it seems to be one of my only viable options, and as far as I can tell -- it's operated by a guy who is trying to do everything above-board and by the books.
Even so, the last time there was a big spike in LTC value and I wanted to sell a number of my coins? His site was d
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
This has already happened.
There are so many alt-coins, that few people actually take time to check the source code. Or even compile their own.
some are just in for mining and/or for speculation.
They quickly download a pre-built exe of whatever is the latest minor trend du jour.
Unscrupulous persons HAVE packaged malware in some of these installers.
And you've seen regularily complains poping up on bitcointalk forums of users who got their bitcoin/litecoin/peercoin and a few other wallets emptied.
Thus currently you can soft people into three categories:
- regular people who only use old established coins. by the time some software has reached, it has stand the test of time, has been checked multiple times, etc.
(I'm doing that)
- bleeding edge people who are still interested into getting the latest piece of software (in the hope that some will take-off and bring massive money). they rely heavily on virtualisation to separate all dubious pieces of software in separate compartment. (so malware can't find much other wallet files, and can only key-log password typed within the virtual machine - only for the 1-2 software isolated into that instance)
(I'm doing that too - even if I only use a couple of established coins, I'm putting them all in separate compartment, just for the sake of security)
- blind idiots which install watever they find (they are the same people who used to have 25 different bars on internet explorer, and their home computer has probably spitted spam for the last 15 years at least, as part of several different huge botnets).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
The you'd damn well better make use of it. Cash-only suckers are paying the same price as my fraud-protected credit-card-using ass and not reaping the benefits.
I'd love to throw a </satire> on that, but it's more or less true at this point. I didn't think it was a year ago when I had shit for credit, but now that I have credit limits that, combined, could buy a small country, and I'm starting to interact more with that system, I see just how much benefit I receive from these accounts when things go wrong and I know that's not free. It's also not on my bill, so it must be on the store shelf.
As for the 12 years starting out with shit credit (I could have fixed that sooner but I didn't care; I didn't know I should, really), I'm not worried about it; I'm more than making up for that now. Oh, and don't carry a balance; cash-only might be for suckers, but carrying a balance (even at 0%*) is for even bigger suckers (or emergencies).
* You can't see the future. What if something happens and you can't pay it? Fees. Oh, and when the 0% term runs out, you can forget a reasonable rate, you're getting the 29.9% default rate because you missed those 2 payments. And and interest accrued during the 0% promo? You get to pay that, too. I mean, sure, if you're gonna charge $100 or something, let ti ride until a month or two before the promo ends, but don't max that fucker out, people.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Anyone not using credit cards has paid for it, too. And gotten nothing in return.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
The real problem is that all the major banks are sharing parts of the same balance sheet. Okay, that's not the *real* problem, they could still properly divide up their assets; the problem is that the parts of the sheet they're all sharing tend to overlap, so that $100 Chase just gave you is also on Capital One's balance sheet. And Capital One still has it.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
among thieves?
Slashdot has fallen a ways, but is still a place where you should assume that people have a basic high school education and know what fractional reserve banking is.
The difference is enormous. Having only one place that controls the money supply, and one that's vaguely answerable to democracy, is a vastly superior plan to every bank creating money at a whim. No bank can loan out more than its deposits, while the Fed is a whole different beast.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
I think a hack involving crypto-currencies would be the perfect next subject for Underhanded C Code Contest (the current one involves social networks with "friend distance" calculator in an imaginary "ObsessBook").
And I'm almost expecting that the winning entry for such a subject will be under the form of a link to an old commit on the git of some popular Joke-Coin.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
...this is a doge dog world.
Why does knowledge have to change the value of the dollar? If the number of assets increases or decreases, why does that have to affect the value of the dollar? What physical necessity ties them together?
My position is that there is no physical connection. It's purely psychological. We don't think of dollars as tied to the number of assets. Even if some of us do, that's a choice, not physical necessity. It's psychology, and can change.
If it's already marked up, then you're not paying because of your action. It was already marked up. I get 1% back. You get 0% back with cash.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Sorry are you saying that fractional reserve banking does not increase the money supply?
Was that a little dig at my education or intelligence? (why must people grandstand themselves like that?)
The difference is enormous.
I never claimed it wasn't, but the end result is not. ie an increase in the money supply is an increase how ever it was achieved.
Anyway, you may want to read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking Specifically the section titled "Money supplies around the world" and take note of the "Deposit creation multiplier"..
To quote:
Fractional-reserve banking determines the relationship between the amount of "central bank money" in the official money supply statistics and the total money supply. Most of the money in these systems is "commercial bank money". Fractional-reserve banking allows the creation of commercial bank money, which increases the money supply through the deposit creation multiplier. The issue of money through the banking system is a mechanism of monetary transmission, which a central bank can influence only indirectly by raising or lowering interest rates (although banking regulations may also be adjusted to influence the money supply, depending on the circumstances).
So please explain again how my high school education failed me. (Not that we actually covered fractional reserve banking at high school here in our school curriculum, but anyway).
Slashdot has fallen a ways, in more way than one.
Never happened. True story.
You really think that the governments around the world will allow it? It takes a LOT of power out of the hands that like to control people.
It simply brings back the level of simplicity that cash transaction have (but makes them online. But just like cash, it's basically direct people-to-people transfers.)
Or put it into another way, the kind of simplification that SEPA has brought in Europe (strongly simplified Bank-to-bank transfers, with much lower fee [sometime even free], and relatively shorter delay [well, still in the order of days, but that's already better than internationnal wire transfers], and total freedom of choice: as long as your bank and the bank of your merchant both support SEPA you can still do transaction together, without needing to involve a specific mantadory 3rd party actor like paypal)
Overall, bitcoin is like the strange offspring of a forbiden love between SEPA and Cash, but targeting the whole internet, and born as a perfect nemesis for PayPal (and other such 3rd parties with a big control over transactions).
So in some part of the world, the power isn't that much new, it's just a newer way to exercise the power you used to have.
(Okay there are other part of the world where your are automatically considered a criminal if you use cash to pay anything more expensive than a chocolate bar. These other part of the world are going to HATE bitcoins)
Also *NOT allowing* bitcoin isn't something easily done. It's not as if the government simply needs to ask its police to raid the local branch of "Bitcoin and Brothers Inc.". There's no central authority. The whole protocol is distributed. There's no single point to choke to stop it functioning. The only legal leverage would be for a country to forbid its merchant to accept payment with it (like Thailand).
But trying to prevent users (using their own wallet, and/or trading person-in-person, and/or buying goods on foreign websites) that is going to be the kind of whack-a-mole game that the media loby already tried playing against pirates.
(expect bitcoin being used over Tor in those countries).
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
When you say people, presumably you mean other people?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Funny, the only one ranting about "obvious falsities" is you.
Provide a reasonable counter-argument or go troll somewhere else.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.