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Someone 'Accidentally' Locked Away $300M Worth of Other People's Ethereum Funds (vice.com)

Posted by msmash on from the not-the-onion dept.

On Tuesday, a single user "permanently" locked down dozens of digital wallets containing nearly $300 million dollars worth of ether, the unit of exchange on the Ethereum platform, allegedly by accident. From a report: Now, some in the Ethereum community are considering the possibility of a risky network split, known as a "hard fork," to fix it. The affected wallets -- known as "multisignature" wallets because they require multiple people to sign off before funds are moved, making them popular with companies -- were all created with Parity, a popular program for digital wallets. Parity multisignature wallets experienced a bug in July that allowed a hacker to steal $32 million in funds before the Ethereum community scrambled to band together to hack back and secure the rest of the vulnerable ether.

3 of 141 comments (clear)

  1. Reasons not to use cryptocurrency by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    1) It is extremely volatile
    2) Few businesses accept cryptocurrencies
    3) They are easy to steal
    4) They are not backed by real world goods, so the value can easily go to zero
    5) There is no anonymity because all transactions are public

    Anyone who cares about their privacy and security should avoid cryptocurrencies like the plague.

    1. Re:Reasons not to use cryptocurrency by WankerWeasel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Bitcoin uses 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of power for each transaction. That could power the average American home for almost a week. It's incredibly wasteful. I believe recently they'd said bitcoin mining is currently using more power monthly than the entire country of Nigeria uses in a year.

    2. Re:Reasons not to use cryptocurrency by WankerWeasel · · Score: 5, Interesting

      "This averages out to a shocking 215 kilowatt-hours (KWh) of juice used by miners for each Bitcoin transaction (there are currently about 300,000 transactions per day). Since the average American household consumes 901 KWh per month, each Bitcoin transfer represents enough energy to run a comfortable house, and everything in it, for nearly a week. On a larger scale, De Vries' index shows that bitcoin miners worldwide could be using enough electricity to at any given time to power about 2.26 million American homes." https://motherboard.vice.com/e...