Bitcoin Forum

We have seen the hacking attack of reportedly 60M USD from Bitfinex and the attack of the DAO for reportedly around double that amount.

But after both attacks we have seen two very different things happen.

In the case of the Bitfinex attack there isn't even the slightest suggestion that some sort of "hard fork" would be offered by the Bitcoin Core developers (so they are just going to have to wear their loss for their mistake) but in the case of Ethereum we have now ended up in a "fork war" with ETH vs. ETC (and ironically ETC is actually the "original" code with ETH now being a fork).

Opinions?

Bitcoin is looking better than ETH because of the fork war dragging down the value of ETH, while raising the value of ETC at the same time. It's kind of a game of numbers, ETC is doing better than Bitcoin %-wise, but Bitcoin doesn't have to drag down the value of a "twin"-crypto in order to generate value itself.

I've never been a fan of Ethereum, so you'll have to take this comment with a grain of salt, but considering that Bitcoin has gone through multiple hacks in the past and never had to fork to recover, it's probably doing much better than the ETX line of cryptos.

To be fair, one Core contributor did make a slight suggestion which would certainly result in a fork. You can't really say this was from the Bitcoin Core developers though (other Core contributors were quick to disagree with maaku, which caused some backpedaling from him).

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4vupa6/p2shinfo_shows_movement_out_of_multisig_wallets/d61qyaj

Anyway, it's certainly nothing like that which came from the Ethereum foundation after the DAO coding fail (I personally don't think it's correct to call those events an "attack", after all code was law).

i'm all for a hard fork to address a technical fault or a tweak that's almost unanimous to benefit the protocol.

other than that it's too big a leap into the unknown, especially if it's because of a third party disaster. that's not the protocol's business. all it should do is operate correctly. eth was operating correctly. now two ethereums are operating correctly. that does not seem good to me.

That would generally be a "soft fork" (i.e. let it be tested and maybe supported rather than be ordered).

This is why "soft forks" in Bitcoin typically require a lot of support (above 90%) before becoming the new "rules".

Bitcoin are not going to rollback for anyone, and that should be a positive being taken out of this. Ethereum has just shown their weakness and there are no way to hide it. Let them fork off in any

direction they want to, we should focus on Bitcoin, not some Alt coin that rub shoulders with banks. I am also not very biased when it comes to Ethereum, and have been vocal about it for some time.

To me it looks like a sophisticated pump n dump scheme.  ::)

No bailout is the right approach. Many in crypto world feel this way, thats why there is surviving etc. Im not sure why so many Ethereum developers preffered the bailout, but my theory is basically every Ethereum developer and most eth investors invested in the DAO, so they all have conflict of interest and preffer the bailout to fix their mistake and get their money back.

Now compare it with Bitcoin, there are so many services already, so when one service fail, only very small percentage of developers/services/people lost Bitcoin there, and if the few become loud to argue for bailing out their mistake, they would be shut down by the majority (without the conflict of interest) with the arguments bailout is really the wrong approach.

For bitcoin we do not need any hard fork, as we want bitcoin as it is, and any change in there will lose its image, and bitcoin is now a normal use currency and in normal currency we need care for our money not fork like techniques, and bitcoin is a currency with highest market cap, so bitcoin is more better than any other coin like ethereum.

bitcoin can do the exact same thing anytime it wants to.   So etc-eth have show the way to stop a thief while btc has shown the way to help a thief.

while i may or may not agree with what I just wrote.  I can tell you some people do.  anyone that held big Eth and was saved by the fork will always think better of ETH

then anyone that held big BTC and was lost due to no fork.

I see a place for fork free coins and easy to fork coins.

I also know that if BTC  wants to fork  they will  .

So personally I think BTC is a step behind ETH-ETC  not ahead.

Besides  BTC has yet to fix its scaling issue of about 700,000 max transaction a day and in practice 300,000 are done a day.
I like the idea of a BTC hard to fork stone chain with a ETC/ETH easy to fork chain.  Solves a lot of technical issues

To bitcoin, Bitfinex is not important- it is just one of the many many exchanges, just that it is slightly bigger. Bitcoin can continue without Bitfinex.

To Ethereum, DAO is almost everything. It is almost the only useful "application" of Ethereum. DAO hack is equivalent to an Ethereum hack. This is why Vitalik needed to hard fork ethereum to reverse the theft- to secure the Ethereum network. Ethereum is almost dead without DAO.

Okay, that's right, caused by there is another exchange than bitfinex. and the bitcoin is already globally and it's impossible to make a manipulation like ETC vs ETH or the DAO cases.

Whether to hard fork or not, it's all about belief and interest.

i don't follow DAO-ETH technical stuff that much but from what i have read so far it seems like the problem aka theft was because of the poor code in ethereum that allowed the theft to happen hence the hard fork.

in comparison the theft in bitcoin (bitfinex) has nothing to do with bitcoin and the code hence no need for fork or anything.

Of course it is. Ethereum's hard fork was the worst idea in the history of crypto. A big popular altcoin, being torn apart by what, a hack? Something that's done is done. It shouldn't be undone.

but still bitfinex have so many funds from various people around the world if you say bitfinex is not important then it's like saying $60 million is not an important thing,but see how much your wealth right now

If you have to fork Bitcoin for every little hack, we would have 1000's of little side-chains floating around. Ethereum has created a problem for themselves now, because for the next hack, they will have to fork again. Ok, I exaggerated a little,
but you get what I am trying to say.

Bitcoin has had a similar thing happening to them, and it was quickly patched up and hidden away in the archives. ^smile^

Fortunately, I think this has set the fork-at-any-cost camp back in a huge way. I think they realize that their only chance to get big blocks is to fork without any suggestion of majority or consensus. I think some of the more extreme big-blockers see the viability of both ETH and ETC as a reason to say "let's fork and let the market decide." Terrible idea, but there will always be some around here who are willing to break consensus for their agenda.

Nothing happen with Gox , bitcoin go on, fix its wounds,(dont believe the same for the investors) , so Finex it was just an exchange, no major app of btc was hacked, and i dont want to think the option ! really!!

Bitcoin is looking better than ETH - It's coming to its original price before the Bitfinex hack.

ETH Dropped a lot, and I don't see the future in this alt coin.

Stick to Bitcoin :)

What's got bitcoin core developers got to do with an "inside job" that happened in an exchange ? I don't think is fair to blame them for the hacking which for me is not a hack but an inside job. Nothing to do with it. Its just the greediness of the people running bitfinex or at least one or a few of them which have made this move. Bitcoin is of course looking better as a lot of other exchanges have been hacked in the past and bitcoin resisted to all of these situations.

A fair point - and some have suspected that the DAO hack was also an "inside job" which has nothing to do with any failure of the underlying Ethereum smart contract implementation either (yet they got involved enough to create a hard fork).

This two hack attempts are totally different in my view as actually dao have security fault or eth have allowed dammps to run in mainchain than side chain so whole chain has to forked to address this security bug. However bitfinex got hacked due to their security fault not that of bitcoin network so actually bitfinex have to fork their security. ;)

For me, Bitcoin is certainly looking better than ETH/ETC at the moment, this 'hack' of Bitfinex doesn't have anything to do with Bitcoin itself, while in the case of Ethereum, that was bound to happen due to how it was programmed.

Bitcoin team has some sort of Fork-o-phobia. Bitcoin needs a couple of great changes to be implemented, but they fear to do that because the big bad fork may affect the price.
Ethereum team did the fork too easy, but it's a more complicate story. And now the ETH-ETC war will make bitcoin team phobia even stronger.

The result is a stone age sturdy Bitcoin mammoth, and if something big happens the mammoth may die and an Ethereum which, while it's still young and forks should come easy, it forked so bad so instead of evolving, it started a war between its own supporters.

Conclusion: both cases are extreme and neither is good.

Bitcoin has had several soft forks already so "fork-o-phobia" isn't really correct. Perhaps "hard-fork-o-phobio" would be more accurate.

Yes, you're right.

In the case of ETH, if I understand correctly (and I may not), ethereum is suppose to be something closer to a distributed supercomputer then to money.  Also, again if I understand correctly, doing a reorg by the miners would really not have accomplished anything as the attacker could have simply executed the attack a second time in a similar way. Lastly, although some people will disagree with this, the fact that the DAO was hacked is verifiable on the blockchain, as anyone can verify that ETH was taken from the DAO that should not have been.

On the other hand, with the Bitfinex hack, it is not possible to verify on the blockchain that Bitfinex was in fact hacked, as in order to know that Bitfinex was hacked, you will need to trust the operator of Bitfinex. In order to confirm that BTC was even taken from Bitfinex's wallets, you will need to either trust Bitfinex, BitGo, or collectively several account holders of Bitfinex. Although I disagree that this is what happened, it is possible that Bitfinex in fact received something of value in exchange for the ~120kBTC that was withdrawn from their wallets.

I am somewhat disappointed that Bitfinex did not attempt to get the miners to do a reorg of the blockchain, as this would give everyone a very important lesson as to when it is safe to trust that a confirmation is sufficiently confirmed. Although it is still technically possible, I don't think this will happen after ~5 days of the hack. the fact is that miners rely on economic incentives to collectively act in a way that builds only on the Bitcoin blockchain with the most work. If there are economic incentives to build on an alternate blockchain, then miners would logically do this. I would much rather everyone learn that a transaction is not "really" confirmed until the miners have received block rewards totaling the amount of the transaction since the transaction confirmed (this may be less in some circumstances depending on if fraud is involved or not). I would much rather this be discovered now to resolve what is almost certainly a hack/theft then in several years when there is a lot of idol mining capacity and a large reorg is done to reverse a very large (in terms of BTC) transaction that is legitimate.

ETH never had a chance at replacing BTC.

I never once thought "Hey ETH is the new thing, Bitcoin is obsolete now.."

Still don't think it even came within reasonable spitting distance of having a chance..

As far as its current price trend, which looks better right now, I think ETH was extremely overvalued and I'm not about to buy in now..

i think this is a fair assessment/conclusion.

there shouldn't be a "bail-out-switch" in bitcoin or any other coin so when you screw up yourself you can fall back on it and get your money back.
if the bitfinex hacker had used a weakness in bitcoin protocol and stole the funds (or like a long time ago created coins out of thin air) then it would be possible to think about a fork in bitcoin but this hack was a screw up from the exchange owner themselves.

there's a fork coming for bitcoin too, apprently
https://bitcoinforks.org/

we even have luke-jr posting his comments on the consider it page  :D
https://btcfork.consider.it/

IMO this fork will fail to gain any significant support like ETC did.
but its worth a look at what they are doing, its interesting to say the least.

True, and Bitfinex itself isn't that large an exchange. The MtGox hack tanked the bitcoin price from $1000 to $100 and it has taken two years but the price hasn't quite recovered. If there was a serious competitor to bitcoin in 2014, bitcoin would have been in danger...

We usually call those altcoins, so this isn't anything special aside from them wanting to market themselves as as relevant to Bitcoin. IIRC I had mentioned that something like "Bitcoin Original" would pop up eventually even though it's based on nonsense.

The majority of the people voting on that website have very limited knowledge.

It's just another damaging altcoin attempt, nothing more.

Bitcoin was always looking better than ethereum...this only showed the discrepancies between the bitcoin devs and the ethereum devs.

Why exactly we need bitcoin developers to act every time some pathetic satellite service like exchange is hacked?
I am against interventionism of any kind. And that DAO hack was completely different case because it was linked to be coin foundations.

I agree that developers should never interfere if nothing is wrong on a protocol level and a service on top has messed their stuff up.

The only reason the ethereum devs could even think about forking was that they did not have to reverse any transactions. The DAO funds were still locked and they only had to make sure that they would never be moved again or in this case, that the funds were put in a different contract.

After an exchange hack, a rollback is impossible due to the thousands of transactions every block, which would be reversed.

There's probably more than two Ethereums out there

ETC is severely damaged forever as a project, and the reputation of its leader, Vitalik Buterin, it's also perpetually damaged after he tried to stop exchanges, after he bailed out investors with a very questionable hardfork, and after the hard fork due it being rushed presents huge problems like the replay attack.

The only reason ETC is not higher than ETH is because ETH has the inertia of being the bigger chain, but eventually the tide will change and ETC will take over. ETH fundamentals are doomed.

unless everyone switch to that fork, especially miners and merchants, at that point you can not call it an altcoin anymore

Luke JR is a troll. The fact that there is still people pushing for a "big blocks" agenda shows how dumb/vested interest behind that they are. Anyone with a brain in 2016 knows scaling on-chain it's impossible unless you don't care that the network becomes more centralized and stupid without a conservative approach, that's why Core is and will remain the #1. There will never be enough consensus to hard fork Bitcoin for mindless experiment's sake. The conservative approach which is the approach that has made Bitcoin able to survive for this long, will remain the chosen one. Every alternative will end up like Classic/XT because they are unprofessional amateur punks without nothing to show.

it is very unlikely that the vast majority of bitcoin users will switch to this, as well as merchants and services already adapted to the current fork.

the part about "Who is behind this project?" is not even saying who is supporting it. so i can assume that since anybody can buy a domain and hosting it is some random users trying to create some commotion.

none of the miners or developers have ever expressed any desire to remain anonymous while working on bitcoin so far, and that is another reason for assuming some random users with some other agenda.

and as for their success, with no community, no miner, no developer supporting them they will fail much harder than bitcoin XT, classic and all the others.

Bitcoin  has shown  they will help exchanges steal money.

Eth-Etc has shown  they will make an effort to  prevent a major theft or exploit.



Bitcoin does not scale it does 300,000  transactions per day on average  max is just under 700,000.

Thus off chain deals are needed to move the coin.

What are off chain deals  moves on exchanges like Bitfinex


What happens when a necessary  exchange gets hacked for its bitcoins.  Thats right Bitcoin helps them to steal it.

If anyone thinks  Bitcoin won out  in the Eth-Etc fork   they are sadly mistaken.

As a complete side bar.   If I mine ETH-ETC  I use real pc's with real warrantees.  If I mine BTC  I use asics from companies that refuse to honor them.

Go watch the Movie  "The Big Short"     the guy sees the housing bubble and bets on it.


I see a real problem for BTC  this year.

I made a move  I spilt my mining  ½ ETC-ETH   ½ BTC

I never understood the big deal with eth anyway, but the whole hardfork thing just cemented the shitcoin tag for it in my mind.   Bitcoin is money, and the rest of these clown coins are destined to fail.  Especially if they try to reverse a hack by forking.

I agree, but I don't share your opinion regarding Luke JR. He has made significant contributions to Core.

The big block agenda has largely failed, because Core developers came up with a much more intelligent solution. Also many initial supporters (excluding some Gavinista lunatics) are realizing that the doomsday scenarios painted by the FUD campaign during the XT/ClassicCoin launch attempts failed to materialize. Despite the shiny extrapolation graphic that was widely circulated and contained a red painted failure zone since the beginning of this year, the Bitcoin network is more healthy than ever.

Core continues to innovate, because it has the most intelligent developers behind it. The departure of Hearn and (inofficially) Andresen was a great relief.

ya.ya.yo!

For ETH-ETC, I feel that it is yet another highly crafted and sophisticated Pump_Dump scheme.

If someone steals a hoard of bank notes from a bank those notes don't become un-spendable. If the police never figure out who robbed the bank the robber keeps the money. It's the same with Bitcoin, a thief robbed Bitfinex and gets to keep the money provided the police never figure out who robbed it.

With Ethereum stolen coins become un-spendable so it's not proper money.

Bitcoin takes the best approach for a coin that is money.

Wrong. Bitcoin is showing that it stands behind the values that it was created for.

They have demonstrated an unhealthy way of forking for the sake of a bailout. The "code is law" and whatnot was an outright lie.

This is incorrect as well. Segwit will up the TPS to about ~180% on average and more on-chain improvements are expected in the future.

forking to present theft after the fact will appeal to those who like centralized stuff for "protection." whether the centralized authority is a government, foundation or single person is the only real difference here. ergo, the forked ethereum will appeal to some mindsets.

purists who want absolutely no interference (like fixing User Error or hacks) will like etc, btc. if it happens, it happens. thats all there is to it.

in crypto there is room for both kinds. imo, of course.

In my opinion anyone even suggesting to do a hard fork to bail out a few key people in Bitcoin will be taken as some sort of joke. No one would dare suggest it.

Let me ask you this. Who among the big investors of the DAO are the more prominent Bitcoiners?

I suggest asking them what their opinions are.

As a bitcoiner since I first heard of it, ethereum is look mighty intiesing right about now. :-\

Wrong, Bitcoin is showing that it's open for business to scammers, hackers and criminals without any worries .

Whose gonna use a tech that is a cesspool of criminals and scammers?!? easily stolen with no way of recovering ever back . Plus bitcoin is way way more centralized than other altcoins, the mining sphere in bitcoin is owned by the Chinese and in effect the block chain is owned and controlled by them as well ( top 3 Chinese pools can easily do 51% attack if they wish ) . Just because you might be running a node  that doesn't mean bitcoin network is decentralized .

Exactly, unless literally every service, retailer and user switches to the fork there is no point in having the fork occur, and since most services are already adapted to the current system, there is no point changing things unless absolutely necessary.

Any fork for Bitcoin that happens without any large stake of interest from the rest of the community is a useless attempt to change something.

It is not wrong, my statement is factually right. Bitcoin has stood for decentralization, censorship resistance and immutability (among other things). As far as criminals are concerned, that's what the law enforcement is for. Stop with the false deductions.

ETH was created and is being used by criminals.

It's quite obvious that your knowledge on the matter is severely limited and/or you're deeply involved with altcoins.

This is a bit incorrect. Any "fork attempt" is controversial/contentious without consensus. Any 'fork' without consensus is an altcoin.