Bitcoin Forum

Was arguing with a friend today, and his argument is that the developers of any crypto can alternate its code from PoW to PoS and with time there may be more innovative ways to keep the network secure. However, on the other hand you cannot dictate what an exchange does or do. They can inwardly manipulate the price by making a statement that they were under attack and coins are stolen by hackers. What then do investors do? by the way by trading in any exchange you are directly agreeing to their terms and conditions. The solution in my opinion would be for traders to trade via decentralized exchange such as etherdelta or any other out there. but even that has its own shortcoming as etherdelta in my opinion is a bit complicated and does not really list all altcoins. What do you think guys.

Your argument is true but not totally because what you suggested exchanges do is something that happens once in a blue moon and those that do, there is no way to be sure that they are lying about the attack as one exchange even paid back what the investors lost during the attack. Although, not high flag for exchange sites, but their contribution can also not be wished away as the outcome of any crypto cannot be complete without being listed on an exchange site. In as much that they have their excesses, I still believe that their advantages still out weight the disadvantages.

I'm not convinced it's possible to have a pos which could compete with a pow-chain like btc in terms of security because a pow-chain is secured by the barrier of entry for hardware which means an attacker has to make a large investement which would be worthless once he attacks the chain. Pos is different. Attacks on pos can be free or even profitable. Not possible with a pow-chain.

You already name a huge problem pos has: exchanges. if the exchange gets hacked and a large percentage is stolen of these coins your coin is ruined forever. Let alone the fact that you have to trust the exchange not the build a new chain from their empty wallets years in the future. Pos is inherently unsecure and pos-coins are at the whim of exchangeowners. Eventually they'll all be compromised.

Decentralized exchanges are needed, sure. But even there you're not safe from hacking as that software can and most likely will contain exploitable bugs too especialy as early as this.
As it stands right now pos shouldn't be taken too seriously. We're all waiting on a working implementantion (let alone a secure one). Still waiting.

Currently AFAIK there isn't a single pos-coin out which hasn't been compromised in some way.

hopefully blocknet if it can what it is supposed to will change all of this. It is taking its time though so could be another few months before it has a decent adoption rate.

A secure exchange with fees that only go to the nodes that support the service that is 100% secure from hacking or attacks? I'll believe it when I see it. In any case, I've had no issues personally with poloniex, bittrex, or GDAX so far.  Don't do dumb stuff like using tor or VPNs with the service or try to send, whether purposely or accidentially, more than your daily withdraw limit, and you should be alright. If you get your account locked, accept that there are big service delays right now.. best thing is to not get your account locked, thus the above advice. Try to use the same IP address, from your home, same computer to trade all the time, etc.

If you use tor while trading or a VPN, for whatever reason you might have, I don't have much sympathy for ya.

Inside job is always a possibility. I still believe that the hack of Bitfinex was not an outside attack. Mt.Gox case is also very suspicious and bizarre.

I still think that keeping big and prosperous exchange going is more profitable for the owner in the long run.

We need to remember that cryptocurrency phenomena is still a new concept, we don't have laws and rules set.

In the end I expect that exchanges will be no different that current banks, fully regulated, licensed and controlled to certain point.

I supposed a big exchanger should have a very strong security, the case of Mt.Gox I believed got helped by the insider, and of course exchanger is a very profitable business, and I agree one day all of the exchanger will be regulated and need to report all of the data, but I appreciate everyone that created exchanger, crypto currencies can grow this big because of the exchanger, most of the alt coin can survive because people trade the coin from exchanger

What was happening with polo yesterday? Looks the big exchange is not 100% have a strong security. Too many my friends are getting hacked on bittrex and another loss a lot caused by DDOS on polo and make the market is lag. Exchange is a big point on crypto. The buyer and seller is interact through the exchange site.