Be VERY careful about using any technology pioneered by the Ethereum people.

This shit is so full of hackable holes, I'd be very wary using services based on any of it.

To wit:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/28/ethereum-soft-fork-dos-vector/

The "new bylaws" quick-fix isn't going to help much in the future. Its still a big attack surface masquerading as a useful computing language.

It really could be changed to " Any Central Banking Mistake Will Fuel Bitcoin's Growth ".

The Euro is dead man walking, though. There really isn't much point for the rest of the member countries to continue, unless they want to shoulder increased burdens from the poorer economies.

And that is the whole problem -- the entire EU experiment is nothing more than economic arbitrage. People move around, money sloshes around, and the premium that stronger economies in the EU have end up getting whittled down by others coming in to claim their part of the bounty.

Ultimately this ends up with the stronger economies struggling and sinking down to the level of the poorer countries. And that is precisely how this will go among the countries that are stupid enough to stay.

Here's his bio-tagline: 


So, another of the quant jerks in search of front-running bids and offers. Luckily most exchanges that I know of don't implement the special order types his kind needs to be total financial parasites. Yet.

Non social-media saturated link - http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-overwhelmed-layman/

Doesn't hit on the fact that "Solidity", the scripting language, is full of exploitable holes.

Glosses over the fact that 'smart contracts' are not human replacements, merely streamlines human involvement.

These things can be done better with the "21" machines, most likely - and cheaper.

The use case is so narrow and stupid that any backend developer can put together a system that would utilize BTC much easier than the Ethereum mess.

Author also makes a bizarre "prediction" about how its either BTC or ETH that will dominate -- they're two different coins, you fucking idiot. I'm so tired of "experts" who have their heads up their own asses.

Oh, and he runs an algo-firm that trades BTC, so he's part of the HFT plague. Luckily there aren't any exchanges paying-for-volume like the NYSE yet.

This is such bullshit.

Any trader that watched the intraday quotes coming from Bitfinex knows they went offline around 4pm June 20th (EDT) and then tried to re-open their engine TWICE, while at the same time preventing people from being able to change orders. This resulted in a shit-storm of fear trades and highly imbalanced order book matches.

Bitfinex completely screwed the pooch on this one, but since they get a cut of every order liquidated, I'm sure they could give a shit about everyone getting stopped out or margin called. In fact, the way they came back online suggested a huge stop-run was being encouraged in the first place.

This had nothing to do with Brexit or anything external -- just BFX's complete and utter incompetence.

Its been proven that "Solidity" the language Ethereum uses, contains many flaws that will contribute to its eventual exploitation and downfall.

I wouldn't touch this mess with a 100-meter pole.

There will probably be more attacks and such until every bit of the ecosystem is shredded.

But keep on buying ETH, you computing-token fools.

The "aggressive correcton" was due to the COMPLETE INCOMPETENCE of Bitfinex, as they flailed about to bring up their order book.

There was an initial bar decline of 740 to under 700 in SECONDS, because these fucking idiots didn't have their ducks lined up and allowed mis-matched trades. But hey, who cares, everyone will still end up trading with these fools.

Just get the blame right -- BFX was the SOURCE of this decline, not "investor sentiment".

That quote kills me. It means they have NO CONTROL over their switching infrastructure. That also means, if they are using virtual machines, that they possibly have a large attack surface from other colocated customers. Even if they have their own distinct servers, the fact that they didn't have ANY redundancy tells me we're dealing with amateurs.

Thanks for the 100-buck swoon, you fucking idiots. The fact that they tried to bring up their order book not once, but TWICE when it was still completely fucked is what tipped the game - from the initial red bar at 740 down to under 700 in SECONDS. I was watching the ticks come across, and that is EXACTLY how it happened.

Anyone who trades at that clown-car exchange deserves what happens, in my opinion. Starve these amateurs of their easy money and go somewhere else.

You know what really brought down Bitfinex?

NO FUCKING DISASTER RECOVERY PLAN.

You've got to be FUCKING kidding me, these guys were raking in 10k plus a DAY, and they couldn't afford control over their own network switching infrastructure? At least ONE more datacenter mirrored for hot-standby?

What are these FUCKING IDIOTS doing with their money, spending it on Ukranian hookers and Belgian coke?

I'll just leave this here:

Bitfinex - 34,438

OKCoin - 7,922

GDAX - 5,988

They're playing third-fiddle to a Chinese exchange, and don't even come close in volume to the top USD exchange in the Bitcoin space.

Hyperbolic title aside -- (I'm getting really tired of shitty mast lines in e-journalism... third web? Its a communications protocol riding over the web standard... not exactly rocket science)

This just summarizes how 21 is enabling a programmable way to integrate bitcoin payments with automated processes running on their machines. Honestly, you could do the same thing with perl and a linux box, but the big deal is their dedicated hardware they are shipping.

It remains to be seen how this ecosystem evolves, but at the moment it looks like a PR-News release monsoon without any practical output coming out of it just yet.

ETH, having cratered from 21.48 to 10.10 (Kraken) is a rather large move. (-52.9% decrease) It also speaks to the larger ethical dilemma that the ETH devs are making right now. ETH is technically non-fungible, as they've decided to "lock out" the attackers coins. Even though their creed was "the code is the contract", they've taken the extraordinary steps of punishing someone who took their creed at their word -- that a contract would be enforceable on the network.

So, because a "bad" guy figured out that a contract would allow multiple allocations to a child-DAO, the devs are scrambling to invalidate his coins and effectively attempt to roll-back the entire history of what happened. This is fraught with peril, because it changes the agreement between the user and the maker of the token. The new rule is -- if they determine you don't deserve your money, they'll take it from you.

Who in the living fuck would trust anything on that system ever again.

I sure wouldn't.

The overriding point is - PAY THE FUCKING FEE.

I have had ZERO problems, because I PAY THE FEE.

People who are so reluctant to shave a few fractions of a bitcoin off to pay a miner to include their transaction DESERVE to languish in a the mempool for hours. The network isn't free, you freeloading jerkwads. Until you can come up with a miner that runs on hugs and rainbows, it takes effort, electricity and bandwidth.

Every single complaint on a delayed transaction can be traced to the following:

1. Using coins that have a non-confirmed input

2. Not paying the appropriate fee to be included

3. Not paying attention to the client you are using - you should only use one that allows you to set the fee or has an automatic way to adjust the fee based on network conditions

Its just that easy, and yet, we still have these complaining idiots that can't wrap their head around including a minimal fee to get their transaction processed.

Idiotic.

Here's all you need to know about the failed DAO - or should we call it DOA.

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/

More technical info here:

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/18/analysis-of-the-dao-exploit/

To say that there were just a few flaws would be generous. It seems that in their rush for accumulating a pile of money, someone forgot that code-as-a-contract means you have to be very SURE you're doing things correctly.

Gavin has zero credibility, so I would take anything he says and throw it over your shoulder - like you were trying to reverse a curse.

Thanks Gav - we'll take it from here. Go back to developing on Sharepoint or something.

What a turd of an article.

1. Take spam attack

2. Turn spam attack into "transactions held up OMG"

3. Write shitty article about jerkwads abusing the network, but spin it so it looks like its the networks fault

4. Pump for the expanded blocksize agenda, blah blah blah

I thought we were done with this kind of crap

What do you expect from a survey that also says 81% of UK businesses would suffer under an exit from the EU.

They've got to be kidding, or have an agenda, because that isn't what the real effects would be. If anything, they wouldn't be subjugated to the ECB's whims.

Pretty much tells you completely where this survey is coming from...

This is hilarious.

Erik just had a major heist at one of his companies, and he's on a cybersecurity company "first pick"?

Hey, while he's at it, McAfee should get Mark Karpeles in there as "Exchange Auditor and Specialist".

LOL.

I find this a bit funny.

Japan is drowning in debt, and all of those JGB's (Japanese Gov Bonds) aren't just going to evaporate into the night air. One major Japanese bank has already pulled as a primary dealer, which softens the market and is causing a bit of a crisis of confidence in Abe's horrific "print money until you make it" plan to resurrect the Japanese economy.

They could use a crypto-currency as a bridge out, but developing their own sovereign coin will have some risks - most notably their population is much older than other countries, so the ones that would have to switch are precisely those that may not understand what the hell a crypto-coin really is. I suppose they will spin their wheels on this one, but it seems a little too late for them to step out from under the huge tsunami of debt that is crippling their country.

If this shows adoption and success, that would be fine, but I am skeptical that a misguided government could produce anything of real utility in time to save anything.