Discussion
Hacker Mints $80 Million worth of Fake Stablecoins and Swaps Them For ETH
dmitrygr: Self-Funding Bug Bounties strike again.
dafelst: But guys, what you don't understand is that the code IS the contract!!! That means you don't even NEED regulation!!
le-mark: Tl;dr another bug in a smart contract exploited, hacker got away clean.
KK7NIL: Sounds like it's working as designed!
tekla: Hacker? The coins were minted with perfectly valid code.
andai: If the admins can "lock all transactions", what's the point of it being a crypto?
colordrops: Exactly. Stablecoins make zero sense.
AIorNot: dang.. stealing money from fools and speculators.
primitivesuave: Missing from the article - the hacker first compromised Resolv Lab's AWS account, took a private key from KMS that was used to control minting, then managed to extract $25 million into ETH before all protocol functions were suspended.
outside2344: How is this industry still an industry?
danny_codes: People love gambling. Get rich quick pitches have always been popular.Now, as to why the SEC hasn’t regulated crypto out of existence.. I refer you to dementia Don
bigfishrunning: Joe had 4 years, Barack had 8. The office of the president doesn't seem motivated to regulate crypto
amarant: What is the point of stable coins? Like why does anyone buy them?It seems to me that their initial value is 1usd per token (or some other fiat I guess) and that's also the roof of their value: they kinda guarantee that they won't become more valuable than that.They are less usable than fiat: more businesses accept fiat than crypto, especially weird and small coins like all stable coins are.There isn't really a floor to their value, as demonstrated here.I see plenty of downsides of owning one of these coins, but not a single upside?Yet people apparently do buy them, so what is the upside? There must surely be something that's good about them?
0x3f: I don't know how this specific thing works, but I don't really see any fundamental problem with mixing and matching. If you believe in the benefits of crypto, then 50% crypto is still possibly better than 0%.It's not like I forgo a lock on my front door just because my windows are made of glass.
mnkyprskbd: Currency isn't a homebrew computer or backyard car project; it is either centralised or not; there is no in between.Blockchain with central authority is the worst of both worlds.
0x3f: Not really. At a traditional bank I have to trust n people with varying degrees of access. Et ceteris paribus, any reduction in n is an improvement, even if n is not zero.Of course n can be smaller and the specific people less trustworthy, but that's quite a different thing.
koakuma-chan: you can send them around easily without having to deal with bullshit payment systems
bigfishrunning: Until it becomes another bullshit payment system
consumer451: Oh wow, there's another interesting story on that site:> Trump Administration Likely to Un-ban Bitcoin Mixers, Dept. of Treasury Says They are “Not Unlawful”https://bfmtimes.com/trump-likely-to-un-ban-bitcoin-mixers/
0x3f: I thought Tornado Cash was already taken off the OFAC list a year ago.
0x3f: Yeah, people who genuinely believe that don't have any problem with smart contracts getting exploited. Of course there are people who _say_ that because it's financially expedient at the time, then change their tune. But both groups exist and this is not really a gotcha.
snypher: No-one in the real world wants to be paid with a $USR. Most everyone wants a cashapp/zelle/PayPal/wire transfer. The bullshit payment systems gained ground on crypto while crypto became more difficult/less usable
anonym29: Stablecoins aren't cryptocurrencies in any sense of the word. It's just electronic FIAT.
amarant: I mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto?As long as you burn as much electricity as Andorra does in a week just to make a transaction, you're probably a cryptocurrency. And that's their sole benefit it seems.
snypher: Ok so we are expected to trust; the creator/s, some random hacker, whoever else has the key? So the value here is between 2 and 'many'.
mnkyprskbd: At a traditional bank you have your national deposit insurance scheme; you get that in return for converting your "assets" to the said nations issued currency but accept the authorities control of the money supply and your funds.With decentralised money, you get the safety of a globally distributed attestation backed by cryptography without a single authority controlling the supply of money or your funds.There is no halfway option. You either have a single authority that can exercise control or you do not; number of delegates for exercise of control is almost irrelevant since you can change banks.
ribosometronome: That access is to provide account support, no? Reverse fraudulent transactions and the like. A "bank" could just not do that save for if you're a large enough client to merit attention but why would I want to bank there if I'm not a large enough client?
fintech_eng: They’re not really meant to go up in value.The main use is just having something dollar-like that you can move around easily. That’s useful outside the US, but also for plenty of people inside the US depending on what they’re doing; especially businesses that have a hard time getting or keeping normal banking (cough gambling, porn, weed cough).They’re handy inside crypto since you can move in/out of other assets without touching a bank. And sometimes you can earn yield on them, which is part of the appeal (with the usual “this can blow up” caveats).Also, there’s a reason every company wants to launch one: if you control the stablecoin, you get the float and the rails. That’s a pretty nice business if people actually use it.If you already have solid access to USD and don’t care about that flexibility, they’re less compelling.But yeah, not risk-free at all (depegs, issuer risk, etc). And honestly there probably isn’t much real need for dozens of slightly different stables beyond the business incentives.
kogasa240p: Monero is better for that task.
anonym29: >I mean they use Blockchain, right? Isn't that like the only real requirement for the name crypto?Absolutely not. Cryptocurrently exclusively refers to permissionless, decentralized, cryptographically secured, irreversible, fungible monetary system with a disinflationary or non-inflationary supply, following a voluntary, collectivized governance model.A vast majority of tokens colloquially referred to as "cryptocurrency" couldn't be further from these principles. There are no stablecoins that are cryptocurrency. Ethereum is not cryptocurrency. Any coin issued by a corporation (e.g. Ripple) is not a cryptocurrency.
sota_pop: Very much this, it’s all the technical rigour, code debt, and none of controls/reversibility.At least when I report fraud to credit card or my bank, they can stop or undo/chargeback a transaction.
kogasa240p: Makes it easier to do pump and dumps, was never about "privacy" or "decentralization" as web3 types parroted 4-5 years ago. Monero is the exception btw.
protocolture: I dont mind smart contracts getting battle tested.I also dont mind the whole chain coming together to vote to reverse the transaction.I also dont mind a bunch of people being unhappy with that and forking.
lagniappe: PYUSD is run by PayPal afaik.
amarant: Ah, so we're basically battling the prudishness of VISA and MasterCard?That... Actually makes sense.. Which is a rare feat for crypto!
nkrisc: If my money in the bank is stolen I have legal recourse.
dylan604: is insured by the FDIC legal recourse?
mothballed: FDIC does not cover bank theft[]. FDIC deposit insurance does not protect against losses due to theft or fraud, which are addressed by other laws. That's covered by private bankers bond insurance, much like you could get for a decentralized stored pots of gold or you can buy insurance in the form of put options (like on IBIT) on the loss of value of bitcoin or if your cold wallet is stolen you can initiate legal proceedings against the thief.[] https://www.fdic.gov/news/fact-sheets/crypto-fact-sheet-7-28...
troad: But you do have to deal with bullshit payment systems. I can't receive stablecoins in my regular bank account, I'd have to set up some crypto nonsense on DankRocketBets or whatever for it to even work.Why would I do this when I can already receive actual USD without any extra ceremony?Stablecoins are a solution in search of a problem.
MrDrone: The contract code said, "if you have a valid (off-chain) private key, you can mint tokens." The hacker gained access to their AWS account and ultimately their keys.While I am happy to celebrate dumb crypto stuff, this isn't a situation where someone's code was "exploited." Their code was stupid, relying only on an off-chain private key to allow the minting of tokens. Their security was just also bad.
