Luke Dash, one of core developers of Bitcoin just got all his Bitcoins stolen.

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[–]SoCo 5 insightful - 2 fun5 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

This one of the loudest guys who ruined bitcoin (long-term) with the militarized push to monetize fees by creating an artificial block size limit, breaking Satoshi's long term appreciation plan, which many of us believed was a sly government intelligence effort to cripple the coin.

He helped push this controversial change, along with others, through abusing Bitcoin's security weakness in its decentralization. They grouped together the Bitcoin financial gatekeepers, (exchanges, large wallet providers, large mining pools, and payment processors) to bully users into the contentious protocol change. Huge strides in adoption almost immediately erased after that change, as it created large fees. The private company's system, Limp Lightening Network, that hoped to profit directly from that change, seems to have flopped as insecure, fundamentally flawed, and overly complex.

This is the guy who would shadow ban people on Reddit who he lost arguments about it to....then unshaddow ban them weeks later and be like, look no one agreed with you.

Between FTX and this douche, you start to think people are getting paid, or suckered, into hurting crypto or turning against it. They always go for the social engineering the low-hanging fruit, like FTX's drugged out management, or Bitcoin's hyper-liberal kind of slow excessively religious developers.

The bankers are afraid and if you haven't noticed, they've began to pull out the big guns instead of being covert. They are working to crush all crypto very hard right now, with a perpetual stack of crypto destroying bills sitting in Congress, full on media blitz attack, and heavy price manipulation.

[–]BISH 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Sounds like he deserves a beating.

Hopefully someone actually stole his coins.

[–]Canbot 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (5 children)

Cue the bitcoin propagandists to blame him and swear up and down that crypto is secure if only you aren't stupid too. 🤣

[–]BISH 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

If he's smart, then he faked the kidnapping of his own Bitcoin.

If the FEDs can't find his coin, then he'll retire on an island...

[–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

Or it was stolen because there are no phisical assets you can secure so there is no way to secure it from hacking. The "muh if he only was smarter" story is just bitcoin propagandists denying this huge flaw in crypto.

[–]BISH 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Maybe. But it's also true that every transaction is traceable, so it you have a large sum of bitcoin, then you may be on the hook for an avalanche of future tax liability.

They're even considering taxing unrealized gains, as in, taxing the value of owning it before you sell it, etc.

Bitcoin is a surveillance coin, so it's very difficult to hide it if they know you have/had it in a known wallet address... Enter the mystery thief of convenience...

These folks understand the significant traceability problems associated with the current Blockchain design.

You better believe these creative Blockchain coders are planning for a way to break the chain, as a viable tax evading exit strategy.

I hope they figure out a viable technique, because the tax slavers don't deserve a dime.

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Or it was stolen because there are no phisical assets you can secure so there is no way to secure it from hacking.

It can (probably) be secure in perfect conditions. If you are airgapped and the root phrase/password are not compromised, there aren't any confirmed attack vectors. All of these reported incidents did involve exploiting user errors, rather than the protocol itself.

Unless you can show me an example where the protocol itself, rather than user error was the vulnerability

[–]Canbot 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

That is like saying communism is the perfect system of government so long as everyone follows all the rules.

But following all the rules is impossible. Meanwhile it is very easy to secure physical assets.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]dissidentrhetoric 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

    From what I read on twitter, sounds like they stole his private keys and he used those to encrypt his seed/password for his wallet. Someone pointed out that his private key should have a password. Strangely at one point he said his wallet was so old that it didn't have a seed. Not sure why anyone with £3 million in btc would be an old wallet. Could be a way to avoid paying tax though, say its stolen, then sell it on the side.

    I suspect from the sound of things his entire PC was compromised for a few months and then they stole all his passwords.

    [–]SoCo 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

    Sounds like his whole machine was compromised and they got all his accounts and stuff. It sounds like he didn't have his Bitcoins encrypted and or probably used one of those stupid hardware wallets that don't really add any security in this situation.

    [–][deleted]  (2 children)

    [deleted]

      [–][deleted] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      Apparently he lost 3,5 mio $ ...

      [–]Buffalo_fart_XXVIII 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Idiot for keeping it in coin in the first place

      [–]hfxB0oyA 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Shouldn't this guy have known enough to have had it on an air gapped drive?

      [–]IkeConn 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Bless his heart.

      [–]EternalSunset 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

      Bitcoin's hash algorithm is based on SHA256 which was developed by the NSA and is not considered safe by that same agency nowadays. There's probably people on the deep state who have access to computers and algorithms that can crack it in hours if not minutes.

      EDIT: SHA256, not SHA512.

      [–]SoCo 3 insightful - 2 fun3 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

      This is incorrect. Bitcoin uses two rounds of SHA-256. SHA-256, 512, and the whole SHA-2 family were developed by the NSA. We now know to be suspicious of their magic constant numbers.

      Yet, SHA-256 is considered secure and is used to secure almost all of the internet, this website's SSL including. What it is not considered secure for, is securing passwords. This gets into making the proper choices of hashing algorithms for the job at hand rather than a blanket weakness in the algorithm.

      We have to remember that Bitcoin is a public private key encryption system, and SHA-256 is just a one-way-hash done over top of that. Even with the worst case scenario of quantum computing, Bitcoin would at worst run into the password hashing issue with its SHA-256, where hashing the same data twice with the same key would be insecure. This is why even salted password hashes are no longer up to snuff with SHA-256, as they repeat the same hashing repeatedly. In Bitcoin, this means in the future, when it is exposed that quantum computing or other means have made all Internet encryption an open window, that your Bitcoins will only be secure if you send coins no more than once from the same Bitcoin wallet address. Each time you reused you wallet address, you increase the likelihood of that wallet being cracked significantly.

      Lucky, Bitcoin wallets - mostly - already work like this by default. This helps with privacy as well, but each time you send a transaction, you send all of chosen inputs, and the change goes into a brand new address. It would be a small bridge to move to ensuring that you spend all of each wallet address's inputs for any unspent inputs you include in a transaction, moving the unused ones to a new change address. This would probably more secure all around, but with old addresses containing a lot of small inputs, this is slightly problematic due to 'dust' issues and especially with Bitcoins broken fee system.

      [–]Alphix 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

      But if it takes a secret DARPA computer to hack somebody, then "hackers" didn't do it.

      This is all part of a vast, sweeping operation to induce mistrust in cryptocurrencies. You know one crypto that doesn't get assraped? Monero. It is very stable and there are no such stories about it.

      EDIT: of course, also, it hardly gets any press at all...

      [–]dissidentrhetoric 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

      UK government outlawed monero by preventing exchanges from doing business in general if they permitted trades with it.

      I wanted to set up a monero exchange in the cayman islands a few years ago and was talking about the idea on IRC.

      [–]Alphix 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

      Really? The brits targeted XMR specifically?

      [–]dissidentrhetoric 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      Yes. I can still buy any crypto on Kraken but not monero.

      [–]Drewski 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      That really sucks. As a core developer though, he should have known better to keep all his funds in a hot wallet.

      [–]dissidentrhetoric 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

      If you have a wallet like electrum, not sure how anyone can steal your coins. Unless they stole his seed and passwords from a secured password vault? I know that Lastpass was recently hacked, so maybe he was using that?

      I suspect most people have a relatively weak keepass password because they remember it. A weak point for sure, if you have the resources to crack it.