Alicorn comments on Will Darkcoin Have Thiel's Last Mover Advantage - Less Wrong

-4 Post author: diegocaleiro 23 May 2014 09:39PM

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Comment author: Alicorn 23 May 2014 10:29:09PM 3 points [-]

I got Louie's newsletter and clicked the Darkcoin link but couldn't figure out how to actually buy any. What did I miss?

Comment author: radical_negative_one 24 May 2014 12:11:46AM 6 points [-]

Now that I'm curious about what I missed, where can I sign up for Louie's newsletter? I just spent ten minutes looking and I can't find it.

Comment author: lukeprog 24 May 2014 02:35:39AM 5 points [-]
Comment author: lukeprog 24 May 2014 02:35:03AM 4 points [-]

I bought BTC with USD via Coinbase, then deposited the BTC from Coinbase into a newly created Cryptsy account, and then traded the BTC for DRK on Cryptsy.

Comment author: Tenoke 24 May 2014 08:24:37AM *  1 point [-]

Make sure to also get a DRK wallet and to transfer your coins there in the end, instead of leaving it on Cryptsy.

Comment author: lukeprog 24 May 2014 04:24:29PM 0 points [-]

Any recommendations on where to get a secure online DRK wallet, a la a BTC wallet with blockchain.info?

Comment author: Tenoke 24 May 2014 04:50:31PM *  1 point [-]

I don't think that there are any online wallets for DRK yet. At any rate, I wouldn't recommend you to use one even if some have popped up - I've personally been burned (and so was gwern) by the first online wallet for Dogecoin (Dogewallet) back in December.

My recommendation is to download one of the wallets from their page (I used darkcoin-qt for linux), encrypt it with a long passphrase (you will either be prompted to do so or there will be an option to encrypt it in settings), wait for it to sync, transfer your darkcoins to an address in the wallet, make a few backups (usually from file>backup) and optionally even delete the actual wallet and forget about it for a while (in case the wallet code has vulnerabilities).

This sounds like more work than it is, however, it really isn't and you really shouldn't rely on a buggy exchange like Cryptsy (or any exchange for that matter) for longer than you need to, nor an online wallet recently created by unknowns.

Comment author: gwern 15 January 2016 06:23:50PM *  1 point [-]

This sounds like more work than it is, however, it really isn't and you really shouldn't rely on a buggy exchange like Cryptsy

To follow up a little on this: where there was smoke, there is fire. I swore off Cryptsy use after I noticed while trying to buy a little bit of Doge to hedge that Cryptsy was so buggy that it would let you go into negative balances. I discussed this on #lw-bitcoin with some other LWers also noticing bugs on Cryptsy; we decided that this bug alone was probably exploitable through trading but we didn't want to risk being wrong or committing a crime*. Some months afterwards, reports began popping up of Cryptsy being ban-happy and not letting people withdraw... Finally, the hammer has dropped.

Lo and behold: http://blog.cryptsy.com/post/137323646202/announcement They were hacked over a year and a half ago for 13,000 bitcoins. They had no cold wallet, and they ran all of the scamcoin daemons, written by con artists and random Internet people and used by a dozen people, on the same server as the real bitcoins, and all it took was one trojan dropped in a super-obscure altcoin to steal everything. Then naturally they decided to keep running fractional while lying their asses off to try to pull things back (how they ever expected to recover 13,000 bitcoins, I don't know, so probably they were lying about their motives too to keep the salaries flowing).

Priceless quote:

This worked fine for awhile, as profits decreased due to low volume and low Bitcoin prices, we would adjust our spending accordingly. It wasn’t until an article from Coinfire came out that contained many false accusations that things began to crumble. The article basically caused a bank-run, and since we only had so much in reserves for those currencies problems began.

* The bug was that you could sell an amount twice. So you could deposit 1 bitcoin, and buy 2 bitcoins' worth of an altcoin, leaving your account in a state of -1 bitcoin (!) and +2 altcoin. You couldn't withdraw until you repaid your -1 debt, but this still seemed exploitable. The exploit would run: deposit bitcoins; go into negative balance on Bitcoin by overbuying some volatile altcoin like Litecoin; if the altcoin happens to double or triple, you then cash back into Bitcoin for profits, but if it doesn't go anywhere, you can cash back at no loss, and if it drops, you just abandon that account and create a new one. In effect, you are speculating with free margin/leverage.

Comment author: diegocaleiro 23 May 2014 10:51:52PM 0 points [-]

Tripling your money in a week, assuming you sold today and bought that day.

Does anyone know how small the market cap of Darkcoin has to be for it to be the conventional currency for money laundering (with bitcoin in between of course)? This is when I plan to withdraw, when the marginal return of its most robust reason for winning becomes negligible.

How much needs to be laundered daily these days? Are there good sources on black markets?

Comment author: Dustin 23 May 2014 10:31:43PM 0 points [-]
Comment author: Alicorn 24 May 2014 02:12:48AM 0 points [-]

Yes, I found that, but its link for "buy darkcoin" goes to the Moolah website, which doesn't have any obvious way to buy darkcoin with USD on it.

Comment author: gwern 24 May 2014 02:25:54AM *  13 points [-]

Just a note for anyone considering going via Moolah: at the request of a third party, I recently spent a few hours digging through Moolah.io's online presence, shell corporations, domain names, and server fingerprints; I was left with an extremely bad impression of them - if Moolah is not itself a scam, it could turn into one at any time, and is likely technically vulnerable to the first skilled hacker to come along. (So a bit like MtGox.) If you ever use Moolah, make sure to keep your exposure to it as minimal as possible.

EDIT: see:

Comment author: Furcas 24 May 2014 02:24:52AM *  0 points [-]

Once you've registered there's a link to their exchange, Prelude... which has had problems with account activation for a week. -_-