Tuesday, June 14, 2011

The darker side of bitcoin

Isn't it funny how sometimes life seems to follow a theme? Here I am being all paranoid about security and not five minutes later I stumble across this:


Hi everyone. I am totally devastated today. I just woke up to see a very large chunk of my bitcoin balance [has been stolen].

I feel like killing myself now. This get me so f'ing pissed off. If only the wallet file was encrypted on the HD. I do feel like this is my fault somehow for now moving that money to a separate non windows computer. I backed up my wallet.dat file religiously and encrypted it but that does not do me much good when someone or some trojan or something has direct access to my computer somehow.

...

Block explorer is down so I cannot even see where the funds went.

I tried restoring an earler backup of my wallet but naturally that does not work because the transaction has already been validated.

Needles to say I feel like I have lost faith in bitcoin.

Anyone have any ideas what I can do besides just jump off a bridge?!


No, there is nothing that this poor sod can do. That is the whole point of bitcoin. It's untraceable virtual cash, and like physical cash, if someone steals it from you it's gone for good.

Wow, the bitcoin that was stolen was worth about half a million dollars at current exchange rates. You gotta wonder if the motive was profit or to undermine trust in bitcoin.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now if only someone stole his gold nuggets, the poor sod would be out of the two favorite libertarian pseudo-currencies.

Has libertarianism always been the domain of sociopaths, whose delusions of self-grandeur lead them to believe that taking Economics 101 makes them understand more than Krugman and Freedman combined?

"No fiat currency!", "Gold Standard", "Socialism", suddenly have "My Bitcoin!!!" to keep them company. Hilarious.

Ron said...

> Has libertarianism always been the domain of sociopaths, whose delusions of self-grandeur lead them to believe that taking Economics 101 makes them understand more than Krugman and Freedman combined?

Apparently:

http://www.slate.com/id/2297019/