Bitcoin - Part 2

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You know how fun it is to find a list of blogs I read a couple months ago there's the initial one that started the fuss. I spend way too much time reading news and blogs probably. Seems like I am the only one. There are articles that follow up and elaborate on this one.

http://pando.com/2014/11/14/tor-smear/
 
MinnesotaBrant said:
You are not addressing that most bitcoin transactions use TOR which, presumably is a weak link at this point since it was presumably started by the CIA.
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You have not established that most bitcoin transactions use Tor nor that most of those transactions have been de-anonymised. Tor may have started off as a US Navy Research Laboratory project but that doesn't make it a CIA created weak link.

As Steven J. Murdoch (Tor project member) points out:
Given enough resources, attackers will be able to de-anonymise at least some of Tor’s users, some of the time, but it’s still the best web privacy solution we have today. The next generation of systems will be better still.

http://theconversation.com/tor-the-...-but-is-it-still-secure-after-silk-road-35395
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There were quite a few articles making that link but that was a few months ago. Just remember that Snowdon said that TOR is absolutely secure, also said that he hosted one of the nodes in Hawaii when he worked for the CIA. So you know its legit because he is anti whatever and so why would he make things up. in A follow up article there said that all the information from TOR ran through like 11 points? (I forget the name) and if a person managed to gain control of half of them they could reroute the data anywhere they wanted. How this made the news is that a small group of hackers managed to do this. Since most of these areas are run by various governments (you get the idea).
 
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To be fair, money in your bank account is not 100% secure. I had a friend who had 10k disappear from from one of her accounts (she had a lot of accounts in various places like a lot of rich people do). She told the bank about it but they did nothing because computers don't lie etc. So she just stopped doing business with the bank. Seems to me I have 100 bucks disappear from the same bank and there really is nothing you can do about it since the computer cannot lie. Probably it was some adjustment from an overpayment two years ago that they neglected to mention. Or something.
 
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MinnesotaBrant said:
To be fair, money in your bank account is not 100% secure. I had a friend who had 10k disappear from from one of her accounts (she had a lot of accounts in various places like a lot of rich people do). She told the bank about it but they did nothing because computers don't lie etc. So she just stopped doing business with the bank. Seems to me I have 100 bucks disappear from the same bank and there really is nothing you can do about it since the computer cannot lie. Probably it was some adjustment from an overpayment two years ago that they neglected to mention. Or something.
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They have to keep records. Couldn't you ask them for a transaction history, and see where the money went? You can usually look up the transaction history online.
 
I think for the lady her account just disapeared. For me 100 bucks disappeared but there was no record of a removal for as far back as I cared to go. I probably could have gotten my hundred bucks back if I made a fuss but if you tell your bank that your 10k account disappeared with accurate info to back it up they might tell you to stuff it. For this lady she was keeping 10k in a lot of accounts at different banks.
 
MinnesotaBrant said:
To be fair, money in your bank account is not 100% secure. I had a friend who had 10k disappear from from one of her accounts (she had a lot of accounts in various places like a lot of rich people do). She told the bank about it but they did nothing because computers don't lie etc. So she just stopped doing business with the bank. Seems to me I have 100 bucks disappear from the same bank and there really is nothing you can do about it since the computer cannot lie. Probably it was some adjustment from an overpayment two years ago that they neglected to mention. Or something.
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We have a lot of bank accounts, in part because we have quite a lot of money, in part because have personal, business, charity and housing management company accounts to manage. Most of the accounts are in the UK but there are a couple in the U.S. as well.

Mrs Don does the money management and in close to 25 years she has never failed to get the balance to reconcile exactly and we've never had money disappear from the account in the way that you describe. Go back to the last point at which the balance reconciled and step through all the transactions from that point.
 
The Don said:
Mrs Don does the money management and in close to 25 years she has never failed to get the balance to reconcile exactly and we've never had money disappear from the account in the way that you describe. Go back to the last point at which the balance reconciled and step through all the transactions from that point.
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I can only heartily agree. Individuals should regularly check their accounts to verify that there are no mysterious entries. For businesses, the standard is even higher. They should ensure that their bank records and accounting records reconcile always. That means examining each bank statement and making sure that each entry matches one in the accounting records or that there is an explanation where it doesn't (eg cheque not cleared).

It was during one such reconciliation exercise that I was doing for a business that I was managing that I found a $4,000 discrepancy. Because I was doing the bookkeeping properly, I easily found out what had happened. A person involved in the business before me had managed to maintain a "back door" to the bank account when he handed control of the account over to me. (The bank never gave me the details about that). He used that back door to make an unauthorized withdrawal (it would never have happened if it was a bitcoin wallet :D).

Had I been slack about the reconciliations, this person would most likely have gotten away with it. As it was, a friendly call from Mr Plod resulted in a happy ending (I got the money back).
 
really online bank accounts are just spreadsheets so I presume if someone removes some money months or years back the spreadsheet just adjusts. As far as the Lady goes she was just old and either forgot she withdrew the account or it was cleared by someone else. Like I said she had so many accounts that she had difficulty keeping track of all of them. Her reason for disputing the bank was that she never withdrew money from these accounts. Hardly proof enough for a bank to cough up 10k.

Also snoden said that a computer can crack any 8 digit password in about a second. He advised using phrases that were long that only you would know like 1day1doghad1puppy8Yearsago?goFigure. See harder to crack. so if your wallet password can be cracked in about a second just how secure is your bitcoin anyway?
 
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MinnesotaBrant said:
really online bank accounts are just spreadsheets so I presume if someone removes some money months or years back the spreadsheet just adjusts.
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They're not spreadsheets, they're electronic ledgers. They record where each transaction comes from and where each transaction goes to, and what the balance is at the time the transactions are made.
 
MinnesotaBrant said:
Also snoden said that a computer can crack any 8 digit password in about a second. He advised using phrases that were long that only you would know like 1day1doghad1puppy8Yearsago?goFigure. See harder to crack. so if your wallet password can be cracked in about a second just how secure is your bitcoin anyway?
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If you were to post a link to "snoden" you would probably find that his remarks don't apply to passwords that are purely random alphanumeric (including upper and lower case) characters. Your "long" password would be much easier to crack since it isn't random.

BTW The private key to a bitcoin wallet is not an 8 digit password. It is 256 bits or 32 bytes long. (This equates to 64 characters in the range 0-9,A-F). https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Private_key

Newer wallets may use BIP 32 seeds for their private keys, which can be as long as 512 bits.
 
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MinnesotaBrant said:
really online bank accounts are just spreadsheets so I presume if someone removes some money months or years back the spreadsheet just adjusts.
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Not at all, at least not in my experience. You're claiming that the bank can retroactively apply a transaction months of years in the past and that this will mean that all balances from that time forward will have changed.

I've never experienced anything like this as a customer and in years of working on banking systems I haven't found anything like this in banking systems. Historic errors and/or adjustments require a current balancing transaction otherwise all of the bank's balances will be thrown out.
 
The Don said:
Not at all, at least not in my experience. You're claiming that the bank can retroactively apply a transaction months of years in the past and that this will mean that all balances from that time forward will have changed.

I've never experienced anything like this as a customer and in years of working on banking systems I haven't found anything like this in banking systems. Historic errors and/or adjustments require a current balancing transaction otherwise all of the bank's balances will be thrown out.
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The bank in question does their auditing at night/ all the figures are wrong all night until the supposed correct ones appear in the morning. You would have to really know exactly what you put in and took out over time to know if it's right. In my case the balance went down for no discernible reason. In the case of the woman, she is old and rich and probably didn't want to mess with it other than to bitch about it. She just stopped doing business with the bank. You would think if the money just disappeared there would be some record of the withdrawal somewhere. Maybe she was full of it.
 
MinnesotaBrant said:
The bank in question does their auditing at night/ all the figures are wrong all night until the supposed correct ones appear in the morning. You would have to really know exactly what you put in and took out over time to know if it's right. In my case the balance went down for no discernible reason.
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They will have had their previous day open/close balance and transactions

They will have had their current day open/close balance and transactions

If open balance + transactions <> closing balance then that will flag a reconciliation error

I don't think you understand how banking systems work. They cannot retrospectively apply a transaction so if you start at the point at which your balance last reconciled (to your own records) and work forward reconciling each day/week/month then you'll find the transaction. If you don't have a record of all your transactions then how can you possibly know whether or not there is an error ?

Your $100 didn't just disappear, I assure you, there will be transaction(s) accounting for it. They may be withdrawals, they may be fees and penalties but the transactions will be there.

MinnesotaBrant said:
In the case of the woman, she is old and rich and probably didn't want to mess with it other than to bitch about it. She just stopped doing business with the bank. You would think if the money just disappeared there would be some record of the withdrawal somewhere. Maybe she was full of it.
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Yes, there will be a record of the transaction(s)
 
I think the point they are trying to make is if it travels anywhere across the internet it may not be in fact encrypted even though you think it is. Let me go google if anybody has broken into a bitcoin wallet. I do know that billions of bitcoins have been either confiscated or stole in the last few years, usually from crooked exchanges.

Here's some info from cracked.com. I guess a group of data miners nearly destroyed bitcoin to prove that it could be done. Plus apparently right now it costs more in electricity to mine a bitcoin than the bitcoin is worth so unless the price goes up there could be a problem. Sounds like it costs 4x the electicity cost per bitcoin mined at current prices.

http://www.cracked.com/quick-fixes/4-reasons-bitcoin-hoarders-are-screwed/

Here are hackers talking about cracking wallets in controlled environments. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2yx99h/my_4_character_bip38_cracking_challenge_has_been/
 
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MinnesotaBrant said:
I think ............
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Thinking is not enough. The Don and I have given you referenced facts that rebut your recent thought bubbles on bitcoin and banking in general but rather than deal with them, you simply generate new thought bubbles.

This thread and its predecessor have provided a wealth of information with respect to double-spending, majority attacks, transaction malleability, the SHA256 algorithm, market vulnerabilities and many other aspects of bitcoin. You would do well to read them and understand the references instead of making rookie remarks about bitcoin.
 
Thought bubbles! I'm in a cartoon.:cool: I think I am going to invest in rent probably monday even though that will never be a good long term investment
 
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