Author Archives: shinohai

Buterin's Previous Waterfall Exposed

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Today's altcorn report is brought to us by Gregory Maxwell, who earlier today in a reddit post outed Vitalik Butterin as mastermind of a quantum computer simulation scam. (archived) Maxwell stated

Vitalik's project immediately before Ethereum is that he was collecting investments from people to fund building a computer program to solve NP-complete problems in polynomial time.

No flaming tire in a shipit ever ascended from investor monies, furthering proof that Buterin worked hard at producing vaporware long before pushing the Ether huffing scam.

There May Be Lulz

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A hacking group known as Shadow Brokers announced Monday they were going to auction an assortment of stolen surveillance tools purportedly used by NSA hackers. The group released code samples to boost veracity of their claims, the National Security Agency naturally witholding comment on the subject. Security experts offered mixed opinions on the existence of the malware, and the hackers only said the auction would end at a specified time. (archived) Peace in our specified time.

Popular Voting Machine Hacked With Seals Intact, Plays Pacman

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J. Alex Halderman, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Michigan, has modified a Sequoia AVC-Edge DRE voting machine to play classic video game Pac-Man. The machines were in widespread use in parts of Louisiana, Missouri, Nevada, and Virginia, according to the manufacturer Verified Voting. Instead of "using the machines to steal votes" they decide to use a MAME emulator to play the popular arcade game. The machines have 486 SLE processor and 32 MB of RAM, and runs MS-DOS as it OS. The professor said the machine was last used in the 2008 Williamsburg, Virginia primary elections, and was part of a pair sold for $100. Halderman further indicated the machine can indeed run linux as well, leaving open the possibility for a wider array of future projects.

Sorry For Your 36.067%

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Bitfinex made an updated announcement on the status of their Socialization plan, with users set to take a 36.067% loss in the ass when the exchange re-opens in 24-48 hours. (archived) Party officials said they will need a few more days to hatch excuses to "explain in full detail the methodology used to compute these losses". Delusional party members thanked their wise leaders for the haircut in the comments section, praising Buttfinex's decision to redistribute wealth as they saw fit. Losses are reported to be distributed against all asset classes "held" on Bitfinex. They are the 36.067%!

Hacked Exchange Other Than Bitfinex Also Plans Reopening

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Gatecoin has announced it will be re-launching it's trading platform soon, in attempts to revive the image of a company that lost 15% of it's net worth in a security breach. The exchange plans to resume trading on August 17th at 08:00 GMT. Feeble car-salesman tactics to lure back ETH huffers to the platform include no trading fees until September, and the ability to withdraw DAO tokens. Gatecoin has promised customers "round-the-clock security monitoring with constant penetration testing" which likely translates to greater odds of the customer being penetrated anally. Sorry for your loss.

Magnr Pauses Trading Stirring Worry

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Magnr "Savings and trust" announced in an email to customers today that it was pausing trading to review it's security measures. (archived) The letter stated:

"In the past 24 hours, Bitfinex has announced that their exchange has been victim of
a security breach resulting in the suspension of activity on their website until
further notice.

As a result, we have placed a temporarily pause on Magnr Trading. During this time,
clients will have the ability to liquidate existing open trades on Bitstamp and
itBit but will not be able to open new trading positions."

While Magnr says they monitor their service 24 hrs daily, users of the platform do not have control of any private cryptographic keys and therefore have little hope of recovering any funds stored therein were the company's servers to experience a breach.

Bitfinex Embraces Socialism In Losing

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Buttfinex released yet another cryptic statement this evening, calling the so-called hack a "socialized loss" which likely translates into more sorry for your loss for their customers. The statement simply said there are no hard figures yet officially released, but the company promised an amended FAQ and more information regarding the extent of the breach tomorrow. Bitfinex, making socialism great again since 2013.

Shapeshift.io Unveils Ether Cleaver

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ShapeShift.io has announced a new service making it easier to launder "clean" Ether-huffer's funds. (archived) The tool, located at split.shapeshift.io, says it can "safely separate or "clean" your Ethereum balances and avoid replay attacks and lost coins." The news comes too late to help chief ETH huffer Brian Armstrong of Coinbase, whose company is still rumored to be of questionable solvency due to not understanding how hard forks work.1

  1. Edit: Coinbase just announced it would be awarding users "credits" "soon" for the amount of Ethereum users have that wasn't subject to Buterin's time travel theft to bailout the DAO.  ↩

Bitfinex Director Claims 119,756 Bitcoins Lost

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Reddit user zanetackett, Director of Community and Product Development for Bitfinex, is now claiming that losses total 119,756 BTC in the hack reported on earlier today. Attackers were apparently able to obtain the offline keys used for the multisig setup used by the exchange, though Buttfinex officials have yet to comment on the exact attack vector. The company further states that "their insurance does not cover these losses" and that "Any settlements will be at the current market prices as of 18:00 UTC" which was just at $600 per coin.

Coinbase And Reddit Work To Hide Blood From Users

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With rumours of insolvency still buzzing on social media, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong took to Twitter to announcing that the company "has all funds to cover user deposits." Apparently cryptographic proof is too hard for the company to present to the public. (archived) Irate users quickly responded with calls for independent audits as Ether huffers still wonder why the exchange refuses to credit their Ethereum Classic tokens to their accounts. Armstrong reminded users that Coinbase "is not a wallet" and users can store their funds in a multisig vault – the exact same type of setup that failed to protect users of Evolution darknet market when it collapsed in an exit scam. The official Coinbase site still bills itself as a digital currency wallet, and offers a "wallet app" on the Google Play store. The companion announcement on reddit quickly was upvoated to the front page. Sorry fork, your loss.