>I've seen multiple articles talking about people as young as 10 years old creating apps. This wasn't possible in the 80s and 90s.
In 1980s UK kids were writing games that sold in their hundreds of thousands.
Maybe not 10 year olds, but 16 year olds like Christian Urquhart, Matthew Smith, Eugene Evans are well known names I can remember off the top of my head. There were other, less known, even younger kids than that writing popular games, and even more younger kids learning to program.
>The current situation reminds me a lot of the time when Firefox replaced Internet Explorer as the most popular browser. And of the time when Chrome replaced Firefox as the most popular browser.
Firefox never replaced IE as the most popular browser and to this day has never been the most popular web browser.
And regardless of whether Bitcoin will break up for whatever reason, it is not analogous to the Internet or the Web; you don't do yourself any favours making such comparisons.
>The nature of this sort of conspiracy theory makes it impossible to disprove.
>For example an identified backdoor and logs pointing to an external hack is exactly what you'd expect to see planted if this were a halfway clever inside job, right? So how do you possibly rule that out?
If only there was an organization whose remit was to investigate and establish the facts behind fraud, robbery, hacking and other crimes.
>You're asking people to prove a negative[1]. It's a common logical fallacy.
No, I'm asking for examples of investigations where authorities have concluded that so-called 'hacks' at Bitcoin exchanges were indeed hacks and not simply thefts by scammers running the services.
>Really? This claim is trivially disprovable. Numerous people have been arrested, including Mark Karpeles of Mt Gox. You've never heard of that case? $500 million allegedly stolen
Karpeles has not been arrested over "$500 million allegedly stolen", which is perhaps why you linked to a story about something else, behind a paywall.
As for Moolah guy, if you have 'proof' that he was arrested over the hacked Mintpal coins that amounts to more than Chinese whispers on Bitcoin forums/blogs, let's see it. All your link does is link to another site that claims he was arrested, almost a year ago, and doesn't even state why.
Even if we assume he might be one day charged with the theft of the coins, that's one person involved in a Bitcoin inside job facing prosecution over it.
I'm sure I can find more than one person involved in an inside job at a bank (involving dollar amounts considerably smaller than we're talking about with Bitcoin 'hacks') doing actual time for it.
>If you happen to be the [current owner of $5 million in Bitcoins], and want to [give away your $5 million in Bitcoins] no questions asked, then you can simply send them to this address
>Edit: Of course, it could also be an inside job. An "exit scam."
Has there ever been any real or serious evidence to demonstrate that any of these seemingly numerous Bitcoin 'hacks' have been legit and not inside jobs, which is exactly what they all look like?
There are so many 'exit hacks' it seems virtually standard practice in the Bitcoin world, perhaps because nobody seems to actually go to jail for it or even face any serious legal investigations into it.
If a bank announced a multi-million dollar 'hack' I'd expect the authorities would be heavily involved, immediately, and everyone with a position to have facilitated a theft would be under suspicion and investigated until ruled out.
One the one hand Bitcoin is a supposedly serious, game changing currency and has billions of dollars tied up in it; on the other, it's treated as little more than internet karma points, and if people have it stolen from a wallet or someone announces yet another million dollar 'hack' at some comical 'exchange' any old clown/scammer can throw up, it seems to be simply 'tough shit' and nothing to see here.
This may be the non-regulated world the fanatics want, but it's a major reason why sane people (currently almost everyone on Earth) will continue to avoid Bitcoin like the plague.
>I don't know, have you tried to buy plane tickets with a credit card? It takes me a solid half hour every time
Funny, because the times I have used Bitcoin it has taken a solid hour, or more, for the payment to 'complete' due to the confirmations required. This for pathetic, tiny payments (like $10 or so), When using a card for airline tickets, for thousands, it takes seconds.
What, so when I'm a customer and a merchant scams me out of Bitcoin, it's my problem? Even though the theft was only possible because that's precisely how Bitcoin is designed to 'work'?
That's exactly why I would not use Bitcoin as a customer, like virtually everyone else on the planet.
Are you seriously so mind-blown at the idea that women (often mothers of young children) might want to have as much information as possible about a person who they don't know, but who they're considering allowing into their lives?
The issue of how each country portrays itself is valid, but to be fair, he's doing it because he's replying to someone doing the same.
The problem is he simply built a straw man to argue with; a comparison between an imaginary NK "evil" (there is no evidence they run a "death camp") with something he deliberately misquoted from the parent post.
The USA will murder you in a death camp for looking at them sideways. Given that context, the difficulty North Koreans have in watching cat videos on Youtube is nothing.
Edit: Downvoters what are you objecting to?
Do you think people in "black sites", like Gitmo, are guilty of something?
Do you believe former staff at Gitmo who say "suicides" were murders are lying?
Do you think NKs can access the internet easily?
Or do just not understand that the ridiculous comparison/exaggeration/simplification in my post is exactly the same as mikeash makes, except he makes it apparently sincerely?
Yep, given the context of something absurd that you just made up, the mildest thing on his list, edited by you to nothing at all, is asinine. Well argued.
In 1980s UK kids were writing games that sold in their hundreds of thousands.
Maybe not 10 year olds, but 16 year olds like Christian Urquhart, Matthew Smith, Eugene Evans are well known names I can remember off the top of my head. There were other, less known, even younger kids than that writing popular games, and even more younger kids learning to program.