<nettime> Bankers on ecstasy (but is the party over?)

[Jaromil <jaromil@dyne.org>]

dear nettimers,

following up the crypto-money craze on "Blockchains", the diva setup
of Ethereum we-will-run-the-computer-of-the-world (and you will all be
assimilated or obsoleted) left a big crater this morning (CET time)

http://uk.businessinsider.com/dao-hacked-ethereum-crashing-in-value-tens-of-millions-allegedly-stolen-2016-6

(US is just waking up to it, many more articles will likely come)

An exploited bug in DAO contracts (the trans-humanist dream who wanted
to run automatic contracts because humans are too stupid and too slow)
burned more than 60 milion worth of dollars as ETH started flowing
into a mysterious account.

Those whom I have spoken to about the issue may remember: I've always
discouraged from stepping on ETH grounds, not just because of all the
fanfare and the me-me-me shilling grounds, but because there is little
reasoning on *computational language* in its implementation. A few
other people share this opinion, the very well respectable Bitcoin
developer Greg Maxwell for instance points out here
https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/4oij7v/oleg_andreev_on_twitter_vitalik_tries_to_switch/d4cvjo1
that "It's the recursive call issue, -- ultimately it's a design flaw
in the EVM that makes it very hard to write safe code. Even many of
their examples were vulnerable to it and similar forms."

as well bright researchers like Meredith point out in a twit now
https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/743770126156128256
"Told you gas wasn't sufficient to keep Ethereum secure. Turns out,
program semantics matter!"

and more bits worth reading here
https://medium.com/@beautyon_/the-fundamental-problems-with-ethereum-408c420849f0#.vjttpujex

Also for the literates, here you'll find a pretty good analysis of the
flaws http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/16/scanning-live-ethereum-contracts-for-bugs/

Now I really hope you don't mind me cashing on some "I told'ya"s.

It is anyway not why I'm writing.

I'm writing to try answer another question, curious of your opinion:
how the hell 60 and more millions (still counting) were stuffed into
this toy?! now put your seatbelt on and be ready to know that
*banksters are on ecstasy*. So much of the bailed out financial sector
has been busy on it and investing it.

3days ago the news recited: "R3 Issues Buterin's "Ethereum Platform
Review" Papers--Opportunities and Challenges for Private and
Consortium Blockchains"
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/r-issues-buterin-s-ethereum-platform-review-papers-opportunities-and-challenges-for-private-and-consortium-blockchains-1465943849

Ethereum was in fact funded with early chip-ins from Goldman Sachs and
grew later as the rather sloppy brainchild of a growing consortium of
Banks which evidently needed some excuse to dump the bailouts of tax
payers into some sort of "tech innovation" gig. Yet another one? here:
"ING Bank Participates in R3's Comparative Test of Distributed Ledgers
and Cloud Platforms"
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/ing-bank-participates-in-r-s-comparative-test-of-distributed-ledgers-and-cloud-platforms-1457543723

Oh BTW Peter Thiel is also involved. Just sayin'

So what is this R3 about really? 

R3 and consortium member banks Barclays, BMO Financial Group, Credit
Suisse, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, HSBC, Natixis, Royal Bank of
Scotland, TD Bank, UBS, UniCredit and Wells Fargo each connected on an
R3-managed private peer-to-peer distributed ledger, underpinned by
Ethereum technology and hosted on a virtual private network in
Microsoft Azure, the public cloud platform offering Blockchain as a
Service (BaaS) in an accelerated development environment.

http://r3cev.com/press/2016/1/20/r3-brings-eleven-major-global-financial-institutions-together-on-a-cloud-based-distributed-ledger

And here for a full list:

The banks involved in the project include Banco Santander, Bank of
America, Barclays, BBVA, BMO Financial Group, BNP Paribas, BNY Mellon,
CIBC, Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Citi, Commerzbank, Credit
Suisse, Danske Bank, Deutsche Bank, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, HSBC,
ING Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, Macquarie Bank, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial
Group, Mizuho Financial Group, Morgan Stanley, National Australia
Bank, Natixis, Nomura, Nordea, Northern Trust, OP Financial Group,
Scotiabank, State Street, Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation, Royal
Bank of Canada, Royal Bank of Scotland, SEB, Societe Generale,
Toronto-Dominion Bank, UBS, UniCredit, U.S. Bancorp, Wells Fargo and
Westpac Banking Corporation.


So. well. good luck with the too big to fail! seems like they are
burning their last neurons in crypto-ecstasy, why should you trust
them then? We need re-hab, not bailouts!

ciao

-- 
~.,_   Denis Roio aka Jaromil    http://Dyne.org think &do tank
    "+.   CTO and co-founder      free/open source developers
      @)   ⚷ crypto κρυπτο крипто गुप्त् 加密 האנוסים المشفره
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