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The Courts

Investor Sues the Winklevoss Twins' Troubled Crypto Business Over Security Failures (theverge.com) 25

IRA Financial Trust, a platform that lets users save for retirement in alternative assets like cryptocurrency, is suing the Gemini cryptocurrency exchange over an alleged failure to protect its customers from a heist that resulted in the theft of $36 million in crypto. The financial platform partners with Gemini, owned by the Winklevoss twins, Cameron and Tyler, to allow customers to trade and store cryptocurrency. From a report: In February, IRA was the victim of a major attack that drained the millions in funds customers had stored with Gemini. The company was reportedly swatted, the act of calling the police to report a fake crime at someone's location, when the cyberattack occurred. Police showed up at IRA's South Dakota headquarters after false reports of a robbery, while bad actors made off with millions in crypto. At the time, a source close to Gemini told CoinDesk it wasn't hacked and that it makes various security controls available to its partners. "Gemini knew about the risks attendant to crypto assets," IRA's complaint states. "In fact, it built its public image around purportedly mitigating those risks. But like so much else in the world of crypto, Gemini's image is just that: an image. In reality, Gemini brushes security aside when there is a chance to earn more revenue."
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Investor Sues the Winklevoss Twins' Troubled Crypto Business Over Security Failures

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  • Ok, I have to ask (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @02:27PM (#62600964)

    Who the fuck cares?

    • by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @02:44PM (#62601022)

      The morons that still deeply believe the fantasy that crapcoins have value do. Anybody else knows they are hot air and nothing else.

    • Me. This is the equivalent of the Fox News feelgood story about a long lost puppy making its way home safely, except it's rich fuckers getting getting their asses sued for being scammy shits.

      • The divorce (or whatever) lawsuit between two alleged celebrities that recently clogged the airwaves wasn't enough for you?

        • I like your use of the word "alleged" because I have no idea what you're talking about. Your airwaves are clearly different to mine.

          • Some celebrity couple had a mudslinging, complete with court dates and the usual scandals. Please don't ask me who or whether they were really famous.

  • Oh yeah, Cryptobois were all so dismissive of fiat currency. They were not going to be controlled by any central bank. No government will be able to tax them, ha haa! And it is all pure free market, winner take all libertarian utopia.

    Now they are crying uncle, paying their lawyers in fiat currency, suing in a court funded by tax dollars, and asking for tax payer funded government to enforce their contracts ...

    Where are the idiots who sanctimoniously blabbered "taxation = theft by government"?

  • This might be a dumb question - but if we see that stolen money is moved to a particular address - can we not roll back those particular transactions? I also wondered this when I read an article about NFTs being 'stolen'. At the very least you could mark that asset as burned and untradable.
    • Re:Rollback (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Pascoea ( 968200 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @03:36PM (#62601194)
      You'd need regulation to do this. And that goes against what the crypto believers stand on. In order to roll back a transaction you have to have someone decide if it's a legitimate request, otherwise it's the wild west. What would stop someone from giving someone some BTC for payment, then turn around and request the transaction be reversed?
      • by mysidia ( 191772 )

        In order to roll back a transaction you have to have someone decide if it's a legitimate request,

        It doesn't matter.. the Bitcoin network makes it technically impossible to reverse a transaction, unless you get transactions to return coins signed by the Secret key of each address the coins ended up in AND someone paying additional Satoshis to make up for the fees that have to be paid for the reversing transactions.

        • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
          To be honest, I wasn't even looking at it from at technical perspective. I don't know enough about blockchains/bitcoin to even comment intelligently. I was looking at it solely from a process standpoint, and how things work with real banks/credit cards.
  • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday June 07, 2022 @04:10PM (#62601302)

    Sorry this is off topic, I'm sure there's some more content in the summary but all I can read is that there is a company that allows people to save for retirement by investing in highly volatile assets the value of which couldn't possibly be predicted day to day.

    That's the real story here, that people are stupid enough to invest like this. Shit many pension funds offer their customers the ability to invest only in bonds because blue-chip stocks are seen as too volatile and high risk for retirement investments. And then there's IRA Financial Trust, who didn't even bother with going off the deep end as much as they went and jumped overboard into the ocean during a hurricane.

    • I agree, stupidest idea ever to do with retirement money !!
    • On the one hand, chalk it all up to greed. But on the other, I'm sure its all about the potential upside. If your investments are sufficiently diversified you could put a small portion of it into crypto and then wait to see if it was eventually worth the risk. "About 1% of companies accounted for all of the global net wealth creation. - The other 99% of companies were a distraction to the task of making money."

      If BTC goes from 30k to 300k, your small risky investment of say 10% of your portfolio could grow

  • A pity they both can't lose

  • The twins might end up going to the big house in matching outfits.
  • a fake crime report to cover up a heist of pretend money

    head explodes.

  • I just know that some people are not able to actually solve this problem. That's why I think you should always think about your security and that's why I chose Pandadoc [pandadoc.com] because I know that this company provides security for my documents. Recently on this site I learned about what is the security of notes.

A right is not what someone gives you; it's what no one can take from you. -- Ramsey Clark

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