Millions of Dogecoin Stolen Over Christmas 132
Kenseilon writes "The Verge reports that millions of Dogecoins — an alternative cryptocurrency — was stolen after the service DogeWallet was hacked. DogeWallet worked like a bank account for the currency, and the attackers modified it to make sure all transactions ended up in a wallet of their choice. This latest incident is just one in the long (and growing) list of problems that cryptocurrencies are currently facing. It brings to mind the incident where bitcoin exchange service GBL vanished and took a modest amount of Bitcoins with them. While not a similar case, it highlights the difficulties with trusting service provides in this market."
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty much this. After Bitcoin, it was inevitable that copycats would come about. But a cryptocurrency with only redditors who actually believe in its worth, and 4channers scamming each other as the user base? Come on. This is not news for nerds. This does not matter.
As an aside, Ripple [ripple.com] may actually be promising. If cryptocurrency is going to keep being a "thing", there ought to be more than one [wikipedia.org] further down the line.
Re:What? (Score:4, Interesting)
Not really, the problem is that it drastically devalues the currency to have thousands of competing currencies. It made it a major PITA in the early colonial days as each colony had it's own currency and even banks had their own. So you would be paid in Bank of Fred Dollars but need to change them to Town of Funnyville dollars to spend them, oh and surprise there is an exchange rate where some of the value disappeared. It makes it trivial to start scamming people left and right as each currency competes.
I honestly don't see any of the current attempts (BitCoin Included) being a stable or viable long term digital underground currency. It's good now, but nobody has any expectations of it being around even 12 months later. It's starting to catch the attention of countries that do not like the competition and will start looking at it as a way to evade taxes and that will suddenly cause acceptance at legitimate traders to be limited.
I wish there was something that could come around, but if it competes with someone else that has a lot of power, it will lose in the end.