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from the you've-never-seen-1000-tonnes-of-gold-instantly-evaporate dept.
User mistakenly takes control of hundreds of wallets containing cryptocurrency Ether, destroying them in a panic while trying to give them back
Unlike most cryptocurrency hacks, however, the money wasn't deliberately taken: it was effectively destroyed by accident. The lost money was in the form of Ether, the tradable currency that fuels the Ethereum distributed app platform, and was kept in digital multi-signature wallets built by a developer called Parity. These wallets require more than one user to enter their key before funds can be transferred.
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/08/cryptocurrency-300m-dollars-stolen-bug-ether
This is less than 1% of the entirety of the total value of Ethereum (as perceived by speculators). One must remember that the national debts of issuers of some fiat currencies could effectively destroy 100% of those currencies, so is it appropriate for dollar users (which indirectly is all of us) to sneer at cryptocurrency users for this apparent weakness which will, presumably, be fixed and never happen again?
(Score: 4, Informative) by Lester on Thursday November 09 2017, @06:03PM
Yes, software reliability is still an unsolved problem. Nevertheless, there is high integrity software methodologies for avionics, nuclear plants, NASA, ESA etc.
https://www.nist.gov/publications/high-integrity-software-standards-and-guidelines [nist.gov]
Nothing guarantees 100% safety (Pathfinder, Ariadna 5...). But they have a ratio of errors very very low. Unfortunately high integrity software methodologies are cost a lot in time, many tests, many documentation, ultra tested compilers and platforms, tools for verification etc. Without reaching such level, banks, VISA etc, have a lot of security audits and exhaustive software verification.
Obviously, that is not what Ethereum and other "Let's change the world" guys are doing.