I was kinda excited to see this and the price jump, because I thought I still had the 1,000 Lumens from when they were giving them away at launch. Turns out they accidentally corrupted all accounts created before some date in 2014, so my password and recovery code don't work and there's no way to recover. That doesn't exactly inspire confidence.
IIRC There were a very small number of accounts that were corrupted during our soft launch period. I think it was something like only the first 1000 wallets were affected, but I could be off... it was a long time ago. Did you happen to work for stripe at the time? I feel like it was only the prelaunch wallets we gave out during our client testing period that got hosed beyond recovery.
But other than that, most people who lost their accounts tend to have bad password management skills, frankly. They certainly could also be victims of bugs in our client... it turns out one of our too ambitious goals during our early days was building a banking-grade wallet experience that offered broad browser support with as few developers as we were. Our support queues however were a sobering lesson in how bad passwords are for security and usability and it was just too much for our community manager and us on the dev team to handle. Our bad... we were trying our hardest believe me.
I apologize if you got hosed because of a bug. I do know that all of my friends and family accounts (6 of the earliest accounts in the system post launch) were able to successfully upgrade to the new wallet and network as late as sunday of last week. They. like you I imagine, got their free lumens and then promptly forgot about the project. They all scrambled to update their wallets when the craziness was going on at the end of last week with lumens and they all upgraded fine.
I'd be happy to help you troubleshoot you wallet to see if we can recover you lumens... email me at [email protected] and we can work through it privately if you like. I can't guarantee much, however... I'm presently starting on a leave of absence for the next month or so and so the time I can dedicate to support is pretty truncated at the moment.
Hmmm I just realized I got 6000 back in 2014 and they're now worth $220... I was able to get into my account just fine. Had to upgrade to lumens or whatever.
So the thing they gave for free back when it was worthless and they needed some free word of mouth is unaccessible for everyone who redeemed it now that it has some value? Certainly sounds like an accident :)
In my opinion, all crypto-currency ventures which rely on their token suddenly becoming money -- meaning it's liquid enough to absorb large sums in and out of traditional currencies -- will fail. Currently, only the Bitcoin market has sufficient depth to support a reasonable level of trade, since merchants -- as things stand now -- need to pay their bills in traditional currency.
It's a bit like creating a Snapchat/Instagram Stories competitor, claiming that you have a solution that lets everyone in the world chat with each other. All that needs to happen is that everyone switch to your protocol. And with money it's even worse, since people are not just risking incompatibility, but the loss of real wealth, in case things don't work out as intended for the users. The market, not the inventors, decides to what extent a given token can be used to transfer value, by doing market making at the exchanges which trade these tokens for whichever currency people's paychecks are denominated in.
Bitcoin becoming reasonably liquid is a damn-near miracle, in my opinion. I thoroughly doubt any crypto-currency that doesn't substantially improve upon Bitcoin will ever attract enough liquidity to become useful for tranferring value (and even in this case, I think it's much more likely that Bitcoin will just adopt whichever features that make this competitor superior).
> it's much more likely that Bitcoin will just adopt whichever features that make this competitor superior
since the bitcoin community continues to fail to adopt the most basic measures to do something about its scalability issue (transaction fees >> $1, confirmations times >> 1h), i highly doubt that this is likely. Just like with megacorps and startups, all the money in the world can't buy you out of internal divisions and politicking.
"it's much more likely that Bitcoin will just adopt whichever features that make this competitor superior)." Yes. Particularly with Sidechains. Stripe is great but Stellar has huge headwinds.
Uh, Mt. Gox on your resume isn't a good thing. It was a horrible failure that cost a lot of people a lot of money and was revealed to have security practices not suitable for a small business, let alone a financial institution. So no, we shouldn't pay attention to this dime-a-dozen startup because it's Jeb McCaleb.
as I understand, he sold mt.gox to its current owners long before the attack, which is also before they conducted a rewrite, that subsequently allowed for the attack.
Nice to hear there are some actual news behind the price development of altcoins. The market has been maybe even too lucrative during the past few weeks. For example, my random purchase of Lumens with 20€ just two weeks ago is currently sitting at 180€.
What if the upward price pressure is actually people buying massive amounts of bitcoin to pay off new ShadowBrokers-based ransomware? And the corresponding rise in alts is the perpetrators using the alts to launder the ransom?
[+] [-] mintplant|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nullstyle|9 years ago|reply
But other than that, most people who lost their accounts tend to have bad password management skills, frankly. They certainly could also be victims of bugs in our client... it turns out one of our too ambitious goals during our early days was building a banking-grade wallet experience that offered broad browser support with as few developers as we were. Our support queues however were a sobering lesson in how bad passwords are for security and usability and it was just too much for our community manager and us on the dev team to handle. Our bad... we were trying our hardest believe me.
I apologize if you got hosed because of a bug. I do know that all of my friends and family accounts (6 of the earliest accounts in the system post launch) were able to successfully upgrade to the new wallet and network as late as sunday of last week. They. like you I imagine, got their free lumens and then promptly forgot about the project. They all scrambled to update their wallets when the craziness was going on at the end of last week with lumens and they all upgraded fine.
I'd be happy to help you troubleshoot you wallet to see if we can recover you lumens... email me at [email protected] and we can work through it privately if you like. I can't guarantee much, however... I'm presently starting on a leave of absence for the next month or so and so the time I can dedicate to support is pretty truncated at the moment.
[+] [-] a13n|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuiA|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] runeks|9 years ago|reply
It's a bit like creating a Snapchat/Instagram Stories competitor, claiming that you have a solution that lets everyone in the world chat with each other. All that needs to happen is that everyone switch to your protocol. And with money it's even worse, since people are not just risking incompatibility, but the loss of real wealth, in case things don't work out as intended for the users. The market, not the inventors, decides to what extent a given token can be used to transfer value, by doing market making at the exchanges which trade these tokens for whichever currency people's paychecks are denominated in.
Bitcoin becoming reasonably liquid is a damn-near miracle, in my opinion. I thoroughly doubt any crypto-currency that doesn't substantially improve upon Bitcoin will ever attract enough liquidity to become useful for tranferring value (and even in this case, I think it's much more likely that Bitcoin will just adopt whichever features that make this competitor superior).
[+] [-] qwtel|9 years ago|reply
since the bitcoin community continues to fail to adopt the most basic measures to do something about its scalability issue (transaction fees >> $1, confirmations times >> 1h), i highly doubt that this is likely. Just like with megacorps and startups, all the money in the world can't buy you out of internal divisions and politicking.
[+] [-] bernardlunn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] c3534l|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] everybodyknows|9 years ago|reply
1. Core algorithm is based on consensus of vetted participants, rather than cheapest electricity -- Bitcoin.
2. Much of the early core code came from Graydon Hoare, designer of Rust.
3. Consensus algorithm endorsed by analysis from David Mazieres -- bcrypt, Stanford.
And no, I have no association of any sort with Stellar.
[+] [-] ThomPete|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwtel|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Vinnl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] toomim|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Jhsto|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hendzen|9 years ago|reply