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by nullc 4501 days ago
> > And you still don't fix the problem that balances which are unchecked can be diverted.

> Okay, I'll admit I might be missing something here; what do you mean by that?

Say Alice _never_ logs in anymore and the site has noticed this. The site can just go "oh Alice, her balance in now 0" and go and gamble away those coins— sure, their holdings go down, but so do their obligations. Since Alice never logs in anyone, she's not going to protest that her coins are all gone.

1 comments

Ah okay, that makes sense. You're completely right that that's not really solvable in general.

Unless, of course, we finally switch over to a public/private key based login system and each user's balance sheet is composed of a set of authorized/signed deposits, trades and withdrawals (ie. a full blockchain, but centralized and "mined" only by the exchange's server). I wonder what possibilities that kind of setup would open.

Go read that IRC log. :)