April 15, 2017
I am Clark J Haley. I saw the write ups on this (SR-NYSEArca-2017-06) and it once more just amazed me about just how ignorant some people really are about things related to crypto currency.
I got into crypto about 3.5 years ago. I started out just wanting to know what a bitcoin was. I soon started mining with my cpu's and gpu's. As time went by I ended up with several th/s of asic miners for sha256 mining.
In my endeavors I got to meet a lot of people(mostly online) several of which after some research I decided to interact with. These people were from all over the world. Biggest thing about these people is they helped me learn and I am not talking about just crypto currencies either. Networking, server setups, mining pool setups, coin design, wallet design, etc. its a long list.
I no longer do any mining and for that matter I do not even have a single wallet for any form of crypto currency anymore. I do however still have contact with a friend I made during that time and occasionally browse around to see what the latest developments are related to crypo.
So I decided to write this letter to express my amazement about a few things apparently some people just don't realize or if they do they have chosen to ignore it.
Blockchain technology as it relates to crypto is about as secure as my billfold lying on the ground. Any person with enough hashing(computing) power can take over the blockchain and modify it to their whim. Although with a coin like bitcoin that is unlikely it is in fact a possibility. This type of takeover can include a back-step of the blockchain causing the erasure of transactions and discovered blocks.There is even a method to completely rehash the genesis block of a coin and completely obliterate the current blockchain.
Most coins and the related wallets and such are opengl coding and freely available for any person to download, modify, etc. This gives hackers basically every piece of information they need to really muck with things if they so desire.
I was once showed 2 lines of python code that when added into a single bitcoin wallet that would completely decimate the bitcoin blockchain. This code was demonstrated for me using a non-public coin with several hundred nodes connected and thousands oc block records in it. In a matter of hours the complete coin history was gone.
Coins get forked all the time. It really is a world of he who has the power controls the chain. So blockchains and crypto's are as secure and honest as the person with the most power is. My experience has been that power corrupts and I haven't seen any exceptions in my doings with crypto technologies.
You want to use this stuff as a basis for financial markets and security measurements, hey, be my guest. Just do me a favor and make sure you advertise very loudly about anything you attach this technology too so I will know not to use it.
Well, you all have a nice day and I really hope you give atleast a single thought to what I said here in this letter. Just might be this viewpoint might save you a lot of headaches and heartaches.