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Comment by i_am_dead | Hacker News Reader

This kid is 18? And people trusted a million dollars in untraceable money to him?

Zhou Tong was 17, when his Bitcoin project was hacked (this is the thread where he announced the project, and was astutely pointed out (concernedly, not mockingly) that he was destined for spectacular failure: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2973301 ).

I really don't know why we keep trusting very young individuals on things that require implementation of _really_ good security. This is one of the places where ageism probably /should/ exist in some ways -- but the other way around from how we know it, because experience is one of the things that is really important here.

Age isn't the only factor in experience, though. Reputation and relevant experience is the key. There are people I would trust at 35 (for 15 years of experience) where I wouldn't trust someone at 45 (for 3 years of experience).

And then remember, John McAfee started McAfee in 1987 and left in 1994. He's 68 years old and I wouldn't trust him to tie my shoes.

indeed

upside of Bitcoin: no banks needed. or, anybody can run their own bank. innovate

downside of Bitcoin: anyone will run their own "bank". They will put Fortress in the name. It will be their first or second Rails app. They will live in their parent's basement. They will be experiencing puberty. But their stuff will be "secure" because they use "https://" on a few of their pages. Yeah.

A kid offering spamming and hacked twitter accounts using the same account on the forums too, so I doubt anybody did any real research into this person before sending him money.

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