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A wire transfer involves a money transmitter, who provides a service according to some terms & conditions. In case of a dispute, a court will have the final wo
by lottin 5y ago
A wire transfer involves a money transmitter, who provides a service according to some terms & conditions. In case of a dispute, a court will have the final word. None of this applies to cryptocurrencies, because cryptocurrency transactions are final. They can't be overridden by a judge. If they could, they wouldn't be censorship resistant. You can have censorship resistance or rule of law, choose one.
- jliptzin 5y agoJust because there’s technically no mechanism within the protocol to reverse the transaction does not suddenly make it legal to keep the money right? You could spend all the money accidentally wired to you and have nothing left to your name, but you still owe that money. So you could keep the ill-gotten crypto but still be liable for civil or criminal charges.
- 8note 5y agoYou'd be making the argument that the contract was followed perfectly, and it decided that you should have the money. If the code is the contract, the bugs are what everyone signed up for.
- int_19h 5y agoThey can be overridden by the judge in the same exact way cash transactions are: by forcing the offender to make a transfer in the amount that they owe, and/or selling off their other property to pay that debt. The thing about crypto and ownership is that the blockchain is not the final arbiter of legal ownership, and that qualifier matters in a lot of cases.
- tlogan 5y agoI believe the US law inforcement will criminally prosecute you if you receive money you have no reason to believe it should be yours (money mule laws, using stolen property, etc.).