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What is your threshold? Who decided what is "not legitimate" activity? Clearly in this case the money was spent using the keys that were allocated to be able to

What is your threshold? Who decided what is "not legitimate" activity? Clearly in this case the money was spent using the keys that were allocated to be able to control the money, what process overrides that?

arcticbull 5y ago
I mean we have an answer to that, it's called the law, and its worked since 1750BC. [edit] This guy, Hammurabi - king of the First Babylonian Dynasty - faced a similar quandary, so there's some prior art. Disputes under the law are resolved in court.
- SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Isn't that anathema to the new world order the crypto people are espousing?
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    Generally yes. As someone who has actually purchased real goods with bitcoin (silkroad) and has dealt with the blowback of the MtGox scandal (still receiving court details to this day...) Those crypto people are snake oil salesmen. Full fucking stop. They aren't interested in making anything usable, they're interested in wild speculation, gambling, and outright scams.
  - gonehome 5y ago
    There are lots of us that recognize the new capability crypto provides (improved self-custody over assets, currency scarcity not controlled by governments) while also not claiming a new world order. Like most things it's not all or nothing and there are pros and cons.
    - the_gastropod 5y ago
      Hitting yourself in the head with a hammer might offer some benefits: - The cool metal might cool your head on a hot summer day - Might knock yourself unconscious to avoid boredom (could be real handy during long flights!) But these nice features are inseparable from the fact that you're hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, which has many serious downsides, too. The "improved self-custody" crypto offers is one side of the ledger. The other side is: you lose regulatory protection, and can be swindled with virtually zero repercussions. Crypto's entire reason for existing is to circumvent government control—it's pretty "new world order" all the way to the core.
      - gonehome 5y ago
        This is a comparison dumb enough to basically be in bad faith. Ignoring that and focusing on the substance: > "The "improved self-custody" crypto offers is one side of the ledger. The other side is: you lose regulatory protection, and can be swindled with virtually zero repercussions." Yeah I don't disagree with this - the risks are real. Some of this can improve with better tools, but some is just higher risk that exists with self-custody. You don't need to move 100% of your wealth into crypto (and I'd argue you shouldn't in nearly all cases). Crypto provides a new capability to take control in a way that other options don't or don't support as well. There is value in this capability even though it has associated risks. > "Crypto's entire reason for existing is to circumvent government control—it's pretty "new world order" all the way to the core." Not all governments are good and even good governments can implement bad policy. Self-custody is a lever against the kind of top down CCP like control of entire economies and a totally controlled cashless future. It's also a hedge against stupid actions from your government (like what we're seeing in Russia currently). New world order suggests replacing the entirety of the existing thing. I'm not suggesting that, I'm focusing on the fact that it offers a new/improved capability that gives individuals more power. I think this is a good thing, but good/bad subjectivity aside it's just a true feature of crypto. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...
        the_gastropod 5y ago
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  No one in crypto typically wants to acknowledge this, but this is the clear and robust answer. Your keys your coins is obviously a situation rife for unreconcilable fraud, and is not a functional solution for anyone who might - ya know, want to spend these things as a currency.
  - xur17 5y ago
    I disagree. It's definitely a trade-off, and there are downsides to it (this security breach being a good example), but there are also advantages. With normal ACH and credit card transactions, the payment never really settles, and can be reverted due to fraud for months. That means I have to slurp up lots of data (privacy?) about my users in order to increase my confidence that they won't try to scam me. And even with that, I end up losing significant amounts of money due to payments with stolen card numbers, etc. With crypto, I know that any payment I receive is final, and I don't have to build privacy violating systems to avoid losing $$$. Not saying this is necessarily "better", but there are advantages to it. As a user, I'd be happy to pay with crypto if the merchant passed some of the savings on to me.
    - horsawlarway 5y ago
      What savings? The savings associated with transactions fees (reasonable for very large spends - utterly ridiculous for small amounts, even today after the major drops, at more than 1.7 USD/tx)? The savings associated with double spend fraud that occurs if you don't delay the transaction for 3 to 6 blocks even though you say it's final (hint - that's not true, and waiting is a large downside for prompt processing at a point of sale) The savings associated with being literally dragged into court because it turns out that fraud is still a thing, and the legal system still matters, and despite you saying that the transaction has settled - the courts can and WILL disagree? I just don't see it. I see a very nice way to send money to folks who are working dark markets and understand escrow (which re-introduces the risk that your transaction isn't actually settled), and a really shitty transaction method for basically everything else.
      - xur17 5y ago
- zaroth 5y ago
  The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. A blockchain can in theory support such things, which would allow a majority vote to approve the court’s judgement, but not ETH as it currently stands. Alternatively if you could get enough miners to just collectively agree to replay the blocks without that transaction you could let the owners move the funds, but it’s monumentally difficult as time goes on and the number of blocks to rewrite increases. If it was detected in seconds, an emergency protocol does exist between certain large mining pools for this sort of thing. Specifically, if you have contracts holding that kind of balance, if a transaction appears on the network which touches a percentage of the funds, you get blistering alarms ringing and someone can “break glass / pull lever” to lock the contract balance into an emergency cold vault. It freezes the DEX but better that then lose the funds. You partner with mining pools to pre-clear that TX and ensure your transaction gets priority in the next block, before the attacker’s transaction goes thru (making theirs the double-spend). But they weren’t even watching. They didn’t even know until the next DAY.
  - jacques_chester 5y ago
    > The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. Courts can and do issue orders against any kind of asset in order to enforce justice and unlike smart contracts, their orders are backed by men and women with dogs and guns. Put another way: a court will not say "gee, gosh, if only ETH had a mechanism I could give orders for! I guess I'm beaten". They will instead say "you owe $X and I will seize all assets you have today, or will ever possess in future, in order to pay that debt". And when it turns out that people thought they were clever by evading the court order by keeping everything in a coin, they will then learn that ethereum can't buy top bunk at the federal penitentiary if you don't have access to a computer.
    - zaroth 5y ago
      We are talking about two different things. I’m talking about a decentralized algorithm which runs on your own machine and can reach a conclusion about a transaction being invalid even though it may have a valid signature. For example, imagine the thief just burns the ETH. $600mm notional value is destroyed in a few bytes of crypto. Whether someone goes to jail or not is besides the point. Can the funds be recovered, and what is the algorithmic mechanism to provide for that recovery?
- the_gastropod 5y ago
  No no no. Crypto enthusiasts reject the idea of the law, and the tyrannical governments that enforce them. Code is Law! Therefore, this is perfectly legal. Conceding that this situation sounds absurd destroys the entire raison d'être of crypto.
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    Code is not law, consensus is law. Big difference! And it's not even law, it's consensus has value.
- xur17 5y ago
  Disputes can still be resolved like that in crypto, it's just up to the legal system to track down the key holders to revert the transaction. Essentially - solve it at the legal layer, don't complicate the protocol.
- noasaservice 5y ago
  Hammurabi's laws only work when they have a monopoly on violence to enforce said laws. Shitcoins (all of them) remove the potential of violence as a means of corrective action. Instead, you have crazy hard math stopping you. Can't do the math? Then you're not forcing your decision.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    > Shitcoins (all of them) remove the potential of violence as a means of corrective action. Instead, you have crazy hard math stopping you. Can't do the math? Then you're not forcing your decision. Oh no they don't. You can still go to prison, and they can still smack you around. To pretend otherwise is to play emu.
  - acdha 5y ago
    Think about this a bit more: I steal your cryptocurrency. When the police show up at my door and I say “you’d have to solve an impossible math problem to get it back!” do they a) threaten beat me and/or my family (Russia, China, etc.), b) shoot my dog and put me in jail where they look the other way while other inmates beat me (U.S. version), or c) toss me in jail (best-case Scandinavian version) until I tell them the key? There isn’t any case where they say “math is hard, guess you get away with it!”
- quantified 5y ago
  Courts and the legal system are centralized authority, not sure they are compatible with the crypto vision.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

arcticbull 5y ago

I mean we have an answer to that, it's called the law, and its worked since 1750BC. [edit] This guy, Hammurabi - king of the First Babylonian Dynasty - faced a similar quandary, so there's some prior art. Disputes under the law are resolved in court.

SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
Isn't that anathema to the new world order the crypto people are espousing?
- horsawlarway 5y ago
  Generally yes. As someone who has actually purchased real goods with bitcoin (silkroad) and has dealt with the blowback of the MtGox scandal (still receiving court details to this day...) Those crypto people are snake oil salesmen. Full fucking stop. They aren't interested in making anything usable, they're interested in wild speculation, gambling, and outright scams.
- gonehome 5y ago
  There are lots of us that recognize the new capability crypto provides (improved self-custody over assets, currency scarcity not controlled by governments) while also not claiming a new world order. Like most things it's not all or nothing and there are pros and cons.
  - the_gastropod 5y ago
    Hitting yourself in the head with a hammer might offer some benefits: - The cool metal might cool your head on a hot summer day - Might knock yourself unconscious to avoid boredom (could be real handy during long flights!) But these nice features are inseparable from the fact that you're hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, which has many serious downsides, too. The "improved self-custody" crypto offers is one side of the ledger. The other side is: you lose regulatory protection, and can be swindled with virtually zero repercussions. Crypto's entire reason for existing is to circumvent government control—it's pretty "new world order" all the way to the core.
    - gonehome 5y ago
      This is a comparison dumb enough to basically be in bad faith. Ignoring that and focusing on the substance: > "The "improved self-custody" crypto offers is one side of the ledger. The other side is: you lose regulatory protection, and can be swindled with virtually zero repercussions." Yeah I don't disagree with this - the risks are real. Some of this can improve with better tools, but some is just higher risk that exists with self-custody. You don't need to move 100% of your wealth into crypto (and I'd argue you shouldn't in nearly all cases). Crypto provides a new capability to take control in a way that other options don't or don't support as well. There is value in this capability even though it has associated risks. > "Crypto's entire reason for existing is to circumvent government control—it's pretty "new world order" all the way to the core." Not all governments are good and even good governments can implement bad policy. Self-custody is a lever against the kind of top down CCP like control of entire economies and a totally controlled cashless future. It's also a hedge against stupid actions from your government (like what we're seeing in Russia currently). New world order suggests replacing the entirety of the existing thing. I'm not suggesting that, I'm focusing on the fact that it offers a new/improved capability that gives individuals more power. I think this is a good thing, but good/bad subjectivity aside it's just a true feature of crypto. https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-debates-should-not-appear-one-sided https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/PeSzc9JTBxhaYRp9b/policy-deb...
      - the_gastropod 5y ago
horsawlarway 5y ago
No one in crypto typically wants to acknowledge this, but this is the clear and robust answer. Your keys your coins is obviously a situation rife for unreconcilable fraud, and is not a functional solution for anyone who might - ya know, want to spend these things as a currency.
- xur17 5y ago
  I disagree. It's definitely a trade-off, and there are downsides to it (this security breach being a good example), but there are also advantages. With normal ACH and credit card transactions, the payment never really settles, and can be reverted due to fraud for months. That means I have to slurp up lots of data (privacy?) about my users in order to increase my confidence that they won't try to scam me. And even with that, I end up losing significant amounts of money due to payments with stolen card numbers, etc. With crypto, I know that any payment I receive is final, and I don't have to build privacy violating systems to avoid losing $$$. Not saying this is necessarily "better", but there are advantages to it. As a user, I'd be happy to pay with crypto if the merchant passed some of the savings on to me.
  - horsawlarway 5y ago
    What savings? The savings associated with transactions fees (reasonable for very large spends - utterly ridiculous for small amounts, even today after the major drops, at more than 1.7 USD/tx)? The savings associated with double spend fraud that occurs if you don't delay the transaction for 3 to 6 blocks even though you say it's final (hint - that's not true, and waiting is a large downside for prompt processing at a point of sale) The savings associated with being literally dragged into court because it turns out that fraud is still a thing, and the legal system still matters, and despite you saying that the transaction has settled - the courts can and WILL disagree? I just don't see it. I see a very nice way to send money to folks who are working dark markets and understand escrow (which re-introduces the risk that your transaction isn't actually settled), and a really shitty transaction method for basically everything else.
    - xur17 5y ago
zaroth 5y ago
The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. A blockchain can in theory support such things, which would allow a majority vote to approve the court’s judgement, but not ETH as it currently stands. Alternatively if you could get enough miners to just collectively agree to replay the blocks without that transaction you could let the owners move the funds, but it’s monumentally difficult as time goes on and the number of blocks to rewrite increases. If it was detected in seconds, an emergency protocol does exist between certain large mining pools for this sort of thing. Specifically, if you have contracts holding that kind of balance, if a transaction appears on the network which touches a percentage of the funds, you get blistering alarms ringing and someone can “break glass / pull lever” to lock the contract balance into an emergency cold vault. It freezes the DEX but better that then lose the funds. You partner with mining pools to pre-clear that TX and ensure your transaction gets priority in the next block, before the attacker’s transaction goes thru (making theirs the double-spend). But they weren’t even watching. They didn’t even know until the next DAY.
- jacques_chester 5y ago
  > The only way to apply the court’s judgement (in the case of ETH) is to hark fork, because there is no governance contract in place. Courts can and do issue orders against any kind of asset in order to enforce justice and unlike smart contracts, their orders are backed by men and women with dogs and guns. Put another way: a court will not say "gee, gosh, if only ETH had a mechanism I could give orders for! I guess I'm beaten". They will instead say "you owe $X and I will seize all assets you have today, or will ever possess in future, in order to pay that debt". And when it turns out that people thought they were clever by evading the court order by keeping everything in a coin, they will then learn that ethereum can't buy top bunk at the federal penitentiary if you don't have access to a computer.
  - zaroth 5y ago
    We are talking about two different things. I’m talking about a decentralized algorithm which runs on your own machine and can reach a conclusion about a transaction being invalid even though it may have a valid signature. For example, imagine the thief just burns the ETH. $600mm notional value is destroyed in a few bytes of crypto. Whether someone goes to jail or not is besides the point. Can the funds be recovered, and what is the algorithmic mechanism to provide for that recovery?
the_gastropod 5y ago
No no no. Crypto enthusiasts reject the idea of the law, and the tyrannical governments that enforce them. Code is Law! Therefore, this is perfectly legal. Conceding that this situation sounds absurd destroys the entire raison d'être of crypto.
- koonsolo 5y ago
  Code is not law, consensus is law. Big difference! And it's not even law, it's consensus has value.
xur17 5y ago
Disputes can still be resolved like that in crypto, it's just up to the legal system to track down the key holders to revert the transaction. Essentially - solve it at the legal layer, don't complicate the protocol.
noasaservice 5y ago
Hammurabi's laws only work when they have a monopoly on violence to enforce said laws. Shitcoins (all of them) remove the potential of violence as a means of corrective action. Instead, you have crazy hard math stopping you. Can't do the math? Then you're not forcing your decision.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  > Shitcoins (all of them) remove the potential of violence as a means of corrective action. Instead, you have crazy hard math stopping you. Can't do the math? Then you're not forcing your decision. Oh no they don't. You can still go to prison, and they can still smack you around. To pretend otherwise is to play emu.
- acdha 5y ago
  Think about this a bit more: I steal your cryptocurrency. When the police show up at my door and I say “you’d have to solve an impossible math problem to get it back!” do they a) threaten beat me and/or my family (Russia, China, etc.), b) shoot my dog and put me in jail where they look the other way while other inmates beat me (U.S. version), or c) toss me in jail (best-case Scandinavian version) until I tell them the key? There isn’t any case where they say “math is hard, guess you get away with it!”
quantified 5y ago
Courts and the legal system are centralized authority, not sure they are compatible with the crypto vision.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]