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Ask HN: Are stealing Bitcoins a zero sum game for thieves?

• wmf 13y ago
  AFAIK stolen BTC has never been clawed back and there is no consensus about whether the nemo dat doctrine applies. BTC will be stolen as long as there is still one place to launder it.
• brudgers 13y ago
  How do you tell if a bitcoin is stolen? There's no exploding dye pack. Just the blockchains and if it says you own it, then as far as the bitcoin industry goes you own it. Possession is ownership and anonymity are two thirds of bitcoin's attraction (fast electronic transfer outside of regulatory oversight is the third). Even at $10 a coin 5000 bitcoin would be a nice payday for a lot of people in the world particularly because bitcoin is prefenced- stolen bitcoin don't sell at a discount. To put it in perspective, Nigerian banker princes will send out a lot of emails in hopes of earning a few hundred dollars.
  • cl8ton 13y ago
    You’re right you can’t tell if they’re stolen, but if >10% in circulation are stolen (and growing daily) why would a legit company like overstock.com (just to name one) take them knowing this? And if they did, why would I trust them knowing that?
    • brudgers 13y ago
      What does it mean to claim a bitcoin is stolen? It's not a claim based on the blockchains but on something else. It becomes a matter of proof based on something like server logs and testimony of individuals. Any business has plausible deniability- they just point to the blockchains and ask "how can I tell this transaction is in dispute? Anyone can claim anything. I don't see a judge's signature establishing ownership." Credit card companies can do what they do because of contracts that might make the merchant eat the cost of goods on a disputed claim. The merchant in turn can have insurance against certain types of loss, just as the buyer has such insurance against loss as part of their agreement with the credit card issuer. It's not some digital technology that makes it work. Digital technology has cut the costs, but credit cards worked when transactions were hand processed using paper records. That's not to say that I think that CryptoCurrency is necessarily going to ascend to the main stream. Theft is a problem because the wonders of the blockchains don't prevent theft. All it does is record the transaction, it judges not. and the lack of regulation and volatile exchange values and potentially catastrophic losses make insurance against loss likely to carry prohibitive premiums or margin calls.
• tedsanders 13y ago
  Even if stealing is zero-sum, it won't stop thieves. Thieves tend not to be utilitarians.