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If you believe this, you shouldn't be handling people's money. It's not just about losing the bitcoin, people running these exchanges may be personally liable.

by Johnie 12y ago

trupedo 12y ago
> It's not just about losing the bitcoin, people running these exchanges may be personally liable. The law is still very murky here, and there are plenty of ways to deflect responsibility. I'm not saying any of this is right, I'm suggesting that the way our culture and infrastructure is laid out, running a shoddy (perhaps conspiratorial) business might actually be the optimal path -- and that's where we need a solution.
- Johnie 12y ago
  If you lose my money that I trusted in your startup, I would file a lawsuit. Whether or not the law is murky, you'll be tied up in legal issues for a long time. Even if the law says you're not legally liable (unlikely), your legal fees would put you in a world of hurt for a long time. When you're transacting in something of value (whether that be money, digital currency, or pokemon cards) for your users, you better be sure to take it seriously.
  - dogecoinbase 12y ago
    So, if providers were responding correctly to incentives in the Bitcoin exchange marketplace, they'd be both ignoring security, and making themselves difficult to find or identify. Got it.
  - sillysaurus3 12y ago
    If you lose my money that I trusted in your startup, I would file a lawsuit. I lost money to Mt. Gox, but filing a lawsuit won't get anyone anywhere. Want to see a sad pdf? https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20150202_tibanne.pdf https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20150202_tibanne.pdf Sad for the customers. Not for Karpeles, the owner of Mt. Gox. He's still a millionaire and still free, and might even have the customers' bitcoins. No one will probably find out. I know you're talking about Bitcoin startups founded in the US or EU, but the same applies: If the startup goes bankrupt, the customers won't get anything back. There's nothing to get back except empty coffers.
    - Johnie 12y ago
      It's not about getting my money back. It's to prevent you and others from making the same mistake in the future. It's also to prevent any fraudulent activity from happening (ie paying out to some creditors while not to others). We have courts and bankruptcy laws for a reason.
      - sillysaurus3 12y ago
        How it works: set up an exchange. Attract users. When enough coins have been deposited into your exchange, steal them. Bitcoin makes this easy to do untraceably. Post a message saying you've been hacked and are shutting down. You're now a millionaire, and no one can ever take that way from you. No court matters. As long as the price of bitcoin doesn't go down by more than 10x, you'll still be very wealthy. And no one can prove a thing. This is business as usual in the bitcoin world. Bitcoin has made it very easy to separate people from their money, and courts have no power to do anything about it. Would you go to prison for a few years to be a millionaire? There is no shortage of people willing to risk this. As you can see from the rest of the thread, people are willing to believe almost any cover story, no matter how implausible. Even that an exchange could be DDoSed by search engines.
        blacksqr 12y ago
        Welcome to the libertarian paradise.
jerguismi 12y ago
Time is also a preference here. There are probably coding NASA-level bitcoin exchanges right now. Meanwhile, there exchanges coded with ruby on rails are here today. If you want to trade today, then you have to choose from the options we have today.
geofft 12y ago
> If you believe this, you shouldn't be handling people's money. That's true, but who's going to make that happen? In traditional society, there are laws about who can be a bank and how carefully you need to treat people's money (and often government programs to reimburse customers when good-faith banking efforts fail). Quite a fraction of Bitcoin users are in Bitcoin because, to first order, they want to move away from that model. So the free market needs to not let their money be handled by people who believe that, and it's not yet clear they care. Probably they will, in a few years.

If you believe this, you shouldn't be handling people's money. It's not just about losing the bitcoin, people running these exchanges may be personally liable.

by Johnie 12y ago

If you believe this, you shouldn't be handling people's money. It's not just about losing the bitcoin, people running these exchanges may be personally liable.

trupedo 12y ago

> It's not just about losing the bitcoin, people running these exchanges may be personally liable. The law is still very murky here, and there are plenty of ways to deflect responsibility. I'm not saying any of this is right, I'm suggesting that the way our culture and infrastructure is laid out, running a shoddy (perhaps conspiratorial) business might actually be the optimal path -- and that's where we need a solution.

Johnie 12y ago
If you lose my money that I trusted in your startup, I would file a lawsuit. Whether or not the law is murky, you'll be tied up in legal issues for a long time. Even if the law says you're not legally liable (unlikely), your legal fees would put you in a world of hurt for a long time. When you're transacting in something of value (whether that be money, digital currency, or pokemon cards) for your users, you better be sure to take it seriously.
- dogecoinbase 12y ago
  So, if providers were responding correctly to incentives in the Bitcoin exchange marketplace, they'd be both ignoring security, and making themselves difficult to find or identify. Got it.
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  If you lose my money that I trusted in your startup, I would file a lawsuit. I lost money to Mt. Gox, but filing a lawsuit won't get anyone anywhere. Want to see a sad pdf? https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20150202_tibanne.pdf https://www.mtgox.com/img/pdf/20150202_tibanne.pdf Sad for the customers. Not for Karpeles, the owner of Mt. Gox. He's still a millionaire and still free, and might even have the customers' bitcoins. No one will probably find out. I know you're talking about Bitcoin startups founded in the US or EU, but the same applies: If the startup goes bankrupt, the customers won't get anything back. There's nothing to get back except empty coffers.
  - Johnie 12y ago
    It's not about getting my money back. It's to prevent you and others from making the same mistake in the future. It's also to prevent any fraudulent activity from happening (ie paying out to some creditors while not to others). We have courts and bankruptcy laws for a reason.
    - sillysaurus3 12y ago
      How it works: set up an exchange. Attract users. When enough coins have been deposited into your exchange, steal them. Bitcoin makes this easy to do untraceably. Post a message saying you've been hacked and are shutting down. You're now a millionaire, and no one can ever take that way from you. No court matters. As long as the price of bitcoin doesn't go down by more than 10x, you'll still be very wealthy. And no one can prove a thing. This is business as usual in the bitcoin world. Bitcoin has made it very easy to separate people from their money, and courts have no power to do anything about it. Would you go to prison for a few years to be a millionaire? There is no shortage of people willing to risk this. As you can see from the rest of the thread, people are willing to believe almost any cover story, no matter how implausible. Even that an exchange could be DDoSed by search engines.
      - blacksqr 12y ago
        Welcome to the libertarian paradise.

jerguismi 12y ago

Time is also a preference here. There are probably coding NASA-level bitcoin exchanges right now. Meanwhile, there exchanges coded with ruby on rails are here today. If you want to trade today, then you have to choose from the options we have today.

geofft 12y ago

> If you believe this, you shouldn't be handling people's money. That's true, but who's going to make that happen? In traditional society, there are laws about who can be a bank and how carefully you need to treat people's money (and often government programs to reimburse customers when good-faith banking efforts fail). Quite a fraction of Bitcoin users are in Bitcoin because, to first order, they want to move away from that model. So the free market needs to not let their money be handled by people who believe that, and it's not yet clear they care. Probably they will, in a few years.