Case law around Bitcoin theft is going to be very interesting.
I'm highly interested in what will happen if we can crack the crypto and move all the funds from a given wallet without any interaction or deception. It's just math, and there's no sovereign entity you're attacking or depleting. No corporate server. Seems like if you can get the numbers to match, the proceeds are yours. But we'll see.
You've made the "it's just math" argument multiple times in this thread, but it's irrelevant.
Bitcoin are securities that have value because people say they do. Saying that BTC is just math is like saying that credit default swaps or frozen orange juice futures are just pieces of paper.
The market assigns value to things. What those things physically are is irrelevant; If there is a buyer and there is a seller, the thing is real and has value.
There's no question that theft of BTC is theft, the fundamental technology behind it isn't relevant to whether or not it's theft because people treat it as a concrete security that can be bought and sold.
That's obvious. Does US case law protect it, though? And in what ways?
> There's no question that theft of BTC is theft
If you publish keys you discover, that's not theft. And that's my point.
How does the system deal with that? There's no technical means to roll back or prove original ownership (especially if you find multiple values for the key).
The legal framework doesn't have any precedent, and if doesn't seem to me like it would protect you.
If I publish, "Hey everybody! I found Satoshi's keys! They're 0FFF...", I didn't do anything wrong.
If "crypto" is cracked to the extent it is possible to move funds from someone's account without interaction or deception (or incredible stupidity, such as as choosing/allowing a weak key or seed phrase) -- then the value of that coin/technology will quickly go to zero. There will be nothing to steal.
Wouldn't that just be fraud? It doesn't seem that different from someone writing a fake check, other than the check is some unauthorized set of bits as opposed to an unauthorized physical slip of paper.
I think this case was pretty obviously theft and it’s like saying that if you can put in the credit card numbers correctly then you can spend the money. It is obviously theft to trick someone else into giving you their money or stealing their numbers.
I’m more curious about cases where some smart contract gives away a load of money because of some bug. There are legal cases where a contract says something stupid and courts uphold the contract and there are legal cases where a contract says something stupid and the courts instead go for the thing the contract meant to say. A funny example is that lawyers don’t like to write an equation into a contract and sometimes someone will tell them the equation that everyone agrees on for calculating interest, and they will convert it to words in the contract and the conversion will be incorrect leading to e.g. applying interest of “inflation since start of contract” cumulatively each year (leading to superexponential growth).
The irony of crypto being lauded as an unregulated market outside of government control, and then crypto millionaires using government-backed courts to sue when they lose their assets due to bad opsec, is palpable.
Everyone loves the wild west until they're the ones being victimized, then it turns out 3rd party authorities are useful after all.
I've been hearing crypto enthusiasts say that crypto will make institutions obsolete since crypto first started. I agree that such people are not sane, yet they are a very vocal portion of the crypto fanbase.
OP is just countering the cytoto fanboys that come out on HN. I made a similar comment about Tesla self driving vaporware and the fanboys did not disappoint.
Crypto is touted as the anti dollar/euro/pound/government backed non-fiat currency yet it is laughable that users are using governments for recourse.
It’s also laughable coinbase is guaranteeing a 150k pound reimbursement if their customers funds are illegaly stolen. They are a basically a bank with FDIC backed accounts, except they’re self backed.
Please name a use for crypto which is not "buying questionable substances from the internet" or "like stocks, except that I can make more of them with my GPU".
They are, in every way, of less value to the economy than traditional fiat currency.
* They have no guarantees or equivalent to the FDIC
* Their value similarly unpinned to anything (for the sake of argument, let's ignore basketed currency, since crypto is not comparble to that and less table than those) other than investor confidence like FOREX
* They are not tax havens
* Their "production" consumes as much energy as some medium-sized nation-states
* Chasing the hype has exacerbated the chip shortage as "peak capitalism" has encouraged fabs to produce GPUs for maximize profits at the expense of, say, chips for cars with their limited supplies
Not everyone who uses crypto is a dark hat crypto-libertarian hacker. Few people who clamor for crypto have good reasons to use it other than "why not have it as an option for people who want it?" or "I wanna do this stuff without being tracked".
> Few people who clamor for crypto have good reasons to use it other than [...] "I wanna do this stuff without being tracked".
Why do you need more? This is a perfectly valid reason for cryptocurrency to exist. All digital transactions should work like physical cash. Banks and credit card companies analyzing your transactions should be literally impossible. Payment processors should not even exist much less act like the financial gatekeepers they are today.
They should perhaps have said digital assets instead but their point is valid. Not all property has to be physical. We live in an era where digital and intellectual property exist and are rightfully protected by law.
What's the difference between your bitcoin balance at Coinbase and your cash balance at Wells Fargo? Neither is physical property. There's not enough physical currency in circulation in the entire US to buy out Apple, let alone back everyone's bank accounts.
That's a fair take, and yet to acknowledge bitcoin as property means it would fall under the same laws and regulations that currently govern property ownership.
Originally, crypto enthusiasts - especially the ones with an anarchist streak - were into the idea that crypto would exist completely outside of government control, i.e. the government wouldn't even recognize it as property. So if thieves trick you into sending coins to the wrong address, tough luck, you should've been more careful.
To sue in court over property theft means the government must recognize crypto as property, and as such, crypto is brought into the fold of government oversight.
No, not anymore. Now it’s banks and ETFs. Just another asset class, all the ideology is just a sideshow once everyone got rich. Now it’s just classic tax efficiency.
Crypto holder here (but not a millionare). Who says government isn't the reason they haven't done something else? If there were no government, you could just "deal" with the problem person that stole your money yourself.
Apparently in your idea, if someone were forced to live in a society with no law, order, or organization they should just peacefully let themselves be parted with all they have by anyone who cares to take it.
If all you're really saying is "without government there would be vigilante justice instead" then you're correct, but it's quite a non-sequitur in relation to the rest of the discussion in this thread.
All I'm saying is without government or any organization you are left with taking care of things yourself, rather than policeman with guns maybe taking care of the problem for you.
Let's say the government doesn't care at all about their loss (pretty common for fraud crimes in the US, I myself have been a victim of credit card fraud and no one cared even my bank who charged me anyway after I proved it was fraudulent) they actually do manage to get their property back from the person who stole it without government intervention, but they did it through direct rather than governmental action. Who cares, and what are you going to do about it? Sit back in your chair and type about the injustice of a man taking his property back without begging a policeman on his knees to consider giving the slightest care? It's nice that your moral outrage will be present but the pragmatism remains.
This is the most insane take. Are you seriously saying that you want a world where people just take matters into their own hands for everything like this? A vigilante oriented eye-for-an-eye society?
If someone takes your property, you should have the agency to get it back. What do you think the government will do to you if you don't pay millions in taxes? You don't think armed agents will come (even before you are convicted)?
We live in a land of law and order. Without any law or order, or organization, your recourse is to do something similar to what the IRS does when they do not get paid.
No, I said without a government you could just "deal" with it yourself. I didn't say if government was good or bad. The statement here was folks were up in arms that someone was talking about going through legal process to get bitcoin back. Now you're upset that I stated that government was what was holding them back from taking non-legal options.
Tell me oh wise one, how do you get your money back if you live in a place with no government or organization and there are no legal means? Do you expect all of society is just going to get it back for you? All you'd have is yourself, and your way to deal with it.
You're 100% correct that without a government, vigilante justice is the option that people will take.
But we don't live in that thought experiment. In our current society, let's say Joe tricked Bob into sending him all of his bitcoin.
Option A: the government recognizes crypto as property, and the government intervenes to get Bob his property back. Of course, this also means that crypto is subject to taxes and regulations.
Option B: the government does not recognize crypto as property, and does nothing because no "crime" has been committed. Bob is out of luck. But, there are no taxes or regulations on crypto, so if you don't get robbed you can get rich and evade taxes.
Option B is the logical outcome of the scenario that many crypto anarchists originally wanted for crypto. No government oversight, which means no taxes or regulations, but also means you're shit outta luck if someone robs you. That's what I was commenting on.
Maybe those crypto anarchists also want a world with no government, so they can take Option C and be their own vigilantes. But it's even more ludicrous to desire that kind of world.
You realize there is no requirement that crypto be subject to taxes in order to have a legal mechanism for enforcing property rights. You're of the misinformed opinion that taxation of crypto is a necessary function of government.
Then why is anyone mad that a bitcoin holder is talking about
using the legal process?
If you think bitcoin holders should be hardcore anarchists you should believe that they should live in a world with those outcomes, whatever you believe they are.
Yes, the point is that most people don't want such a world. With very few exceptions, even hardcore libertarians don't want that world. That's why they're arguing that some sort of court system isn't necessarily incompatible with libertarian values.
It's pointing out the issue with the "how can you consider yourself a libertarian but support people using a government system, like a judicial system, when they're wronged? isn't that hypocritical?" argument. It leads to the conclusion "if they're really true libertarians, they'd either let themselves be victims or just take justice into their own hands", and neither of those would be desirable outcomes.
The argument would make more sense if, say, the victim had gotten taxpayer-funded federal law enforcement to find and apprehend the perpetrators. But in this case they hired a private investigator, sent a request to the parents of the alleged perpetrators, and filed a lawsuit when the request wasn't responded to.
No, I do not, because that's not how the IRS works. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Perhaps even a single example of "armed agents" showing up to the residence or workplace of someone who has failed to pay those taxes?
your recourse is to do something similar to what the IRS does when they do not get paid.
Except that I don't have the authority to garnish wages or put liens on property. Like the IRS does.
“Three businessmen told the Senate Finance Committee today of Internal Revenue Service agents who, with guns drawn, broke down doors, terrified workers and forced teen-age girls to change clothes in front of male agents in raids at the men's homes and businesses that they said were unnecessary.
These aggressive paramilitary tactics were denounced as intolerable and ‘’fascist’’ by Democratic and Republican senators as the panel heard testimony for a second day in its second round of hearings on I.R.S. abuses of taxpayers.”
You're skipping the other side of it, where someone else also "deals" with you as a problem. Not that you stole anything. They just can, because they have more force available and no government means they can.
And you're skipping the part where I never said it was a better system, just that it is your recourse if you live in a completely unorganized (or unjust) society.
I'm not saying you presented it as better. Just that the idea is moot. If you can use vigilante justice, then everyone can do the opposite. It's just not a realistic option where you have the chance to "recover" something. The thing was never "stolen" in that world, because taking things from others is how that world would work.
Property rights can exist in a world without formal government. Primates have innate understanding of fairness. The idea of ownership of something predates the system of judge and jury, modern government, and even the presence of humans [1]. If someone takes your personal property, you have the right to take it back. It needn't be recognized by some formal entity.
People can already "do the opposite." Hooded men in the middle of the night could try to take your possessions. The odds the police will show up in time is slim; at least in the US especially in rural areas your only chance is to take retaining your possessions in your own hands. Removing governmental restraint just prevents you from being convicted in court if you act directly instead of using the gun of a policeman. This is why in places like Texas is it legal to shoot someone for trespassing on your land and taking your property; some would argue that should extend to your virtual property such as bitcoin.
There is a lot more nuance to law/regulation than “if you don't like my draconian privacy and/or freedom reducing laws then you deserve no property rights!”
Property rights are not possible without a monopoly on force. Property rights are inherently broken because it means someone is giving you rights over some __property__ that you're defending with some arbitrary rules.
Not really. You surely know what the mob thinks about property and privacy rights.
100% of intellectual property rights requires a government. It's not really a right. It's manufactured. Patents user to he called monopolies. It takes a government to enforce such a regime.
Without a government there's no agreed upon, or forced upon, authority to prevent violence.
It's not nobody, otherwise services like https://koinly.io/ and similar wouldn't exist with support for private wallets, uniswap handling, etc. Unless you can provide some proof for that claim, please don't generalise.
You can be against the government and the Federal Reserve unilaterally controlling all monetary policy (including currency supply, interest rates, inflation, bank regulation) while fully supporting the justice system at the same time.
Can you name a country that has a strong, fair, and just judicial system without having complete control of their monetary policy?
I can’t even begin to imagine how that country would continue to exist. A government that doesn’t control its own monetary policy isn’t a government at all.
Yes, Bretton Woods isn't a good example of a time where the US literally lacked control over monetary policy.
However, the GP stated that countries without control of monetary policy cease to exist. For the purposes of addressing that statement a period of >30 years where the US decided not to exercise any control seems nearly as good of a counter-example as a period where they literally had no control.
"In charge of its monetary policy" can mean a hundred different things, so that is impossible to answer directly. While a centralized (and government controlled, regardless of what it would have you believe) banking system seems as obvious today as a national military, it is a relatively modern invention. The Fed itself didn't exist until 1913. USA was on the gold standard until 1933. The US dollar wasn't a fiat currency until 1971.
Some of this country's greatest achievements have come in a system where the government still had full legislative, executive and judicial powers but had to operate under basic rules like not being able to print money for themselves whenever they felt like it.
Ok, that is different though... you are arguing the US CHANGED their policy, and you don't like the way they changed it.
That is different than saying they were not in control of their monetary policy... they have always been in control, you just liked the old monetary policy better
Have they always been in control? Yes, for the entire existence of the US it has been legally capable of creating a US Dollar and of turning it into a fiat currency.
However, for large swaths of the time the US has been around that has not been politically feasible, and I'm not sure it would have been economically feasible, fiat currencies seem to have taken a while to gain stability and acceptance.
For a large period of time the US was on a gold standard and de facto did not have control over monetary policy. It doesn't matter much that they technically had power if they didn't use it.
I think you know on its face that’s not even remotely equivalent to what we’re talking about here. Each country you’re referring to is a part of the EU and as a member still has control of the overall policy. Just because they agree to making it democratic doesn’t somehow mean that private individuals now operate outside the scope of their collective control.
> I think you know on its face that’s not even remotely equivalent to what we’re talking about here
I did not know. The phrase "complete control over monetary policy" has a very specific meaning and I stand by my response as a counterexample to that meaning.
And I don't think this is an unreasonable misunderstanding! People do worry about Bitcoin w.r.t monetary policy, a future of "hyperbitcoinization" where the world runs off a deflationary currency seems undesirable, to say the least.
If that is not what you intended then even given your clarification here I'm still not sure what you meant to say with that phrase.
The European Parliament has regulatory powers over the ECB that are almost exactly the same as the Congress' powers over the Fed, even down to the numbers.
So yeah, Germany does have control over its own monetary policy, they just made a political choice to share that power with France, Italy, Spain, etc.
I think I've lost the thread here, I am aware that each of the member countries have some control.
However, for example, my understanding is that Greece was _forced_ by the ECB and others to undertake some wildly unpopular austerity measures. It doesn't sound like they had a lot of control. If Germany were to go through a similar crisis my understanding is that it could also be forced to take measures Germans do not approve of.
I'm not passing any judgement here! But surely we can both agree that Greece (and Germany) do not have full control over their monetary policies and still exist as independent countries, that's the only point I wanted to make.
> However, for example, my understanding is that Greece was _forced_ by the ECB and others to undertake some wildly unpopular austerity measures. It doesn't sound like they had a lot of control.
They weren't forced per se. Their government was close to bankrupt, facing loan repayments it couldn't pay. The choice was either refinancing or default. The EU offered refinancing loans, but on strict conditions including austerity measures. The Greek government decided that those austerity measures, as painful as they were, were a lesser evil than the immense economic chaos and uncertainty a default would cause. The situation the Greek government faced wasn't hugely different from that repeatedly faced by some other governments such as Argentina. The main difference between Greece and Argentina is that Argentina controlled its own monetary policy, and hence had some control over exchange rates; but, when faced with massive debts you can't repay (denominated in international currencies), control over your own exchange rates is only of modest help.
It was commonly said at the time that if Greece defaulted it would have to leave the Eurozone. I'm not sure how true that actually is – the Eurozone has no formal mechanism to expel a member, and so if a defaulting Greece refused to reintroduce the drachma, I don't think there is anything the ECB could do to actually force them to. However, in such a dire economic crisis, there is a decent chance the Greek government may have decided that leaving the Euro was the best option, and negotiated with the EU for a voluntary departure. Since default was avoided, it never came to that.
I'm not a Randian or whatever, but it doesn't seem that inconceivable to imagine a hypothetical government which provides security/military/justice services without enforcing a monetary policy. I can think of many potential difficulties running and funding such a government, but it's not like the concept is so absurd that such a government can't ever possibly exist sometime within the next tens of thousands of years.
In the countries that you think of as having 'strong, fair, and just judicial systems' governments typically control only the fiscal policy. Monetary policy is left to some independent entity. For countries with fixed exchange rates it is also impossible to have autonomous monetary policy without imposing restrictions on capital mobility. This also applies to blocks of countries, e.g., none of the individual governments of euro countries have control over the bloc's monetary policy.
During the Wild West, if someone stole your cattle but you didn't know who, you very well might have hired a private investigator to try to find the cattle and who stole them, followed by a request/demand to return the cattle. If they refused, maybe you could have filed a civil dispute to make it a matter of public record that your property was stolen by particular individuals, if the option was available. If it wasn't, the only other option was extralegal justice.
The only other option here is also extralegal justice, like committing a crime against the alleged perpetrators or their parents, such as extortion or theft, to try to receive compensation. Most would agree we don't want that to happen. So what do you expect victims to do? Just be like "well, I know who stole my property, but I'm a libertarian and civil courts are kind of connected to governments and I don't want to use anything connected to governments so I guess there's nothing I can do about it"?
I'm not really a libertarian/cryptocurrency maximalist/anti-government/anti-government-issued currency, so I might be speaking out of turn, but I don't think lawsuits of this nature are necessarily incompatible with libertarian values. Besides anarchism-absolutists, I think most people still support some kind of justice system to protect against things like theft and injury.
I downvoted you because this is a straw man. Very few people believe in this and even if they did it doesn't mean the individual involved here believes that.
Just because in our world governments have a monopoly on laws and criminal courts, it doesn't mean that a world without governments would have no laws or criminal courts.
I'm not a fan of BTC because it's unbacked but I do care about having an irreversible money transfer tool and I do care about not having governments.
I'll give you an example.
In a society without governments, there would be no-one able to prevent the use of violence.
Eventually, organisations which provide violence as a service (whether offensive or defensive) would come up.
The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully instead of losing employees for the quibbles of their clients.
Deciding to acquire a protection service from one of these company would end up meaning accepting the different set of laws they would enforce between companies. The fear of a costly war between agencies and the fear of their reputation dropping with clients would keep these companies following the rules and the contracts they agreed to.
A protection service covering thieves would be hard pressed to find agreements with other protection services: the thieves stole X$ and is paying Z$ to their protection service where Z<X (otherwise what's the profit of stealing if it all goes in protection service); the victim is seeking X$+fees, the thieves' protection service needs to either pay X and eventually go bankrupt or ask X to the thieves, which is equivalent to give back X$+fees.
There are two scenarios:
- The thieves are not protected by any third party protection service: the victim's protection agency sends a few armed employees and retrieve what was forcefully stolen
- The thieves are protected by a third party protection service: the victim's protection agency and the thieves' protection agency agree to resolve the matter with a private court and agree to be bound by the judge decision. The judge has an economic interest in being fair or his reputation will go down the bin and he won't have clients anymore. After the court result, the thieves can return the money + fees or have the victim's protection agency forcefully retrieve the stolen goods or be sent to a prison-work camp until they repaid their debt.
> In a society without governments, there would be no-one able to prevent the use of violence. Eventually, organisations which provide violence as a service (whether offensive or defensive) would come up.
So basically warring mini-states, mercenary groups, mafias. We've been there before, most of history in fact. In a lot of places with little to no government control, we're still there now.
> The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully
Regaining stability after dismantling the current monopolies on violence than ensure it will take a very long time, and in the interim the situation will be extremely violent. The world didn't start settling matters relatively peacefully until two massive world wars occurred, and even then it only settled matters between some major western governments, not the world as a whole.
> So basically warring mini-states, mercenary groups, mafias. We've been there before, most of history in fact. In a lot of places with little to no government control, we're still there now.
Yes, I agree with you that a society without government where you would want to live is hard to achieve (hence why I'm not living in Somalia). I think it's in the realm of possible things, though. Maybe at some point in the future.
> Regaining stability after dismantling the current monopolies on violence than ensure it will take a very long time, and in the interim the situation will be extremely violent. The world didn't start settling matters relatively peacefully until two massive world wars occurred, and even then it only settled matters between some major western governments, not the world as a whole.
I think the best approach would be to gradually privatise public entities, reducing taxes progressively and replacing with private alternatives: healthcare, education, police, courts and eventually national defense.
I agree maintaining stability could prove to be a challenge. I think in particular, switching the police for protection agencies would need some negotiations in place during a period of peace maintained by a central (national or foreign) entity.
I think that even just going in this direction, without adopting anarchic plans, and reducing the size of the government could prove to be beneficial.
Georgia would be a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88vXJzkvr8Y
But haven't you just described governments? Your "protection service" is our "sovereign state". Your agreements between protection services are our international treaties (in particular ones that cede jurisdiction, such as the ECHR). Your "thieves not protected by any third party protection service" are our pirates in international waters.
The only difference is that I think you're imagining a free market where people can choose their "protection service" without physically moving into a specific area protected exclusively by them, and consequently there's an assumption that people can choose to be stateless. I'm not sure how you propose that land ownership would be mediated except by force by the protection services, which is exactly how sovereign states work anyway. And then people can't ever be stateless in practice because they'll always occupy land claimed by one of your protection services.
There is a big difference between paying for a service I can get from 5 different providers just in my local area and a country wide monopoly.
My main problem with the government is that I can't choose another government where I am, which means the government can be inefficient and unfriendly towards consumer (big public spending, bureaucracy).
It's not because of the illusion of being stateless; if nobody protects you, everyone can kill you, as that couple of bitcoin traders found out when trying to setup camp in international waters. It's mainly so that different agencies can compete with each other and so that nobody has a monopoly on violence.
Small independent entities would also have incentives to keep laws and contracts small and short: they can't afford to spend public money to make them and they won't care about victimless crimes like our governments love to do.
Overall, I think we can come with a society that is more decentralised, more efficient and closer to what consumers want.
You can laud anything for anything you want. Meanwhile, the person who stole 16.xx bitcoins in a way that was traceable to them, while exposing themselves to legal process, also had bad opsec.
I'm sure in the wild west there were plenty of cases where a dispute went to the person who had the authorities on their side.
Nothing contradictory here honestly. Obviously stealing should be prosecuted. We just don't want to be surveilled, have our money inflated to valuelessness, etc.
How did they track the destination address to Oliver Paul Read? How is that even possible? Was it because the address was a Bitfinex address which they subpoenaed?
From the article it shows the kids had bad opsec, and their identities could be deduced from Github accounts that were linked to the theft which were subsequently subpoenaed.
edit: And since they were asking on github on how to get the private key from the malware, they apparently succeeded in getting that private key and then probably sent the coins to bitfinex. That transaction would be visible on the chain of course, so it's an independent thread of evidence.
What's interesting to me is the letter sent to the parents house, it's similar to that of a scam email requesting for millions of bitcoin... or else. The irony.
Side note: could have this happened if you ran a browser with JS turned off?
The exploit was that the victim downloaded some malware (that came bundled with software he intended to download) which ran in the background looking for a Bitcoin address in his clipboard and quickly replacing it with a different one. It wouldn’t be possible to do that in an ordinary JavaScript application (lots of restrictions on clipboard access) and the malware was not a website so turning js is irrelevant
The defendants are in the UK, and the plaintiff in the US. The plaintiff filed their suit in Colorado according to the article. Even though the US has this rule that they will appoint you a lawyer, I don’t know if that applies when the defendant is a foreign national who is not even physically in the US. And I don’t know the UK legal system but if it’s anything like my country then they may need to hire the lawyer themselves. And it could be that they cannot afford this. I mean sure the kids stole a lot of Bitcoin but it’s not a good idea to use the stolen money until they know whether or not they get away with it. (And for the record I hope of course that they are forced to return the stolen Bitcoins.)
Furthermore even though the mother is representing the son, it is possible that they have already sought advice from a lawyer on what to say.
I looked it up and you are correct. There were some additional details about some circumstances where it could apply even then. But like I said, I’m not a lawyer :p
The statute of limitations argument isn't an argument stemming from guilt, it is merely an issue which may block the lawsuit before anything else is even presented to the courts. The mom isn't saying "Yeah he stole them, but the statute of limitations has expired". She is saying "This lawsuit doesn't even have standing because the statute of limitations has expired".
If someone sued you for property stolen 50 years before you were even born, you would still argue the statute of limitations has expired before even getting to the physical impossibility of the act.
The mother did not admit anything. And it is pretty obvious that she has professional legal advice and is not just acting on a whim. The lawyer was probably not allowed to represent her in a Colorado court.
I'm curious how cross-border civil-case lawsuits work between individuals. Can the Reads just ignore the lawsuit? If so, will they get arrested next time they try to enter the US or do they get extradited upon conviction?
There are ways to serve defendants internationally in a civil case. Once served, you must win your case, get a judgment, then take your judgment into the country of residence of the defendants and get it entered there. You cannot be arrested for a civil judgment. It's all about money.
> Who the hell installs a random app and then uses it to transfer millions of $$ in bitcoin?!?
It's not like there's a huge wealth of stable reputable ecosystems that could have been used as an alternative.
Look at any crypto forums from just 5 years ago and just about every single website or tool mentioned has either been hacked or run off with users' money in the intervening period.
What is "random" software, and what is not? Most people have no context for making that distinction. Avoiding software, or identifying honest expert help, can also be infeasible for these people. Most technologically experienced people don't appreciate or respect this massive hindrance the majority live with.
"Because plaintiff did not file his lawsuit until May 21, 2021, three years and five months after his injury, his claims should be dismissed."
Can someone please explain how the statute of limitations works?
From what this lawyer wrote, it sounds like the clock starts ticking when you find out you were injured even if you have no idea who did it. So, if it takes you years to track down the thief, then you're out of luck even if you file suit the day you discover his identity.
I'm not sure if this applies in Colorado, but I just read on a law firm's web site[0] that, if you file a 'John Doe' lawsuit, you are filing within the statute of limitations, even if you don't amend the filing with the defendant's name until later.
If this is all true the kid tried to frame another boy for the theft. The ethics of stealing aside, that's just pure evil, especially at such a young age. Imagine they'd not discovered him and it would have ruined the other guy's life having to go to prison for a crime they didn't commit.
> Neither of the defendants’ families are disputing the basic claim that their kids stole from Mr. Schober. Rather, they’re claiming that time has run out on Schober’s legal ability to claim a cause of action against them.
I was honestly shocked to read this. Can it be surprising the kids think it's okay to steal if this is their parent's response? Clearly two very smart guys but in the long run ethics matter a lot more than money or intelligence.
Meh, gotta learn it somewhere. Some kid in the neighborhood broke into a bunch of mailboxes. Looked him up, looked up his dad. It came as no surprise that the kid's father is no longer allowed to make telephone sales in the state of Tennessee. I'll leave it to the reader's imagination as to why that might be.
That is not the point. There's the legal system. Then there's morality and how you raise kids. If the parents act like these, they shouldn't be surprised they're raising little filthy thieves.
In other words: parents raising kids giving them values like respecting the private property of others (no matter if it's actual physical gold coins, a bicycle, Bitcoins or whatever really) probably wouldn't use such pathetic tactics to try to dismiss the case. But the real point is: parents raising kids with actual values probably wouldn't be raising scummy thieves in the first place.
The parents were wrong to ignore the victim's letters. That's a lot of money to force your kids give back, and I know it would be tempting to keep it if my kids did a similar thing, but the morally courageous thing would have been to return it then and there. It seems they took the greedy path.
However, aggressively defending one's legal rights is also morally justified, esp. in Common Law jurisdictions with adversarial procedure. In fact, we'd likely have a more just (and thus more moral) system if more people asserted their legal rights in criminal trials, and took matters before juries rather than prisoner's dilemma plea agreements. (I understand why they don't, which is why plea agreements are so pernicious.)
Would there even be a way to verify the victim's claims? If I got a random letter in the mail saying my kid stole $XX and I should pay it back voluntarily to not get the courts involved, I'd just toss it in the trash.
There is, IMO, a difference between legal punishment and parental punishment.
More likely than not, the bitcoin is gone and the parents don't want to be on the hook for a substantial sum of money. Meanwhile, their kid is grounded for ever.
People can talk about ethics at length when they themselves are not involved, but when faced with this exact situation I can guarantee that everyone here would also try and get the case dismissed rather than be on the hook for a million dollars.
Especially as their kid probably spent it when it was worth a lot less, so they really have no way to repay that sum. Although it is a fair sum to sue for. If he had found their details when BTC was $1000 it would have been easier on everyone. Their kid was too good but not good enough at hiding his tracks.
I wonder if HMRC would be interested in what would have been a considerable capital gain which likely went unreported for tax purposes.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 215 ms ] threadI'm highly interested in what will happen if we can crack the crypto and move all the funds from a given wallet without any interaction or deception. It's just math, and there's no sovereign entity you're attacking or depleting. No corporate server. Seems like if you can get the numbers to match, the proceeds are yours. But we'll see.
Edit: are downvoters afraid of this idea?
Couldn't you say the same about guessing a password?
In the other, you are running a hashing function on a public ledger/data.
You'd either have to leak the database to get the hashes, compromise some other system, or keep trying to talk to the server to probe for weaknesses.
With crypto it's just math that lives out in the open.
But let's say they draw a line at "making a transaction that knowingly isn't yours". What if you leak some highly valued keys and short Bitcoin?
Bitcoin are securities that have value because people say they do. Saying that BTC is just math is like saying that credit default swaps or frozen orange juice futures are just pieces of paper.
The market assigns value to things. What those things physically are is irrelevant; If there is a buyer and there is a seller, the thing is real and has value.
There's no question that theft of BTC is theft, the fundamental technology behind it isn't relevant to whether or not it's theft because people treat it as a concrete security that can be bought and sold.
That's obvious. Does US case law protect it, though? And in what ways?
> There's no question that theft of BTC is theft
If you publish keys you discover, that's not theft. And that's my point.
How does the system deal with that? There's no technical means to roll back or prove original ownership (especially if you find multiple values for the key).
The legal framework doesn't have any precedent, and if doesn't seem to me like it would protect you.
If I publish, "Hey everybody! I found Satoshi's keys! They're 0FFF...", I didn't do anything wrong.
Exactly was "owned" and taken to be considered theft? A secret?
I’m more curious about cases where some smart contract gives away a load of money because of some bug. There are legal cases where a contract says something stupid and courts uphold the contract and there are legal cases where a contract says something stupid and the courts instead go for the thing the contract meant to say. A funny example is that lawyers don’t like to write an equation into a contract and sometimes someone will tell them the equation that everyone agrees on for calculating interest, and they will convert it to words in the contract and the conversion will be incorrect leading to e.g. applying interest of “inflation since start of contract” cumulatively each year (leading to superexponential growth).
Everyone loves the wild west until they're the ones being victimized, then it turns out 3rd party authorities are useful after all.
Can we move on and accept that not everyone who is using crypto is a dark hat crypto-libertarian hacker already?
Crypto is touted as the anti dollar/euro/pound/government backed non-fiat currency yet it is laughable that users are using governments for recourse.
It’s also laughable coinbase is guaranteeing a 150k pound reimbursement if their customers funds are illegaly stolen. They are a basically a bank with FDIC backed accounts, except they’re self backed.
They are, in every way, of less value to the economy than traditional fiat currency.
Not everyone who uses crypto is a dark hat crypto-libertarian hacker. Few people who clamor for crypto have good reasons to use it other than "why not have it as an option for people who want it?" or "I wanna do this stuff without being tracked".We need way more crypto-libertarian hackers.
Why do you need more? This is a perfectly valid reason for cryptocurrency to exist. All digital transactions should work like physical cash. Banks and credit card companies analyzing your transactions should be literally impossible. Payment processors should not even exist much less act like the financial gatekeepers they are today.
Laws enshrine property.
Bitcoin is a legal gray area. I'm sure it'll shape up some way or another, but maybe not the way we expect.
Originally, crypto enthusiasts - especially the ones with an anarchist streak - were into the idea that crypto would exist completely outside of government control, i.e. the government wouldn't even recognize it as property. So if thieves trick you into sending coins to the wrong address, tough luck, you should've been more careful.
To sue in court over property theft means the government must recognize crypto as property, and as such, crypto is brought into the fold of government oversight.
Let's say the government doesn't care at all about their loss (pretty common for fraud crimes in the US, I myself have been a victim of credit card fraud and no one cared even my bank who charged me anyway after I proved it was fraudulent) they actually do manage to get their property back from the person who stole it without government intervention, but they did it through direct rather than governmental action. Who cares, and what are you going to do about it? Sit back in your chair and type about the injustice of a man taking his property back without begging a policeman on his knees to consider giving the slightest care? It's nice that your moral outrage will be present but the pragmatism remains.
We live in a land of law and order. Without any law or order, or organization, your recourse is to do something similar to what the IRS does when they do not get paid.
This is pretty rich coming from someone who's legitimately suggesting vigilante justice as a policy.
"Law and order for thee, freedom to be judge, jury and executioner for me."
Tell me oh wise one, how do you get your money back if you live in a place with no government or organization and there are no legal means? Do you expect all of society is just going to get it back for you? All you'd have is yourself, and your way to deal with it.
But we don't live in that thought experiment. In our current society, let's say Joe tricked Bob into sending him all of his bitcoin.
Option A: the government recognizes crypto as property, and the government intervenes to get Bob his property back. Of course, this also means that crypto is subject to taxes and regulations.
Option B: the government does not recognize crypto as property, and does nothing because no "crime" has been committed. Bob is out of luck. But, there are no taxes or regulations on crypto, so if you don't get robbed you can get rich and evade taxes.
Option B is the logical outcome of the scenario that many crypto anarchists originally wanted for crypto. No government oversight, which means no taxes or regulations, but also means you're shit outta luck if someone robs you. That's what I was commenting on.
Maybe those crypto anarchists also want a world with no government, so they can take Option C and be their own vigilantes. But it's even more ludicrous to desire that kind of world.
If you think bitcoin holders should be hardcore anarchists you should believe that they should live in a world with those outcomes, whatever you believe they are.
It's pointing out the issue with the "how can you consider yourself a libertarian but support people using a government system, like a judicial system, when they're wronged? isn't that hypocritical?" argument. It leads to the conclusion "if they're really true libertarians, they'd either let themselves be victims or just take justice into their own hands", and neither of those would be desirable outcomes.
The argument would make more sense if, say, the victim had gotten taxpayer-funded federal law enforcement to find and apprehend the perpetrators. But in this case they hired a private investigator, sent a request to the parents of the alleged perpetrators, and filed a lawsuit when the request wasn't responded to.
No, I do not, because that's not how the IRS works. Do you have evidence to the contrary? Perhaps even a single example of "armed agents" showing up to the residence or workplace of someone who has failed to pay those taxes?
your recourse is to do something similar to what the IRS does when they do not get paid.
Except that I don't have the authority to garnish wages or put liens on property. Like the IRS does.
Here ya go: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/30/us/3-businessmen-testify-...
“Three businessmen told the Senate Finance Committee today of Internal Revenue Service agents who, with guns drawn, broke down doors, terrified workers and forced teen-age girls to change clothes in front of male agents in raids at the men's homes and businesses that they said were unnecessary.
These aggressive paramilitary tactics were denounced as intolerable and ‘’fascist’’ by Democratic and Republican senators as the panel heard testimony for a second day in its second round of hearings on I.R.S. abuses of taxpayers.”
Dystopian fiction is not something to strive for.
People can already "do the opposite." Hooded men in the middle of the night could try to take your possessions. The odds the police will show up in time is slim; at least in the US especially in rural areas your only chance is to take retaining your possessions in your own hands. Removing governmental restraint just prevents you from being convicted in court if you act directly instead of using the gun of a policeman. This is why in places like Texas is it legal to shoot someone for trespassing on your land and taking your property; some would argue that should extend to your virtual property such as bitcoin.
[1] See citations regarding primate behavior ("property in primates") in https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/214043811.pdf
100% of intellectual property rights requires a government. It's not really a right. It's manufactured. Patents user to he called monopolies. It takes a government to enforce such a regime.
Without a government there's no agreed upon, or forced upon, authority to prevent violence.
I can’t even begin to imagine how that country would continue to exist. A government that doesn’t control its own monetary policy isn’t a government at all.
However, the GP stated that countries without control of monetary policy cease to exist. For the purposes of addressing that statement a period of >30 years where the US decided not to exercise any control seems nearly as good of a counter-example as a period where they literally had no control.
Some of this country's greatest achievements have come in a system where the government still had full legislative, executive and judicial powers but had to operate under basic rules like not being able to print money for themselves whenever they felt like it.
That is different than saying they were not in control of their monetary policy... they have always been in control, you just liked the old monetary policy better
However, for large swaths of the time the US has been around that has not been politically feasible, and I'm not sure it would have been economically feasible, fiat currencies seem to have taken a while to gain stability and acceptance.
For a large period of time the US was on a gold standard and de facto did not have control over monetary policy. It doesn't matter much that they technically had power if they didn't use it.
This description seems to apply to most European countries, who have explicitly given up some control of their monetary policies.
So, Germany, for example, seems to contradict your thesis that any such country would quickly cease to exist.
I did not know. The phrase "complete control over monetary policy" has a very specific meaning and I stand by my response as a counterexample to that meaning.
And I don't think this is an unreasonable misunderstanding! People do worry about Bitcoin w.r.t monetary policy, a future of "hyperbitcoinization" where the world runs off a deflationary currency seems undesirable, to say the least.
If that is not what you intended then even given your clarification here I'm still not sure what you meant to say with that phrase.
So yeah, Germany does have control over its own monetary policy, they just made a political choice to share that power with France, Italy, Spain, etc.
However, for example, my understanding is that Greece was _forced_ by the ECB and others to undertake some wildly unpopular austerity measures. It doesn't sound like they had a lot of control. If Germany were to go through a similar crisis my understanding is that it could also be forced to take measures Germans do not approve of.
I'm not passing any judgement here! But surely we can both agree that Greece (and Germany) do not have full control over their monetary policies and still exist as independent countries, that's the only point I wanted to make.
They weren't forced per se. Their government was close to bankrupt, facing loan repayments it couldn't pay. The choice was either refinancing or default. The EU offered refinancing loans, but on strict conditions including austerity measures. The Greek government decided that those austerity measures, as painful as they were, were a lesser evil than the immense economic chaos and uncertainty a default would cause. The situation the Greek government faced wasn't hugely different from that repeatedly faced by some other governments such as Argentina. The main difference between Greece and Argentina is that Argentina controlled its own monetary policy, and hence had some control over exchange rates; but, when faced with massive debts you can't repay (denominated in international currencies), control over your own exchange rates is only of modest help.
It was commonly said at the time that if Greece defaulted it would have to leave the Eurozone. I'm not sure how true that actually is – the Eurozone has no formal mechanism to expel a member, and so if a defaulting Greece refused to reintroduce the drachma, I don't think there is anything the ECB could do to actually force them to. However, in such a dire economic crisis, there is a decent chance the Greek government may have decided that leaving the Euro was the best option, and negotiated with the EU for a voluntary departure. Since default was avoided, it never came to that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currency_substitution#US_dolla...
This statement is best characterized as "not historically aware".
The only other option here is also extralegal justice, like committing a crime against the alleged perpetrators or their parents, such as extortion or theft, to try to receive compensation. Most would agree we don't want that to happen. So what do you expect victims to do? Just be like "well, I know who stole my property, but I'm a libertarian and civil courts are kind of connected to governments and I don't want to use anything connected to governments so I guess there's nothing I can do about it"?
I'm not really a libertarian/cryptocurrency maximalist/anti-government/anti-government-issued currency, so I might be speaking out of turn, but I don't think lawsuits of this nature are necessarily incompatible with libertarian values. Besides anarchism-absolutists, I think most people still support some kind of justice system to protect against things like theft and injury.
I'm not a fan of BTC because it's unbacked but I do care about having an irreversible money transfer tool and I do care about not having governments.
I'll give you an example.
In a society without governments, there would be no-one able to prevent the use of violence. Eventually, organisations which provide violence as a service (whether offensive or defensive) would come up. The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully instead of losing employees for the quibbles of their clients. Deciding to acquire a protection service from one of these company would end up meaning accepting the different set of laws they would enforce between companies. The fear of a costly war between agencies and the fear of their reputation dropping with clients would keep these companies following the rules and the contracts they agreed to.
A protection service covering thieves would be hard pressed to find agreements with other protection services: the thieves stole X$ and is paying Z$ to their protection service where Z<X (otherwise what's the profit of stealing if it all goes in protection service); the victim is seeking X$+fees, the thieves' protection service needs to either pay X and eventually go bankrupt or ask X to the thieves, which is equivalent to give back X$+fees.
There are two scenarios:
- The thieves are not protected by any third party protection service: the victim's protection agency sends a few armed employees and retrieve what was forcefully stolen
- The thieves are protected by a third party protection service: the victim's protection agency and the thieves' protection agency agree to resolve the matter with a private court and agree to be bound by the judge decision. The judge has an economic interest in being fair or his reputation will go down the bin and he won't have clients anymore. After the court result, the thieves can return the money + fees or have the victim's protection agency forcefully retrieve the stolen goods or be sent to a prison-work camp until they repaid their debt.
So basically warring mini-states, mercenary groups, mafias. We've been there before, most of history in fact. In a lot of places with little to no government control, we're still there now.
> The expensive nature of violence (nobody in their right mind would spend the money we spend on wars if the cost of war wasn't socialised through mandatory taxes) would push these organisations to negotiate contracts to settle matters peacefully
Regaining stability after dismantling the current monopolies on violence than ensure it will take a very long time, and in the interim the situation will be extremely violent. The world didn't start settling matters relatively peacefully until two massive world wars occurred, and even then it only settled matters between some major western governments, not the world as a whole.
Yes, I agree with you that a society without government where you would want to live is hard to achieve (hence why I'm not living in Somalia). I think it's in the realm of possible things, though. Maybe at some point in the future.
There is a nice example in Medieval Iceland: https://mises.org/library/medieval-iceland-and-absence-gover...
> Regaining stability after dismantling the current monopolies on violence than ensure it will take a very long time, and in the interim the situation will be extremely violent. The world didn't start settling matters relatively peacefully until two massive world wars occurred, and even then it only settled matters between some major western governments, not the world as a whole.
I think the best approach would be to gradually privatise public entities, reducing taxes progressively and replacing with private alternatives: healthcare, education, police, courts and eventually national defense. I agree maintaining stability could prove to be a challenge. I think in particular, switching the police for protection agencies would need some negotiations in place during a period of peace maintained by a central (national or foreign) entity.
I think that even just going in this direction, without adopting anarchic plans, and reducing the size of the government could prove to be beneficial. Georgia would be a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88vXJzkvr8Y
But haven't you just described governments? Your "protection service" is our "sovereign state". Your agreements between protection services are our international treaties (in particular ones that cede jurisdiction, such as the ECHR). Your "thieves not protected by any third party protection service" are our pirates in international waters.
The only difference is that I think you're imagining a free market where people can choose their "protection service" without physically moving into a specific area protected exclusively by them, and consequently there's an assumption that people can choose to be stateless. I'm not sure how you propose that land ownership would be mediated except by force by the protection services, which is exactly how sovereign states work anyway. And then people can't ever be stateless in practice because they'll always occupy land claimed by one of your protection services.
Small independent entities would also have incentives to keep laws and contracts small and short: they can't afford to spend public money to make them and they won't care about victimless crimes like our governments love to do.
Overall, I think we can come with a society that is more decentralised, more efficient and closer to what consumers want.
Nope, it fails several of the tests that determine what is and is not a government.
At first glance, it:
* does not claim an exclusive territory
* does not claim a monopoly on the legitimate use of force
I'm sure in the wild west there were plenty of cases where a dispute went to the person who had the authorities on their side.
Also a major assumption you have is that any crypto holder must hold the same views as the early bitcoin adopters.
Bitcoin has no threat of violence when wrong doing happens.
edit: And since they were asking on github on how to get the private key from the malware, they apparently succeeded in getting that private key and then probably sent the coins to bitfinex. That transaction would be visible on the chain of course, so it's an independent thread of evidence.
Read the article?
Furthermore even though the mother is representing the son, it is possible that they have already sought advice from a lawyer on what to say.
IANAL, TINLA.
I believe that is only for criminal trials. Isn't this a civil case?
I looked it up and you are correct. There were some additional details about some circumstances where it could apply even then. But like I said, I’m not a lawyer :p
If someone sued you for property stolen 50 years before you were even born, you would still argue the statute of limitations has expired before even getting to the physical impossibility of the act.
Of course, this was when bitcoin was $500 and I was just trying to transf it off of a work computer.
If I was dealing with tens of thousands, I would not have been so foolish to try and transfer the bitcoin without expert help.
Who the hell installs a random app and then uses it to transfer millions of $$ in bitcoin?!? What a fool!
How do you identify expert help that you can trust, if you're not qualified to assess expertise?
It's not like there's a huge wealth of stable reputable ecosystems that could have been used as an alternative.
Look at any crypto forums from just 5 years ago and just about every single website or tool mentioned has either been hacked or run off with users' money in the intervening period.
you what? you were trying to transfer btc from a (work) computer? well ....
Can someone please explain how the statute of limitations works?
From what this lawyer wrote, it sounds like the clock starts ticking when you find out you were injured even if you have no idea who did it. So, if it takes you years to track down the thief, then you're out of luck even if you file suit the day you discover his identity.
Is this correct?
https://statelaws.findlaw.com/colorado-law/colorado-civil-st...
[0] https://www.shouselaw.com/ca/personal-injury/suing-john-doe-...
I was honestly shocked to read this. Can it be surprising the kids think it's okay to steal if this is their parent's response? Clearly two very smart guys but in the long run ethics matter a lot more than money or intelligence.
In other words: parents raising kids giving them values like respecting the private property of others (no matter if it's actual physical gold coins, a bicycle, Bitcoins or whatever really) probably wouldn't use such pathetic tactics to try to dismiss the case. But the real point is: parents raising kids with actual values probably wouldn't be raising scummy thieves in the first place.
However, aggressively defending one's legal rights is also morally justified, esp. in Common Law jurisdictions with adversarial procedure. In fact, we'd likely have a more just (and thus more moral) system if more people asserted their legal rights in criminal trials, and took matters before juries rather than prisoner's dilemma plea agreements. (I understand why they don't, which is why plea agreements are so pernicious.)
More likely than not, the bitcoin is gone and the parents don't want to be on the hook for a substantial sum of money. Meanwhile, their kid is grounded for ever.
I wonder if HMRC would be interested in what would have been a considerable capital gain which likely went unreported for tax purposes.
https://github.com/rootSig/electrum-atom