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Can you give a source for this?
A quick search turned up this collection of wisdom:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_...

Some of the examples that he’s crazy there are just rules from the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.
> You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.

Yes it does. Just because crazy ideas are spread by an old religious organization does not make them any less crazy. There is no provable god. Any of their beliefs are just that, beliefs. Nothing they "teach" can be verified or measured. It is all made up nonsense and you might as well call it crazy. People do not raise from the dead. We die, that's it.

I don't think it's necessary to denounce religion to criticize these views, and that's usually viewed as flamebait.
> Just because crazy ideas are spread by an old religious organization does not make them any less crazy.

I agree with this, for provably wrong, generally accepted as wrong, or blatantly contradictory statements. But from a secular perspective, believing in god(s) is just an approximation or heuristic. Some people need or want that. For my own thinking I've judged it as an questionable axiom that creates a logic hole large enough to drive a bulldozer through, but to each their own. What actually matters is the conclusions and behaviors a person builds on top of it.

Catholic moral teaching on homosexuality does not require there to be a God. In fact the reasoning is entirely secular. You may disagree with it, but that is the case. Catholic moral teaching on slavery is based on there being a God.

When it comes to marriage, the church believes that relations between men and women that can result in the generation of a child are worthy of special privileges. Relations between impotent men or women who cannot have sex are similarly not considered marriage. If you can find two men or two women who produced a child, the church would change its beliefs, but no one has been able to do so. Note that there's no dependence on their being a god for this one. The fact that heterosexual couplings produce children is an observation. That this relationship should come with societal privilege is a statement one can come to through reason.

> Relations between impotent men or women who cannot have sex are similarly not considered marriage

Is this indeed so?

Yes, men who cannot have erections due to permanent disability or women without vaginas (whether due to surgery or existing disability) cannot marry in the church. It's always been the case.
I thought I heard about all the dumb things in the church, but I thought wrong
In my limited understanding as a non-Catholic, some of these are Traditionalist Catholic takes (notably the geocentrism), eg, rejecting the mild reforms of Vatican II. So, it being just the Catechism is something I think many Catholics would take issue with. I can't imagine any of the Catholics I've ever met offering up a defense of slavery.
Some, some are almost verbatim out of the current (post-Vatican II) Catechism.
Except he’s not “Catholic” (at least by what most define that as). Apparently he’s a sedevacantism follower.
It's ancient stuff which can be interpreted and translated to modern language but should not be taken literally.

Apart from this, religions were created as means of society control. Some people need religion, some can find spirituality without it, some don't have such needs. This guy appears to be a person who would set someone on fire to make sure that they're not a witch.

> It's ancient stuff which can be interpreted and translated to modern language but should not be taken literally.

That's a debate that belongs to the Bible not the Catechism. The Catechism is updated all the time and published in an authorized modern English version.

>> You can disagree with it but being Catholic doesn’t make you crazy.

No more crazy than some people in the middle east. They are not crazy but you can say they are religious fanatics or as the people in the U.S prefer to say Right-Wing

https://old.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/4936kw/lukejr_is_...

Don't think it matters though; theft is still theft even if the victim is a nutjob, and it's still theft if he didn't protect his keys well enough.

But today a crime is okay if you don't like someone. Hmkay.

On a second thought: He reads like an extremely religious person. This actually makes me doubt the "tax evasion" story.
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I see it as accepting karma; the guy is clealy an idiot and an ass, and was responsible for losing their own money.

Like if someone spread their money all over their lawn to show off; when it gets stolen, I'm not supporting the theft, but I can definitely laugh at the "victim" who did it to themselves. There is room for personal responsibility here...

There's a difference between "I'm ok with this" (which is what the comment further upthread said) and "lol, what an idiot". The first indicates approval of the crime, the second does not. Plus, it was purely based on his personal views, and not his op-sec (or lack thereof).

Besides, it's not like he strewn all his money on the lawn; stealing the wallet + GPG key still took some significant effort. More like leaving a lot of money in the house with a shabby door and lock: not a smart idea, but you'd still have to break through the front door – crappy as it may be – to get at it. It wasn't a "crime of opportunity".

he is arguing straightforwardly from the premise that catholic doctrine is the source of moral truth and that it has its own view of permissible and impermissible slavery. would it surprise you to learn that the 13th amendment has an explicit carve-out for prisoners? it's literally the same thing
The 13th amendment talks about "slavery or involuntary servitude"; the prisoner exception mostly refers to "involuntary servitude" – certainly in modern context. Plus, certainly in US context (and this guy does seem to be from the US) "slavery" strongly implies "racial based slavery". That's not the only form of slavery, but that's the strong connotation it has in the US for obvious reasons. His exact views are unclear, and at best he is careless in how he expresses his views.

Either way, I'm not especially interested in discussing his views in great detail; I was mostly replying to "I don't like this person, so I'm okay with him being a victim", which I take exception to.

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He has written a large number of things that demonstrate he is cognitively impaired.

It's weird watching folks either engaging in "blaming the victim" or "laughing at the disabled" around this guy.

He appears to be astoundingly, cripplingly stupid. Core dev, huh? Yeah. Cool.

Cognitively impared, or just an asshole? Its a very fine line
>He appears to be astoundingly, cripplingly stupid. Core dev, huh? Yeah. Cool.

Is that an issue? His contributions are peer reviewed, just like with everyone else's contributions (anyone can submit PRs). Or do you work at place that would fire well performing team members if it was found out they believed in something that was "astoundingly, cripplingly stupid"?

You basically just rationalized the ChatGPT Development Team, coming to everywhere near you.

Yes, someone who appears to get things right by accident would eventually be removed in almost every place I’ve worked, except when that person was in charge.

It's in a subreddit called "DebateReligion". Just because someone takes a position in a debate doesn't mean that it's their personal belief.
In a formal debate setting? Sure. In a debate where everyone elects to participate and what they'll be arguing - and when someone consistently, across multiple forums, including places that are not for religious debate, takes similar views (eg, he seems to consistently say that laws of the state are de facto moral unless they contradict the teachings of the church/"a higher law", with his views on slavery being a special case of this broader position)? Seems like a reasonable inference.
What he's actually saying in the Reddit thread linked in the sibling comment is that the Catholic church condones slavery in some circumstances (I'd have to take his word about that, I don't know anything about church doctrine) and that insofar as the church is the expression of God's will, that makes it moral.

It's no crazier than any other religious belief if you're going to imagine some omnipotent deity just makes up whatever rules they want and they're beyond human reasoning.

I have no idea what the circumstances are in which the Church condones slavery, but it's not like the guy is arguing that we should reinstate plantations or that Epstein was a good guy who did nothing wrong or anything.

I'd encourage you not to take his word for it, these are extreme views that are not reflective of Catholics in general (and I saw at least one person in those threads pointing this out, though I didn't read the threads closely). I've met at least one Catholic who would describe his views as heretical.

I'd also encourage you to reexamine if "slavery is okay sometimes" is really equivalently "crazy" to other religious ideas (like say, "love thy neighbor"), I think that is pretty uncharitable to religious people.

He might not address Epstein, but he does argue that "heretics can be executed as long as there's due process." That is some low key religious fascism ("it's okay to execute heretics as long as we control the government first"). Most Catholics I know oppose the death penalty (they successfully lobbied to make it illegal where I live, because they felt it was incompatible with their religious convictions).

You might look more into "Traditionalist Catholicism" if you are interested. I enjoyed this short (45m) documentary. https://youtu.be/icwDF8wRgF4

The views of Catholics in general are irrelevant. The church doctrine either says something or it doesn't. He's arguing that the doctrine says that and always has.

I think taking someone's words out of context and twisting it into "this guy is pro-slavery" so you can gloat about them being robbed is just a shitty thing to do.

It doesn't "just say what it does or doesn't" is what I'm trying to tell you, there's a lot of controversy about this within the Catholic community, and his views are specifically counter to current doctrine (which he views as illegitimate). (See the edit I made when you were typing this.)

Gloating about them being robbed is shitty though.

That's not the point. There's still a difference between arguing in the abstract "my interpretation of the doctrine says this is permitted" and "I support and advocate doing this". Even the 13th Amendment permits slavery for prisoners.

It reads much more like a pedantic nerd who wants to argue the technicalities of the rules rather than someone who's just itchin' to own some slaves.

I guess? It's not a distinction with a very compelling difference. (The 13th amendment is wrong, morally speaking, to do so.)

> It reads much more like a pedantic nerd who wants to argue the technicalities of the rules rather than someone who's just itchin' to own some slaves.

I think if you understood the context better you may feel differently.

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By the Catholic definition of slavery (depriving a wage earner of their wage), all countries on the planet practice some form of slavery, typically in the form of debt slavery. Attaching nice words to it like 'wage garnishment' does not change the substance of the act.

That being said, I know Luke well from various online fora (di not know he was a BTC dev til today, but it makes so much sense), and he's a bit of an A*hole

"Lost"...sure, what a convenient tax writeoff
On the last day of the year to claim it too. What a coincidence.
The timing of his claimed loss is suspiciously convenient in regard to a supposed tax writeoff scam, assuming that is possible, but he is a deeply eccentric man. A discussion earlier on HN [1] mentions many examples of his (alleged) activities and core beliefs that I think it's fair to say many will consider abnormal, even by the standards of cryptocurrency and libertarian circles

You really should read more about him to see how this incident might be more plausible in the context of such an unusual individual's unique and non-mainstream lifestyle

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34210583

You don't seem to understand taxes, that doesn't make any sense.
Some countries have a wealth tax. If he legally "lost" those assets, he doesn't have to pay taxes on them?
Very few countries have a wealth tax, and US is definitely not one of them.
Theft is a tax deduction.
It looks like he kept his keys on a server that he knew was compromised since November. Not great opsec, to put it lightly.

https://twitter.com/pic/orig/media%2FFlakyMWWAAIUDPl.png

It was compromised more than once.

He kept claiming it must be physical access, but the information he shared about the attacks points more to an IPMI, BMC, iLO or iDRAC type interface being unsecured.

He also didn't use FDE on the server which made the attacks possible...

He has lost them, but surely someone else has found them! Anyway it’s a story to follow.
that must be a tax evasion incident. i can't believe a CORE DEV would be as dumb as keeping everything in a hot wallet on his computer, where he does all kinds of stuff.
Wow all the way to the sun revolving around the earth. Ok, 14 years ago but still...
Are all Christians absolute nutcases? All I see is someone who's devout, or possibly belonging to a fundamentalist sect of Christianity.

Despite how progressive we nerd types signal to be, HN can sure be a boy's club of in-groups sometimes.

I'll take my downvotes, I mean it. You guys in this comment thread are not bringing value to this discussion.

I would argue that anyone who professes beliefs such as the person in question is, in fact, an "absolute nutcase". The extreme beliefs themselves are what makes someone a nutcase.

A primary example of such a nutcase belief complex is: 1. That X is the only true religion. 2. That believing in false things is not a natural right and is heresy. 3. That heresy can and should be punished.

This belief complex has been demonstrated publicly by the mentioned person.

Didn't think this level of Xenophobia would fly on HN, but I'm not exactly surprised either.
wait, standing against someone who wants to give the state the rights to kill me (a heretic by their definition) is xenophobia now?
You are conflating anti-Christian with anti-reason. This person's beliefs as professed by those quotes, whether or not they are Christian (and many of them are certainly not, for example, in line with Catholic beliefs, which is my area of expertise) are not reasonable.

If someone expresses an unreasonable belief, such as that it is moral to execute "heretics", then that person deserves scorn regardless of whatever "belief club" they claim to belong to. Not only that, he himself is a "heretic" to Catholics for believing that Pope Francis is some kind of impostor installed by the liberal MSM media.

Sorry, but sometimes a nutcase is just a nutcase. The easiest way to identify a nutcase is identifying professed beliefs that are either internally inconsistent or that no reasonable person would remotely agree with.

> Not only that, he himself is a "heretic" to Catholics for believing that Pope Francis is some kind of impostor installed by the liberal MSM media.

Technically, believing a valid papal election did not occur and that others believe in it only because of a fraud conspiracy when such an election did occur is not heretical, even from the perspective of the doctrine of the part of the Church that recognizes the election.

I'm not saying that this guy isn’t a heretic from the point of view of (what the MSM describes as, from his PoV) the Catholic heirarchy, or even that his sedevacantism isn’t rooted in heresy, just that the particular view pointed to isn’t heretical on the surface (since it doesn't touch on, much less conflict with, any essential doctrine.)

Fair, thanks for the clarification
Hmm…

He claims:

>> it is legitimate to punish by death, someone who openly declares the popes to not be infallible on matters of faith and morals

But also claims that, in simple terms, “executed code is not code or lawful” if it’s executed code dealing with his magic internet tokens…

What a conundrum…

What a specimen of a human being I’ve come upon tonight. I’ve known of the man’s existence, not this beautiful list of past quotes you’ve given us tho.

Did not know there was a raging christo-fascist amongst the core dev team.

Unfortunat.

> I’ve known of the man’s existence, not this beautiful list of past quotes you’ve given us tho.

And this is 6 years old, in the meantime he has graced us with many more, including one where he says that slavery is fine because it's just another type of employment contract!

If he was in from the start, 200 BTC are probably nothing though?
> The incident has also caught the attention of Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, who offered condolences and support in a Jan. 1 post. > > “Sorry to see you lose so much. Informed our security team to monitor. If it comes our way, we will freeze it. If there is anything else we can help with, please let us know. We deal with these often, and have Law Enforcement (LE) relationships worldwide," he wrote.

The difference between Bitcoin and TradFi shrinks every day.

> If it comes our way, we will freeze it.

So much for “Code is law”.

everyone is watching the avi case now to see whether a court will rule code is law. going to be super interesting to watch play out.
yes, but that obviously doesn't apply anymore when you add it to an exchange, which seems fair tbh. I'm not a blockchain shill by any means
I assume you must understand how Bitcoin works, so…

Moving cryptocurrencies around barriers such as custodial exchanges freezing/losing/stealing it is one of the “superpowers” that makes real Crypto valuable.

Any thief dumb enough to deposit their stolen goods onto someone’s exchange deserves to have it frozen — heck, if they deposited it into my wallet, that’s what I wound do!

Explain again how this defeats “code is law”?

It doesn't defeat it, it merely underlines that bitcoin platitudes evaporate in the light of practical use of "crypto".

Related sayings: "Feet of clay", "Emperor has no clothes". etc.

Damn, it's almost like centralized exchanges are the exact antithesis of everything cryptocurrencies stands for. I wonder if that's why everyone warns against using them?
Storing it yourself is similar risk to keeping lots of cash in your house.
"Storing cash in my house is unsafe. I'll just store it in someone else's house!"
If the other house has better protection against thief's and you trust the owner and inhabitants then, yes, maybe that makes sense.
..... Yeah.... That makes sense to me?
Storing cash in my house is unsafe. I'll just outsource this to people with expertise in storing cash
Most likely the hacker will use a DEX to convert his funds. But yeah there's no much difference between Exchanges and banks, they work basically the same way.
1. Is Changpeng “CZ” Zhao known to be someone who believes in "Code is law"? I know that some in the crypto community (specifically ethereum/difi) believes this, but this isn't as much of a gotcha you think it is because crypto isn't a monolith, and therefore there can be apparent contradictions from people within the crypto community.

2. On a more fundamental level, I don't see how this is inconsistent with "code is law". After all, if the attacker willingly transferred his stolen funds to a third party, then in the eyes of the network he legitimately gave up control of it[1], just like luke legitimately gave up control of his coins when his wallet was hacked. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[1] if you want to make it kosher in the eyes of the law, you could even sneak a clause in the ToS that says you have the right to freeze whatever funds you want.

> The difference between Bitcoin and TradFi shrinks every day.

It has been fascinating to watch society rethink/rebuild financial regulations from first principles and largely end up with the same conclusions. If anything, hopefully getting people to realize that all the rules tradfi institutions follow aren’t just made up for no reason.

You mean the rules that got our bank accounts frozen for giving 50 bucks to our trucker buddies to help them protest for the freedoms we thought we had?

Those “regulations“?

This incident alone has forged grim resolve in many people, including myself, to produce systems to grind TradFi to dust.

What evidence do we have that this kind of abuse of power would be impossible in crypto world?

It would only be possible if everyone used anonymous coins like Zcash and Monero from their own wallets. Any use of exchanges or secondary networks like lightning provides levers to turn people off. Any corporation can be subjected to pressure by not just governments but large groups of people.

I don’t see people like the trucker protestors using cryptographic hardware wallets and waiting minutes for transactions to clear on a block chain.

BTW the trucker thing was a line for many people including myself, and I wasn’t anti-vax and did not vote for Trump. Freezing the assets of people for participating in a protest is not okay. The content of the protest is irrelevant.

We can use Monero with our own wallets right now and will continue to do so, nobody can stop that. How is that not evidence? Transactions are occurring right now. It doesnt have to be "everyone" doing it
I imagine due to the transparency that is blockchain, you could create a regulatory system that refused payments from certain wallets as well. ex. This person sent $100 to BLM, make sure not to sell to him Nike.
Do you have a source for someone getting their bank account frozen over $50 to their trucker buddies?
I'm pretty sure they are talking about Canada freezing personal accounts of people during the anti-mandate protests.

No clue on the veracity of the statement, but here it is repeated by news media[0] which is sourcing a member of the Canadian parliament[1].

[0]: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/mp-mark-stra...

[1]: https://twitter.com/markstrahl/status/1495472037438967808

Did you read your zeroth link? It's not the proof you think it is. In fact, I don't think that it's unreasonable to consider it obvious lying...

>In a tweet on Sunday, Chilliwack-Hope MP Mark Strahl said a woman called Briane, "a single mom from Chilliwack working a minimum wage job," had apparently fallen foul of the Emergencies Act, which was recently invoked by the federal government in a bid to stop protesters occupying streets in downtown Ottawa.

>Vancouver Granville MP Taleeb Noormohamed says he's "quite skeptical" about the claim and has written to Strahl asking for more information, offering to help rectify the situation.

>Strahl has declined to speak to CBC News about the tweet or give any more information about Briane.

>On Monday, the Globe and Mail reported it had been mistakenly sent an email by the Ottawa Police Service, in which a constable said they had gone through the list of donors and found two "Briannes," neither of whom lived in B.C.

> Did you read your zeroth link? It's not the proof you think it is. In fact, I don't think that it's unreasonable to consider it obvious lying...

I mentioned that in my previous reply. I never even made a claim of truth or not, I was just giving context for what I believe they were claiming. Don't shoot the messenger.

> No clue on the veracity of the statement

Also

> Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

> Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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Good old Twitter troll Mark Strahl. Just pushing whatever lie suits his agenda.
FYI, I'm an Australian and I had my bank account closed without reason 1 month after a $1000 donation to Wikileaks.
Not sure why you are down voted. Let's hope your hn account wont be closed as well now "they" know what you did.
Because it is a statement without any context or evidence being used to try and back up another point without any evidence. There are reasons besides donating to wikileaks that could result in a bank account being closed in Australia.
>> There are reasons besides donating to wikileaks that could result in a bank account being closed in Australia.

There could be other reasons but I wouldn't be surprised if that was the only reason. Visa and mastercard suspended payment processing for wikileaks.

Some banks were closing accounts if you purchased crypto so it can be even more arbitrary.

Yes, those. I made no claim about the morality of said rules. Only that it appears that the logical conclusion is the same in both spaces.

Good luck to you, competition is a good thing.

That's ultimately why I'm turned off by crypto. I love some of the ideas, from a technical perspective. I do think some aspect of it is going to survive and provide immense value in the future, though I don't know what it will look like.

But right now, you have people, mostly younger, thinking they know how to build a better world by starting over from scratch. In programming, we've all seen (and been) the engineer who sees an old codebase for the first time and thinks they could do a better job with a full rewrite. We know that rarely works. And yet somehow many of those same engineers think they can do the same with a global financial system that's been in existence for centuries.

>But right now, you have people, mostly younger, thinking they know how to build a better world by starting over from scratch. In programming, we've all seen (and been) the engineer who sees an old codebase for the first time and thinks they could do a better job with a full rewrite. We know that rarely works. And yet somehow many of those same engineers think they can do the same with a global financial system that's been in existence for centuries.

How is this any different than the people who are trying to write a whole social media/communications infrastructure from scratch (ie. fediverse), which turns out to be mostly the same as incumbents but worse? There's even an example of "[new system] is speedrunning the history of [old system]", which the recent debacle on mastodon where people were complaining about unfair/arbitrary bans and name impersonation, both of which are well known problems that centralized platforms ran into and they attempted to put a lid on.

It's not different at all. Were you expecting me to disagree? That's exactly the point I'm making.
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the funny bits here are if the stolen funds are sent to binance.com (not binance.us) cz/binance will claim they don’t have jurisdiction.

it’s apparently illegal for cz to help americans via binance.com.

Even if it ends up the same, it will differ from the ethical framework of NYC cosmopolitans. Having more diversity of thought would be a good outcome.
I have been saying this since 2010. BTC is typical libertarian overreaction to government incompetence/corruption. The bailouts and lack of consequences for the financial sector in 2008 are infuriating, but getting rid of the government involvement in the financial sector isn't a realistic solution.

It would be like finding out that the fire chief in your town was filling up his car with gas that was supposed to only be for the fire trucks, and then deciding to totally get rid of the fire department. Yes, you end the corruption, but the next time there is a fire a whole block of homes burns down.

A decentralized trustless currency or store of value means that a minor typo OR a hack could cost you everything. And adding layers of protection on top of that makes the underlying layer completely pointless. If every exchange is going to stop any transactions involving my wallets the minute they decide I'm "suspicious" why not just leave my money in cash or gold or in a bank account?

It's not about eliminating government, it's about building an alternative that some people can use voluntarily if they wish, while others who want to keep the government system are free to do that at the same time.

It would be like a town where the government fire department was corrupt and stealing from the town's treasury, so some people move outside the city limits and set up their own volunteer fire department.

Maybe it doesn't work as well. Maybe there are fires the volunteers aren't prepared for. Maybe some government firefighters start fires in the unincorporated area to make townsfolk afraid to leave and join the rebel group. But at least the volunteers aren't stealing from the treasury any more.

> The difference between Bitcoin and TradFi shrinks every day.

Bitcoin is a protocol, I assume TradFi means traditional finance companies. The companies that deal with Bitcoin shouldn't be different from TradFi to begin with (and that's a good thing). They are typically holding and handling assets (Bitcoin) on behalf of others and philosopically I see only little difference whether you are doing that with Bitcoin, with physical assets like gold, or digital database rows like equities or bonds.

Using Bitcoin in a self-custodial manner is something else altogether.

True, but except for the inflation/coinbase-size/2008-style-bailouts part.
As a Bitcoin OG I would expect him to have more then 200 BTC.
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Way, way more. This is a 2011 era bitcoin core developer.

I'd be shocked if he doesn't have thousands in paper wallets.

This shows again that even literally core bitcoin people are not competent to run their own banks.

What chance does the unbanked have? They'll have a much better chance in traditional banking.

>This shows again that even literally core bitcoin people are not competent to run their own banks.

I guess that’s true, but only in the sense of “even core devs can get lazy/stupid/cocky and fail to implement basic security measures (eg. hardware wallets)”, not “securing bitcoins is such an impossible feat that even a bitcoin core dev can do it”

Right. I'm not saying it literally impossible to do it right. I'm saying it's impossible to achieve mainstream audience competence. In other words: the states aims of cryptocurrencies don't scale in this aspect either.

For the mainstream the advice becomes: Don't leave your coins in an exchange or other third party. But also don't manage it yourself. Leaving no option.

Even the security experts fall to phishing scams. Should we stop using the internet for financial transactions?

After decades of stupid "secure" password policies and lately almost worthless sms/otp as second factor auth the industry finally came up with a real solution: webauthn.

I think that if a webauthn like solution is provided for crypto storage then you won't see wallets stolen anymore.

“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” -Satoshi Nakamoto

Also Luke Jr is pretty much a terrible person so I won’t shed tears on this one.

Perhaps a stroll by this would have been useful for a core dev with $3.2 million in a wallet stored in a profoundly stupid way on a server.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Multi-signature

That Satoshi quote contains layers and layers of ignorance about economics.

Donation of what? It only makes sense if the purpose of Bitcoin is to go up in fiat denominated terms, but that’s not a currency it’s a Ponzi scheme.

It’s like QE being a tax on everyone, and tightening being a donation to everyone.
Of course the purpose is to make it go up in fiat denominated terms, but it doesn't make it a Ponzi scheme. It's just a better currency. Only an irrational person uses currency that is designed to lose value, compared to one that isn't.
>Donation of what? It only makes sense if the purpose of Bitcoin is to go up in fiat denominated terms, but that’s not a currency it’s a Ponzi scheme.

I think you're either reading too much into it, or are interpreting "donation" too literally. He's just pointing out the very simple fact that if there is less of a scarce resource, then the value of what remains goes up, all things being equal. He's not advocating that people burn their bitcoins intentionally to make everyone rich or whatever. The whole thing is just a subtle joke, and it seems like you missed it.

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>“Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.” -Satoshi Nakamoto

That’s not applicable in this context because the coins were stolen (ie. transferred to someone else) not lost (ie. transferred to no one). In the former case it doesn’t make everyone’s coins more valuable because it could still be spent.

Can we not do the drive-by “X is a terrible person”? It’s endemic to the rest of the internet: https://www.reddit.com/r/196/comments/100nfgs/forget_mr_rule... and also off-topic.
It's fine to not give attention to someone who thinks slavery is moral.
That may be true, but we have a higher standard here: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The guidelines are more than merely rules. They’re the glue that holds us together and prevents us from tearing each other apart in political flamewar.

Giving attention to someone who supports slavery is not a higher standard, so stop incorrectly linking to HN's rules.
It is also brought up here that they are guidelines, not really rules (tho most of them are rules).
I'm sorry this isn't a drive-by, there is a mountain of evidence about this guy. I draw the line fully at "slavery is ok."
Weren't they most likely stolen and not lost?
I actually wrote about how Bitcoin security would need banks and security guards back in 2015:

"Another things that will push the price of Bitcoins up is the cost to store Bitcoin's will be very high, as Bitcoin storage companies will need to have paper wallets, vaults, security guards, insurance and many things we associate with a tradition bank, and this will be an ongoing cost, which will only get more and more expensive since Bitcoins are limited in number and demand will only go up. So I would not be surprised one to day see the million dollar Bitcoin!"

Link here: https://www.castoshi.net/blog/bitcoin-is-terrible-for-consum...