[amit9gupta]

He did not steal anything. He beat the fund (Indexed Finance) at their own game.

He has not stolen anybody's password, has not modified DeFI code - simply executed a set of financial transactions according to the rules (expressed as DeFI smart contracts) and profited from it.

Indexed Finance is an unlicensed investment firm. The promoters knew the risk ( decentralized finance) and now they want to blame someone who outsmarted them at their own game.

[InsideOutSanta]

This. If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.

If you end up using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions, what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

[thinkingtoilet]

> what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

So far, to execute illegal transactions and using the lack of regulations to exploit the financially illiterate.

[throwaway2037]

I agree with your assessment of cryptocurrencies. Here is a thought experiment that I use with other people: Ask yourself why none of the top 10 global investment banks have started their own crypto exchange. Now, add the 20 largest stock, futures, and options exchanges. Still none. After all, it is "just" market making (with a bit of clearing, custody & execution services). What is wrong with this picture? For me, the real issue is that KYC (know your customer) legal requirements will drain all the profit from the operation and expose the ibank/exchange to enormous legal risk.

Another one to make you scratch your head/chin: The world's busiest crypto exchange is Binance. The Wiki page literally says: "Headquarters: Unknown". How can anyone trust a company like that? Who regulates it? What enforcement agency will help in the event of fraud?

[b3lvedere]

90% agree with this , with the little caveat that law and regulation always are a couple of steps behind huge innovations. Unfortunately sometimes companies think this gives them freedom to break current laws and regulations.

Your thought experiment reminded me a little of the Kurzgesagt video on how to debunk an internet conspiracy in seconds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hug0rfFC_L8

[Salgat]

I like how every attempt to legitimize cryptocurrency by the current administration has just resulted in hurting the price of cryptocoins.

[rchaud]

That's happening because crypto 'value' doesn't exist in a vaccuum, immune to the vagaries of the tradFi markets. When shit hits the fan, credibility matters. That's why traders park cash in government bonds when a market sell-off happens; a government bond essentially guarantees you get your money back quickly when you're ready to go back into the markets.

The recent moves by the administration have been so incompetent as to tank the bond market as well, thereby leaving few safe harbors. And no harbor is less safe than crypto.

[oh_my_goodness]

But it's cash!

[close04]

By now everyone who stands to gain from (ab)using crypto is probably already convinced. Almost everyone else heard so much about scams and illegal activities around crypto that they find it too risky. So the current admin is preaching to a small choir, to the angst of the large one.

What I like is that every time there's a hack, or someone loses money over crypto either due to some illegal action or just unintended consequence of using it, you have a few more people demanding more regulation and state intervention. If only crypto regulation was scoped exclusively to when they need it after being swindled out of it.

[smcl]

By far the more common use case is as an unregulated asset you can semi-legally pump-and-dump, and to extract money from gullible rubes

[pavlov]

As recommended by the President of the United States.

[nicbou]

As _demonstrated_ by the President of the United States.

[rchaud]

And demonstrated by his new business partner in the private prison industry, Bukele of El Salvador.

[pcthrowaway]

You're saying the same thing

> So far, to execute illegal transactions and using the lack of regulations to exploit the financially illiterate.

[smcl]

I think this was edited - my understanding of the original comment was that it was primarily for buying things on the darknet ("illegal transactions").

[hinkley]

Money laundering.

[apercu]

And get rich quick scams. And fraud.

[smallmancontrov]

And drugs. And delivery of bribes to the sitting US president (these are not the same as illegal transactions because when the president does it it is not illegal).

[thinkingtoilet]

I posted the original comment everyone is replying to so it's clear I'm not fan of crypto. To be fair, literally everyone I've ever known, including myself, has only ever used cash to buy drugs. I can't put that on crypto.

[eftychis]

Oh, it is illegal. It's just that the DOJ is turning a blind eye because someone at some point wrote a "memo"[0,1], which it seems can be the bane of global peace and prosperity as we know it. (Yes, it is ironic that a memo in some countries like the U.S. can affect everyone else.)

P.S. I understand the context in your comment here. Just expanding on it for cynicism's sake.

[0] https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/olc/sitting_president.htm [1] https://www.justice.gov/file/146241-0/dl?inline [Note it has been updated since 2000.]

[anonym29]

Some of the first early adopters of pagers and cell phones were drug dealers and prostitutes.

The economic conditions that push vulnerable people to committing crimes enhanced by technology are not a condemnation of the technology itself.

[hinkley]

Amongst our weaponry are such elements as graft, narcotics, money laundering, fraud… I’ll come in again.

[oh_my_goodness]

Who's using a ledger system for illegal transactions?

[jrflowers]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet_market

[oh_my_goodness]

Thanks for the link. I would caution those Silk Road people that they might get caught one day.

[actionfromafar]

That's what pardons are for.

[BlackFly]

You'll need a stronger defense than that in court because courts absolutely create and deal in gray areas where technical fine lines exist.

What you need to argue is that the the smart contracts were valid contracts that the creators intended to and had opportunity to understand and that their creation was their act of negotiation of a position. It isn't really a stretch, but with amounts like this probably more diligence would have been due than that. Calling it theft is ridiculous on the other hand.

[Brybry]

In the indictment[1] he's not charged with theft.

He's charged with:

1) wire fraud (the smart contracts/swap exploit)

2) unauthorized damage to a protected computer (running the exploit on the ethereum network)

3) attempted hobbs act extortion (contacting kyberswap to attempt to gain control of kyberswap in exchange for return of some of the crypto)

4) money laundering conspiracy

5) money laundering (knowingly laundering the proceeds of the previous, including paying an undercover agent to help bypass a blacklist to do so)

[1] https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/media/1388036/dl?inline

[throwaway2037]

Hat tip for that indictment document. Here is the official press release (parent page to your doc?) from the Dept of Justice: https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/canadian-national-charg...

[BlackFly]

Yes, I cite that in another comment. The article calls it theft, well specifically they say "stole" but that implies theft.

[Calwestjobs]

it can be said that laws are social contract

[kulahan]

I disagree simply on the principle that nobody has any choice in whether or not to participate. Calling it a social contract just sounds too… soft? for what it really is.

[esperent]

> nobody has any choice in whether or not to participate.

You've hit a key point of disagreement amongst philosophers about the idea of the social contract.

Some of them say it's not voluntary because we were all born into a existing society, others say, sure it is, you can just give up all your property and go live in the forest.

Others then reply that disabled people and children can't do that.

But also the idea of living in a forest is not really an option for most people in the modern world. So my personal take is that the social contract is inherently non-voluntary in the modern world.

> Calling it a social contract just sounds too… soft? for what it really is.

Why do you think a social contract implies softness? For most of it's existence the social contract allowed slavery, ritual killing in the form of warfare and duels, and it still allows the death penalty in much of the world.

[Nevermark]

> Why do you think a social contract implies softness? For most of it's existence the social contract allowed slavery, ritual killing in the form of warfare and duels, and it still allows the death penalty in much of the world.

I think they are saying that the words "social contract" sound more collaborative and voluntary (to them) than what the phrase actually refers to. Your examples would only reinforce that view.

It is a subjective stance on a coined phrase, but given most of our laws were settled by people not living now, and enforced on people not living when the laws were created, and there is no periodic process of ensuring laws reflect the living, the words "social" and "contract" are being stretched quite a bit.

(On the other hand, the meanings of most phrases drift from the nominal meanings of their constituent words.)

[RHSeeger]

But the benefit of living in a society is that those people that _cannot_ survive without the society, _can_ with it. They still have the option to live outside society, they'll just perish. And that sucks. But by being part of society and gaining the benefits thereof, you are agreeing to follow it's rules (or suffer the consequences if you do not).

I would not survive away from society due to medical needs. In exchange for being able to acquire the items I need to survive, I follow the constraints of living in that society. But it _is_ a choice. I could choose to go live in the woods without said benefit; and I'd die.

[_Algernon_]

>But also the idea of living in a forest is not really an option for most people in the modern world. So my personal take is that the social contract is inherently non-voluntary in the modern world.

This idea is ridiculous because even if you could go live in a forest a large part of the enlightenment was that states grabbed control of the periphery (forests) of their domain. You can no longer run of into the forest. The state will still want you to fit into the existing ownership structures, censuses, taxation regimes, etc. If you commit a crime it will still be decided by the existing courts.

[dullcrisp]

I don’t think something being a contract is reliant on there being a compelling alternative though. But then it’s usually hard to tell what’s important to philosophers.

[giantg2]

"you can just give up all your property and go live in the forest."

And these people are wrong since the laws will still be applied there. If you don't own the land you are likely trespassing, squating, etc.

[protocolture]

Social Handcuffs

[Taek]

Just because some subsets of the crypto industry want to operate entirely outside the law doesn't mean the whole industry wants to operate outside the law. As evidenced by anyone who pays taxes on their crypto.

Saying "he used the system as it was designed, even if not as intended" is more or less equivalent to saying that any computer hack or zero day is also "using the computer system as designed".

You even plausibly extend that to picking locks in the physical world.

So yes, it does make sense for the law to get involved.

[protocolture]

If a smart contract requires a court to execute you really should have just used a regular contract no?

[EGreg]

No. Definitely not.

Smart contracts are supposed to eliminate a huge swath of disputes, so often people don’t need courts at all. People can put business rules in place that aren’t violated - and not just for contracts.

For example bidders at Christie’s and Sotheby’s sometimes don’t have the money but the houses can’t make a big scandal. They try to hold another auction and sell it to someone else as if the guy sold it.

In crypto it would be trivial to endure bidders have put up the money. You can refund the lowest bidder below N winners. You can also ensure payouts happen at agreed-upon rates. You can prove escrow. And stuff like that.

Imagine a bunch of donors or investors seeing how their money is spent because it is on the blockchain. Or imagine a community having roles and knowing that each role was granted properly.

In web2 anyone who can get into the database can modify any records and then you hope court cases and chilling effects will undo the damage retroactively.

[protocolture]

>Smart contracts are supposed to eliminate a huge swath of disputes, so often people don’t need courts at all

That just sounds like near total agreement with me.

Dont get me wrong, I love smart contracts conceptually. But if the parties to a smart contract desired court arbitration, they should include a function for it in the smart contract. Like a swing vote for a trusted third parties keys.

Without that, to me, you are signalling acceptance of the outcome of the code without arbitration. If you seek a court to interfere with the execution of a smart contract that never included a provision for arbitration then you are in my mind, as guilty of ignoring the intent of the smart contract as any hacker might be.

And if you were just going to court to dispute the smart contract, you may as well just have accepted a legacy contract. Escrow, multiple parties, etc etc all solved problems in the traditional legal space.

[EGreg]

The key is that the smart contract framework introduces a feature that is used let’s say 2% of the time.

So I disagree even if you used that feature of the framework, that you “may as well have used a non smart contract”.

[unsupp0rted]

> In crypto it would be trivial to endure bidders have put up the money.

And also not in crypto, as has been done for thousands of years

[Taek]

Smart contracts give you a lot of financial automation and guarantees that regular courts do not. Furthermore, any litigation or arbitration in court is very expensive. If you can use smart contracts to simultaneously increase the complexity and sophistication of your transactions while also reducing the number of times you need to go to court, you've created value.

And, a lot of crypto projects do pair their smart contracts with regular contracts, or at the very least with ToS

[ellen364]

It seems more like a contract dispute to me. My first thought is that a commercial court could decide who keeps the money.

(Clearly in the real world the American authorities have decided it's a criminal matter. I just find it odd that a "smart contract" dispute falls under criminal rather than commercial law.)

[__MatrixMan__]

The point of cryptocurrencies is to reward people who make hardware available for in-public multiparty computation. The point of that is to be able to create rulesets and expect that they'll be followed within the confines of the system.

It's bonkers to me that the only rulesets people care to implement on such a platform are just reflections of money as we know it. How unimaginative. I wish we'd make something new rather than translating something old--bugs and all--into a new language.

[BobbyJo]

Hardware availability is a use case of cryptocurrency, but not the point. The point is a decentralized accounting system that no single party can manipulate, for good or bad. You can apply that to hardware availability, digital game economies, supply chain accounting, etc. but the point of crypto is more abstract than any of that.

[godelski]

For those unfamiliar, see "The Cypherpunk Manifesto"

   We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money. 

https://www.activism.net/cypherpunk/manifesto.html

Or "The Crypto Anarchist Manifesto"

  Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other.

https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/cryp...

[__MatrixMan__]

I agree with:

> the point of crypto is more abstract than any of that

It has to do with operating in spite of somebody who would otherwise tamper with your information. It's about durability in the face of sophisticated adversaries.

I was trying to get at the point of crytocurrency. The accounting system can handle anything at all, so why bother with the coins? We've had coins for thousands of years, they're the most boring app imaginable. Why bother maintaining artificial scarcities when we could be addressing real ones?

But at the end of the day, if nobody provides hardware for it to run on, then, we can't have that accounting system. And those people have to pay their electric bills, and for the hardware they're using, and for that they need something money-shaped. The point of cryptocurrency is to be that money-shaped thing. We need it to interface with the traditional finance system until we can replace that system with something better.

[Calwestjobs]

his point was correct

[oh_my_goodness]

Guessed translation: "The point of cryptocurrencies is to reward the people who do cryptocurrency infrastructure."

That's the point for them. It's not the point for anybody else.

[throwpoaster]

Let's do it! What's the idea?

[__MatrixMan__]

A list of ways people can trust each other (e.g. to be a skilled plumber, or to be a fair mediator, to be a real human, to not let their key get compromised, and many other things). I call these colors.

Also there's a directed graph where the nodes are users. Edges on this graph indicate that this user trusts that user, the edges are colored to indicate which type of trust it is.

Given two users, they can compare graphs to decide if they both trust (transitively) any other users in some set of colors. Also, if cycles appear, then that cycle is a community of experts and they can follow the graph in reverse to find out which other users consider them experts.

It's sort of like how we have representatives in congress, except instead of being one layer deep with millions of people being represented by one, it can be as nested as needed to ensure that the experts are not overloaded (since many of us are somewhere in the middle, we distribute the load by playing both roles--depending on who we're dealing with). It also differs from typical representative democracy because you can express trust in somebody's diplomacy and simultaneously avoid trusting their understanding of economics (or whatever other colors you care to).

Ideally it would be a system in which the most trusted and capable people for any job are easy to find and easy to support, and in which we focus on becoming skilled and trustworthy rather than on the ownership of scarce things.

Human societies already work like this, they have for a million years or so, but it stops working well when the cognitive burden of walking all of these trust graphs becomes too much to bear, then things get authoritarian. We now have the technology to scale it better, but the implicit non-specialized authorities are still in charge.

A couple of applications for this that could work in the near term:

1. If you have a dispute, you can use the data find a mediator who is trusted by you and the other party. And not just trusted, but trusted in the relevant way. This is a step towards a better court system, better because the arbiter is explicitly trusted by the complainants and because the arbiter is an expert in the color of the complaint.

This would solve the well-somebody-needs-to-be-able-to-undo-the-transaction problem without invoking a bank and without leaving it unsolved. The transaction arbitrator would be determined by the trust settings of the parties to the transaction. There's a lot more consent and specificity in that than in what we're doing.

2. If you find a dubious claim, you can see who signed it and check for a trust path between you and that person. 1,000,000 fake amazon reviews mean nothing through that lens, since you don't trust them. But two or three reviews signed by people that you explicitly trust (perhaps transitively) would mean a great deal. This gives us a way to ignore scammers and malicious AI's and creates a space in which being trustworthy is an asset (contrast this to the world we've built which is more about commanding the most attention).

I'm not saying I have it right, but such things are worth trying in general, and "crypto" isa much better medium for them than bureaucracy (although I'm more excited about CRDT's than blockchains, because I think partition tolerance is more important than consistency).

[Jasper_]

But how do you reward people within the system? You need some sort of token with value...

[__MatrixMan__]

You could contribute to a goal that they care about, or give them something they need, or help find somebody who will. Or you can promise to do so in the future.

Using "value" as a medium is problematic because we increasingly don't value the same things. It worked ok back when food took so much effort to grow that securing it represented a significant portion of our mindshare. Then money was reliably a proxy for our shared agreement that food was good.

But now that it's so much easier to make the necessities that we agree on, we spend more time perusing contradictory outcomes. Which is more valuable, if my endeavor succeeds and yours fails, or visa versa? Whose agenda am I furthering when I decide to value a dollar? It's hard to participate in because I can never figure out whether I'm hurting or helping.

Better would to let people be explicit about what they want so that we can the things that have consensus and work towards those. As it is we're letting the ownership of scarce abstractions determine what gets done, which is just bonkers. It was once the best we could do with only the laws of physics at hand to enforce the rules (re: the scarcity of gold), but now we can do better.

[CursedSilicon]

The entire idea of crypto is "I wasn't supposed to be the one holding the bag!"

[hx8]

Funny, I thought the whole point was to hold on to the bag as long as you can. Think back to the first time you heard about btc or eth, and how much return a modest investment would have made. It's the people that sold early that lost out.

[vkou]

How is that theory going for the bagholders of the graveyard of dead coins and rugpulls?

[hx8]

You're not wrong, but has there ever been a time when buying & holding the 3 largest market cap coins wasn't a winning strategy?

Most of the deadcoins were very low cap, and low cap investments are inherently risky. Most of the rugpulls were schemes around small coins or individuals not actually holding the private keys to the wallet.

[brohee]

The purest survivor bias in a while, and even some of the few survivors are in freefall, e.g. Litecoin.

[hinkley]

Musical chairs except you don’t want to get a chair.

[what]

That game is called Hot potato.

[jstanley]

> If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.

If you believe in cash, does that mean you can't run to the courts if someone steals your cash?

If your security proves insufficient to prevent a theft, that doesn't mean the theft was legal! It just means your security was insufficient.

That security can be enforced by mathematics instead of courts is definitely a benefit of cryptocurrency, but when it goes wrong courts still matter.

[InsideOutSanta]

>If you believe in cash, does that mean you can't run to the courts if someone steals your cash?

No, because the point of cash isn't to circumvent government control of the financial system. If you build a whole system just to decentralize financial control and avoid government influence but then appeal to the government as soon as you don't like what happens, you're doing something wrong.

[hinkley]

Cash is a fiat currency issued by the government you are running to for restitution. I’m not sure GP understands what fiat currency means.

[kasey_junk]

Now do gold.

[koolba]

> If you believe in cash, does that mean you can't run to the courts if someone steals your cash? If your security proves insufficient to prevent a theft, that doesn't mean the theft was legal! It just means your security was insufficient.

Stealing someone’s private key and then using it to steal their assets is very different from exploiting edge cases of get rich quick schemes.

[Muromec]

It's different in means, but not in intent. Sure, extortion, blackmail and robbery all differ from theft, but are illegal all the same

[lelandbatey]

It's quite different in intent. When you stash crypto within a defi contract that you authored, and that contract states that the crypto can move under certain conditions, and then folks come along and say "hey, I meet those conditions" and move the crypto, then no crime has been committed!

If you didn't want folks to be able to get the crypto under those conditions, then why did you make the contract grant them the crypto in those conditions? I can't take a stack of $100 bills and leave it on the sidewalk with a post-it note saying "only to be picked up by John" and then sue the person named John who comes by and picks up cash. I also can't get mad when Alice sees the stack and tells her friend John to come pick up the money with his name on it.

So it is with crypto. Why are you using crypto if you don't want to follow the rules? That sounds to me like you're trying to do unregistered securities trades...

[tempestn]

In the legal system, formation of a contract requires intent. If it can be demonstrated that there was no intent to form a provision of the contract, no "meeting of the minds", then I don't believe it is enforceable. (Though IANAL.)

[crote]

The problem here is that those crypto contracts aren't designed to be security. They are intended to be contracts.

It's like opening a bank account, and the contract says "You can only access your own money in the vault. Everything you can access is yours to use as you see fit." On your first visit the manager brings you into a vault with hundreds of cash-laden tables. He shows you to an empty table, and says "Here's your table. Enjoy!".

Are you allowed to take money from the other tables? Clearly the contract says you can, but surely that can't be what they intended? Is it theft to "break their security" by walking over to another table, or is it just a hidden perk of the contract you signed?

[notahacker]

Moreover they're designed to be contracts with the explicit intention of enabling trustless exchange without third party oversight, under the belief that the code can replace a legal system

unlike actual contracts, which are written with the expectation that disputes may occur and be resolved by arbitrators and a legal system (who will probably rule that a poorly drafted clause 2b doesn't in fact grant you the right to take all the other customers' money)

[dandanua]

@crote

> Are you allowed to take money from the other tables? Clearly the contract says you can, but surely that can't be what they intended?

If their entire business model is based on giving a service that allows you to store your money in safety without any government dependency, while in reality they allow everyone else to take your money, then they deserve whatever happens to them.

[yifanl]

The fact that they deserve to be bankrupt doesn't mean the person responsible for their state of bankruptcy is innocent.

[pcthrowaway]

If you get into a cash poker game, and someone outplays you, then no, you can't run to the courts

[analog31]

Money is a technology. Its purpose is whatever use you want to put it to.

Like any technology, a money system can be designed so that it works well enough for a small set of intended purposes, and poorly for all other purposes. Moreover, its uses can be constrained by laws.

I think an open question is whether existing laws related to money or property apply to cryptocurrencies. For instance, "theft" and "fraud" cover a lot of things, without specifically listing all of them.

If it's ambiguous whether such laws apply to crypto, then sure, someone could use the legal system to settle the matter. In fact, using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions could be as good a use of crypto as any, if "anything goes."

[vonneumannstan]

>you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.

I doubt that will hold up in court. The exact thing could be said about computer networks and hackers exploiting them.

[pchangr]

The point of bitcoin, in words of their creator is to “allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.” That’s it.

[Vegenoid]

> If you end up using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions, what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

Agreed, but there is already a very similar case where "code is law" was tested, and failed: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/man-convicted-110m-c...

It turns out that once a financial system becomes big enough, the US will apply its finance laws to it. Finance laws are designed to prevent sudden unexpected transfers of wealth from one (wealthy) unwilling party to another based on unanticipated loopholes.

[wnevets]

> what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

To funnel cash to regimes like North Korea

[gamblor956]

"Code as law" was attempted as a defense in another token-related "hacking" case.

It didn't work there, and it won't work here either.

If you end up using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions, what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

That is a philosophical argument completely unrelated to whether or not something is illegal. Cryptocurrencies aren't a replacement for the law, nor do they stand outside of it.

[2muchcoffeeman]

I feel like the current state of affairs is a consequence of mixing real money systems with crypto and then making it easy to invest in.

Because it sure looks like they intended for “code is law” to be the case. Many of the oft cited use cases were to circumvent traditional systems.

[andy81]

> That is a philosophical argument completely unrelated to whether or not something is illegal.

Most comments saying that cryptocurrency holders should abide by "code is law", are not actually saying that we should abide by "code is law" and abandon the legal system.

It's a classic argument to show that the purported benefits of cryptocurrency are a farce.

[Braxton1980]

>cryptocurrencies in the first place?

To get 30mg oxy

[lupusreal]

> If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed

Shouldn't, but can.

Anyway, you're assuming most of these crypto people are true believers in the technical attributes of crypto currencies, but I think most of them don't understand or care about that and are just trying to get rich.

[don_neufeld]

> what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

I think you’re answering your own question here

[-__---____-ZXyw]

This!? Which? What..? Why!?

[FireBeyond]

Yup. Exactly. "The code is law". Well, sometimes you learn you're not as good at code as you thought you were.

[nkrisc]

> If you end up using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions, what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

In this case, to make money. These are not ideological purists, they're capitalists.

[CPLX]

I mean you can believe in cryptocurrency. But why do courts have to believe in it?

[timcobb]

> what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

Not to be that guy but it seems like the point of cryptocurrencies is to scam vulnerable people...

[xattt]

A wanting of having cake, but a desire to eat it too.

[hinkley]

Take the cake immediately to your left. Problem solved.

[tempfile]

> If you believe in cryptocurrencies, you can't run to the courts when people use them as designed, even if they didn't use them as intended.

Yes, indeed. And when people leave their home unlocked the thieves should get to keep their stuff. What kind of savagery is this?

> If you end up using the legal system to remediate undesired transactions, what's the point of cryptocurrencies in the first place?

Great question, we have been waiting for answers for nearly a decade now...

[InsideOutSanta]

>And when people leave their home unlocked the thieves should get to keep their stuff.

That's not what happened here. What happened is that the crypto company said, "Follow this contract," and their customer followed the contract and took their money, and then the crypto company was like, "But not like that!"

Ostensibly, the whole point of cryptocurrencies is to decentralize financial control and not depend on governments for that service. If you then depend on governments the second you don't like what happens, there's no point to cryptocurrencies.

[danielmarkbruce]

It's like building a home on a land which has no system of law because you like anarchy, and then complaining when a fellow anarchist steals your stuff.

[tempfile]

If you can't distinguish "not what I intended" from "not what I wanted" then there is probably no reasoning with you. Luckily for the rest of us, making this distinction is a pre-requisite for becoming a judge or lawyer.

[InsideOutSanta]

>Luckily for the rest of us, making this distinction is a pre-requisite for becoming a judge or lawyer.

I have to admit, that's pretty funny. But I will point out that you did not make an argument in support of your position; you merely insulted me.

[tempfile]

I really didn't intend that as an insult! I just find it very easy to distinguish between a case where someone followed reasonable rules and got an outcome they didn't like, versus a case where someone found absurd rules - clearly not intended by anyone - and exploited them for an undeserved gain.

If you see a case where someone exploits a badly-coded computer program to take a hundred million dollars from someone, refuses to return any of it (even when offered several million dollars for their trouble), refuses to co-operate with the judges and the rest of civilised society, and just see "waa waa baby doesn't like his medicine" then I don't see how to actually reason with you. That's just a value difference, not really an insult.

[FireBeyond]

> Luckily for the rest of us, making this distinction is a pre-requisite for becoming a judge or lawyer.

Actually, in many parts of the US, you do not have to have any law education to become a judge in district courts.

[DangitBobby]

The entire point of a home is not to escape traditional finance. It's by design not compatible with a simple "thief breaks into house" comparison, otherwise the entire enterprise is a scam and they should be criminally prosecuted for fraud the second they ask for legal dispute resolution on transactions that happened on ledger.

[Aurornis]

> He did not steal anything. He beat the fund (Indexed Finance) at their own game.

As popular as this idea is online, it doesn’t work that way in the courts.

Intent matters in issues of the law. The “finders keepers” rules don’t apply in legal matters in the real world.

If someone logs into their bank and notices that changing the account number in the URL lets them withdraw from other people’s accounts, no court is going to shrug it off and say that it’s the bank’s fault for not being more secure. Likewise, finding a vulnerability in a smart contract doesn’t automatically give someone the right to any funds they collect from exploiting it.

We all know the “code is law” arguments about smart contracts are just marketing bluster. The lawyers do, too.

[Hizonner]

The intent of the whole underlying system is that the intent of all the parties be described by code of the smart contracts. Which are intended to be composable, intended to be used in unanticipated ways, and intended to operate independent of any human oversight. The system is also intended to avoid all ambiguity by enforcing the contracts exactly as described by the code... and to provide certainty of transactions and prevent them from being undone after the fact.

Everybody involved knows all of that, and claims it as a positive feature of the system. At least until they find out that it's actually hard to write bug-free code.

There may indeed not be a legal "meeting of minds" (although there very well also may)... but from an ethical point of view, everybody involved knowingly signed up for exactly that kind of risk. And honestly it would be good public policy if the law held them to it. Otherwise you get people trying to opt out of the regular legal system up until it's inconvenient.

There'd be more of a case if he'd exploited the underlying EVM implementation. But he didn't. He just relied on the "letter" of a contract, in an environment that everybody had sought out because of unambiguous to-the-letter enforcement.

[golol]

Exactly this. If what is written on the blockchain is not the law in the context of anything involving blockchains and DeFi, then the whole idea of blockchains and decentralized finance is pointless.

[ryanjshaw]

You’re assigning a set of beliefs to an entity that doesn’t hold them. The authors of the code are pursuing the matter in court i.e. they see smart contracts as an efficient decentralised solution to a complex problem within the existing legal framework.

[sfn42]

Nah, they just want to make money. They fucked up and now they're trying to get the legal system to save them.

[paulcole]

> intended to be used in unanticipated ways

Am I an idiot or is it unclear why this is the intention?

[DavidPiper]

I assume OP means it in the sense that the system intends novel uses that the designers didn't necessarily consider. Same with programming languages (or language in general), for example.

[ipsento606]

> If someone logs into their bank and notices that changing the account number in the URL lets them withdraw from other people’s accounts, no court is going to shrug it off and say that it’s the bank’s fault for not being more secure

When you open a bank account, there is an actual contract and regulatory framework that governs how you use the account. A URL parameter is an implementation detail that no more alters the contract than a broken lock on a vault would alter the contract.

But when you interact with a smart contract, the smart contract is the contract. What you are allowed to do is defined by what the smart contract lets you do. You don't need to open an account, agree to T&Cs or sign any other sort of contract to interact with the smart contract.

If the smart contract is not the contract, how would you propose we can determine what the real contract is?

[ryanjshaw]

> when you interact with a smart contract, the smart contract is the contract

This is one viewpoint but certainly not the only viewpoint and definitely not the viewpoint of the authors of the contracts in question.

Smart contracts are a novel method of executing contracts, but like all contracts the parties involved and the contract itself is subject to legal oversight in the relevant jurisdictions.

[mjr00]

The big difference is that those are centralized systems owned by corporations, and accessing them in a way which you're not supposed to, such as by changing a bank account number or exploiting a zero day, is a crime.

With DeFi it's different; the code is public and decentralized. There was no unauthorized access to anything here. From my reading of what was done, it was essentially taking advantage of the poor trading strategy of Indexed Finance.

I'm not going to pretend to be a lawyer, but I don't see a lot of parallels between this and e.g. using SQL injection to obtain unauthorized access to a system.

[ajb]

I'm not a lawyer either, but I suspect the technical structure is not determinative. Contract law has certain features. These technical constructs purport to enable contracts to be written and executed such that subsequently the courts cannot but find that what the code did is final and there is no possible legal reconsideration. Clearly, this is the prior expectation of the parties, but whether it is the case under all circumstances is a function of contract law (and other applicable law) not the technical constructs. The code is not what will finally be determinative.

To give an analogy, it's like writing code in a high level language and saying that it will prevent side channels such as spectre. But such side channels are a function of the hardware, not the high level language. The hardware in defi is ultimately the law, not the servers.

[ryanjshaw]

> I suspect the technical structure is not determinative

Correct. The courts care about intent, structure is secondary.

This is the classic “you don’t get to walk into my house just because you found an unlocked door” that HN users struggle to understand when the digital equivalent is under discussion e.g. an unsecured API.

[mjr00]

> This is the classic “you don’t get to walk into my house just because you found an unlocked door” that HN users struggle to understand when the digital equivalent is under discussion e.g. an unsecured API.

Except this is not how DeFi and dApps work. The network is decentralized. At no point was any unauthorized access to a system performed. This is not the same as entering private property through an unlocked door, or using SQL injection to gain unauthorized access to a system.

This is not to say Medjedovic is innocent; he made extortionist threats, and gleefully admitted he stole money from people, so wire fraud charges seem obvious. As you say, the courts care about intent, and his intent was clear. But you can't apply the normal charges of accessing a computer without authorization here.

[ryanjshaw]

My example was an meta comment about how HN users confuse means vs motive.

In this particular case, however, we’re talking about fraud not unauthorised access, see a very similar case here which resulted in a conviction: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/man-convicted-110m-c...

[stef25]

> his intent was clear

Would it be fair to say his intent was to enrich himself by using this platform's features ? And bonus points: "is that a crime" ?

[stouset]

The entire point of cryptocurrency contracts is supposedly that “code is law”. Running to the courts as soon as someone does something you didn’t intend only highlights that people don’t actually believe this.

[ceejayoz]

We've known this since Ethereum forked in the DAO debacle.

[stouset]

We have, it’s just yet another counterexample that tanks the arguments of True Believers.

[darepublic]

The code is law thing is a grey area. But I am open to the idea that this young man did not break any rules, just found flaws in the system. In the same way that card counting should not be against the law just because it resulted in the house being disadvantaged. These things should be addressed with patches to the rules, not legal action.

[Calwestjobs]

be careful with card counting, most casinos do "business" in such way that there is NO advantage for player. no matter what player does.

so all american youtube sagas about doing card counting in PRESENT time are fraud to dupe people into thinking that it is possible to card count. NOW TODAY.

[StanislavPetrov]

Card counting is still possible (albeit a bit harder) in the present day - the mathematics are the same. Most casinos use more decks and don't deal as deeply into the shoe, but it is still entirely possible to gain a statistical edge over the house, which is why casinos will still ban you from playing blackjack if you are playing with an advantage(counting, varying your best sizes greatly based on the count, sitting out and watching until the deck gets deeper, ect). They will never ban you from games like Roulette, where you there truly is no way to gain an advantage over the house regardless of what strategy you use.

[reaperman]

> Roulette, no way to gain an advantage over the house regardless of what strategy you use.

These days that’s probably true but it has been done: https://www.roulettestar.com/people/joseph-jagger/

[selcuka]

He was a smart man:

> After the second day, Jagger kept a clear head and decided that enough was enough, and left Monte Carlo to head home to Yorkshire with his winnings.

> When he got home, he retired from the Mill and invested some of his winnings into property.

[KoolKat23]

It's not really a grey area, there is a tacit contract with a mutually understanding that they will use the code to fulfil certain items in the contract, it doesn't take away the need to fulfil the rest of the parties obligations.

[PaywallBuster]

https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/04/18/mango-markets-exp...

Avi Einsenberg did the same with Mango Markets,

got away with 110M and is now looking at 20 year sentence

And Mango was being sued by the SEC too https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2024-154

> SEC Charges Entities Operating Crypto Asset Trading Platform Mango Markets for Unregistered Offers and Sales of the Platform’s “MNGO” Governance Tokens

> Pair of affiliated entities separately charged for acting as unregistered brokers

[Cthulhu_]

The company and its customers knew what they were getting into; to get protections from the law and guarantees, financial institutions need to get licensed and comply with all the rules, regulations and law. Of course, this includes providing transaction data to the relevant parties to help them detect tax evasion and money laundering.

[Aurornis]

> to get protections from the law and guarantees, financial institutions need to get licensed and comply with all the rules, regulations and law.

That’s not how the law works.

If someone breaks the law or doesn’t comply with regulations, that’s a separate issue. It doesn’t entitle a third party to steal their funds.

If you were to rob a drug dealer, you couldn’t argue that they weren’t complying with the law and therefore you were free to take it. You would both have broken laws.

[archontes]

Define theft.

If you write a contract and give it to a lawyer with the instruction, "Anyone who satisfies this contract gets this money." And someone satisfies the contract to the lawyer's -but not your- satisfaction, and the lawyer sends the money, did the third party steal from you?

[danielvf]

There's a very relevant XKCD on this, where someone discovers a clever "bug" in an insurance contract, and is then disappointed.

https://xkcd.com/1494/

[echoangle]

Is that how it works legally? If you hack into computers using a zero day, did you also just access the computer according to the way it was programmed? Just because you can do it technically doesn’t mean it’s not fraud/something else.

[cherryteastain]

If that's not how it works, where's the line for what is fraud and what is not? Once you move away from the "code is law" principle, companies have the perverse incentive to define fraud as "any transaction that results in negative PnL for me", which is exactly what happened here.

[echoangle]

„Code is law“ isn’t a thing. Go tell a judge that your hacking is legal because the code allowed it. That’s not something that’s allowed by law.

[cherryteastain]

I am well aware that "code is law" has no weight in actual law. The point I tried to raise was, given the following sequence of events:

1. You deploy a smart contract to the ethereum blockchain

2. I interact with your smart contract in some manner

how do we define whether the manner of interaction in step 2 is fradulent or not?

"Code is law" is one interpretation by crypto enthusiasts to define under what conditions interacting with the blockchain is fraud; in their definition, it's never fradulent.

Let's assume "code is law" is nonsense, as many comments here say. Then, under what conditions do we define interacting with the blockchain as fradulent? What is fraud and what is not fraud?

Edit: In the blockchain we can even formalize this. The ethereum blockchain at block K has a certain state S_K. I submit a certain transaction/set of instructions T to the blockchain which is mined as block K+1. How do we define a function isIllegal(S_K, T)? (Assuming block K+1 contains EVM instructions from my transaction T only)

[mschuster91]

> Let's assume "code is law" is nonsense, as many comments here say. Then, under what conditions do we define interacting with the blockchain as fradulent? What is fraud and what is not fraud?

The thing is, laws can have issues and bugs as well, just like code! And we have courts to judge not just when someone outright breaks a law but also when someone is skirting on the edges of the law.

Take Germany's "cum ex" scandal for example. Billions of euros were effectively defrauded from the state and on paper the scheme appeared legally sound, but in the end it was all shot down many years later because the actions of the "cum ex" thieves obviously violated the spirit of the law.

The only difference is that blockchains are distributed worldwide and there is no single entity that can be held accountable and forced to execute or reverse any given transaction.

[echoangle]

You’re never going to find a binary function that tells you if something is legal or not, in the end it’s up to a human judge to decide. But imagine setting up a search engine and I enter “ Robert'); DROP TABLE INDEX; --” as a search term. Would you say that’s a crime? That’s a perfectly fine thing to search for, right?

[Hizonner]

> You’re never going to find a binary function that tells you if something is legal or not, in the end it’s up to a human judge to decide.

... but the whole point of cryptocurrency, or at least of smart contracts and "DeFi", is to reject that and try to build a parallel system. That's presumably based on a belief that you can write code that behaves the way you intend, regardless of whether you really can do that or not.

So perhaps the judge should decide "Well, you signed up for that when you tried to opt out of having human judgement govern your deals. Have a nice day.".

And in fact perhaps there should be formal statutory law that makes it clear that's what the judge is supposed to decide in any case that isn't itself "borderline" somehow. Which the case at hand shouldn't be.

[cherryteastain]

Yes, perfectly fine, and the fact that you can paste that string into this website without being put in prison is testament to that!

[danielvf]

The physical universe advances from state to state, but we define still can call certain behaviors illegal.

https://xkcd.com/1494/

[cherryteastain]

Alright, please go ahead and define under what legal pretext this guy's behavior might be illegal.

There are other cases where interacting the blockchain is illegal in a very clear manner. Example: if I know an Iranian or North Korean entity has the keys to an Ethereum wallet, and if I send USDT to that wallet as a Western citizen, that is very illegal due to sanctions.

[TimPC]

The context is completely different though. Building a normal computer app is not an attempt to do anything without government or legal structures so it makes sense that normal computer apps would be protected by government or legal structures.

It doesn't really make sense for people to build smart contracts that are intended to be an extra-judical agreement where the code enforces the rules and then run to government whenever something they don't like happens. What is the purpose of smart contracts at all if you still need the entire legal apparatus around them?

What does agreeing to a contract that inherently implies trying to work around the need for government in contracts means? What does it say about intent?

If for example, the firm that lost money had been saying "Code is Law" in their previous pro-crypto statements and had explicitly talked about smart contracts being extra-judical it seeems there intent would be to avoid legal intervention entirely and it would require a fairly high bar to argue that any bug could result in a lawsuit.

[cellis]

It may not pass muster with a judge in some backwater, but with one in the Northern District of California or a jury of their HN peers, it might. Laws are what we make them.

[archontes]

Imagine I write a contract and empower an AI to execute it. I put $10,000 in a bank account and write, "I'd like a nice car."

I do this of my own free will, at my own hazard. I know I'm playing this game. I have intentionally elected to use a system that will execute without any further intervention or oversight on my part. Verbally, I state that I am confident enough in the writing of my instruction that I feel secure in whatever outcome it may bring.

The system automatically executes and someone has sold me a very nice remote control car.

I sue that person.

Why should I have standing?

[olddustytrail]

Like buying from eBay?

[dan-robertson]

Isn’t, in the US system, the definition of fraud built up through a combination of legislation and case law from previous ‘grey area’ cases? I think most laws tend to have some balance between what is easy to define/understand and what is desirable to allow/disallow.

[freejazz]

What does one have to do with the other? Fraud is "intentional deception to gain an unfair or illegal advantage, often resulting in financial or legal harm" what does that have to do with code? What could code even do about fraud?

[cherryteastain]

If fraud is "intentional deception", who did this guy deceive? Everything was out in the open.

[freejazz]

What does that have to do with my question?

[moralestapia]

Indexed Finance's mistake was not being Vitalik Buterin and then putting on a sad face and ask for the shitcoin to fork to a version where they didn't screw up.

[sksxihve]

Code is law went out the door with the ethereum hardfork after the dao hack.

[aqme28]

This makes no sense. I agree with you that code is not law, but the incident you're talking about wasn't law but community-driven consensus.

[Calwestjobs]

(realizing that im so old. if this is what i totally forgot, what else of this magnitude of signifince i do not remember anymore. that i was part of/ was involved/ it affected me.)

[stefan_]

Funny, because it would never have happened if it was court ordered.

[KoolKat23]

It depends if acted in accordance with the terms of the contract then it's fine but if he did something not covered by the contract it's theft.

If I run an unmanned lemonade stand out front and leave a pile of money on the table, and say take your change, if you take more than what you're owed that's theft regardless of how easy it was.

[crispyambulance]

He should have taken the significant and generous 10% bounty the first time around. He now has to face law suits by well-funded finance firms.

[DangitBobby]

It seems like he simply faces a very wealthy existence in countries that don't give a shit about US laws.

[knodi123]

Assuming he can get his hands on the tokens and then convert them to local currency. Not impossible, but it's worth noting that he still hasn't managed.

[programjames]

Next we're going to learn that winning Poker Bots with an "all in" strategy is defrauding the competition.

[cvoss]

This is a tiresome argument. Stealing is a moral concept first, and a legal concept second. You can steal without breaking any laws, the same way you can be a bad person without breaking any laws.

[gamblor956]

In the real world, code is not law. Computers are not a magical gateway to another reality where existing laws and rules no longer apply.

What matters is if Medjedovic engaged in activities that would be illegal in the process of acquiring the funds from Indexed Finance. A theft is theft whether it is physical or digital; victims aren't required to have perfect security and criminals are not allowed to exploit weaknesses to just take something that belongs to someone else.

Medjedovic is accused of exploiting "glitches." From a legal perspective, that would be no different from a thief exploiting a "low" wall or an unsecured window. Glitches aren't invitations any more than an open window. In other words...not a defense. (And in the U.S., specifically see the Avraham Eisenberg case, which is basically the same fact pattern. Eisenberg lost. His sentencing was postponed to last week but appears to have been postponed again.)

Then he skipped town after he was ordered by a court to put his tokens into escrow. If he truly believed that "code is law" and that the tokens were rightfully his, he wouldn't have skipped town. At that point...his own actions demonstrated that he didn't believe that what he did to acquire the tokens were legit. (The Fugitive notwithstanding, innocent people don't run.)

Then he "exploited glitches" for another DeFi. See above.

Then he attempted to launder the tokens...with some guy he found on the internet. Someone who legitimately believed that they legally owned the tokens would have hired lawyers, not money launderers, to gain access to their property. (Aside: any money launderer willing to launder money for a stranger is almost certainly undercover law enforcement...)

Then he moved to a country without an extradition treaty, and in the past few months has been spouting racist far-right nonsense in the hopes of getting pardoned.

Is he guilty? His own actions say that even he thinks he is.

[poochkoishi728]

He can believe the tokens are rightfully his, and still believe that authorities don't see it his way. Like if you're in Salem and know you're not a witch, you'd want to take off too and chill in no-extradition treaty countries, so you don't get boiled alive by people with different outlooks.

I like the analogy of an unsecured window. It doesn't seem to apply to a hypothetical (idk specifics of this company) purely private company in some crypto-friendly country that doesn't have any ties to the rule of law.

[garfield_light]

Irrelevant, his thoughts in the matter or him being a shithead don't make the unintended use of a smart contract illegal or not. This is just usual case of Wilhoit’s Law by shitcoin peddlers.

> There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

They are outside of regulatory scrutiny but god-forbid someone uses the same excuses to take their funny money.

[InDubioProRubio]

But wont somebody think of the Incompetence Finance Inc. - we cant have fraudsters defrauded, with legal means. The upper caste taketh the lower giveth that is tardition since the dawn of time.

[Yizahi]

Code is lol. Oh, sorry, meant to say Code is Law. :)

[TacticalCoder]

https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-security-enginee...

From that link:

"U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said: “Today, Shakeeb Ahmed was sentenced to prison in the first ever conviction for the hack of a smart contract and ordered to forfeit all of the stolen crypto. No matter how novel or sophisticated the hack, this Office and our law enforcement partners are committed to following the money and bringing hackers to justice. And as today’s sentence shows, time in prison — and forfeiture of all the stolen crypto — is the inevitable consequence of such destructive hacks.”

The undisputable matter of fact is this: there have already been several cases of people who thought they could invoke the "(smart contract) code is law" argument to outsmart judges and the legal system.

But that's fantasy. In practice these people, when caught, go to prison.

> Indexed Finance is an unlicensed investment firm. The promoters knew the risk ( decentralized finance) and now they want to blame someone who outsmarted them at their own game.

And DeFi exchanges are "unlicensed brokers". And yet I posted a case where the hacker who "outsmarted" them is now in prison: how smart one has to be to end up in prison right?

Post me a case where an "unlicensed investement firm" sued a thief who "outsmarted them" and where the judge decided to let the thief walk free.

For I posted a case from justice.gov to prove my point.

[danielvf]

The camera shows night in the Wild West.

A masked man creeps through the shadows of a sleeping town.

He looks both ways, then uses a knife to unlatch a door from the outside. He slips into near pitch blackness. He moves confidently in the darkness - he's worked for this bank before, checking on their security from theft.

Out comes his lock picking tools - the bank president's office door opens with a quick rake. Cheap lock.

Inside, with no windows to betray him, he lights a candle. There in the corner stands the safe. He knows it inside and out, and has been practicing. Five minutes later, the lock is picked, and he loads up the gold, cash, and bonds inside.

He puts the candle out, slips back outside, and returns to his room at the lodging house, climbing in through the window.

The next morning, with the discovery of missing gold, the town looks like someone kicked over a fire ants nest. It only takes 30 minutes before people start wondering about "bank security expert" who had just been in the bank every day.

A crowd heads over the boarding house, growing in size as it goes.

"Did you steal our money?", they ask?

"ABSOLUTELY NOT," he replies, "I merely used my immense mental powers to out hink several flawed physical security measures, breaking no laws of physics, in such a way that the gold, cash, and bonds previously belong to you are now in my possession, and now belong to me. No theft has taken place, only the movement of certain levers, of which anyone who knew how could move, and the movement of afterwords of certain goods."

"So you stole our money!!", the town shouted.

"No, no, I just interacted with the universe according to its very own publicly available rules. No theft has occurred!"

An old cowhand, covering him with double barrel, spoke up, "Walll, guess he's right. We deserved to lose all that money. He did nothing wrong at all."

Everyone left, impressed with his genius.

[DangitBobby]

Yes, running transactions for asymmetric benefit allowed by code on a platform underpinned by a technology whose proponents espouse "code is law" is at all comparable to a man picking a lock on a bank safe. Very astute.

[danielvf]

In this case the only person espousing the idea of "code is law" is the hacker. Neither the blockchain's builders, nor the hacked protocol, nor the users are saying that.

"code is law" is a meme that primarily lives on hacker news. Only a tiny fraction of crypto people believe it or say it.

[ceejayoz]

This is revisionist history.

https://www.bitget.com/news/detail/12560604358718

> In April 2016, in Switzerland, the Slock.it team was introducing their ambitious plan: The DAO, a decentralized investment fund governed entirely by code. "Imagine a fund with no board, no CEO," founder Christoph Jentzsch explained, "all decisions are made by token holders through smart contract-based voting. This is the ultimate realization of 'Code is Law'."

https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1188511660387889153

[olddustytrail]

Is the "Slock.it team" not a tiny fraction of crypto people?

I find it difficult to believe they're a large majority.

[ceejayoz]

The DAO was not some small, fringe project in the crypto world.

Per Wiki:

> As of May 2016, The DAO had attracted nearly 14% of all Ether tokens issued to date.

Vitalik Buterin is, uh, pretty notable, too.

[meepmorp]

> The camera shows night in the Wild West.

> A masked man creeps through the shadows of a sleeping town.

> He looks both ways, then

... walks into a casino, realizes there's a flaw in how they shuffle and deal cards, and then makes a shit ton of money exploiting this weakness.

After losing a shit ton of money because they didn't plan for someone to play the game in an unexpected way, the owners of the casino demanded the money back.

"Did you steal our money?", they ask?

"ABSOLUTELY NOT," he replies, "I didn't get any non-public information, I didn't manipulate the deck, and you have yet to point to a single hand that was not played entirely within the stated rules of the game. You're just mad because I noticed that you fucked up and bet accordingly."

[olddustytrail]

They all beat the shit out of the asshole and took their money back.

"There's always another moron tries that one", they laughed as they walked away.

[meepmorp]

the long arm of the law is just substituting for the long leg of kicking his ass