[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.

[dhosek]

For online sales of drugs it’s through crypto. Also, it’s the preferred way of paying ransom these days.

[sfn42]

There's a pretty big market for drugs and other illegal things on onion websites. You send an encrypted order, transfer crypto to an escrow wallet, then they send the product in the mail.

[waspleg]

The only person I knew who had BTC in like 2008 used it to buy drugs from the Silk Road. They're dead now so it doesn't matter.

[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.]

[xp84]

(i'm not GP but...)

You've cited policy which blocks prosecution of sitting Presidents -- but that didn't necessarily enjoin eventual justice from being served after his term(s) end. However the outcome of Trump v. United States, 603 U.S. 593 (2024) appears to not just block prosecution but grant immunity, meaning what would normally be a crime ceases to even be a crime.

That ruling appears to draw a nearly complete shield of immunity around Presidents for any crimes done as 'official acts,' and nearly everything can be claimed to be an 'official act' especially given how vaguely-scoped much Presidential power has become. I consider it pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a former President even be charged with a crime if Congress doesn't explicitly repudiate this ruling with an actual law.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_v._United_States#:~:text...

[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.)

[kulahan]

This was indeed my stance, thank you!

[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.

[Detrytus]

But the point of "living in the forrest is not an option" isn't that the person in question is incapable of surviving there. It is that the society claims ownership of the forrest an will punish you for trying to live there. I mean, try sleeping in your own car in California, or some other US states...

That's just the nature of almost any society: they are actively hostile towards such outliers.

[esperent]

> But the benefit of living in a society is that those people that _cannot_ survive without the society, _can_ with it

Hence why it's a "contract". Both parties benefit. Society gets to exist, the people in it mostly have better lives than they would living alone in a forest. Admittedly, that's a low bar and we could stand to improving things.

[_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.

[esperent]

> I don’t think something being a contract is reliant on there being a compelling alternative though

Legally, a contract must be entered into voluntarily by both parties. If either party is coerced into joining, then it is no longer considered to be a contract. I assume that philosophers use the same meaning of the word contract.

[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.

[immibis]

If you don't sign a contract you are not bound by it, and you are not protected by it. If the law doesn't apply to you, that cuts both ways: people can kidnap or murder you with impunity for any valid-sounding or completely-made-up reason.

[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.)

[lelandbatey]

The point is that there's a pretty big publicly published document informing the world of their intent. It's called a contract, and they said "this will be the rules by which we abide."

It's a very hard battle to say "wow, I didn't intend to have my contract say that, despite writing that and publishing it." You'd have to have a lot of auxiliary material explicitly stating the opposite of what your contract actually said, or you'd have to convince others that what the contact actually says is so difficult to understand that there was no way to anticipate that the contract allows what it does. And even then, I don't know if that'd pass because "I didn't think of that at the time" is commonly not accepted as a way to get out of breach of contract.

[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.

[InsideOutSanta]

>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

I think you overestimate how easy it is to distinguish between these two. A reasonable common example is people like Bernard Marantelli exploiting lotteries. The lottery does not intend for people to play as Marantelli does. You can (and people do) argue that he's stealing money, but should he go to jail for playing the lottery in a way "not intended by anyone"? I don't think so.

It's the same with card counters at a casino. The casino can throw card counters out because they can decide who plays at their establishment, but it would be unreasonable to jail card counters for playing blackjack in a way casinos don't intend.

>If you see a case where someone exploits a badly-coded computer program to take a hundred million dollars from someone

This phrasing removes relevant context to the point where it no longer represents what actually happened.

>refuses to return any of it (...)

I did not comment on any of this at all.

>I don't see how to actually reason with you

This is dismissive and denies my ability to be convinced by reasonable arguments. It is insulting, even if it's not intended that way.

[protocolture]

The problem is that Smart Contracts aren't sold as "Computer Program" they are sold as binding agreements forged in code. The code was agreed to by all parties.

I absolutely get your position, and possibly hypocritically supported the main branch when ethereum had a big fork over exactly this issue. But its also not hard to see where the "code is law" guys are coming from.

[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.