[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.

[tonyarkles]

I think you’re confusing “smart contracts” with “legal contracts”. They’re not entirely different but exploiting a loophole in a smart contract doesn’t necessarily meet the standard of a legal one.

> To form a contract, there must be: a) an offer and acceptance of said offer; b) consideration for the offer, or some value exchange; c) an intention to form legal relations; and, d) a certainty of the terms of the contract

https://www.canlii.org/en/commentary/doc/2019CanLIIDocs4082

The people who made the smart contract almost certainly wouldn’t tick all four of those boxes definitively. It’d be an interesting civil case probably!

[MadnessASAP]

It's actually pretty well established that a typo in a contract doesn't isn't enforceable, particularly if the party trying to enforce it is acting in bad faith.

[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