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Comment by elaineo | Hacker News Reader

If investors think it's theft, they should call the authorities.

The suspect (not "thief", because "theft" is determined in a court of law) can then be convicted via due process, which is a constitutional right.

After the Mt. Gox hack, users contacted authorities. The Mt. Gox hack lost $600M worth of bitcoin. They are now recovering some of their funds.

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It's worth comparing the Madoff scam. It's been a long, slow grind, with lawsuit after lawsuit against many different parties. But 63% of the losses of direct customers of Madoff have been recovered.[1]

The anonymity feature of Etherium is why this can't happen with the DAO. Nobody knows who has that money. It's tied to a numbered account. They haven't been able to launder it yet, but everyone seems to assume they will be able to.

If Etherium were non-anonymous, this problem could have been unwound in court.

[1] http://www.madofftrustee.com/recoveries-04.html

That's a possible course of action, but in order to be practical and effective in restoring justice, it needs some technical abilities that Ethereum currently doesn't have and probably cannot have - namely, the ability within due process to (a) freeze the anonymous stolen funds during the trial and (b) after a (hypothetical) decision of court, seizing the funds against the will of the account's owner (e.g. trial in absentia).

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