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Comment by ttoinou | Hacker News Reader

He's not a bandit nor a thief. This is how crypto-property works : if you have knowledge of the keys, it's yours.

Successfully guessing the correct combination on a padlock does not make it any less criminal when you decide to steal someone's bike.

Also: even if it were legal, it would still be stealing someone else's property.

But crypto property is NOT regular property

magic internet property

Die, fiat currencies, die!!

Exactly. Wait, was it ironic (: ?

A bunch of others have made the obvious reply, that knowing the keys doesn't transfer legal ownership.

But you still have a good point: Ethereum -- which the article is about -- specifically endorses the philosophy of "code is law", that you can actually replace all of law enforcement and courts with smart contracts on the blockchain, that there's no need for an external power to override its results.

Dumb contract spec? Give out the private keys? Tough. "Code is law."

This is a philosophy not universally held by blockchain advocates, but definitely held by Ethereum advocates (if inconsistently -- see DAO hack). So it's a fair response in this case.

Your post confuses me. Ethereum did a rollback, so how can they continue with their “Code is Law” belief?

An inconsistently adopted/implemented belief doesn’t sound like a belief at all.

I agree they've been hypocritical about it, but it's at least what they claim to support.

That's like saying: If you know the vault combination at a bank, the content is yours.

In the end, you still have to obey the laws of the land. No mater how decentralized some tech is, it's still attached to some country, and thus its laws.

You really don't have to if your own state has a complete disregard for the laws that a third party state with a grievance tries to apply to you, which is the reality for a lot of people.

That assumes there's some state that accepts or claims the responsibility of arbitrating issues of cryptocurrency ownership, and has both the capability and the will to enforce its rulings.

Which seems like just the kind of dependency many crypto-enthusiasts are trying to avoid; and it's unclear to what extent states are interested in taking on that responsibility.

Without that, it really is a wild west out there, where anyone who can guess my key is free to claim my wealth. That model may appeal to some people, but I doubt the general public will care for it.

There have already been several cases of the police getting involved in crypto thefts. Here is an example: https://cointelegraph.com/news/international-police-collabor...

It sounds like that guy created what appeared to be a legitimate wallet creation service, and then emptied the accounts of anyone who used it. That definitely sounds fraudulent.

We don’t know if the person “guessing” Ethereum keys is also the one generating them, but from the article it seems there are multiple people scanning for known keys, so at least some of them aren’t intentionally duping users.

Was the coin ever recovered?

Cryptocoin theft also seems have the same advantage as a buried bag of cash in that criminal prosecution doesn't prevent you from still owning the goods.

I suppose there's restitution, depending on venue.

Haven't heard anything.

In general governments are more than happy to arbitrate civil issues of ownership regardless of the property, but there may not be much appetite to pursue criminal investigation.

Same with anything really. If you know my password everything in my bank account is yours too. A private key is simply a very complex password.

Unfortunately crypto’s greatest strength (that it’s akin to cash) is also it’s greatest weakness. There’s no way to set up 2FA like I can with my bank and there’s no fraud protection, etc.

Edit: doesn’t mean he’s not a thief, btw.

"If you know my password everything in my bank account is yours too."

That's not true. Bank transactions are reversible. The legal system has your back.

https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/how-do-i-get-my-mon...

And... I addressed that?

I thought 2FA or similar was "just around the corner" for bitcoin?

Hardware wallets have been used for years.

2FA should be enabled for any centralized accounts, like exchanges, but there’s no authority who could require a second factor for a real Bitcoin wallet.

Edit: multi-sig has been available for a while, so I suppose that could almost be considered 2FA

You can set as many devices as you want in a M-of-N multisignature address where M out of N devices have to sign in order to move funds

And how many people do that? Is there an organized process for advocating that?

I guess what I’m really asking is: does Coinbase do this? Because honestly, if Joe User doesn’t know to do this and it’s not made available through the most popular consumer interface... it doesn’t matter.

Analogies to bicycles or bank safes are silly.

Crypto is putting something in a magic box with a sign on it that says "contents property of the first person to utter the magic words". "Your" cryptocurrency is not yours. It's "owned by" the magic words, not you. You can assign new magic words, but you can never insert yourself between the crypto and magic words, until you cash out the crypto to some other form of currency.

True crypto-libertarians would of course respond that once cashed out to "some other form of currency" it still isn't owned by you.

I agree if we are talking about legally theft. If people are going to turn to the state to protect their crypto, what is the point of crypto? Just use state backed money in that case.

IMO it's a little different on if it's morally wrong/theft.

That would make for an interesting legal case if the parties were known and in a suitable jurisdiction.

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