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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

Not your keys, not your coins™ -- with that as the core philosophy of cryptocurrency, can you even say this was stolen, let alone laundered?

It sounds like the person with the keys transferred the coins into another wallet.

Resolved: behaves correctly. At least, as intended anyways.

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That makes sense. I guess that seems to somewhat conflict with the concept of the exchange as a service, at least for how laypeople understand currency exchanges in general. It wouldn’t surprise me if most people with exchange accounts don’t understand that coins not in their own wallet aren’t actually theirs. The exchanges don’t really make that clear to their users either, at least the ones I’ve used.

It turns out people want centralization :) I'm sure users mostly understand it but they give the keys away anyway.

Core tenant of cryptocurrencies is purely anti-human

Can crypto be simultaneously anti-human [nature] and yet pro-user [intent]? Can the pain points of crypto be smoothed to make them pro-human [nature] without losing the qualities that make them pro-user [intent], supposing that they are pro-user [intent]?

What about the situation, "I paid them, but they never delivered?".

How would wage garnishment, as ordered by the courts, work? (This is the main one that needs answering because it is a simple example of the hardest anti-human problem that goes against core blockchain philosophy... reversing or forcing transactions)

To me that seems both too high a bar and making the perfect the enemy of the good. It’s asking too much of crypto specifically because the same complaint can be leveled against undeclared cash as you are leveling against crypto in your wage garnishment scenario. A hypothetical worker paid cash wages by a cash only business could in theory fail to divulge their full wages and thus fail to comply with a wage garnishment order. However, that is the status quo. To solve it is to solve it for all kinds of undeclared income, crypto included. For that reason I think that the current wage garnishment system is to blame for its own failings; it is also the moral failing or civil disobedience of the scofflaw which allows this situation as much as the existence of crypto. You may as well blame cash for the problems of crypto, and for the problems of wage garnishment evaders.

As to how you are making the perfect the enemy of the good: your complaint fails to specifically apply to cryptocurrencies in general or to any specific crypto for the same reasons it fails to apply to cash specifically. That cryptocurrencies cannot mitigate the market failings of cash is not a failure of crypto or of cash. It is no failure at all because cryptocurrency never sought to solve that which you perceive as a fault. The problems you raise may be very real problems in society, but they are not a problem that is in-scope for crypto developers to solve or mitigate. That’s more of a problem for crypto custodians and their customers.

This is very confusing and I don't follow

How is cryptocurrency worse than cash for complying with court orders? If cash is no better or worse than cryptocurrency in regards to complying with court orders, then why single out cryptocurrency?

Nobody gets paid their salary with cash for a reason...

Small businesses, strip clubs, public houses and bars, restaurants and their staff, handymen, private cleaning and janitorial staff, groundskeepers and lawnmowers, etc in every country in the world are innumerable counter-examples to that assumption.

Many of those are fringe cases, and many more are moving (or have already moved) to digital payments. Square took food trucks, restaurants, handymen, lawnmowers, etc, on to credit card payments. Janitorial staff probably get paid through payroll the majority of the time.

Sweden even got to the point nobody was accepting physical cash in the first place.

These fringe cases exist and are people too, not “nobody.” Cash still exists too. So do cryptocurrencies. Arguments against cryptocurrency that also apply to cash are obvious and uninteresting. That was my point.

escrow services

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escrow

That doesn't solve the general problem of complying with legal orders.

For example, how would escrow help with wage garnishment, suing a company and winning, or generally forced transactions by court order?

Not who you are replying to, but I answered and addressed those claims in a sister comment, here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23199291

You keep saying you answered but you have not. That is very unclear and just throwing around words.

You haven't understood the idea and instead hang on to narrow focus around cash, which had nothing to do with the argument, because most people have digital money that goes through institutions. Using fringe cases to justify the common is the wrong way around.

If your argument against cryptocurrency could also apply to cash, why don’t you also say so? My point is that cryptocurrency has aspects of digital assets and cash assets simultaneously. So if your argument equally would apply to cash, which is commonly used, then I think it’s worth pointing that out.

Also, I don’t agree that my writing is unclear. I find your dismissal unjustified by your arguments. I simply bring up a counter-example to your argument with cash. You saying it is fringe and beside the point is not an argument. To then criticize my writing is to miss the point I was making. I don’t find that you are debating in good faith when you make personal attacks on quality of writing when your own argument hasn’t been made or won.

You haven't clearly replied to the scenario I presented and have rather used this cash analogy (and idea that if I don't address cash than the question is invalid) to continually deflect from from having to answer the original question and how it applies to cryptocurrency.

Cash is a bad analogy because it is the only widely used currency, it defines what we mean by currency, and it has always been a part of modern history in some form. Cryptocurrency has fundamental differences from a digital, public, immutable ledger.

So if you'd like to get back to the original questions, I'd be happy to continue this discussion.

However if your only defense for cryptocurrency is "cash does it too so we don't have to talk about it" then we can stop here.

I’m not advocating for or defending cryptocurrency. I’m asking questions to clarify what it is you are asking. I don’t see why you think I am deflecting. Asking questions is as old as the Socratic method.

If you don’t think analogies to cash are a good answer to your questions, please restate your question. I’m not using cash as an analogy, I’m using it as a counter-example in the monetary marketplace that proves that different monetary instruments have different properties, some of which are inherent to the medium of exchange. I want to know why you think cash isn’t a good answer to your questions. I also am curious why you think cryptocurrency is a bad answer to your questions, if indeed you do.

as expected...

I asked a question about how an immutable ledger, with public consensus, deals with the reversal transactions as ordered by the rule of law. Do you have an answer for that?

I think you misunderstand, by thinking in terms of nature vs intent you are already anti-human.

Remember, Users are Humans. Unless you want to let your cat buy cat food using cryptocurrencies?

What I mean by anti-human, I am referring to the concept that to cryptocurrencies, people don't matter, their wishes, emotions, lives don't matter, the only thing that matters to cryptocurrencies is the algorithm and the principles.

I would say that is more ahuman than anti-human, in the same way one can be an atheist rather than a theist. Cryptocurrencies don’t have any regard or deference to humanity, because they lack agency. How then could they rise to become anti-human rather than simply ahuman?

I don't think there is anything fundamental about cryptocurrency that would make them entirely immune to theft.

You can both believe that the blockchain is working as intended and that the coins were stolen.

I don't disagree although the system philosophically, at it's core, has no concept of theft, of permission, or reversal. Keys = coins.

> Keys = coins

Exactly... and if you steal the keys, you are stealing the coins.

Can you steal keys? Can you "steal" a song? Is it a copyright issue? IP issue? I'm genuinely curious what this concept maps onto.

Yes it's like stealing a credit card number or generating one.

Can someone steal your password?

Keys have value, they are not yours, you take them, you stole them.

It's a bit of a flexible concept when it comes to IP and it's not a clean mapping.

If I "steal" a song that you wrote by downloading it, you can still listen to it of course. This is what the pedants love to argue against. The law doesn't call this theft AFAIK, but there are separate laws.

However a producer has lost something - the right to control who listens to it. The right to control how it is listened to, the right to an income from your creation. Various other things that people may or may not agree with but exist in law.

So, to be lazy, non-legal people say they stole the song instead of all this.

This applies to a lot of things such as crypto keys. Knowing the key doesn't remove the key from you. But I have removed control - you can no longer prevent me from taking your tokens/value. It is much like a stranger having a key to your house without your permission. They might never use it. You probably don't want it to be an ongoing situation though.

well, when you place cryptocurrency with an exchange, you're giving them the keys, no one's stealing anything.

The law generally makes a distinction between voluntary parting, which usually maps to “here, take my $thingy and use it, bring it back when ya done” and then not having it returned as expected.

And theft, which usually maps to taking something that belongs to another person, without their consent, and keeping it with no intention of giving it back to them.

Which one of these categories do you believe your example falls in to?

How does inserting the word cryptocurrency change your perspective?

The same as when you put money in a bank, you're giving them money, no one's stealing anything.

Until they don't give it back. That's the important part.

Banks, especially big established ones that have been around for hundreds of years, are well established businesses that work hand-in-hand with the government to ensure safety of both a country's economy as well as the bank account of individuals.

Got your credit card stolen and someone makes fraudulent purchases? Go to the bank and let them know, and they can do a chargeback and perform an investigation for you.

Someone hacks your bank account and takes out all the money? Go to the bank and they will perform an investigation and follow well laid out procedures to try their best to recover the money, as well as work with the police to identify the hacker. Of course there is no guarantee they can recover your money but, they are experts are figuring stuff like this out and have many fail-safes in place to prevent a hacking attempt to happen in the first place.

But with crypto exchanges, not only are some of the basic securities measures not foolproof, more absurd stuff can happen. Several big exchanges had to file for bankruptcy due to getting their coins hacked away. And if you wants a totally nuts crypto exchange story, look up Quadriga.

I was just saying that freely giving up an item does not necessarily mean theft cannot later occur if that item is not given back. The parent suggested the keys were not stolen because they were given. I say they were stolen as soon as they were used without consent, much like a bank spending your money and not giving it back.

I'd say the last point about crypto is a feature, not a bug. A lot of proponents absolutely cheer on the fact that no individual, business, or government can come along and sweep up coins/tokens and hand them back through force if appropriate cautions are taken. This is unfortunately the other side of that. The idea of people using exchanges as a value store and not as a pass-through or escrow service has always confused me for that reason.

The law is capable of finesse in situations like: "I point a gun at your head and tell you to empty your bank account via ATM". Sooner or later, criminals are going to figure out that the weak link in crypto is the people, and all the secure wallets in the world won't save users facing physical violence.

There has to be a place for legal enforcement in this world; "blockchain is the final word" doesn't lead to a society people actually want to live in.

That’s certainly an argument that can be made, but not one that’ll fly if you want more adoption.

Isn't this just the main trade-off between centralized banks and decentralized crypto?

Like, if a bank is able to reset my password, how safe is it really ?

The bank is regulated externally, they do not have arbitrary control over how they treat you.

In fact, if you get hacked the bank will make you whole at their expense, which is quite a bit different from what happens in crypto.

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