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Comment by cortesoft | Hacker News Reader

> Keys = coins

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

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.

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.

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