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Comment by sho | Hacker News Reader

Easy. If it's a third party service like an exchange or other custody provider, get a court order, done. If it's on a personal wallet (very rare) then compel them to hand it over right now or go to prison until you do. No rubber hose required.

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That's just rubber hose with a warning and paperwork.

It's just rubber hose with extra steps!

This speaks to a fundamental truth about cryptocurrency. In order to make it easier to use, these currencies adopt the trappings of fiat currency. When I had Bitcoin a while back, I always used an exchange. Most new users will do the same. And any financial transaction you're able to perform will likely go through intermediaries. Not because they're necessary but because they make things easier. If cryptocurrency is going to become mainstream, it will have to be indistinguishable from fiat for end users.

I'm amazed by what has happened to Bitcoin in the last several years. I played around with it about a decade ago, and that involved setting up a node on my laptop, creating my private key, and going to town.

Now everyone is trying to move to a second network (Lightning), but that system is so overwhelmingly complicated that no normal human being can actually manage it themselves. So everyone just has all their coin stored with third parties and no one actually has their private key anymore.

Take a look at one of the "wallets" sometime in your app store of choice. The negative reviews are complaints about onerous know-your-customer processes (make sure to scan your driver's license into your Bitcoin wallet, kids!), deposit and withdrawal limits, etc. From the reviews, you can't even tell them apart from PayPal/Venmo/et-all.

Alternatively, the trappings of fiat are the onramp and the social support that enable the meaningful use cases for the minority of power users.

Why would you assume that it's rare to have it outside of an exchange/custody provider? For that sum I'd expect most operation to have most of them in their own wallets.

What does ‘rubber hose’ mean here?

A rubber hose attack is also sometimes called a wrench attack. It's the use of physical action (often implied as violence or torture) to gain some secret.

And the reality of a "wrench attack" is illustrated in this xkcd comic:

https://xkcd.com/538/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber-hose_cryptanalysis

> In cryptography, rubber-hose cryptanalysis is a euphemism for the extraction of cryptographic secrets (e.g. the password to an encrypted file) from a person by coercion or torture[1]—such as beating that person with a rubber hose, hence the name—in contrast to a mathematical or technical cryptanalytic attack.

The "beating with a rubber hose" thing, in turn, comes from allegations that this method is favored by the likes of secret police, intelligence agencies, and organized crime because it leaves minimal marks on the victim compared to other forms of physical abuse.

Along the same lines: To “”throw the book at him” is a double entendre euphemism (American) for both bringing a lot of charges against someone, and/or beating them with a phonebook because it (purportedly) doesn’t leave bruises.

Pretty sure you just made that up tbh

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