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Comment by alibarber | Hacker News Reader

If you guess someone’s bank details and steal their money, in many jurisdictions the account owner would have some recourse against the bank and is likely to be made whole (not an easy or enjoyable process I’ll admit) - so I guess that’s one key difference.

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If you steal someone's BTC coins in this way - don't expect to be able to talk about it publicly.

A judge might easily make a ruling that you "stole" the money. Don't expect the legal system to accept the notion that crypto is outside their jurisdiction, nor expect them to appreciate your complex tech arguments about why it's not really stealing.

Yeah, it's the bank you would be stealing from, through fraud (impersonation, I guess). But Bitcoin is decentralized, so you wouldn't be stealing from anyone?

You're still stealing from someone, but it's harder for them to catch you.

Why would it be harder? There’s a ledger of your transactions available for analysis.

Not if the bank scenario holds. There is no legal persona associated with bitcoin nor the block chain. There's also no money there. Someone else took it already.

No. You're not stealing from anyone. It's decentralized and bits have no owner. If you say 'hey, here is my Bitcoin transaction' and others accept, and you just had luck to find a valid address, it is not the same as stealing. Bitcoin has no value.

That isn't true, although you might like the philosophical debate around that, a judge is still going to make you pay the person back and/or give you a prison sentence if it's proven that you are the original owner of the keys. He's going to laugh at your digital philosophy as he slams his hammer down upon judgement.

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