The fact is wires can also be irreversible and you cannot use the court system as a blunt instrument outside your jurisdiction. The value transmission medium isn’t the problem here.
No, it isn't. It's a reminder that we have all of this financial structure for a reason. The person you're responding to didn't make any light of the potential victim or call them a degenerate.
In traditional finance, you (Joe Shmoe) can't just wire someone ~100M USD, regardless of jurisdiction. There are controls, most of which have been written in blood or tears. Cryptocurrencies will also grow those controls, and we will all rightly question its value when it inevitably does.
But it's also not a disgrace for traditional finance: it's a disgrace with respect to the latitude our justice system gives to individual LEOs and a sign that the government is willing to extrajudicially punish people instead of pursuing justice through the courts.
Put another way: assert forfeiture is not some kind of "gotcha" against traditional finance in favor of cryptocurrencies. When law enforcement seizes your bank account, they're going to seize your cryptocurrency accounts too. And if you (unadvisedly) attempt to hide those assets, then you will be making their job in court much easier.
If someone goes through the legal process and is found to be guilty and their assets are seized that's fine. But if someone is pulled over, found to have some drugs, gets their car and cash on them possessed and is forced to go through a lengthy process that free up that money, then that's different.
In any case: the really egregious examples of civil asset forfeiture are the petty ones: the government stops someone for the crime of DWB[1], and seizes all of the property they have on their person (including, sometimes, the car itself.) It's a disgusting crime, but one that doesn't typically extend to the victim's bank accounts or other financial resources, unless there's a larger case being pursued against them. And so, once again, it's not clear how cryptocurrency improves the state of affairs: either you're carrying a hot wallet around with you for your day-to-day expenses (in which case you're subject to the same seizure), or it's roughly equivalent to a traditional financial produce and isn't subject to a spurious seizure (but might be subject to a larger one).
Scenario 2: they take your hardware wallet, then they must prosecute you and prove to a court that the money is not legitimately yours, to get the key. IANAL, but am I wrong?
Instead, I'll point out that the answer does not matter: from the moment that they have my hot wallet instead of me, I can no longer use it. It doesn't matter to me whether they can actually liquidate it or not. And, as I pointed out earlier, I'd harm my own case by attempting to liquidate my assets with a separate copy.
I'm not saying technical solutions make the rule of law unnecessary. But they can defend against some violations of the rule of law, depending on the parts of the justice system that are still just.
People effectively defending themselves against a national disgrace help towards getting the disgrace fixed.
But don't delude yourself into thinking that any meaningful number of people, even cryptocurrency believers, share your position. It's all fun and games until the Men with Sticks show up, and most people understandably tuck tail at that point.
If I'm going to be made a coward in the eyes of a few LARPers, I might as well pay as few middlemen as possible in the process. But that's just me!
> But don't delude yourself into thinking that any meaningful number of people, even cryptocurrency believers, share your position.
You'd be surprised.
Next you're going to tell me that the blockchain isn't made of Lego blocks!
> You'd be surprised.
Given the aggressive spread of custodial services, I don't think I would be. The average cryptocurrency user (even enthusiasts, true believers, &c.) is not a dyed-in-the-wool Burkean. Less prosaically: easy money comes with loose beliefs.
Try getting your money back when getting scammed via venmo or PayPal - rarely any better, and if you’re selling you’re more likely to get scammed with those services than crypto.
In nearly all cases, no separate restitution was required: the processor or my bank was able to reverse or halt the ACH transaction before the money settled. In the handful of cases where settlement had already happened, they were able to countermand the transaction.
Venmo/PayPal/Fedwire transactions should be able to settle in real time, which can be more convenient at the expense of easy reversability
If you use a payment card (debit or credit) with a payment service, then they might use either the payment card's network or ACH, depending on what the card issuer supports.
It’s definitely not a guarantee. Most of the Venmo type scams where people “accidentally” send you money and ask you to send it back or pay for an item with bad funds are not reclaimable from those services based on TOS. In those cases you’d be better off with BTC.