Damn, it's almost like centralized exchanges are the exact antithesis of everything cryptocurrencies stands for. I wonder if that's why everyone warns against using them?

1. Is Changpeng “CZ” Zhao known to be someone who believes in "Code is law"? I know that some in the crypto community (specifically ethereum/difi) believes this, but this isn't as much of a gotcha you think it is because crypto isn't a monolith, and therefore there can be apparent contradictions from people within the crypto community.

2. On a more fundamental level, I don't see how this is inconsistent with "code is law". After all, if the attacker willingly transferred his stolen funds to a third party, then in the eyes of the network he legitimately gave up control of it[1], just like luke legitimately gave up control of his coins when his wallet was hacked. Live by the sword, die by the sword.

[1] if you want to make it kosher in the eyes of the law, you could even sneak a clause in the ToS that says you have the right to freeze whatever funds you want.

I assume you must understand how Bitcoin works, so…

Moving cryptocurrencies around barriers such as custodial exchanges freezing/losing/stealing it is one of the “superpowers” that makes real Crypto valuable.

Any thief dumb enough to deposit their stolen goods onto someone’s exchange deserves to have it frozen — heck, if they deposited it into my wallet, that’s what I wound do!

Explain again how this defeats “code is law”?

yes, but that obviously doesn't apply anymore when you add it to an exchange, which seems fair tbh. I'm not a blockchain shill by any means

everyone is watching the avi case now to see whether a court will rule code is law. going to be super interesting to watch play out.

Most likely the hacker will use a DEX to convert his funds. But yeah there's no much difference between Exchanges and banks, they work basically the same way.