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Comment by Steko | Hacker News Reader

No dollars were actually stolen. Dollars are a real currency, the kind you can put in real banks so this kind of thing never happens to you.

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I see what you're doing, you're being purposefully condescending. You aren't dumb enough to actually believe that something people trade for real dollars has absolutely no value. Whether you like it or not, people do use Bitcoins and a value can be assigned the same way a super model's legs can be insured for a value. Deal with it.

Yes, he's egging the crowd on, but his comment did make me wonder what the legal ramifications of someone stealing bitcoins are. If one of the account holders tried to take Linode to court, do you think a US court would even acknowledge the value of a digital currency?

China doesn't acknowledge virtual theft, which caused some problems here:

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4072704.stm)

But a later case said that virtual property should be protected by law:

(http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-05/24/content_1142726...)

Dutch authorities arrested someone for virtual theft:

(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7094764.stm)

Here's another Dutch case, involving real world violence, which went to their supreme court:

(http://madisonian.net/2012/02/01/dutch-supreme-court-decides...)

That last one mentions US case about domain names.

I'd be really interested to hear from previous US court cases, or from lawyers, about this.

A lot of companies that deal in 'virtual goods', e.g. World of Warcraft, don't like the idea that the bits are property, because then it's hard for them to take the bits away from people (say for cheating), or if they want to shut down the servers etc.

A guy once hacked the SecondLife auction system and they closed his account: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bragg_v._Linden_Lab

I don't recall the details, but I think there was another case (in a Starwars MMO?) where the hacker "got a way with it" and build a house for the money. His buzzer plays the games theme-music :)

Bitcoin's status as a currency may not even be relevant. Your car isn't currency, it's property. If I steal it, I will be charged with theft relative to the value of the car.

I can't see how Bitcoins would be treated any differently. They're property, and they can be readily traded at an established value, so I don't see why someone couldn't be charged for stealing them.

They did not "steal" them, they merely made a copy. The original owner still has their sequence of numbers. Snarky perhaps, but every possible argument one can make about why torrenting a video is not theft applies equally to the "theft" of bitcoins.

Wrong, actually. Read up on how bitcoin (or cryptocurrency in general) works.

I'd love to see that tried in court. I have a feeling that argument won't work very well. I have some limited experience in this area, as I worked for a bankruptcy trustee for a number of years. Debtors tried all manner of convoluted arguments to escape the spirit of the law. Judges have very little patience for that sort of thing.

The judge will make a limited effort to understand Bitcoins, but the core question will remain, "what harm was done and who was it done to?" The "owner" of the Bitcoins was, unquestionably, deprived of value.

So see it however you wish: Bitcoins as tangible property that was taken, or Bitcoins as tangible property that was irreparably damaged. Either way, the judge will ask the same question. Who was harmed and how?

Escaping the conclusion that the attacker's actions are responsible for the loss of value is impossible. You can bet that the State will consider these arguments very carefully if they catch the perp and bring charges against them. From there, it's up to the defense to find a jury so dumb that they'll buy the "Bitcoins aren't property" argument.

Regarding the arguments relative to video torrents, I believe this to be an error in logic. If I copy a video from a friend, that friend can continue to derive the original value from the video. That is, the friend can continue to watch the video and enjoy it. The act is different in that the original holder of the Bitcoins can no longer use them once they have been "copied" (to use your terms).

In this case the original numbers are totally worthless since they were transfered to someone else. The original owner has been completly deprived of the property.

"I see what you're doing, you're being purposefully condescending."

I'm pointing out the obvious. X bitcoins could be "worth" 5 cents or 500,000 in a matter of hours. Bitcoins were stolen not dollars therefore an accurate headline would say how many bitcoins were stolen and possibly the USD (or whatever) value parenthetically.

"You aren't dumb enough"

Stay classy.

"to actually believe that something people trade for real dollars has absolutely no value."

I never said it had no value. Baseball cards have value, no one pretends they are a currency and if anyone did people would rightly point out the many disadvantages like your baseball cards don't get the advantages of a real bank.

> I'm pointing out the obvious. X bitcoins could be "worth" 5 cents or 500,000 in a matter of hours.

So could your US Dollars.

A fiat currency only has value as long as other people are willing to accept it as payment for various goods and services. That willingness is based on the belief that they, in turn, will be able to exchange the currency for other goods and services at a later time.

The same principle applies to bitcoins. But a cryptographic currency like bitcoin has advantages that USDs don't. For example that massive amounts of bitcoins can't just be whipped up "out of thin air" like paper money can.

I don't understand the point you're making. If someone stole baseball card they'd be charged with theft. What's the difference here?

It is common editorial practice to express facts in a way that readers can easily understand. Imagine a US paper runs a story about a Japanese theft where 1,000,000 YEN are stolen. Let's assume I don't follow world currency markets, so I have no idea what the YEN:USD rate is. I might assume some level of equivalency and walk away with the impression that somewhere around a million USD were stolen. That would be inaccurate. The responsible editorial decision is to provide the reader some accessible basis for understanding the facts.

The reason you're being called out for condescension/trolling is because the point you're making is entirely irrelevant to the discussion. Is Bitcoin a real/valid currency? It doesn't matter in the context of this theft. What's relevant is the value of those Bitcoins at the time they were stolen. That's how matters of theft are assessed. Criminal charges are levied based on the value of the items stolen.

Another thing to consider is the thoughtlessness of discussing the relative merits of Bitcoin as a currency when someone just lost a couple hundred thousand dollars. Someone's life is sucking really hard right now, and pedantry is a great way to put people off. This just seems like a really inappropriate time and place to have that discussion.

I think you're nitpicking. The goods stolen had a value corresponding to the amount listed. Is converting the amounts from a transaction carried out in euros to dollars objectionable? I would argue no.

Unless someone gets your bank login/pw, transfers it out, and the bank decides that you were responsible for protecting your login/pw.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/bank-ach-theft/

Oh, traditional banks have never been hacked and dollars transferred? Somehow I'm not buying it.

Traditional banks have insurance which protects them in case money is stolen:

http://www.fdic.gov/consumers/consumer/information/fdiciorn....

Individual cash deposits are also guaranteed by governments in most countries.

Bitcoins are not controlled by any government or central bank, but neither are they backed by one. And here we see the downside of that trade-off.

That doesn't mean banks won't decide to sue you if someone electronically steals your money the bank.

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/01/texas-bank-sues-customer-...

Um.

In that case, the customer was demanding repayment of lost money, alleging the bank's security was negligent, and the bank was basically asking the court to say "it's not our fault somebody got his username/password".

Right. Which refutes seldo's conception that bank deposits are safe due to insurance or government guarantees.

The deposit in question exceeded that which is guaranteed by FDIC.

And your summary was flat-out disingenuous; you presented it as the bank suing the customer, when in effect it appears to be the bank seeking a court declaration that the bank's own security measures were not at fault, as a response to the customer's claims against the bank.

oof, I guess that's how terrible precedents are formed. The argument of the plantiff is all wrong - it's not that the bank failed to secure some nebulous "online account", it's that the bank performed an unauthorized transfer by whatever means. Online banking credentials aren't proof of identity, and banks have continually rejected capability security (which in this case would have taken the form of dynamically-generated secrets that enable one transfer up to $X). If they can't afford to eat ~$100k every time their mostly-reversible system gets taken advantage of, they shouldn't default to offering the ability to transfer $100k to the Internet in the first place.

(and clearly bitcoin is the polar opposite, based on capabilities and being irreversible, for now)

It protects the consumers, not the banks. Same, in this case bitcoinica is honoring all the money and is swallowing the loss themselves.

It protects both. Without the insurance, the bank would have to pay the customers what it could, and then possibly die if it can't.

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