Hacker News Reader

Comment by Bootvis | Hacker News Reader

But what if I steal a Bitcoin and exchange it directly to USD. If the coin is banned later my counterparty, who acted in good faith, is left with an empty bag.

View on HN

In that case, it's like any other stolen good. If you accept stolen property, you don't hold title to it, whether or not your intentions were honest.

So now both the BTC and the USD are now stolen? You mean that conversion doubles the number of stolen goods?

This is no different from real life scenarios. Suppose someone stole a $5000 ring, sold it for $2500. The ring is still stolen, the police can and will confiscate the ring, so the buyer is out of the $5000 ring and their $2500 paid for the stolen property. The ring is stolen from the owner, the money is stolen from the buyer.

If the police confiscate the ring they will return it to the original owner, they don't just keep it.

Yea--keep the loot; won't bother to retrieve stolen bikes at flea markets; cruise the streets looking for marginal DUI's; always handing out tickets for marginal infractions. I look at them as Tax Collectors. For protection, I would have more luck printing out a Physibe gun.

I think that would depend on jurisdiction but I don't think reclaiming would be workable in this scenario.

Imagine this: I exploit malleability and deposit directly in my BTC-e account, exchange to LTC etc, etc on dozens of exchange and finally to USD. I cash out to cash and disappear. I of course gave my final stop false information. So now my last victim gets a claim, if this last victim happens to be an exchange and it is forced to pay up and the amount is somewhat significant that exchange is now insolvent. Whose problem is that? The exchange declares bankruptcy and their customers get a haircut.

This won't happen, it does more harm than good.

You're describing money laundering, which scrubs the stolen property of its association with a crime. Its a technique which can obviously be successful, but is a crime in its own right.

Traditionally, this is not the case with money. The money asset is different from all other assets in this respect. This matter was settled in Scotland over 300 years ago. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2260952

The result is that even if you can prove that someone else holds a dollar bill that was stolen from you at some point, you do not necessarily have the right to get it back.

See also the Wikipedia article on the principle of "Nemo dat quod non habet" ("no one gives what he doesn't have"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemo_dat_quod_non_habet

Until Bitcoin is legal tender, it's more like a commodity than money.

"legal tender" is a strange concept. For example, £5, £10, £20 and £50 notes are not legal tender in Scotland. But I don't think most Scottish people consider those notes to be "more like a commodity than money."

Great. Go steal some Bitcoins and have some fun then.

I'm not sure what happens if stolen Euros or gold are accepted as payment. These aren't legal tender in the US, so if they are exempt from the aforementioned rule, then bitcoins might be as well.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com