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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @kepford 14h \ parent \ on: Is there really such a thing as "stolen Bitcoin"? bitcoin
Your title is more broad than your thesis here. Many things can be stolen. How that is handled after the theft is secondary to the question of can bitcoin be stolen. More broadly, governments are in the business of theft. Stolen goods recirculate. I agree with you. But this has little to do with the question you posed.
Maybe. I tried to argue that "stolen" is a legal construct, making sense only within the accepted definitions of common law. But "common law" are rules made by rulers for their subjects: citizens. Foreign nationals are not subject to the same rules. And since bitcoin is cross border, it cannot be stolen in a legal sense - because there are no universal laws. ByBit lost their coins because they did not see the holes in the Ethereum smart contract. Lazarus was smarter. Meritocracy in action.
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But "common law" are rules made by rulers
Not really what common law is. At least not my understanding of the term. Law pre-exists the state and doesn't require a monopoly on violence. Many anarchists have written about this for many years.
I hear what you are saying though... but theft is a pretty universally accepted wrong. Even the way you are describing what happened sounds like theft to me. Its like saying the lock on my door was weak so it was ok that someone came in and took my computer. Its not.
That said, criminals steal from one another all the time. I'm not super concerned about what happened to ByBit. Unless I'm missing something... its theft and the moral hazard I read in your logic is a much bigger threat if it were to take hold. Its the kind of moral relativism that makes people think they are heroes for doing wrongs. But maybe I'm reading to much into it.
Edit:
So maybe I'm missing what you are saying. Sounds like you are saying the contract was not violated, but a flaw was found, IE the contract was not violated. Maybe, in that case its not theft. Still feels like it though.
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Sure, moral rights and wrongs are tough. Nature is cruel in how it operates, and us humans are the worst. But what is an alternative to deal with "tainted" Bitcoin? Supply each UTXO with a provenance certificate? It is what it is - an electronic ledger that tracks full history.