Comment by shuntress | Hacker News Reader

Comment by shuntress | Hacker News Reader

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Bitcoin is actually explicitly designed to enable recourse and refunds. Every single transaction is permanently and immutable tied to a verifiable identity.

Through common practice, these identities are treated as disposable and therefor generally ignored. But stating that the currency is explicitly designed to disallow accountability is not an accurate representation of reality.

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Edit to add a practical example for clarification because this is being downvoted.

If the FBI conducts an effective warranted search + seizure of a mob safehouse, seizes a large safe, opens it up, and finds either:

A) Gold bricks

or

B) Bitcoin wallet private keys

In case (A), they can maybe correlate records, reports, statements, and other evidence to possibly determine the rightful owner of the gold or goods laundered for gold.

In case (B), they can check the BTC ledger against fraud reports that contain bitcoin wallet public keys, then publish a public statement asking people to prove they own any matching public keys -- because bitcoin, by it's fundamental nature, is more accountable in a way that enables recourse and refunds.

Transactions are not reversible by legal authority in bitcoin, only by the receiving party willingly doing the transaction in reverse.

What you are talking about is establishing reputability, not about refund-ability or the ability of authorities to reverse illicit transactions. You can see that as a feature of bitcoin or not, but if you want protections from a system you need to act within that system.

I am saying I know I made a mistake and if they truly caught those who are responsible, then I don't see why they won't be able to get access to the stolen funds. My eth is in that collection of stolen funds. I'd rather prove it's mine and have the government return it to me vs them auctioning it off.

I understand what you are saying, and I'm sorry you are in this situation. But I can also see that because you acted outside of the reach of the legal system then there is less chance of it being able to help you.

Sorry if I'm being heartless here but I'd also argue that the funds were not stolen, they were given in a system that provides almost no legal recourse.

Cryptocurrency is not outside of the reach of the legal system.

"the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas ... ordered Trendon Shavers to pay more than $40 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, and a civil penalty of $150,000 related to [Bitcoin scam] BCS&T." https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/texas-man-sentenced-ope...

Right, when the person is identifiable and within that jurisdiction. I'm saying that if I pay X bitcoin to someone on the internet for a service I have less change of recourse within the law if I don't get that service (in this case a back payment of x*2). If it was a normal digital/creditcard/whatever transaction it'd be easier to reverse and deal with.

This is like saying that gold coins are explicitly designed not to allow recourse and refunds and that transactions in gold are not reversible by any legal authority.

In both BTC and solid gold, reversibility is not a property of the currency. It is a part of the system which uses that currency.

However, with Bitcoin (unlike with gold) the currency is explicitly designed with verifiable identity being fundamental to every transaction.

With Bitcoin, an individual can prove that they participated in a transaction that was later determined to be fraudulent. This is a fact of the currency. It is explicitly built in to Bitcoin at a foundational level.

Whether existing systems use that specific aspect of the currency to do anything meaningful is a separate matter.

But the fact is that bitcoin itself has more accountability than other currencies. Not less.

What I said was "not reversible by legal authority". That's true for both gold coins and bitcoin if the legal authority don't have them to give.

I'm not saying bitcoin is less accountable and giving 6000$ in gold coins to a stranger promising to double them would only be slightly more responsible since then you'd at least know a physical jurisdiction.

What I'm saying is that when bitcoin X leaves wallet Y to wallet Z the only way to get back X into Y is for the holder of Z to willingly give it, while "normal" digital transactions can be reversed by the transactor or by law. So if you want a transaction to be reversible by law you probably don't want it in bitcoin. Please let me know if I'm wrong.

You are not wrong but you are glossing over the fact that by "digital transactions" you seem to actually mean "transactions brokered by a third party".

USD also works the way you describe. I may write someone a check based on a fraudulent premise then later demand my money back. If they have already cashed that check and run then the money is gone from their account and there is no way to reverse the transaction. The bank may charge them, cancel their account, pay me back anyway, etc. These are all actions taken by the third party broker.

With USD the accountability of my_account -> check -> fraudsters_account -> cash is all part of the third party's (the bank's) system.

With BTC, this chain of accountability (my_wallet -> transaction -> fraudsters_wallet) is part of the currency itself.

If the fraudster is later caught and their fraudulent gains seized, with BTC I can prove which of those fraudulent gains came from my wallet and be reimbursed with potentially little technical fuss.

My point is that your point may be true of the systems built to handle transactions made with bitcoin but is not true of bitcoin itself.

Agreed, but the financial system we have is set up to handle one of those scenarios and not the other. Bitcoin could be as good or better at this use-case, but for now that is not the case.

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