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Comment by bbbbb5 | Hacker News Reader

It's worth noting that the indictment seems to focus on very specific technical details of how this hack happened, rather than trying to suggest that hacking smart contracts would be broadly illegal.

It seems that exploiting a smart contract in a way that doesn't involve market manipulation might still be fine, or not. Who knows?

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> It’s worth noting that the indictment seems to focus on very specific technical details of how this hack happened, rather than trying to suggest that hacking smart contracts would be broadly illegal.

Indictments are about specific crimes, not broad generalities.

> It seems that exploiting a smart contract in a way that doesn’t involve market manipulation might still be fine, or not.

“Exploiting a smart contract” isn’t a specific offense, and some instances might be legal. But even if they aren’t specifically “fraud” or “market manipulation” as is charged here, they can also “theft of service”, “theft by false pretenses”, or any of a wide variety of other crimes and torts.

Yeah, my main point is that it remains far from clear as to how the government would approach a situation like the 2016 DAO hack.

>“Exploiting a smart contract” isn’t a specific offense, and some instances might be legal.

Exactly, there does not seem to be easy catch-alls here like wire fraud or unauthorized access.

Commodities fraud isn't even considered "specified unlawful activity" so they can't stack on money laundering either. Given Avraham's resources this will probably spend a few years in appeals court.

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