

Ask HN: Are stealing Bitcoins a zero sum game for thieves? - cl8ton

Where’s the tipping point? At some point the stealing has to stop for Bitcoin to remain legitimate.<p>With 7% stolen from MtGox and add to that all the other thefts (known and unknown) lets say right now today 10% in circulation are stolen.<p>At what point do merchants and users stop buying and accepting them because of the 1 in 10 chance they are accepting stolen Bitcoins?<p>Will next year be a 50% chance your accepting a stolen Bitcoin?
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brudgers
How do you tell if a bitcoin is stolen? There's no exploding dye pack. Just
the blockchains and if it says you own it, then as far as the bitcoin industry
goes you own it. Possession is ownership and anonymity are two thirds of
bitcoin's attraction (fast electronic transfer outside of regulatory oversight
is the third).

Even at $10 a coin 5000 bitcoin would be a nice payday for a lot of people in
the world particularly because bitcoin is prefenced- stolen bitcoin don't sell
at a discount. To put it in perspective, Nigerian banker princes will send out
a lot of emails in hopes of earning a few hundred dollars.

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cl8ton
You’re right you can’t tell if they’re stolen, but if >10% in circulation are
stolen (and growing daily) why would a legit company like overstock.com (just
to name one) take them knowing this?

And if they did, why would I trust them knowing that?

~~~
brudgers
What does it mean to claim a bitcoin is stolen? It's not a claim based on the
blockchains but on something else. It becomes a matter of proof based on
something like server logs and testimony of individuals.

Any business has plausible deniability- they just point to the blockchains and
ask "how can I tell this transaction is in dispute? Anyone can claim anything.
I don't see a judge's signature establishing ownership."

Credit card companies can do what they do because of contracts that might make
the merchant eat the cost of goods on a disputed claim. The merchant in turn
can have insurance against certain types of loss, just as the buyer has such
insurance against loss as part of their agreement with the credit card issuer.
It's not some digital technology that makes it work. Digital technology has
cut the costs, but credit cards worked when transactions were hand processed
using paper records.

That's not to say that I think that CryptoCurrency is necessarily going to
ascend to the main stream. Theft is a problem because the wonders of the
blockchains don't prevent theft. All it does is record the transaction, it
judges not. and the lack of regulation and volatile exchange values and
potentially catastrophic losses make insurance against loss likely to carry
prohibitive premiums or margin calls.

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wmf
AFAIK stolen BTC has never been clawed back and there is no consensus about
whether the _nemo dat_ doctrine applies. BTC will be stolen as long as there
is still one place to launder it.

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tedsanders
Even if stealing is zero-sum, it won't stop thieves. Thieves tend not to be
utilitarians.

