It is important to understand that crypto is not an expression of finance (although financial transactions do take place on top of crypto), but an attempt to express law outside of the bounds of IRL legal frameworks, stating, "code is law", which is of course, not true. The legal system always takes precedence when they have a monopoly on force (financial and physical), which is why crypto is destined to be a niche system so long as it does not have mechanisms for the legal system to exert its will on it. What is business logic of traditional systems if not expressions of business rules operating within the constraints of legal frameworks?
It is not about immutability or what level of transparency the ledger has, it is about control and who can influence both business as usual contract execution and exception handling. It is a power struggle. Don't miss the forest for the trees.
"Code is law" is a property of Ethereum Classic, not all cryptocurrency. I don't really see many crypto people arguing that code should supersede law.
I'm no expert but I understand that undo-ing transactions is pretty trivial if you use multi-sig. The owner and the bank (or government) can each have a signature, and a chargeback can occur when both signatories agree to execute it.
By the way, the law already has ways of punishing irreversible actions (i.e. murder, destruction of property).
> I don't really see many crypto people arguing that code should supersede law.
Evading tax laws or conducting illicit transactions is a core appeal of crypto, and obfuscating identifiers in crypto to achieve those ends is what crypto tumblers are all about.
> I'm no expert but I understand that undo-ing transactions is pretty trivial if you use multi-sig.
Per [1] multi-sig only lets you require multiple signatures to create a transaction, reducing the chance you do something stupid, so sort of like a physical check that requires multiple physical signatures. Multi sig doesn't let you (or the other signers) reverse the transaction once it is complete.
For that, you must contact the recipient and convince them to return the crypto, hopefully by asking them nicely.
It is not about immutability or what level of transparency the ledger has, it is about control and who can influence both business as usual contract execution and exception handling. It is a power struggle. Don't miss the forest for the trees.