Topic: Bitfinex Attack & Code Is The Law (Read 527 times)

That hard fork is to protect the integrity of the block chain. The hacker might transfer the money illegally.

Indeed.  Minecache seems to be severely logically challenged.

Nowhere, except in one single instance, "code is law".  That single instance is a smart contract.  Nor in crypto currencies, nor in any other software system, "code is law".  The particularity of a smart contract was that a computer was the judge between different parties, so there "code had to be law" as a computer can only execute code, and not "interpret intend".

In ALL other software endeavours, INTEND is law.  Even with bitcoin and even with ethereum.  There, the intend is the white paper.  This is why bitcoin hard and soft forked in the past, in order to correct bugs in the software, because the software deviated from the white paper intend.

So there, (buggy) code is NOT law.  

In crypto, normally PROTOCOL is law, because the protocol was the contract (not the code).  The intend of a cryptosystem usually contains "immutability".  Remember, the engagement of the ethereum foundation: "unstoppable code".   Modifying on purpose code that was running according to intend, to CHANGE INTEND against even a minority of people assuming that intend, is breaking one's engagements.

Again, the ONLY place where buggy code is law, is in the concept of smart contract.  Which makes that concept in itself a funny concept.

If they can (legally and practically) and they do, then they did. We'll see...

But I don't see any relevance of that to hard forking what was supposed to be a decentralized blockchain that nobody controls or owns. If you want to introduce politics to blockchains, then please understand the Iron Law of Political Economics guarantees you will have a fiat system.

Should the law enforcers catch the DAO hacker and punish her as she breaks any kind of law in the land?

Let me start with saying that you start to really piss me (and likely others) off with both your spam and stupidity.

Code IS law but when we say that we're talking about decentralized services such as blockchains. Bitfinex is not decentralized by any means and it's not a coin or even a blockchain. It is a centralized service.
And as such, it always only a matter of time before they get compromised. Always.

On one hand it's a shame that they got hacked but on another, hopefully this will be another push towards decentralized exchanges and traders having some common sense and not holding much funds on centralized platforms.

You tend to confuse concepts. Bitfinex is a centralized private business, your comparison is apples and pianos.

The law exists and it can be used to attempt to fight against the immutability of the blockchain.

The salient difference between a hard fork and the use of the law, is we all know a priori that the law is a factor. Whereas, a priori we don't want to add the risk of hard forks to change the rules AFTER THE FACT arbitrarily.

Hard forks could change anything and everything retroactively. The entire blockchain becomes an issue of trust, which is pointless. Just go back to fiat (centralized control) systems.

It's clear that with the last few months activity within the crypto-sphere that we can all now classify crypto currency hacks and attacks, as justifiable actions by noble coders simply using 'code is the law' to highlight inherent areas requiring a small patch or better coding. With this in mind, I am at a loss as to why Bitfinex have contacted the relevant legal authorities, as the $60 million lost/charged was simply the coders fee for finding the exploit. Bitfinex would do better to focus on patching this highlighted exploit in case a real criminal comes along and uses it to steal 1 ETC.