How do you propose miners keep track of the stolen coins? Perhaps the miners will place the coins in a temporarily locked wallet.
How can coins be unfrozen? The coins are returned to the rightful owners after a democratic court determines who they are.
Who pays for this system? A percentage of the stolen coins may be used to pay for any management of the system. Similar to the taxes we pay to support our justice system.
Three glaring example of how you have no clue as to how the thing you are trying to "fix" operates at a fundamental level. None of this is even possible.
NOT. POSSIBLE.
Miners cannot "place the coins in a temporarily locked wallet" because they can only send them where the
owner wants to send them (or not, but then another miner will).
NO ONE can return "coins .. to the 'rightful' owners" except the current
owner.
It is not possible to take "a percentage of the stolen coins" unless the current
owner gives them to you - and they may not want to do that.
Look, I'm glad you know more about the protocol than I do, but I'm not here to debate the protocol with you. I know if the devs and miners decided to freeze the coins they could. If they can't technically do it, everyone else (with a wallet) would do what they say because they carry too much weight. I'm simply stating an option that may be better for bitcoin and bitcoin society as a whole in the long run.
Just as a technical point, are you stating that the representation of the stolen bitcoins could not be re-encoded (sent, outputted, or however you want to call it) with a new key pair in a new block? It appears that someone else who appears knowledgeable says its possible:
Well... 51% of the hash rate could attempt the following.
The could stop including a certain set of transactions and stop building on top of blocks which include any of those transactions.
In this case, we would probably have a nice fork.
So OP, please stop talking about this 4 year old topic and go do something about it. No one is going to throw Bitcoin under the bus to save some people who ignored the benefit of Bitcoin in the first place by trading actual bitcoins for Bitcoin IOUs.
I am doing something about it by talking about it. Bitcoin does not have to be thrown under the bus to be more just. The devs and miners simiply have to lead the way.
Are you stating that you never purchased coins at an exchange? Or that exchanges haven't played the most important part (by far! other than the code itself of course) in bitcoin's short successful history to date?
No because then we are placing our trust in "the core developers",. Trust in anyone is slippery slope. Bitcoin is supposed to be trustless system
If you don't believe your trust is already with the core developers you're sorely mistaken.
OP meet Protocol, Protocol meet OP.
**Later that night**
Protocol: Why did you introduce me to OP!? He's stupid and doesn't understand anything about me.
Is this on topic? Do I need to understand the protocol to suggest a better way? One can code anything one desires.
Short answer: They can't. Even if they release an update the network has to accept it.
I for one would not accept it. You snooze you lose your bitcoins. That's that.
I'm going to call bullshit on you here.
Finally to all those who keep saying something to the effect of "please stop talking and go do something about it":
For one I am; I am discussing it with you. Secondly, I am not forking the chain because I do not have the technical capability at this point nor do I have the leadership role in the bitcoin community that would make it a success.