It is bad enough that I needed
to point out the nature of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Worse that others are wasting my time arguing about the obvious.
@fillippone, in addition to being a wannabe wallet thief, you are a coward. You are
obviously quite
well aware of this thread. Hiding behind others, as your friend babo maliciously tries to turn this into an attack on me: Despicable. Perhaps because there is nothing you could say here.
@LoyceV (via LoyceMobile) (
bottom of page 2), you wholly evaded the substance of the matter. But the next time that some anonymous “Newbie” account pops up in the development forum to seek help with Brainflayer or a key-cracker, I will be happy to let him know that LoyceV says he’s just showing that Bitcoin is secure.
Do you even realize that you yourself are propounding a popular blackhat argument?As I remarked
in my first post on this thread, this is well beyond Asch. It is group conformity, plus people reflexively defending someone who is popular. If the author’s name on OP were not “fillippone”, and if fillippone were not exceptionally popular, then everyone would immediately see that he is a wallet thief (
or wants to be ).
Imagine that an anonymous Newbie account very explicitly said that he is trying to get lucky finding and taking other people’s coins, he favourably cited LBC (a wallet-thief project whose author has been red-tagged for years), and he claimed this is “legitimate”. Classic wallet thief. Open-and-shut case.
Taking fillippone’s argument in OP to its logical conclusion, there is no such thing as a Bitcoin theft: If you have the private keys, the money is
legitimately yours, period. Chew on that for a bit.
Whereas
a popular and highly-trusted pillar of the community has increased responsibility. I will not grant fillippone deference for being “fillippone”: To the contrary, I will hold him to a higher standard than I would apply to some dumb random newbie.
@babo, (
page 2 and now
page 3) beneath response save to note that your tactic of accusing the accuser shows your own dishonourable character. Defending expressly stated, openly proclaimed wallet-thief intentions by wild insults and personal attacks on the one who properly pointed out the obvious: Tagged accordingly.
@ETFbitcoin, few people have considered the abstract question of Bitcoin ownership in cogent and coherent terms. I am well on record as characterizing Bitcoin as
a bearer asset; please see quotes below (including my disagreement with some Bitcoin Core developers, whom I believe abrogated the concept of Bitcoin as a bearer asset in some development discussions about
signmessage). Insofar as I have seen, I seem to be the only person in the world who has really thought this through. I should write about that further, if I were not wasting my time pointing out the obvious here.
Consider
physical gold coins as an analogy, and take fillippone’s name out of the picture. Imagine that it were still a popular practice to hide (
crypto- <
κρυπτός, ‘hidden’) gold coins under one’s mattress. “Account X” said that he wants to find a way to peek under people’s mattresses, and to discover where they hid their gold coins. He claimed that if he finds where people hid their gold coins, it is “legitimate” for him to take them.
With physical gold coins, possession rules: A theft cannot simply be frozen or revoked, like a bank or credit card transaction. Instead of
not your keys, not your coins, the situation is literally
not your coins, not your coins. That is obvious.
However, we would all recognize a theft as a theft.See also Gregory Maxwell’s condemnation of LBC:
"I started making keys, starting with ones with fewest cuts and systematically working through all possibilities. To learn if these keys matched any that had been used in the past, I tried each one in every door in the neighborhood. After a bit I found a few valuables. What was I supposed to do, leave them there?"
It profiteth us not to apply a—well, let us say, a “creative” interpretation of the word “legitimate”. The word descends from L.
legitimus, ‘lawful’, <
lex, ‘law’; and it has stayed close to its original meaning. In English, it can mean ‘lawful, legal’, or in a non-legal sense, ‘in accord with principles and customs’, among other senses not relevant here.
It is a cognate with Italian legittimo, which is a synonym in Italian with legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato. Thus, fillippone cannot reasonably claim to have made a mistake of foreign language: In his own mother tongue, he claimed that for him to take any coins he could hypothetically find is
legale, valido, regolare, permesso, concesso, consentito, accettato, approvato, autorizzato—and @babo is backing him up on this!
@aliashraf, partly agreed and partly disagreed. Technologists do generally have a tendency to think of technologies in isolation, without considering philosophical, legal, and social aspects. Please see my discussion above and below about Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. However, I also disagree with your characterization of Bitcoin and especially, with your deprecation of cryptography.
Aside...
or how trending is zk proof fantasies which are supposed to be the next BIG thing (total madness),
I have known for the past nine years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world. For
nine years, I have yearned to get zero-knowledge proofs into Bitcoin.
Satoshi himself knew that zero-knowledge proofs could improve Bitcoin; he simply didn’t know how to imply them here, and the breakthrough cryptographic advances didn’t happen until 2013–2014. I was an early adopter, and suffered some bleeding-edge problems around 2017–2018; only in 2022, after many further advances, I am ready to declare the technology mature for general adoption and usage. I have been making many preparations; and some of my forthcoming posts will be exactly on that topic.
That, which is of world-moving importance, is being delayed and having my time stolen away by this, which is a spectacular failure of community responsibility.
@JayJuanGee, although your response is more level-headed than some others here, this is not a case of “shoot first and ask questions later”. It is an open-and-shut case:
fillippone openly, blatantly proclaimed the intentions of a thief. This is not even a technical argument, or a n00b “whoopsie”: It is a matter of basic ethics and honesty of character.
It seems that almost everyone responding on this thread would side with rico666, the author of that LBC project that fillippone praised in OP here:
"I started making keys, starting with ones with fewest cuts and systematically working through all possibilities. To learn if these keys matched any that had been used in the past, I tried each one in every door in the neighborhood. After a bit I found a few valuables. What was I supposed to do, leave them there?"
Yeah. I had lot's of these discussions. Your comparison doesn't apply - even remotely.
"I started taking walks in the park - systematically taking paths to cover the whole area. From time to time I find some coins. What am I supposed to do, leave them there?"
The doors in the neighborhood have names on them. And yes, even "for finds in the park" rules apply. We adhere to them.
You are lucky, this night the pool found something again. The funds are still on the address. What would be your take on this now?
It's a rhetoric question, I do not really need your input. As promised I slept over our - for me yesterdays - "conversation". I guess I'll leave the lawyers in their box this time. Instead, when we meet at the next Bitcoin event we'll both be attending, I'll approach you and we'll handle our arguments like real men. Promise.
Rico
Whereas even rico666 does not go so far as fillippone:
rico666 expressly claimed that he does not intend to take away people’s money, whereas fillippone claimed that it would be “legitimate” to steal people’s money for himself (!). If rico666 was widely tagged as a wallet thief (and he used to have a lot more tags for this than I see now), this is indeed an open-and-shut case. It is ridiculous that anyone is even arguing with me.
As I have repeatedly mentioned, everything that fillippone claimed in OP was “legitimate” applies equally to malicious use of Brainflayer (which works!), or to “key-cracking” tools (which don’t work, but I am speaking to the principle of the matter).
Nullius on Bitcoin as a Bearer AssetFollowing is a brief abstract of my prior statement on Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer instrument. I think that with physical bearer instruments, it would be too obvious to state that
a bearer instrument can be stolen.- Nullius. “Stake addresses, signmessage, ownership, and control.” Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-01-19.
I respectfully disagree with sipa, luke-jr, and others so stating (and I should probably say so on that issue). I argue strictly that control of the private keys equals title to the Bitcoin, period; and it is dangerous to blur a rule logically inherent in the nature decentralized, trustless, permissionless cryptographic money.
If you are a custodial exchange, etc., then you may be holding title to that Bitcoin as a nominee, or (quite arguably) a bailee, or some other legal concept which may be logical to apply. However, account-holders at custodial exchanges are not the titular owners of any Bitcoin at all, in my opinion. If you don’t have the private keys, then it is not your Bitcoin: It is somebody else’s Bitcoin; and that somebody else, the titular owner of the Bitcoin, has contractually agreed to let you excercise beneficial ownership of some sort.
So many ills of this world result when ownership is divorced from control. (Aside, don’t get me started on how the separation of ownership, control, and responsibility is a major factor in the widespread corruption of modern corporations.) Don’t do that with Bitcoin.
In my analysis, ownership is fully congruent with the use of digital signatures to control money in a decentralized, trustless, permissionless system; and legal agreements outside the four corners of Bitcoin script are properly compartmented where they belong, in the realm of legal contracts and the legal enforcement thereof.
(N.b. that the same argument applies to theft: A thief who uses wrongful means to obtain title is still holding titular ownership, and will continue to do so unless recovery is effectuated by avoiding the improperly obtained title. By analogy, consider a criminal who uses forgery, coercion, or fraud in the factum to wrongfully obtain a deed to lands—although that deed would probably be adjudged absolutely void, not merely voidable, whereas a Bitcoin transaction is only absolutely void if a blockchain reorg retroactively invalidates it.)
- Nullius. “[WO] Bitcoin is a bearer asset!” Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-11-17.
- Nullius. “Judge concurs with nullius: Keys = titular ownership (vs. beneficial ownership)”. Bitcoin Forum post. 2020-11-25.
I take the position that
Bitcoin is a bearer asset. [...]
Bearer assets such as cash, gold bullion, or old-fashioned bearer bonds
can be held in trust for the benefit (“beneficial ownership”) of another. This neither changes the nature of the bearer asset, nor absolves the trustee of legally enforceable fiduciary duties to the beneficiary. Much as I can tell from the above snippet, the judge in this case
seems to have imposed a
constructive trust on the coins.
The word “beneficial” is key here! A
beneficial owner is not necessarily the
titular owner. [...]
Much though I am sympathetic to this statement in principle, there will always be tension between the desires of those who would govern, and the practical limitations on their power.
Bitcoin directly exploits this tension. In an era when governments and
their owners, the banks have been attempting to replace all bearer assets with
identity-based assets, Bitcoin’s nature as a bearer asset pushes us back toward the wiser, freer era of bullion, cash notes, and bearer bonds—with the added benefit that Bitcoin can be transferred around the world with the press of a button.
For better or for worse, courts
will attempt to adjudicate disputes over the allegedly
proper ownership of bearer assets. As you say, it comes down to a question of enforceability.
Possession is nine-tenths of the law. Always has been, always will be!
Possession of the keys equals possession of the coins. Bearer asset.
N.b. that “nine-tenths” is not “ten-tenths”, and that should not be read out of context. If possession equalled ownership in all aspects, then the whole concept of theft would not exist: It would be impossible to steal anything, because anything that you possess is legitimately yours.
That is a classic “law of the jungle” argument. The “law of the jungle” is what fillippone explicitly proclaimed in OP here: Find money, take it, it is “legitimately” yours.
As a Nietzschean amoralist, I am well aware that all morality is subjective; and I can philosophically contemplate the “law of the jungle” argument, or (
mutatis mutandis) various justifications of a Thieves’ Code, without jerking my knee or overly exciting my glands. However, thievery is incompatible with
me and with any society in which I wish to partake. Accordingly, my morality brands thieves as thieves and criminals; and on the Bitcoin Forum, I tag them accordingly.
Edit: Reviewing the above quotes, I realize that
fillippone’s statements in OP are logically equivalent to extending the “not your keys, not your coins” rule to mean that a centralized exchange has a right to exit-scam users, simply by walking off with the coins. I don’t think that that’s what any reasonable person means by “not your keys, not your coins”.
[...] you are actually owner of the private keys, so you are legitimate owner of such balance, and nothing prevents you from transferring to your own wallet.
(End of edit.)
The above responses are compressed and not so neatly formatted as usual; for this is suddenly becoming an absurd waste of my time, and a distraction from important tasks. I should start hourly billing of anyone who expects for me to explain the obvious yet again.