Topic: What the Cyprus theft reminds us about property and ownership (Read 733 times)
well at least Cypriots are taking matters in their own hands.
acc. to press reports, they threatened to kill the president along with all his kids and grandchildren asf..
they wrote they employed a hired gun to do it.
In Cyprus, people were deprived of something they thought belonged to them. It is true in one sense, but false in an other.
I'm not sure what I am going to say describes the exact semantic difference between "property" and "ownership", but that is how I like to think about it anyway. Even if I'm wrong about the words, the notions I'm about to talk about still exist and if the words are not correct, there should be other words because the notions are useful, thus they need words.
Anyway, what I want to say is that there is a fundamental difference between property and ownership.
As Thyrion Lannister puts it:
.
When you have some money on a bank account, this money is your property. But you don't hold this money. Your bank does. It does it for you, on your name. This means that only the bank has the capability to actually do anything with this money. You only have the illusion that you have such a capability because the bank normally obeys you with this money whenever you request an operation.
Property is an abstract concept: it's a word that describes some kind of legitimacy to enjoy ownership without necessarily owning the thing owned.
With euros, one way of both owning and having property on money is to own bank notes that have been acquired legitimately. It's a bit more complex than that, but that's a good approximation.
But with electronic euros, there is no way, unless you are a bank, to own euros that are your property.
The Cyprus theft shows how fragile is the concept of property when it is not reinforced by ownership. The money in your bank account is yours, but not as much as one might thought.
With bitcoins, the difference does exist as well: if you trust a third-party wallet or exchange, you do not own the bitcoins that are supposed to be yours. And just as in the Cyprus case, this property is fragile.
But the crucial difference with bitcoin is that it is the only electronic form of money that anyone can, if he wants to, actually own on his computer. And that is a very important proof of concept for electronic finance.
I'm not sure what I am going to say describes the exact semantic difference between "property" and "ownership", but that is how I like to think about it anyway. Even if I'm wrong about the words, the notions I'm about to talk about still exist and if the words are not correct, there should be other words because the notions are useful, thus they need words.
Anyway, what I want to say is that there is a fundamental difference between property and ownership.
As Thyrion Lannister puts it:
.When you have some money on a bank account, this money is your property. But you don't hold this money. Your bank does. It does it for you, on your name. This means that only the bank has the capability to actually do anything with this money. You only have the illusion that you have such a capability because the bank normally obeys you with this money whenever you request an operation.
Property is an abstract concept: it's a word that describes some kind of legitimacy to enjoy ownership without necessarily owning the thing owned.
With euros, one way of both owning and having property on money is to own bank notes that have been acquired legitimately. It's a bit more complex than that, but that's a good approximation.
But with electronic euros, there is no way, unless you are a bank, to own euros that are your property.
The Cyprus theft shows how fragile is the concept of property when it is not reinforced by ownership. The money in your bank account is yours, but not as much as one might thought.
With bitcoins, the difference does exist as well: if you trust a third-party wallet or exchange, you do not own the bitcoins that are supposed to be yours. And just as in the Cyprus case, this property is fragile.
But the crucial difference with bitcoin is that it is the only electronic form of money that anyone can, if he wants to, actually own on his computer. And that is a very important proof of concept for electronic finance.
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