Who Watches the Watchers?
Reuters - US Govt Auctions Confiscated Bitcoin
Does anyone else find it a bit bizarre that the US Govt is suddenly in the Bitcoin business auctioning off Bitcoin it has apparently freed from its unlawful custodians? It's a very slippery slope when someone decided on a law, executes the law, and is allowed to make profit on it.
At the same time, recent hacking events against Bitcoin Exchanges have seem people's accounts plundered with no recourse available to recover their Bitcoin. There is no insurance on these holdings as yet, and it all relies on the inherent security of the system. As a Libertarian, I'm wondering what's preventing a government from using its resources to hack into an exchange, plunder Bitcoin, then auction it off after a while. Can some of the Bitcoin experts here comment on that?
difficult with bitcoin as the blockchain is not as secure as others. Until all bitcoin operations implement KYC it will be difficult
Precisely. I suspect some of the more notorious Bitcoin hacking and plundering events that we have seen, the ones so large or blatant that they have affected Bitcoin prices, have been state-sponsored. Power corrupts, and absolute power absolutely corrupts.
you got that right
Plunder it is pure and simple!
yeah and they should be held accountable
I am very pleased that I moved on from Bitfinex before the hack/robbery and I am not at all amused that they did a bail-in in conformance with EU regulations and I remember the days of the mtgox hack... Bitfinex doing a bail-in is so much weaksauce that I am lost for words.
Why did they ditch cold wallet storage entirely?
Why do they think that people are gonna swallow a bail-in from a supposedly non-mainstream financial service company?
Who actually thinks their crummy tokens are worth anything anyway?
Is KYC a government regulation or some kind of self regulation?
I'm having flashbacks to my read of "Atlas Shrugged" here. Galt's Gulch sound good to any Steemitarians?
It does..... but then you remember Ayn Rand died while living in public housing...on medicare.
Irony much?
There is a balance between voluntarism and social responsibility.