What’d he do that was illegal? Seems like he didn’t cheat and insider trading laws don’t seem to apply. Oops crypto is a unregulated market.
Isn't making people angry illegal yet?
The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
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Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#32The people who genuinely believe "code is law" are stunned to learn that: a) humans won't act "rationally", b) regulations exist for a reason, and c) no, the law is law, code is brittle.
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Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#33This was fascinating to read, but I think the guy is ultimately innocent. He executed a series of speculative trades using the platform's rules and mechanisms. It reminds me of the 2013 case of some guys who took advantage of a software bug in a video poker game. “All these guys did is simply push a sequence of buttons that they were legally entitled to push.”
This sounds very much like the same thing, and since digital currency is not heavily regulated, some might say at all, I think the outcome, while unfortunate, is not illegal.
Sadly Day & Keller and others will likely haunt this poor kid with lawsuits and frivolous attacks, but in my book he did not break the law.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#34What’d he do that was illegal? Seems like he didn’t cheat and insider trading laws don’t seem to apply. Oops crypto is a unregulated market.
It's an exploit no matter how you look at it.
Would it be an exploit if I discover the math to move all bitcoin in existence to whatever address I want then do so?
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#35Hey, code is law right? He is the rightful owner now.
Until someone finds a way to calculate another key to move his eth.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#36I find it disturbing that Medjedovic was prosecuted in the first place. If anyone is guilty of this situation, it's Kellar and Day.
Absolutely. They are guilty of writing vulnerable code, being hacked, and stolen from.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#37What is interesting to me is how it shines a light on the regulatory framework of the non-crypto economy. If you read up on edge cases, there is a lot of people deciding if something is "fair", and my notions of fair and a particular judges notions of fair are often at odds. To steal from Frank Zappa: Legal isn't the same as allowed, allowed isn't the same as fair, fair isn't the same as just, and just isn't music.
There are lots of stories lately about stolen NFTs. The podcast ReplyAll did an episode where they tracked down the current owner of a stolen NFT. He had sympathy for the original owner but he had no intention of turning it over. I don’t get why purchasing a stolen NFT is different than purchasing a stolen guitar from a pawn shop. Shouldn’t the previous owner be able to use the courts to demand the return of the item…
One of the points of digital assets is that the code is the contract, so whatever the code says is what was agreed to. There can be no cheating (in theory) hence no need to resort to courts etc.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#38> Medjedovic added that he'd taken on “substantial risk” in pursuing this strategy. If he'd failed he would have lost “a pretty large chunk of my portfolio.” (The 3 ETH he stood to lose in fees was worth about $11,000 at the time.) This is misleading, either intentionally or due to Medjedovic's incompetence. You can fork the current head of the mainnet blockchain to localhost and try infinite permutations for free to…
> You can fork the current head of the mainnet blockchain to localhost and try infinite permutations for free to see what the next state of the blockchain will be. And then if you like that state, you can then pay to send the working transaction to the mainnet to make that same state occur, in a sure bet.
You have described mining.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#39Yeah, the attacker resides in Canada, so even if found guilty he's looking at easy jail time at the worst. All he has to do
is wait a few years and the $ is his. not like in the US in which feds hand out decade+ sentences like candy on Halloween.
Re: The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds
#40What is interesting to me is how it shines a light on the regulatory framework of the non-crypto economy. If you read up on edge cases, there is a lot of people deciding if something is "fair", and my notions of fair and a particular judges notions of fair are often at odds. To steal from Frank Zappa: Legal isn't the same as allowed, allowed isn't the same as fair, fair isn't the same as just, and just isn't music.
A judge is not deciding whether something is "fair" they are deciding whether it is illegal to the letter and/or spirit of the law. The reason this is at odds with us is that many things are legal that are not "fair". The specific danger here legally is trying to apply general laws into an unregulated market. It's a bit like borrowing money from your mate and then trying to take him to court because he's asking for t…
Well, this is going to send us down a rabbit hole but the reverse is also true: there are multiple interpretations of a given law and the judge tries to use their judgement to square the law with the facts.
(Rabbit hole because I sense this is a debate lawyers have all through law school, and there are various schools of thoughts about the nature of the law etc)