Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

deepdotweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 555 posts

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#291

Post by tinco »

baddox wrote: post #266
ewoodrich wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I only have to worry about being declared a criminal by one rather than [arbitrary number] of groups that I have literally no control over.

You would have much more control over a competitive market of groups. Your claim is like saying that you'd rather there only be a single restaurant available rather than a group of restaurants, because then you only have to worry about one restaurant poisoning you or otherwise providing bad service.

This libertarian polycentric government system is not like having multiple restaurants to choose from. To me it sounds like you're at one restaurant (the place you live at), and there's multiple cooks, instead of choosing they are going to decide what food is best for you (they all cook different kinds of poison food), and compete with each other over who gets to give you the food.

If that's not how the libertarians envision it, and you can actually choose what government you want by actually moving into one governments influence (so you are without the influence of another) then what you describe is basically Europe. Is Europe the libertarian dream?

(Ironically, in Europe there is the problem of too many inhabitants of poor more liberal (corrupt/lawless) countries migrating to rich euro-socialist countries)

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#292

Post by joe_the_user »

dnautics wrote: post #229
joe_the_user wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I notice you don't question the "everyone is greedy" assertion, however. As I understand it, libertarians believe that justice can be attained through the adversarial institution of the market. That is, by everyone greedily fighting within the bonds of normal commerce, a just (but likely not equal), situation will arise. The gaping hole in this scenario is that those who are greedy and, say, losing or just not gettin…

no, libertarians don't necessarily believe that justice is attained through the market, but that market allocation of resources is more just than political allocation of resources. "everyone is greedy" is not a good characterization of libertarianism; there are plenty of libertarian social benefit groups; a good example that ties into the OP is "sean's outpost" which is a bitcoin-based organization providing for the…

"everyone is greedy" is not a good characterization of libertarianism; there are plenty of libertarian social benefit groups

You are saying because not all libertarians are actually greedy, they don't believe everyone is greedy.

If were to rephrase the statement as "everyone seeking individual good will result in a collective good", I don't see you really disagreeing.

The problem is that we already see people seeking individual good in a truly vicious and unfettered fashion and public harm that brings (say, Mexican drug gangs fighting it out).

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#293

Post by arg01 »

JohnBooty wrote: post #221
zedshaw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

"Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws!" I'm nearly as far away from libertarian as one can be, but no - it's not the same as not having laws. Example: Old (American) West-style "frontier justice" where a bunch of townspeople form a posse or a lynch mob or whatever to right some (real or perceived) wrong. (edit: I do understand that this is only one possible scenario, and not what all or even many libertari…

I'd have to say that the law looks like a monopoly to me. If the only way I can avoid being subject to the local law is to move a large distance and that's the only way to opt out how is this not a monopoly, or rather how is it any less the case than it is now?

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#294

Post by joyeuse6701 »

zedshaw wrote: post #173
tolmasky wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have a deep misunderstanding of libertarianism (which is your right of course). Libertarians don't necessarily not believe in laws, they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers. This is kind of the whole point. Its clear that in your world view "justice" is somehow inexorably tied to government, but there others that disagree (which leads to your confusion in thinking that because som…

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

Fools always laugh the hardest.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#295

Post by mpyne »

JohnBooty wrote: post #221
zedshaw wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"they simply don't believe in a monopoly of laws and law enforcers" Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws! And even then, what you're saying is they believe someone should bring this guy to justice...and then do nothing to him. Then it's not justice. You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here.

"Ahahahahaah! That's the same as not having laws!" I'm nearly as far away from libertarian as one can be, but no - it's not the same as not having laws. Example: Old (American) West-style "frontier justice" where a bunch of townspeople form a posse or a lynch mob or whatever to right some (real or perceived) wrong. (edit: I do understand that this is only one possible scenario, and not what all or even many libertari…

The thing to keep in mind is that the whole idea of a state is that it is the organizational entity (call it a posse if you like) that has the legitimacy to use force in the first place.

If multiple such groups have the "right" then you have either a coalition state or tribes with warlords, but even that only really changes the level of jurisdiction.

It seems to me that some libertarians try to claim theoretical victory by defining their legal enforcement to be a private contractor or somesuch, but as soon as they do that they've simply re-defined the government to be that private contractor (or whoever is controlling them) instead. There's still a state and still governance, whatever you happen to call that particular rose.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#297

Post by jboggan »

brokentone wrote: post #254
jboggan wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That should be 4474.26636916 . . . who is doing BTC calculations with floats?

Bitcoin can be divided down to Satoshi's (0.00000001) an are often traded in fraction. Since they're worth $500+ at the moment, it makes a lot of sense.

I was talking about the trailing decimals after the hundred-millionths place. It's an obvious sign that someone was doing calculations on them as floats and not integers (and dividing by 100,000,000 for display purposes).

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#298

Post by lurkinggrue »

Crito wrote: post #267
redthrowaway wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Ahahahahaah!... You're killing me my friends. Just killing me here. You can make the same argument without being an ass about it.

If he were the sort of person that were capable of making this argument without being an ass about it, then this entire thread of discussion would not have been started in the first place. Whether you are a libertarian bitcoin drug dealer, a communist bitcoin drug dealer, or a politically apathetic cold-hard-cash drug dealer, governments don't enter the "I got ripped off, what are my options?" equation. That's just t…

There is quite a bit anarcho capitalist bent to a portion of the Bitcoin community and a number of people are going to be prone to pointing and laughing when something like this happens.

Not sure if that makes it right but people will be people.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#299

Post by lurkinggrue »

jrockway wrote: post #284
iguana wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

zedshaw being an asshole. I'm shocked, shocked!

How is he being an asshole? He is exactly right. Watching Bitcoin from a detached and neutral position is absolutely pure entertainment. "Hey y'all, let's make a web page for transferring money and drugs!" "But I'm not very good at programming." "No worries, there's CRYPTO!!!!!" "Oh excellent, we'll sure screw over our oppressive government now! Down with the rule of law!!" "Uh boss, someone just untraceably and anon…

I'm finding it quite funny and saw this coming a mile away.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#300

Post by DigitalSea »

Irony at its finest here. If you're going to go to the effort to use a decentralised currency that is difficult to track to a particular individual for a website selling illicit drugs and items served via a decentralised and anonymously run network, don't expect any sympathy when your Bitcoin goes missing... You go to the great effort of avoiding conventional means of currency (banking, trackable transactions to individuals) and yet you realise how the traditional banking system in many ways while not being perfect protects you from a lot of this type of activity. If an attacker hacks into your Internet banking or your credit card is stolen, you in most cases get the money back.

No monetary system is perfect, and I think these increasingly frequent scenarios where X amount of crypto-currency is "stolen" and cannot be recovered drive that point home. I strongly believe that crypto-currency has a bright future, I own a few Bitcoin myself and many other alternative crypto, but I don't entrust and never would entrust my coins in a drug-dealer exchange escrow wallet, I keep them on my computer and in cold storage. These kind of situations just keep driving BTC's price down further, we don't need a Silk Road for Bitcoin to succeed.

This whole situation really just makes me laugh. Some people have no faith in the traditional system of Government or currency, but for some reason have faith in a system and currency that is inherently insecure, unpredictable and when shit hits the fan, there's nobody to help you...

Post reply on HN