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Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

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Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#351

Post by mden »

baddox wrote: post #278
ceejayoz wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You would have much more control over a competitive market of groups. I'm sorry, a competitive market of private organizations trying to lynch me gives me control... how?

In informal language, the market chooses winners and losers by "voting with their dollars." Obviously, no single individual has absolute control over any aspect of society in either system.

I'm not sure I understand how that gives you personally more control. It seems to give more control to whoever wants to hurt you as he is the one purchasing the services. So with one body of force, I only need to worry about them coming after me, but with multiple bodies, I have less control as any one of them can come after me (even worse, without my knowledge of their existence in the first place). What am I missing?

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#352

Post by pjc50 »

mikeyouse wrote: post #130
fleitz wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The financial industry is just as insecure if you hold actual cash. The solution the industry has is not to hold cash. Since no one has money, and all the banks have insurance, they just reverse the transactions in 90% of cases, and in the other 10, like ATM fraud, use insurance. But seriously, go to a bank and try to withdraw $90K in cash. Also, if you make off with 90K in cash the finance industry has people with g…

You could easily go to a bank and withdraw 90k in cash. There'd be paperwork involved, but even small bank vaults hold far more money than that. This chart is old (1992) but gives an indication of the amount of money in a bank vault: http://i.imgur.com/hVZWFR5.png

Quite a lot of banks will simply say "no, not with any amount of paperwork". It's over the AML threshold. Unless you're a business with a need for that quantity of cash.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#353

Post by woodchuck64 »

baddox wrote: post #255
MartinCron wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't do anything to answer my question about where libertarians stand on the question. I still don't get what a civilization without a "monopoly on laws and law enforcement" would look like.

"Laws" and "law enforcement" are just products, similar to any other service. If you can imagine what a civilization without a monopoly on food production, or house cleaning services, or medical services would look like, you should be able to imagine with a civilization without a monopoly on laws and law enforcement would look like. Most people believe that monopolies are not economically efficient for producing "ord…

Law enforcement is ultimately a license to use violence. Having multiple coalitions or companies selling violence as a product seems like a recipe for a truly nightmarish society.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#354

Post by dsuth »

ivanca wrote: post #315
zedshaw wrote: post #133

This is seriously the most hilarious thing I have read in a long time. Here we have a group of objectivist libertarians who believe that there should be effectively no laws other than the law of economics and self-interest who run an illegal website devoted to the pure greed of cashing in on contraband, and this is what they write: "I’ve included transaction logs at the bottom of this message. Review the vendor’s dis…

Why is this the top comment? ... Oh, the author.

Likewise disappointed at what passes for discussion on this topic, on Hacker News of all places.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#355

Post by baddox »

tinco wrote: post #317
baddox wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't speak for all "libertarians," but the way I envision it is that it's precisely like restaurants. In other words, anyone can start a restaurant anywhere they choose that offers any services they choose with any restrictions (geographical, etc.), and any individuals can choose whether to pay for any services that are made available to them. Certainly some restaurants will only be available in certain regions, e…

(Note, I'm not dismissing libertarianism, I just want to understand this idea) I understand the public services part of the idea, but the public services is not what I hear libertarians complain about. What I hear complains about are the public restrictions, and their enforcements. Suppose I live in Birmingham Alabama, and I do not want to be mugged. I would want to subscribe to the restaurant that offers me protecti…

> But these muggers are smart, they subscribe to the restaurant that do not do anything to muggers. What happens now?

That's a very common and intelligent question that immediately gets raised. I believe that such a restaurant would not exist, at least for very long. Assume that it does exist. Firstly, every customer of that restaurant is also vulnerable to being mugged without consequence, which many muggers might quickly realize is not ideal. Secondly, every other restaurant would probably use force to protect its customers from the muggers, like you ask here:

> Will my restaurant use force to protect me from them, infringing on the rights of the muggers?

I don't tend to use the concept of "rights" in my arguments, but if you please, then yes, the anti-mugger restaurants would infringe on the right of the mugger to mug people.

> The result of that would be that a mugger simply is an outcast as no restaurant would openly service muggers?

Restaurants would probably service people who have mugged, but not in the sense that they would enable the mugger to mug. Perhaps a serial and unrepentant mugger would eventually be completely outcast, but more likely, they would receive punishment for mugging and either stop mugging or suffer lots of punishment (e.g. forced reparation or imprisonment). That brings up the notion of prisons in a polycentric legal system, which is another big subtopic. But in short, I do think that prisons could and would exist in such a system.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#356

Post by mpyne »

zanny wrote: post #227
chasing wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But this isn't a beta test. People treat Bitcoin as if it's ready for primetime and ready to replace traditional currency.

If the worst problem in the fiat banking cartel industry was occasionally buggy client software, we would all be floating on a cloud of happiness and rainbows.

That's weird, even in 2009 my market investments didn't randomly end up with an account balance of 0.00.

Seems that fiat is doing much better than "occasionally buggy". They even usually catch the bank robbers, let me know when Team Bitcoin tracks down the SR2 thief!

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#357

Post by mpyne »

Steko wrote: post #80

For anyone still drinking the "Bitcoin is frictionless" kool-aid, this hasn't been a good week.

I'm still waiting to hear how they plan to scale Bitcoin to 50,000 transactions per second. To cover a part of the current financial system alone (but only in the U.S., not the rest of the world). 50,000 is a looong way from 7.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#358

Post by username223 »

baddox wrote: post #340
username223 wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can take your pick of places to live without functioning governments. Most of them are probably uninhabited islands or starving regions in Africa, but it's up to you.

That doesn't answer my question. It's clear that essentially every society on Earth is organized by a government. I was asking if that has been a positive thing. Widespread does not imply positive.

If governed regions are worse, why aren't you living in one of the ungoverned ones? Where (roughly) do you live now, and where would you live if moving were free?

Thanks to government, my landlord can't kick me out without due notice, big guys with weapons can't "protect" me for a fee, and I can travel for free wherever I want on well-maintained roads without paying arbitrary fees.

If your point is that agriculture made most people worse off than their hunter-gatherer predecessors, I probably agree, but that choice is long past.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#359

Post by girvo »

DigitalSea wrote: post #300

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 indi…

Well, actually, people don't trust these new markets either. So many have been hacked, or been scams, that those with the most to lose have been pretty careful or exited this online game altogether.

Re: Silk Road 2 Hacked, All Bitcoins Stolen

#360

Post by jakejake »

swalsh wrote: post #76

My favorite part of bitcoin is just how wild west it always feels. Real money, in very massive quantities is stolen, and there's no authorities who will do anything about it. Old school scams are new again. Crashes happen on a monthly basis. I'm staying out of it in any serious quantities because frankly i'm having too much fun watching it.

There are certainly fortunes to be made as well as lost. I probably would not put "serious" quantities into bitcoin myself either, but it definitely is more interesting to watch it when you have a small amount in it.
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