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0 pointsDannyBee3y ago0 comments

This claim makes no sense. In the real world, crimes have very specific definitions. Most are physical, in fact.

For example, robbery is when, with intent to commit theft, you take property by force.

Anything else is not robbery.

Theft by taking is: when a person unlawfully takes or, being in lawful possession thereof, unlawfully appropriates any property of another with the intention of depriving him of the property, regardless of the manner in which property is taken or appropriated.

(The above is georgia, robbery/theft/etc are state crimes so defintions vary a bit)

Again, it requires doing so unlawfully (or converting unlawfully).

If doing what this person did isn't unlawful in the real world, it's not theft, it's not robbery, it's not anything.

So you have to find a crime that actually matches what happened.

It's not wire fraud - that would require " false statement, promise, or misrepresentation in order obtain money or something of value from someone else."

etc

So what crime do you believe this actually is?

(So far i've only seen a civil lawsuit, and while there is a warrant for his arrest, that's for refusing to move the tokens to a neutral third party, or show up to court :P )

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notahacker3y ago

In addition to sounding like textbook embezzlement, I don't think there's any reason to believe that "theft" as define by that very broad Georgia definition couldn't apply here (the "unlawfully" is to exclude certain property appropriations explicitly permitted by law like bailiff seizures or deposit retentions from the definition, not to mean it's not theft if you keep someone's property against their will without breaking any other laws. I don't think it ceases to be "appropriation" of funds simply because you provide something worthless as an exchange either, particularly not with that last clause)

DannyBeeOP3y ago

I will admit have avoided trying to follow the entire rabbit hole of details on this case. So feel free to point out where i've missed some facts. From what i've seen I doubt it would be considered theft for the simple reason that the tokens that were bought/sold didn't belong to anyone else in particular who you could say it was appropriated from. He also paid for all of it, and paid the fair value at the time.

In fact, he paid very high prices for the initial tokens (860 times initial value at one point). Then gave away a bunch of tokens. Then waited for an algorithm to do something dumb around the pricing, and then swapped the tokens.

Who exactly did he appropriate property from here? He paid for all of it, and paid the prices the market demanded. The algorithm did something dumb, but that is no different than some trading bot algorithm doing something dumb and selling for less than it should, which happens all the time.

As for embezzlement, it requires a trust relationship - it's a violation of a fiduciary duty.

I don't think he had one?

So far, i've not seen any criminal charges here, only civil ones. Certainly prosecutors are slower at this sort of thing, but i'll be interested to see what happens.

notahacker3y ago

According to the linked article, he contributed code to the exploited contract (and was even paid for it!). That sounds like a trust relationship, and layers of obfuscation around swaps and "paying fair price" arent going to change the fact the intended net effect of the trades was that all the value in the contract was transferred to him. Big difference between a trading bot doing dumb stuff and trading bots using exploits a contractor engineered to cleverly transfer all the assets under management to himself.

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0 pointsDannyBee3y ago0 comments

This claim makes no sense. In the real world, crimes have very specific definitions. Most are physical, in fact.

For example, robbery is when, with intent to commit theft, you take property by force.

Anything else is not robbery.

(The above is georgia, robbery/theft/etc are state crimes so defintions vary a bit)

Again, it requires doing so unlawfully (or converting unlawfully).

If doing what this person did isn't unlawful in the real world, it's not theft, it's not robbery, it's not anything.

So you have to find a crime that actually matches what happened.

It's not wire fraud - that would require " false statement, promise, or misrepresentation in order obtain money or something of value from someone else."

etc

So what crime do you believe this actually is?

(So far i've only seen a civil lawsuit, and while there is a warrant for his arrest, that's for refusing to move the tokens to a neutral third party, or show up to court :P )

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notahacker3y ago

DannyBeeOP3y ago

As for embezzlement, it requires a trust relationship - it's a violation of a fiduciary duty.

I don't think he had one?

So far, i've not seen any criminal charges here, only civil ones. Certainly prosecutors are slower at this sort of thing, but i'll be interested to see what happens.

notahacker3y ago

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