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Tracking a Bitcoin Thief, Part II: Illustrating the Issue of Trust In Altcoins
An anonymous reader writes The team over at the BITCOMSEC (Bitcoin Community Security) project released a second part to their 'Tracking a Bitcoin Thief' series in which they disclose what happened to a once-rising alternate crypto currency project that promised to place guaranteed value of its MidasCoins by backing it with actual Gold. Dealing with the reality of user compromise, the projects founder ups and runs away with all of the communities coins; cashing them out at an exchange for Bitcoins. A sobering tale of trust issues within the alternate crypto currency community. (The first part is interesting, too.)
It's not theft. They just copied some bits.
Ha
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
They certainly misplaced their trust. I don't have a great deal of sympathy for these individuals either. But I would never say they deserve it unless they entered the market with malicious intent. Maybe they were selfish to try and capitalize on the currency, or perhaps they just believe in it from a philosophical standpoint and wanted to support it.
The logic of they-deserved-it-so-its-justified-because-they-let-it-happen is a worn fallacy I'm tired of hearing. If we all believed in such logic, we'd all wear a helmet at all times, otherwise anyone who caves your skull in from behind with a rock would be perfectly justified and socially acceptable. There would be no crime because everything would be legal. Anything you propose as being illegal would be dismissed on that same logic. Oh someone robbed you at gunpoint? Too bad, shouldn't have been outside carrying valuables unarmed. You will probably reply that "anyone who is too weak or goes out unarmed deserves to whatever happens to them, let the weak be weeded out", but even the most well armed and prepared could, and eventually would, find themselves in a situation where they didn't see their assailant in time. Children are pretty uninformed of many of the dangers of the world. Sometimes the best lessons learned are those that are learned the hard way, but there are certainly some terrible things that happen to the uninformed which they didn't by any means deserve. It would be chaos.