> You cannot legally rob a bank just because they left it unlocked and unmanned

Nobody suggested making crypto crimes legal. Just metering the degree to which law enforcement, a public good, is put to use pursuing it. Why should a law-abiding saver bail out what in many cases looks like a gambler’s foray?

> Why should a law-abiding saver bail out what in many cases looks like a gambler’s foray?

Because having an idea about how these frauds are committed are helpful for society as a whole. Law enforcement investigating such crimes is the first step towards meaningful laws and regulations.

Acting as though these crimes never happened because they're not enshrined somewhere in the criminal code is cutting off one's nose to spite the face. The negative externalities will still be there, and they will land squarely at society's doorstep. We will all have to foot the bill one way or another.

Everyone's a rugged individualist until they get rugpulled.

I am not sure what you mean by “bail out”. When something gets stolen from you, the government doesn’t repay you for the actual amount. They do pay to litigate/make litigation possible. That is part of the societal contract - if you own something and someone takes it from you, the court system exists so you have legal means of restitution. I don’t really care about whether that’s good or not to apply to crypto, I am merely pointing out that it does.

Socially acceptable. Because I am not going to acknowledge or respect a Turkish summons. Although I would expect a Turkish hit squad.

>You cannot legally rob a bank just because they left it unlocked and unmanned.

Exactly - because it isn't a bank, it is a bunch of cash on the street, if it was unlocked and unmanned.

And even if there was a clear Sticky Note with foreboding text, you would be in the clear to pocket a stack of cash sitting on the sidewalk, left unattended, guarded only with a sticky note.

The steelman and strawman are nearly identical - a bugged contract or implementation isn't a bank, it is a bunch of cash on the street. It stopped being a bank once a bug was found.

> And even if there was a clear Sticky Note with foreboding text, you would be in the clear to pocket a stack of cash sitting on the sidewalk, left unattended, guarded only with a sticky note.

That's not true, and not true globally. Unattended valuables being taken is still theft. Though prosecution is rare, it still happens [0].

[0] https://www.macaupostdaily.com/article12506.html

It's not a matter of whether it's theft. Of course it is.

But if you leave your valuables in the street unattended and then come back shocked to discover that they aren't where you left them, this is not a problem that requires new legislation to solve. The solution to preventing this from happening to you in the future is quite obvious and doesn't involve the government.

And if the government manages to catch the thieves, great. But if they don't, c'est la vie.

I suspect that your belief about found things is at odds with the law.

Theft-by-taking has a wholly different level of legal magnitude gravitas than robbing a bank, tho.

I found someone's car keys in the street this morning. I'm pretty sure that didn't entitle me to their car.

No, because keys for a car and keys for a wallet are wholly different, and even then, picking a lock (bruteforcing a keyspace) isn't comparable, because the value, intent, and purpose of a car is not in its properties of being able to be transferred, transmitted, and it's future value increasing (although that last one is true incidentally), but it is primarily used to get from A to B.

If you found a gift card with the PIN in the street, it would entitle you to a moral inhibition. If you went through a stack of discarded gift cards and found ones with change, you would be less morally wrong, but just as legally right.

Finding a debit card in the street with the PIN is akin to finding someone's wallet.dat file on their github. That is stealing, so no comparison.

Thanks for these analogies. People unfortunately want the new technologies to be an exact replacement of the status quo. There’s no reason for it to be the case and the way these technologies work may make it infeasible to enforce the rules of the status quo.

In New York in the 90s I picked up $150 in small bills off the street. Just strewn around in the middle of the day.

It still gives me delight to remember that. I needed the money, but the continuing pleasure in recalling has been worth far more.

It's a bit unfair to make that comparison. Most technical hacks are always present until somebody abuses it, to make a fair comparison the bank would have to _always_ be left unlocked and unmanned

The guarantee that a bank gives is not the same guarantee that a smart contract gives you. the bank guarantees the safety of your money, the smart contract guarantees that it will as stated in the code.

It's on the the contract dev to write the correct thing and on the contract user to determine if the does what is "says on the thin"