Re:Finality does not exist in payments
by yanmaani on Tuesday February 15, 2022 @05:14PM
(#30353574)
It's certainly a thing for the payment rail - Bitcoin qua payment rail is entirely irreversible. So as a category in the real world, it is trivially a thing.
Whether such storage exists is a much better question. I think it depends on what you want to do with it. For example, if the Bitfinex guys were ideologically motivated, they could've spent all the money on, I don't know, political ads or whatever. More generally, I think you can certainly come up with storage that is outside the reach of a given threat actor in pursuit of a given goal.
> > So as a category in the real world, it is trivially a thing.
I'm not saying bitcoin isn't a thing in the world; I was saying that I don't think that makes it "beyond the legal-regulatory system", or that that is really even a helpful/useful concept. I mean we can talk about various shadow economies, but they are just that - and not really in scope for OP article.
I think it is a mistake to believe this is a thing. You can be allowed to operate in gray areas for a bunch of reasons, or you can be small enough not to be too bothered about (e.g. shutting you down not deemed worth the effort); but this is a choice of those same systems, not in your control really.
Although to be fair, I guess this stuff really varies by jurisdiction. Otoh, where the gray areas get bigger, your chances of having that go against you are bigger also.