...
I didn't even need to read your entire post.
Are you actually this "fundamentally" morally bankrupt?
If they were yours, and someone "found them", and didn't give them back: would that be stealing? Yes.
Morality is irrelevant.
The majority of the Bitcoin Network is designed and functions on amoral behavior.
You seem to be pretty ignorant of this based on your response.
Ok
I was not trying to be rude, if I came off as such.
To clarify myself, can stealing truly exist in an purposefully created amoral system?
For a wacky example,
assume in another dimension, humans can kill other humans for a form
of advancement and that is socially acceptable and the rules and laws in this dimension, now
the question is: can a person commit murder in this place?
I don't think so and I think the OPs question about stealing is like this example.
(But in our world it is murder, and outside the Bitcoin blockchain, it is theft.)
We don't need to be in another dimension: we call this war, and we do it every day, right here in this dimension for as long as recorded history. It doesn't make ok it simply makes it the way things are.
...
No. War is actually a form of state sanctioned killing, as long as it falls within Geneva Conventions.
So war is not murder under the legal understanding. The question I was asking was in a world where
killing is acceptable on a daily basis, such as for parking spots and job promotions. My point was that
the bitcoin blockchain is not only a "trustless, program requiring no morality, and etc"., but legally it is
something much more. The Bitcoin blockchain is its own world with rules that are contradictory to our
current view of the world and its systems, and this is why the governments currently can not regulate it.
Theft, conspiracy, collusion, manipulation, and etc are illegal in normal regulated financial systems, but
in Bitcoin it is what allows it to function.
But this is not:
"The majority of the Bitcoin Network is designed and functions on amoral behavior."
The network was meant to function without trust, it is a program it requires no morality. We are not questioning the morality of the program.
It was a question posed by a person regarding an action they would carry out.
This isn't Plato's Republic, it's bitcoin talk.
And the question isn't a complicated moral conundrum.
Is it stealing? Yes. However which friggen way you would want to justify it.
Bitcoin does not grant any users any legal rights or guarantees of or in the Bitcoin system.
Bitcoin has no central authority to determine ownership or rightful possession of any bitcoins.
The whole system is voluntary and only functions due to its ability to not conform to established laws.
Theft from a legal view is determined when a type of property is wrongfully or illegally taken by another.
In the bitcoin system, since no rights exist or are granted, theft does not exist except as a valid system
of conveyance of bitcoins. For example, the Bitcoin blockchain does not care who has stolen them, neither
do the devs or miners, and that the only users who do care are the legally regulated exchanges that will freeze
the stolen coins if they are deposited within their site since they are required to conform to money laws and rules.
If the coins never enter the exchanges, the thief will be allowed by the blockchain to continue its control and
movement of those coins. The bitcoin blockchain will not freeze those coins or make judgements of those coins.
Since Bitcoin itself is currently unregulated, theft is fully allowable, considered a realistic possibility, and ultimately
is considered acceptable when it occurs. If you pay attention to the forum posts of when actual coins are stolen from
someone, most of the responses to that user is that it was due to their own actions and not due to the thief breaking
some sort of code or rule or law. The user who lost their coins has no form of recourse or appeal to the system itself.
Because of all the foregoing and other undiscussd issues, bitcoin users actually do not legally own any bitcoins.
They have no rights to the coins or the system and most governments do not grant any rights or protections to it.
So "stealing" is really only a moral question and not a legal question with Bitcoin, and the OPs post was a legal question
in Legal section of this forum.
I am not trying to justify theft, I'm just explaining why I think certain legal standards may not exist in Bitcoin.
If a day comes when those standards are applied to Bitcoin within the network itself, Bitcoin is dead and over.
