but just to be clear, the gains weren't from a greedy hacker. they were from completing a trade on an exchange where the counterparty happened to be a greedy hacker. if i make money selling fruit at a fruitstand for cash, the fact that the cash is stolen doesn't matter in any modern legal system that i'm aware of. again, that's true even in the united states, which adopts the relatively unusual legal rule that stolen goods can be returned to their prior owners even after an innocent purchase.
Hi Unk,
I really appreciate your posting history and your philosophy in general on the "state of bitcoin" at the moment as being better thought of as a preliminary experiment with blockchain technologies rather than The Perfect Currency Of The Future.
However, on this, I think you are wrong. First off, every major exchange I'm aware of has a history of rolling back trades for various reasons. I realize your point is that the trades in and of themself weren't a result of a glitch, however this need not be the case. Open market manipulation especially when undertaken by someone who does not actually own the coins involved and when the disruption is large enough the shake the entire market seems to be a clear cut case when it would be best for everyone if the trades were reversed.
I agree with you that exchanges need to move towards more transparency in terms of when/how funds will be frozen, what redress procedures are, when trades will be broken, etc. However, as you have noted numerous times, we are still in the preliminary days and have outgrown ourselves a bit in terms of what we are able to deal with. It's a shame that growth has not occurred in a slower fashion and that suddenly there's very real amounts of money at stake, (especially because, as you mention, it is going to strongly impede a willingness to throw the current block chain out the window and move to something better) but that's where we are at.