[Cryptography] playing lawyer, Incentive Politics

[John Levine]

It appears that Sebastian Stache via cryptography <zeb at qtt.se> said:
>Be it for "the pure pleasure of destruction", or to "end the CO2 
>emissions" or, most likely, simple sour grapes; Yes, to "wipe out $BTC" 
>is both illegal and prosecutable, as is hacking mining pools and 
>currency exchanges.

You know how we feel when lawyers start making assertions about the way
cryptography works?

I am not aware of any laws directly regulating Bitcoin. I know a lot
of laws related to fraud, but they depend on the intent to defraud people
who expect you to do something but you do something else. If you set up
your own private mining pool to unwind the blockchain, and have no
connection to the people who find their wallets depopulated* via the
longest chain algorithm, where's the fraud?

If you think it's illegal it would be a help if you could say under
what laws and in what countries.

R's,
John

* - that's the word they use when there's an outbreak of bird flu on a
chicken farm and they have to kill all the chickens and start over