Sleeping beauty Bitcoin wallets wake up after 14 years to the tune of $2B

This is the other edge of that double edged sword of "no regulations". It's a lot easier to steal bitcoin with no consequence because there isn't an entire financial system backed by people with guns to help you if you are wronged.

You are confused. The people with guns will come for you if you steal bitcoin and they know who you are.

> Bitcoin thief sentenced to 5 years in prison for stealing $1 billion in crypto and laundering it with his social-media rapper wife ‘Razzlekhan’

https://fortune.com/crypto/2024/11/15/bitcoin-thief-sentence...

> there isn't an entire financial system backed by people with guns to help you if you are wronged

It's not the "financial system" that comes and hunts criminals with guns, but police, acting based on what laws they seen has been broken. And stealing $3 billion is as illegal if it was Bitcoins, as if it was Euro or USD.

No, he was changed with laundering.

There are essentially no criminals that are stealing crypto where the police will have jurisdiction. It's main use case outside of speculation is committing international fraud and theft with no consequences.

The point isn't about a change of legality. It's about a change of enforceability! In the normal regulated financial system _every_ entity you can interact with is known to someone who is a) good at keeping paper traces and b) extremely motivated to provide them, given appropriate motivation, i.e. a properly formed request by authorised parties. And that limits the number of times you can do anything scammy to "few" before you need to switch identities

So in your scenario: The 3 billion will reappear at some point and they will raise flags. And at that point there is a convenient rendezvous point between law enforcement and the perpetrators. And we can all quibble about whether the authorisation is appropriate or not (not all "requests" are requests and most won't even need anything close to a court order). But it's damn convenient to follow the money

As a matter of fact, the police return fewer stolen USD to rightful owners than the "financial system" (ie regulated banks, credit card companies, etc). If you report an identity theft (a theft of your USD via your CC or bank info) to the police, nothing will happen, even if they find the guy. The party that is going to return your money (if anyone) is your CC or your bank.

The "financial system" is even more central a player when you consider the universe of potential crimes. Why don't drug dealers put their illegal and ill-begotten money in the bank? It's because the bank is obligated to ask a million questions, and occasionally, to freeze accounts. Why don't North Korean hackers request payment by bank transfer of USD? Because those payments can be put on hold or reversed by the financial system, which is a tool of the "police" in a way that Bitcoin never can be or will be.

The "financial system" is literally a technical system which has been effectively deputized by the "police", and as a matter of technical reality the "financial system" enforces the laws in ways that bitcoin (and exchanges, custodians, etc) are designed to prevent. Financial systems sometimes return stolen money and enforce laws with the involvement of literal police, but mostly not.

Some may not like the laws, and they can argue for why bitcoin is great. But if you like the laws, you should grapple with the fact that Bitcoin was designed to robustly foil the laws. On purpose! This property is called "permissionless" or "censorship-proof" by people that like it.