12 years ago, Satoshi Nakamoto wrote the following:
“Imagine if gold turned into lead when stolen. But if the thief returns it, it becomes gold again.”
There are 2 versions of what this means:
First, that due to the openness of the bitcoin blockchain, the victim can report the theft, backing it up with well-known facts and attaching the address of the thief, after which no one will accept this bitcoin from him.
In practice, this was used during major hacks of exchanges and decentralized protocols - exchanges refused to accept bitcoins from such addresses.
When the amount is returned to the original owner, the claims are removed and everyone is ready to accept these bitcoins again.
The second version, Satoshi wanted to create some mechanism that would make the stolen bitcoins impossible to use in principle, including on the blockchain itself. However, he never implemented such a mechanism.
“Imagine if gold turned into lead when stolen. But if the thief returns it, it becomes gold again.”
There are 2 versions of what this means:
First, that due to the openness of the bitcoin blockchain, the victim can report the theft, backing it up with well-known facts and attaching the address of the thief, after which no one will accept this bitcoin from him.
In practice, this was used during major hacks of exchanges and decentralized protocols - exchanges refused to accept bitcoins from such addresses.
When the amount is returned to the original owner, the claims are removed and everyone is ready to accept these bitcoins again.
The second version, Satoshi wanted to create some mechanism that would make the stolen bitcoins impossible to use in principle, including on the blockchain itself. However, he never implemented such a mechanism.