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To those claiming that this is an example of crypto being a scam / useless / unsafe:

I'd point out that if this is a case of incorrect data entry, similar cases happen in traditional finance with some regularity, and in the majority of those cases (e.g. someone sends a large amount to the incorrect bank account), there is no legal recourse to recover those funds and companies resort to asking nicely for the money back (usually it works).




One important thing to note is that in traditional finance if the money gets sent to person B, because person B hacked my e-mail, there is an enforcement mechanism to get the money back.

However, this is not as true for crypto. If I steal 5M from your account and put it into mine then you can't get the money back if I don't give up the key. And, while the state will personally arrest you, they are going to be a lot less likely/able to recoup any crypto.


There’s an interesting court case on this going on now.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2021/08/man-robbed-of-16-bitcoin...


> there is no legal recourse to recover those funds and companies resort to asking nicely for the money back

Yes there is, there are courts. There's a long history of error corrections being forced. That is if it's clearly an error.

https://www.ncconsumer.org/news-articles-eg/using-money-mist...


Crypto is international. Courts are terrible with that scenario.

Pretty hard for US courts to make a random person across the globe give up their wallets.

Also, banks can be court ordered to hold funds. Crypto doesn’t have that.




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