Cryptocurs Don't Asportate

fliptop writes:

Over at ACM.org, Robin K. Hill writes Cryptocurs Don't Asportate [*]:

Cryptocurrency cannot be stolen-by definition. We don't need to ask whether crypto is a commodity or a credit vehicle, nor whether the exchange or the client owns the funds [Anderson]. We need only look at the principle behind the arrangement. Most bank accounts have an owner, a vessel (the account), some contents (the money), and some means of access (an account identifier or accountholder's personal identity). AND there is some authority that manages these elements (the bank). Cryptocurrency conflates the vessel and the contents, while rejecting the authority. I claim that cryptocurrency also absorbs the owner into the acess, leaving only two things, the access and the contents.

Note that the term "decentralized finance" might be more precise here, but "crypto" is the coin of the realm, so to speak. We digress to note that cryptocurrency promoters explicitly omit the element of authority, claiming its absence as a feature, not a bug. Yet this doctrine has already, and ironically, been contravened. The government(!) of El Salvador has declared that Bitcoin is legal tender and must be accepted as payment; the IMF (an even broader authority!) urges retraction [IMF]. A long-standing request to the local government for permission to excavate the tip (landfill) in Newport (Wales) has ben rejected by that Council [BBC]. Law enforcement can indeed handle this as a crime [HamiltonPolice]. In all of these situations, a crypto holder has invoked authority to thwart the anarchy of decentralized finance.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.