He has not stolen anybody's password, has not modified DeFI code - simply executed a set of financial transactions according to the rules (expressed as DeFI smart contracts) and profited from it.

Indexed Finance is an unlicensed investment firm. The promoters knew the risk ( decentralized finance) and now they want to blame someone who outsmarted them at their own game.

It seems like right now the crypto industry makes the decision to their convenience on a daily basis.

Interesting side-note : the people he took/stole from - they offered him 10% if he returned the rest. He said no in a tweet trolling them.

Contrary to the opinions in this thread, I think he was smart to run away. Remember that he did this from Canada, not the US. Countries don't have the same extradition treaties with Canada that they do with US.

If he had stayed, he would almost certainly be convicted. No court can possibly understand "code is law". Courts' job is only to interpret the law, not make the law. And the law was not written for crypto. You cannot fit a square in a circle without distortion.

What I think would have happened is the courts, rather than introducing novel precedent, would have preferred to just rely on existing case law and declare him a criminal.

Another interesting side-note : the judge presiding the case made a public comment asking the guy to come back to Canada promising him a fair trial. The guy didn't show up - maybe he didn't receive the message.

Overall, even with the benefit of hindsight, we still can't be sure if he was smart to exploit this or not. Forced to live in a few countries but with a lot of money.

* It's because (1) laws were designed when numbers were lower (no one had $16M to steal); (2) humans can't visualize big numbers (individually, $16M is just as big as $65M in my head)

> Mr. Medjedovic left home after receiving death threats

So, crypto-dealers hiding their identiyty and issuing death threats now appeal to law.

Something happens

We need to use the system which we want to replace...

Calling it a "hack" or an "attack" as this article does (while strawmanning the opposite case) is a deliberate attempt to muddy the waters, and is a failure of journalism.

But on a serious note, whenever you read about some people that have either managed to outright steal crypto, or find some vulnerability which hasn't been legality tested...and they just pack their bags, hoping to live life free, forever after. It just seems so naive, too naive with how smart these individuals otherwise tend to be.

I think it is fair to say that once you'll cross a threshold, could be a million. could be 10 million. could be 50 million. All depends on who you've taken it from, you'll realistically be hunted for life.

The people that do get away with these things, are state sponsored operators - but they don't walk away with tens of millions in loot, either.

EDIT: Reading the article, this guy sounds like a real piece of work.

Andean Medjedovic's case shouldn't have even made it to court and he had no obligation to leave his crypto or cashed out legal tender with some "custodian" and spend the next several years of his life as a beta tester for establishing case law. This wasn't just "code is law," more accurately, "under the stipulations of the contract, code is law."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31478795 ("The math prodigy whose hack upended DeFi won’t return funds" (2022) — 399 comments)

A file labeled "Decisions and Mistakes," in which he wrote, "Going On the run / Yes / Chance of getting caught<Payoff for not getting caught / (NA) / Risk is typically underpriced in modern world.

There was no break in or exploiting, it was a trade using flash loans, fair enough if you ask me. A platform trading hundreds of millions should invest in proper security audits

What's the lesson? Maybe tornado cash the gas tokens before doing stuff like this and definitely never post it on social media or acknowledge that you did anything. Be smart and have good opsec

I wonder if this is any relation to Cicada 3301. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cicada_3301

Saying "The code let me do it, so it should be legal" is a bit like if I leave a "free to a good home" sign on a plant pot outside my home, and it leans on my car. It does not mean you are permitted to take my car, no matter how "obvious" it seems to you that it should.

But, if this really was agreed upon by most of the parties involved, shouldn't the smart contract have include giving the courts a master-key that allows them to override the blockchain when necessary? Undoing fraudulent transactions and such. Can we really argue that everyone expected disputes to be handled by the courts if this wasn't implemented?

There is no technical reason why it couldn't have been done, as far as I can tell. It would not be great for PR perhaps, since it sort of goes against what a lot of the original crypto enthusiasts believed in: decentralization and protection from future hypothetical tyrannical governments. But at least it wouldn't be half as hypocritical as what we have today.

Of course, if you designed your crypto like this, with a court controlled backdoor, you'd unfortunately have to stop calling the whole thing decentralized. But if that's the intent, and everyone agrees to it, what's the issue?

I'm trying not to pass any value judgement on the "Canadian math prodigy" in this scenario, on the whole I don't care much about the isolated incident, but rather on whoever wrote the smart contract trying to both have their cake and eat it too.

I find crypto really fascinating from a technical and philosophical standpoint, but I'm not too fond of how it's been adapted by society as mostly a sort of get-rich-quick scheme.

https://rekt.news/indexed-finance-rekt https://rekt.news/mango-markets-rekt

Ultimately the rules are written by people who look legitimate, and/or those who capture regulators.

The article is skimming over some of the darker sides of his side of the story - like how allegedly his code and conversations are generally peppered with racist rants (I haven't seen any examples of such). The boy seems like a horrible case of internet poisoning - like, a brilliant mathematician child completely mangled in the head by 4chan/gamer discourse.

One part of his first heist that isn't mentioned often is that Indexed Finance says he was actually working with them and contributing to their codebase before he pulled his exploit.

However, cryptocurrencies are unregulated so you can easily argue that the laws usually governing the markets don't apply. Unfortunately for him, I don't think the judge will want to set that precedent...

https://x.com/cryppinfluence/status/1889268223528538113

This in particular: https://x.com/cryppinfluence/status/1889268417108332733

This is the stuff of legend.

And they also want government to act if someone does something they don't like.

The https://indexed.finance page has a big fat "This project is in beta. Use it at your own risk." warning. I guess "use at your own risk" doesn't apply to themselves.

Unserious people.

That’s a reference I haven’t heard in a bit

Very interesting that he gives praise to trump after all this hassle from the US government. Why is the US even involved in this? It's a canadian dude and a canadian exchange.

Once again, crypto folks are all about decentralization until someone outsmarts them, then they go crying to daddy government to bail them out.

Boy the crypto industry better pray that market manipulation isn't illegal in DeFi-world or they're all going to prison.

I mean, sure, we can use the language of theft and crime figuratively, just like when we talk about animals. For instance, "the wolf stole a chicken from the coop".