[cr15]

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).

[handmodel]

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.

[mikeryan]

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

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

[jonny_eh]

> 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...

[Smashure]

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.