A lot of people seem to argue that the original intent was for disputes to be handled by the courts. That is, governed by laws outside of the crypto's smart contract implementation. And thus the company is right to seek judicial help and label this act as theft. Alright, sure, on its surface that doesn't seem like an unreasonable position. After all, we all trust the courts right?

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.