A transfer of stolen tokens (as far as I understand) could have been reversed if a valid arbitration order demanded it. In this case, a transfer of account is a little more tricky to deal with. Have you contacted https://eoscorearbitration.io/ ?
30% below market does sound too good to be true, but I've fallen for that trap before. It happened to me in May of 2013, the only time I did a trade with out an escrow because I didn't care about Ripple. I got scammed because it was too good to be true. I learned an important lesson that day.
I do feel bad for you, I really do. I also think we all have to be careful as a community not to create markets for stolen property. If we don't know it's stolen property, should the original property holder be held accountable for that? Is it all on them for not securing their property correctly? Maybe. I guess that's up to the arbitrators to decide.
Yes I did write ECAF last night. Thank you for pointing me again to a forum that is working on a constructive solution.
I did use an escrow and it performed its purpose in allowing me to trustlessly verify that the account transfer was indeed published on the blockchain before sending my BTC. But how can an escrow protect me if it's simply impossible for me to know if the funds are stolen or not?
The issue with "not creating markets for stolen goods" is how do you know a good is stolen? And who decides what "stolen" is? Is giving your private keys to somebody mean that the other person stole your goods or did you give it to them?
If we create a precedent were somebody acting in good faith, who can not possibly know that the tokens he is purchasing are stolen, gets punished. Then how can we possibly ever know that the tokens that we purchase in any future transaction don't turn out to be stolen and taken away from us after the fact? Doesn't that completely and irreversibly undermine the very reason why we have blockchains in the first place?
Didn't we create blockchains so that we don't have to rely on third parties to validate every single transaction, but can trust what is published on the distributed ledger?
Sorry, I missed responding to your comment here.
It is not impossible. Do you do KYC on the seller? Considering you were getting a 30% discount and buying an account in an unusual way (and if you had seen the latest EOS news about many hacked accounts out there), then maybe you can take some responsibility for this?
By doing due diligence. As they say "Buyer beware."
If you're referring to the original account that got hacked, my understanding is a fraudulent website was involved that lied about key creation. Yes, the original person should not have trusted a shady website, but I also think the real bad actor was the thief who was rewarded through a sale with you.
Knowing who you do business with matters. That's how we can create a society we all want to live in. If the point of blockchain is just immutability without any connection to improving human well being than what's the point? You can trust the cryptographic realities of a transfer, but not the human beings who are initiating the transfers to begin with. That takes human intuition and involvement and is the whole reason EOS governance makes sense.
I really am curious to see what happens in this case and if ECAF can do anything further to help you. I assume you filed a claim as well?