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> While I could go into discussions about the rule of law, or decentralized political systems, I think the best way to explain my position is an idea that most gamers will find familiar: If the game lets you do it, then it's not cheating.
Most MMORPGs I've played banned players if they exploited behavior that the game software allowed if that was allowed due to a bug or a design oversight or went against the spirit of the game. For instance, if you found a way to duplicate items or currency and used it to your advantage that would earn a ban.
Another example that could earn a ban would be finding and using a place in the terrain where a monster gets stuck and can be killed with ranged attacks without the attacker being in danger.
Even things that do not involve any bug at all commonly could earn a warning, and punishment (up to a ban) if you persisted. For example, taking a high level magic user into a low level zone and using area effect spells to clear the zone of all low level monsters and keep it clear so that newbies have trouble finding things they can fight.
EverQuest did once try a "no rules" server where you could do anything the game allowed. They made it a PvP server, leaving it up to the players to define and enforce punishments against people who were playing in ways the community did not like.
That lasted until Fansy the Famous Bard, of the wonderful Flowers of Happiness guild, figured out a way to get people killed without them being able to do anything to hurt him, and the "no rules" server was given rules [1].
While I do agree that game is a bad example, the argument still holds IMHO.
Ethereum has been advertised from the very beginning that it is a decentralized platform where the only rule/law will be the code, and no one authority can control that. However, what they are doing right now is exactly gaining control back from the code, hence making the platform less or even not decentralized.
I know this probably will get me a lot of downvotes but if there always will be a central group of people that I need to trust, I'd rather trust existing banks which have a lot of existing experience than a group of software engineers who might be experienced in coding, but not so experienced in finance.
I admit that it's very sad those much money was involved, but I believe the people who took the money away(I don't want to call them attackers, they are really not) just played the rule smartly and did nothing wrong.