If they were stolen, who do I call to help me get them back? If I loose the keys to get into my coins, who will help me get access back to my cash. Does the UN have a BitPolice squad hunting down bit theft? If I were to declare bankruptcy would I have to declare my bit coins as a part of my estate? Is there a BITRUPTSY court?
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Is it possible to fine the bit coins that were stolen and then effectively devalue them? One thing the miners should be able to do is refuse to verify transactions with the stolen BTC.
What do you do when the money is gone? With other payment technology you can get court orders to freeze funds, or judgments against current holders.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is irrevocable and pseudo-anonymous. In July 2011 the owner of MyBitcoin.com web wallet allegedly walked away with 50,000 btc of customer funds. We know where those funds are. You can see them on any block explorer. But it is not possible to freeze or confiscate those funds. And we don't know what real world person or people have access to the keys controlling those funds. So what are you going to do?
MtGox went under with 850,000 btc of customer funds. Its creditors are currently fighting over the 200,000 btc that was found to still be in possession by the company. The other 650,000 btc? Who knows.
It's just a simple fact of reality. If you don't have physical control over the keys for that bitcoin, it is not your bitcoin. Some of us have learned that lesson the hard way.
I think that would require an authority deciding whether bitcoins were truly stolen. Otherwise, couldn't anyone could just claim a transaction was a theft?
I'm not trying to troll here at all, but if "$215,000" worth of bitcoins are stolen, do the authorities investigate as they would $215,000 worth of cash?
Is there taskforces that recognizes this? or is it just the wild west?
> Do you knock on your door and demand your private keys?
Pretty much. If you're storing your bitcoin with something like Coinbase, they could also knock on Coinbase's door.
> How can they do that if you've broken no laws?
Buying stolen artwork is not a crime if you don't know it's stolen. But the government can still seize the stolen artwork and return it to its original rightful owner. The only recourse you have is to go after the person who sold you the stolen artwork -- which may not be very feasible for you to do in the case of semi-anonymous bitcoin transactions.
> How do they even know you have them in the first place?
If you use a third-party service like Coinbase, they could just ask them. If you're using your own wallet, they'd have to rely on good-old fashioned deduction -- e.g. if the previous holder of the coins has an accounting log showing payment to you in bitcoins, that's probably enough to infer that you have or did have possession. It might be enough to shift the burden of proof so that you have to show that you don't have possession of the bitcoins.
Since it’s not cash the stolen bitcoins are personal goods. Stolen goods are subject to forfeiture wherever found, even from a bona fide purchaser for value.
I'm pretty sure your logic is flawed. Someone is already screwed, its sort of why police can confiscate stolen goods even if you paid for them.
I'd like to know if it would be feasible to regulate in someway to claim ownership of said coins and have them returned should they turn up in some sort of regulated clearing house / exchange. Caveat: I know this is in no way possible right now, yet as soon as this block chain gets large enough we are going to have some form of centralization going on, and with that I am certain it will be regulated in some way eventually. That is, if it lasts that long.
What exactly is the plan to deal with a multi terabyte block chain anyways?
Easy in the case of ransomware or any other cases where a victim has to pay Bitcoins. The entity who pays the ransom/whatever sends the money to a Bitcoin address. This money is immediately marked as "confiscated" in cooperating jurisdictions. That money will be mixed in a tumbler (operating in a non-cooperating jurisdiction) with other Bitcoins, which get the same treatment. Or exchanged for a different cryptocurrency in an exchange that facilitates money laundering, and all cryptocurrency that is traceable that goes through that exchange is immediately marked as "confiscated".
You can keep using Bitcoins in non-cooperating jurisdictions, sure. But they'll automatically be less valuable or worthless because you can't use them in many countries.
People with development experience in Bitcoin could implement this in a jiffy. Doesn't even take a government really, you could probably build a startup whose main thing is to provide this information. Then people/exchanges/etc. could decide on their own if these Bitcoins have value or not.
Look up “unclaimed property”, there is a whole complicated bureaucracy dedicated to tracking this stuff and letting heirs claim it. Each state of the US has a separate web site where you can search for anything left in a dead relative’s accounts.
Claiming it is easy for small values. It gets more complicated as the value rises, I have enough left in this situation from a grandparent that I am putting off getting something called a “judgement of possession” to acquire some funds.
This bureaucracy does not, of course, exist for cryptobucks; creating one probably will be mandatory if it is to become an actual part of the financial system instead of a cascading pile of scams, and it will involve a whole lot of things that are anathema to the anti-government attitudes a lot of crypto true believers have.
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Here in the UK we have what's known as CPSPOC, or "Criminal Prosecution Service Proceeds of Crime" unit. Their job is to recover all proceeds from criminal activity. In this case I imagine they'll try to argue that the bitcoins mined with stolen electricity are proceeds of crime, and they'll confiscate them. The money recovered will go to the treasury after the electricity company has been compensated.
This makes no sense to me. The court orders... who exactly, to return the coins? AFAIK a new Bitcoin fork would have to be made (by whom?) - and there's no guarantee the fork would be accepted by anyone.
Practically speaking, at this point the government is probably in possession of the private keys and could authorize reverse transactions to restore the stolen crypto.
The larger question is a question of policy and law... Does the government even consider entries in a blockchain ledger to be "returnable stolen property?"
I wonder if the Mt Gox parties et al who were robbed will be refunded their bitcoin, since there is a ledger, or if the government will just keep everything. How could a refund be accomplished anyway? Would one need proof of owning a wallet that was emptied?
If they were stolen, who do I call to help me get them back? If I loose the keys to get into my coins, who will help me get access back to my cash. Does the UN have a BitPolice squad hunting down bit theft? If I were to declare bankruptcy would I have to declare my bit coins as a part of my estate? Is there a BITRUPTSY court?
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