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They can "ask" you for your Bitcoin, but the question is phrased, "Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first

They can "ask" you for your Bitcoin, but the question is phrased, "Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first and give us the Bitcoin later?" It generally requires a court order to get money out of your bank. If it's a Bitcoin wallet, then they can just send the court order to you directly, and put you in jail until you comply (i.e. as many years as it takes). The differences seem a bit superficial to me.

doggosphere 6y ago
The difference is fundamental in that the "property" still exists outside the control of the government. If a trusted source has access to it, they can still move it. If such thing were to happen, and afterwards you complied, then there would be little grounds to hold you for contempt of court.
- klodolph 6y ago
  > If such thing were to happen, and afterwards you complied, then there would be little grounds to hold you for contempt of court. The court system is not a computer program you can fool with clever tricks. If you are facing a court order to surrender money or other assets and try to evade it by moving the money around, you are just going to find yourself in deeper trouble. People have tried it before.
  - doggosphere 6y ago
    How do you surrender assets you don't have control over? I'm merely pointing out that the differences are not superficial.
    - NationalPark 6y ago
      The point is that the judge won't say, "Aha! You got me!", the judge will say, "Cute trick, now back to jail."
      - doggosphere 6y ago
        What grounds does a judge have to send the person to jail if they complied with the order to decrypt a wallet? There can be any number of reasons the coin was moved: - hacked by some 3rd party - corruption by officers (https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-stealing-bitcoins-seized-by-u-s-marshals/ https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-ste...) - partner in crime moved them, with or without consent from suspect.
        thinkloop 6y ago
        That seems fishy tho, you'll probably have to prove that, one of the core pruposes of judges is choosing who to believe, there is no such thing as a 100% fact.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        The burden of proof falls on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Ex: Being in the vicinity of a crime when it takes place may make you a suspect (aka "fishy"), but this alone is not enough to prove guilt.
        listenallyall 6y ago
        Buddy there are plenty of people in jail right now based on extremely flimsy evidence such as simply being in the vicinity of a crime. All your comments in the thread are about "proving it," when, at the end of the day, it's up to 12 people in a box, most of whom don't know the first thing about bitcoin. Refusal to decrypt, wife moving Russia, etc... The government is going to make an extremely convincing case, with plenty of witnesses and all the time and money and lawyers they need. Meanwhile you'll be communicating with your defense lawyers from behind bars. You might be right -- maybe they can't prove any ill-intent -- but that's not a gamble with the odds in your favor.
        doggosphere 6y ago
    - ddingus 6y ago
      They aren't superficial. You aren't wrong in that assessment. But, you are ignoring how law works. Here's a little bit about that: Criminal law is all about intent. So, here's an example of the non superficial elements here: Say, one gets the "gimme your coin" order, says no, goes to jail. While in jail, the coins move, OK? Person in jail cries, "Uncle!" and gives up the wallet. Authorities find it empty. Who had what intent? If the intent is to circumvent the order? That's an additional crime period. It may involve others too, who may also be committing crimes. The intent will link it all back together somehow, and that's what the law will resolve. Crucially, the person supposed to give up coin won't end up with coin, because they are ordered to give it up. If the intent was not to circumvent the order? Someone, somewhere did something with intent, and that intent will boil down to theft from law enforcement, who is entitled to that coin, due to the order. That person would now be a criminal, and on it goes. The person ordered to give up coin still won't end up with it, and someone else is now being hunted down for having stolen coins from law enforcement, who will do whatever it takes to end up with the coins so ordered to them. Put in very simple terms, understanding intent and law can all look like this: Say we find a dead person. Is that a crime? If anyone else, other than the dead person, anywhere, intended that dead person end up dead, yes! It's murder. Could be for hire, vengeful, whatever. Maybe someone was stupid. That's a different intent, and a different crime. Maybe it's manslaughter of some kind. Could be reckless, for example, or negligent. If there was no intent associated with the dead person then there is no crime, and we've just, sadly, got a dead person. Maybe the person stepped in front of a bus. That's suicide. In all cases, there is a dead person. Intent determines whether there are also criminals, what their crime is, and all that other stuff. Make sense?
      - doggosphere 6y ago
        You're ignoring how prosecution works. Intent alone does not prove anything, you need proof of act (actus reus to the mens rea). To play along with your analogy; do you have proof that someone killed someone else? Even if you have a damning confession letter which proves intent. Do you have a murder weapon? Evidence that puts the person at the scene of the crime? Circumstantial evidence like phone location data? Ironically intent is the far harder thing to prove, I have no idea why you chose to base your argument on intent.
    - klodolph 6y ago
      > How do you surrender assets you don't have control over? If you’ve arranged to share control of the Bitcoin wallet with someone else so they can move coins out of it in order to evade a court order, what’s happened is you’ve now conspired with someone else to evade a court order. Say hello to the RICO act, or something like it. Maybe you’ll be spending some time in prison after your assets are seized, and maybe your friend will be too. It’s kind of hard for your friend to claim that they were innocent. There are a lot of tough laws against this stuff which are designed to work against the mob and organized crime. You’re not really inventing something new, you’re just doing old-fashioned mafia stuff, but using computers to do it. The court doesn’t care that you used computers to do it.
      - doggosphere 6y ago
        I am a cyber criminal. One day I get arrested and the court demands I decrypt my wallets. I refuse and get hit with contempt. My wife flees to Russia and moves the coin to another wallet, without my knowledge. Or maybe it was an agreed plan. Who can prove otherwise. Eventually I give up and decrypt the wallets. What are your legal grounds for prosecuting me for this further action? What can you prove? How are you going to prove that I conspired, and that this wasn't my wife going rogue?
        ddingus 6y ago
        In that scenario, the coins ended up somewhere other than where the court ordered. That didn't just happen. Someone intended it to happen. Investigations and all available means will be used to obtain the coins. That could continue for the remainder of time all involved have here.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        Yes. I'm not a lawyer, but this is now an issue outside the purveyance of the original court order to decrypt. It requires new charges to be laid, evidence to be provided, and due process in reasonable time. My point was the hard physics of it: the assets can be moved, and proving who moved it is very difficult.
    - gmadsen 6y ago
      agreed, most times it is not a technicality that wins. The intent and situation play a strong role in american court systems.
alasdair_ 6y ago
>"Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first and give us the Bitcoin later?" A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. The kind of money that could covertly pay an entire prison worth of guards to look the other way for an escape attempt. Of course, you end up on the run for the rest of your life, which doesn't sound especially fun.
- klodolph 6y ago
  You can fantasize about this James Bond stuff all you like, but one schmuck with a Bitcoin wallet probably is not going to pull it off. Bribing people isn’t so easy and reliable that you can wave a fat stack of cash in someone’s face and expect them to take it. People have lives and their careers tied up in their jobs and know that accepting a bribe isn’t a sure thing. It depends on where you live, sure. But in the US, there’s a fair bit of resistance to bribery.
  - LeifCarrotson 6y ago
    Covert bribery is definitely frowned upon. Overt bribery - hiring lobbyists, event sponsorships, regulatory capture, etc - is very popular, I'd even say it's more so than in other countries.
    - CydeWeys 6y ago
      Do you really think that someone with $1B of Bitcoin could buy their way out of the kinds of serious felony criminal charges mentioned in the linked article through campaign contributions and similar? I doubt it.
      - strgcmc 6y ago
        IMO the short answer is, yes pardons can seemingly be bought in the Trumpian era of American politics. Whether $1B is enough, I don't necessarily know, but I don't see why the likelihood is something to dismiss out of hand.
shiftpgdn 6y ago
I thought there was a constitutional ruling that you can not be compelled to remember passwords. Couldn't you just say "I forgot the key?"
- Traster 6y ago
  You could say it, but that doesn't make it compelling testimomy.
- ChrisLomont 6y ago
  States and even Federal courts have ruled in different directions, so this currently depends on where you are charged. Some cases have put people in jail a long time for contempt when they refused to hand over passwords. https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/07/01/Law-enforcement-phone-unlock-Fifth-Amendment-Supreme-Court/stories/202007030004 https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/07/01/L...
lmkg 6y ago
If the money is in your bitcoin wallet, then the government has the same access to it as if the money were paper dollars hidden under your mattress. Coercion is available, but they cannot take it directly. If your money is in a (regulated) bitcoin exchange, then the government has more-or-less the same access to it as if it were in a bank. The serve a court order to the third party you have entrusted with your money, and the third party complies, without your direct involvement. Many of the arguments about bitcoin involve comparing apples to oranges. Bitcoin is a currency, its direct comparison is dollar bills, but most of the problems that it purports to solve are aspects of banks not dollars. There is some argument to be made that you can do more with Bitcoins without involving a bank, but I see a lot of people putting Bitcoins in banks (or exchanges or other regulatable third parties), and a comparison of Bitcoin + surrounding financial institutions vs Dollars + surrounding financial institutions is not as favorable to Bitcoin.
bloak 6y ago
I don't believe that in most sane juridictions a court would keep a suspect in prison indefinitely when the suspect claims to have forgotten the passphrase for a bitcoin wallet. I think the court would have to find the suspect guilty and sentence them to an appropriate custodial sentence (which in my personal opinion would be no longer than what they'd get for deliberately forgetting the passphrase). The only incentive for the suspect to remember the passphrase after being sentenced would be earlier parole. If the suspect tried to use the bitcoins after being released then another charge could perhaps be brought for perjury. None of this is specific to bitcoins or totally new. It's roughly the same situation as when the court thinks that the accused knows where the stolen money is hidden, but the accused claims not to know. Courts must have dealt with hundreds of cases like that, so we could look up somewhere how they handle it in different jurisdictions, if we really wanted to know. I'm curious about it, but perhaps not that curious.
- sneak 6y ago
  > I don't believe that in most sane juridictions a court would keep a suspect in prison indefinitely when the suspect claims to have forgotten the passphrase for a bitcoin wallet. I think you overestimate the sanity of jurisdictions. See RIPA for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_and_Wales#Exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...

doggosphere 6y ago

The difference is fundamental in that the "property" still exists outside the control of the government. If a trusted source has access to it, they can still move it. If such thing were to happen, and afterwards you complied, then there would be little grounds to hold you for contempt of court.

klodolph 6y ago
> If such thing were to happen, and afterwards you complied, then there would be little grounds to hold you for contempt of court. The court system is not a computer program you can fool with clever tricks. If you are facing a court order to surrender money or other assets and try to evade it by moving the money around, you are just going to find yourself in deeper trouble. People have tried it before.
- doggosphere 6y ago
  How do you surrender assets you don't have control over? I'm merely pointing out that the differences are not superficial.
  - NationalPark 6y ago
    The point is that the judge won't say, "Aha! You got me!", the judge will say, "Cute trick, now back to jail."
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      What grounds does a judge have to send the person to jail if they complied with the order to decrypt a wallet? There can be any number of reasons the coin was moved: - hacked by some 3rd party - corruption by officers (https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-stealing-bitcoins-seized-by-u-s-marshals/ https://news.bitcoin.com/rogue-silk-road-agent-admits-to-ste...) - partner in crime moved them, with or without consent from suspect.
      - thinkloop 6y ago
        That seems fishy tho, you'll probably have to prove that, one of the core pruposes of judges is choosing who to believe, there is no such thing as a 100% fact.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        The burden of proof falls on the prosecution to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. Ex: Being in the vicinity of a crime when it takes place may make you a suspect (aka "fishy"), but this alone is not enough to prove guilt.
        listenallyall 6y ago
        Buddy there are plenty of people in jail right now based on extremely flimsy evidence such as simply being in the vicinity of a crime. All your comments in the thread are about "proving it," when, at the end of the day, it's up to 12 people in a box, most of whom don't know the first thing about bitcoin. Refusal to decrypt, wife moving Russia, etc... The government is going to make an extremely convincing case, with plenty of witnesses and all the time and money and lawyers they need. Meanwhile you'll be communicating with your defense lawyers from behind bars. You might be right -- maybe they can't prove any ill-intent -- but that's not a gamble with the odds in your favor.
        doggosphere 6y ago
  - ddingus 6y ago
    They aren't superficial. You aren't wrong in that assessment. But, you are ignoring how law works. Here's a little bit about that: Criminal law is all about intent. So, here's an example of the non superficial elements here: Say, one gets the "gimme your coin" order, says no, goes to jail. While in jail, the coins move, OK? Person in jail cries, "Uncle!" and gives up the wallet. Authorities find it empty. Who had what intent? If the intent is to circumvent the order? That's an additional crime period. It may involve others too, who may also be committing crimes. The intent will link it all back together somehow, and that's what the law will resolve. Crucially, the person supposed to give up coin won't end up with coin, because they are ordered to give it up. If the intent was not to circumvent the order? Someone, somewhere did something with intent, and that intent will boil down to theft from law enforcement, who is entitled to that coin, due to the order. That person would now be a criminal, and on it goes. The person ordered to give up coin still won't end up with it, and someone else is now being hunted down for having stolen coins from law enforcement, who will do whatever it takes to end up with the coins so ordered to them. Put in very simple terms, understanding intent and law can all look like this: Say we find a dead person. Is that a crime? If anyone else, other than the dead person, anywhere, intended that dead person end up dead, yes! It's murder. Could be for hire, vengeful, whatever. Maybe someone was stupid. That's a different intent, and a different crime. Maybe it's manslaughter of some kind. Could be reckless, for example, or negligent. If there was no intent associated with the dead person then there is no crime, and we've just, sadly, got a dead person. Maybe the person stepped in front of a bus. That's suicide. In all cases, there is a dead person. Intent determines whether there are also criminals, what their crime is, and all that other stuff. Make sense?
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      You're ignoring how prosecution works. Intent alone does not prove anything, you need proof of act (actus reus to the mens rea). To play along with your analogy; do you have proof that someone killed someone else? Even if you have a damning confession letter which proves intent. Do you have a murder weapon? Evidence that puts the person at the scene of the crime? Circumstantial evidence like phone location data? Ironically intent is the far harder thing to prove, I have no idea why you chose to base your argument on intent.
  - klodolph 6y ago
    > How do you surrender assets you don't have control over? If you’ve arranged to share control of the Bitcoin wallet with someone else so they can move coins out of it in order to evade a court order, what’s happened is you’ve now conspired with someone else to evade a court order. Say hello to the RICO act, or something like it. Maybe you’ll be spending some time in prison after your assets are seized, and maybe your friend will be too. It’s kind of hard for your friend to claim that they were innocent. There are a lot of tough laws against this stuff which are designed to work against the mob and organized crime. You’re not really inventing something new, you’re just doing old-fashioned mafia stuff, but using computers to do it. The court doesn’t care that you used computers to do it.
    - doggosphere 6y ago
      I am a cyber criminal. One day I get arrested and the court demands I decrypt my wallets. I refuse and get hit with contempt. My wife flees to Russia and moves the coin to another wallet, without my knowledge. Or maybe it was an agreed plan. Who can prove otherwise. Eventually I give up and decrypt the wallets. What are your legal grounds for prosecuting me for this further action? What can you prove? How are you going to prove that I conspired, and that this wasn't my wife going rogue?
      - ddingus 6y ago
        In that scenario, the coins ended up somewhere other than where the court ordered. That didn't just happen. Someone intended it to happen. Investigations and all available means will be used to obtain the coins. That could continue for the remainder of time all involved have here.
        doggosphere 6y ago
        Yes. I'm not a lawyer, but this is now an issue outside the purveyance of the original court order to decrypt. It requires new charges to be laid, evidence to be provided, and due process in reasonable time. My point was the hard physics of it: the assets can be moved, and proving who moved it is very difficult.
  - gmadsen 6y ago
    agreed, most times it is not a technicality that wins. The intent and situation play a strong role in american court systems.

alasdair_ 6y ago

>"Would you rather give us your Bitcoin now, or would you rather spend some time in jail first and give us the Bitcoin later?" A billion dollars is an enormous amount of money. The kind of money that could covertly pay an entire prison worth of guards to look the other way for an escape attempt. Of course, you end up on the run for the rest of your life, which doesn't sound especially fun.

klodolph 6y ago
You can fantasize about this James Bond stuff all you like, but one schmuck with a Bitcoin wallet probably is not going to pull it off. Bribing people isn’t so easy and reliable that you can wave a fat stack of cash in someone’s face and expect them to take it. People have lives and their careers tied up in their jobs and know that accepting a bribe isn’t a sure thing. It depends on where you live, sure. But in the US, there’s a fair bit of resistance to bribery.
- LeifCarrotson 6y ago
  Covert bribery is definitely frowned upon. Overt bribery - hiring lobbyists, event sponsorships, regulatory capture, etc - is very popular, I'd even say it's more so than in other countries.
  - CydeWeys 6y ago
    Do you really think that someone with $1B of Bitcoin could buy their way out of the kinds of serious felony criminal charges mentioned in the linked article through campaign contributions and similar? I doubt it.
    - strgcmc 6y ago
      IMO the short answer is, yes pardons can seemingly be bought in the Trumpian era of American politics. Whether $1B is enough, I don't necessarily know, but I don't see why the likelihood is something to dismiss out of hand.

shiftpgdn 6y ago

I thought there was a constitutional ruling that you can not be compelled to remember passwords. Couldn't you just say "I forgot the key?"

Traster 6y ago
You could say it, but that doesn't make it compelling testimomy.
ChrisLomont 6y ago
States and even Federal courts have ruled in different directions, so this currently depends on where you are charged. Some cases have put people in jail a long time for contempt when they refused to hand over passwords. https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/07/01/Law-enforcement-phone-unlock-Fifth-Amendment-Supreme-Court/stories/202007030004 https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/editorials/2020/07/01/L...

lmkg 6y ago

If the money is in your bitcoin wallet, then the government has the same access to it as if the money were paper dollars hidden under your mattress. Coercion is available, but they cannot take it directly. If your money is in a (regulated) bitcoin exchange, then the government has more-or-less the same access to it as if it were in a bank. The serve a court order to the third party you have entrusted with your money, and the third party complies, without your direct involvement. Many of the arguments about bitcoin involve comparing apples to oranges. Bitcoin is a currency, its direct comparison is dollar bills, but most of the problems that it purports to solve are aspects of banks not dollars. There is some argument to be made that you can do more with Bitcoins without involving a bank, but I see a lot of people putting Bitcoins in banks (or exchanges or other regulatable third parties), and a comparison of Bitcoin + surrounding financial institutions vs Dollars + surrounding financial institutions is not as favorable to Bitcoin.

bloak 6y ago

I don't believe that in most sane juridictions a court would keep a suspect in prison indefinitely when the suspect claims to have forgotten the passphrase for a bitcoin wallet. I think the court would have to find the suspect guilty and sentence them to an appropriate custodial sentence (which in my personal opinion would be no longer than what they'd get for deliberately forgetting the passphrase). The only incentive for the suspect to remember the passphrase after being sentenced would be earlier parole. If the suspect tried to use the bitcoins after being released then another charge could perhaps be brought for perjury. None of this is specific to bitcoins or totally new. It's roughly the same situation as when the court thinks that the accused knows where the stolen money is hidden, but the accused claims not to know. Courts must have dealt with hundreds of cases like that, so we could look up somewhere how they handle it in different jurisdictions, if we really wanted to know. I'm curious about it, but perhaps not that curious.

sneak 6y ago
> I don't believe that in most sane juridictions a court would keep a suspect in prison indefinitely when the suspect claims to have forgotten the passphrase for a bitcoin wallet. I think you overestimate the sanity of jurisdictions. See RIPA for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_and_Wales#Exceptions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_silence_in_England_an...