3 ms·

It's not property, except I want to be able to own it, buy it, and sell it for $CURRENCY...

nybble41 5y ago
It's not legally property. Legally you don't own it. If the network suddenly changes its rules and says it's not yours then you have no legal recourse against the developers/miners/etc. If you buy, that's a service; you're paying someone to apply their signature to a note in the distributed ledger. You don't own the note and the currency itself is nothing more than an abstract concept which has meaning only to the extend that there is consensus among the users, none of whom have any particular obligations toward you.
- josho 5y ago
  What may be semantically true may also be quite different than peoples perceptions. And peoples perceptions and how they functionally treat crypto is like a currency, it's even in the name. So, I strongly suspect if you tried to argue that position in a court of law, or even in a debate amongst tech. peers you would come out on the loosing end. Regardless, I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing.
  - bradwood 5y ago
    "Cryptocurrency" is well understood to be a misnomer. The correct term is "Crypto Asset" as, at least according to most tax legislation, it is not a _currency_. Currencies do not attract CGT on disposal. Assets (like crypto) do. This is a big difference
- ac29 5y ago
  > It's not legally property. Legally you don't own it. If the network suddenly changes its rules and says it's not yours then you have no legal recourse against the developers/miners/etc. I wouldn't assume this unless you are aware of specific case law that says this. If you held some assets on a blockchain and the developers decided to block your address after you made fun of them on twitter or something, it certainly seems like you'd have standing to sue.
  - nybble41 5y ago
    > If you held some assets on a blockchain and the developers decided to block your address after you made fun of them on twitter or something, it certainly seems like you'd have standing to sue. What exactly would you sue them over? The design always depended on the voluntary consent of everyone involved. The developers never promised that the protocol would remain unchanged. This has happened before—for example, the Etherium hard-fork that reversed withdrawals from the DOA which were unexpected and unintended but authorized by the smart contract code—and no one on the losing side of that fork managed to successfully sue the developers for changing the protocol. They would have had standing if anyone did. The developers don't even fully control it; as an open, distributed system, someone else can step in and supplant them with new client software if users (meaning mainly buyers and retailers accepting the currency) decide they prefer different rules. Whatever changes the developers might make is only an expression of their opinions about how the system should work. Other users of the network are not obligated to accept those changes if they happen to disagree.

It's not legally property. Legally you don't own it. If the network suddenly changes its rules and says it's not yours then you have no legal recourse against the developers/miners/etc. If you buy, that's a service; you're paying someone to apply their signature to a note in the distributed ledger. You don't own the note and the currency itself is nothing more than an abstract concept which has meaning only to the extend that there is consensus among the users, none of whom have any particular obligations toward you.

josho 5y ago
What may be semantically true may also be quite different than peoples perceptions. And peoples perceptions and how they functionally treat crypto is like a currency, it's even in the name. So, I strongly suspect if you tried to argue that position in a court of law, or even in a debate amongst tech. peers you would come out on the loosing end. Regardless, I appreciate your perspective. Thank you for sharing.
- bradwood 5y ago
  "Cryptocurrency" is well understood to be a misnomer. The correct term is "Crypto Asset" as, at least according to most tax legislation, it is not a _currency_. Currencies do not attract CGT on disposal. Assets (like crypto) do. This is a big difference
ac29 5y ago
> It's not legally property. Legally you don't own it. If the network suddenly changes its rules and says it's not yours then you have no legal recourse against the developers/miners/etc. I wouldn't assume this unless you are aware of specific case law that says this. If you held some assets on a blockchain and the developers decided to block your address after you made fun of them on twitter or something, it certainly seems like you'd have standing to sue.
- nybble41 5y ago
  > If you held some assets on a blockchain and the developers decided to block your address after you made fun of them on twitter or something, it certainly seems like you'd have standing to sue. What exactly would you sue them over? The design always depended on the voluntary consent of everyone involved. The developers never promised that the protocol would remain unchanged. This has happened before—for example, the Etherium hard-fork that reversed withdrawals from the DOA which were unexpected and unintended but authorized by the smart contract code—and no one on the losing side of that fork managed to successfully sue the developers for changing the protocol. They would have had standing if anyone did. The developers don't even fully control it; as an open, distributed system, someone else can step in and supplant them with new client software if users (meaning mainly buyers and retailers accepting the currency) decide they prefer different rules. Whatever changes the developers might make is only an expression of their opinions about how the system should work. Other users of the network are not obligated to accept those changes if they happen to disagree.