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Sure, here's a court order compelling you to turn over N BTC by such-and-such a date, or you'll be held in contempt of court. I suppose you can file a motion t
by dlitz 13y ago
Sure, here's a court order compelling you to turn over N BTC by such-and-such a date, or you'll be held in contempt of court.
I suppose you can file a motion to quash, but now you'll need to submit evidence that you no longer control those Bitcoins. Good luck. Maybe you'll say the passphrase was destroyed. You might be lying, but in any case, they're as good as seized, because if the Bitcoins are ever spent, we'll see it in the blockchain.
And that's all assuming that the loss or destruction of the Bitcoins even matters to the court. Maybe the current USD value of N BTC is just added to your non-dischargeable debt.
Bitcoins raise some interesting legal & law enforcement questions, but it's wrong to assume that they somehow exempt their users from the law, or prevent all enforcement of the law.
People have been trying to bypass the law for millennia, and it rarely works: The law just isn't that fragile.
- biomechanica 13y agoWhen there are laws that attempt to force people to do things they do not wish to do you get a push back - you get something like Bitcoin or Tor or I2P, etc. Law is always a step behind. What you see right now is Law trying to play catch up. However, it seems quite obvious that the people involved in creating Laws don't quite know exactly what Bitcoin is fully. We'll see a bunch of really dumb bills being introduced in retaliation then, like always, they will adapt slowly and find a way to take control. Bitcoin isn't exempt, you're right. Though, Bitcoin can be changed or something new will come out.
- LatvjuAvs 13y agoSlavery - full sail on!
- cube13 13y agoI don't see where this is a new rule. This is the exact same thing the DEA has done with large quantities of money or bank accounts. The US Government's response so far has been pretty good, actually. They're not making new rules for bitcoin. They're making it explicitly known that they're treating BTC like all other forms of money.
- jrockway 13y agoContempt of court is a trivial sentence compared to the sentences that you'd otherwise get for selling drugs and laundering money. It's not even clear that the government can compel you to give up something that only exists in your mind.
- rdtsc 13y agoIn some jurisdictions contempt of court has ended up being a virtually endless jail sentence. Even in civil cases on can be held indefinitely in jail until they comply with the court order. There was a case when one person was held this way for years because they wouldn't reveal where they put some large amount of money that their spouse was supposed to get after a divorce...or something of that sort, I believe it was in California. The point is sometimes contempt of court is not a whole lot different effectively than just a prison term.