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With the highly fluctuating value of bitcoin, who chooses WHEN to sell? And if the FBI must preserve it as evidence until all legal issues are resolved, it cou
by jadeddrag 13y ago
With the highly fluctuating value of bitcoin, who chooses WHEN to sell? And if the FBI must preserve it as evidence until all legal issues are resolved, it could be worth much more, or maybe nothing.
- gojomo 13y agoThere's no need to hold the coins to preserve the evidence: they have cryptographically-secured logs of the funds' provenance (and disposition) in either case. If they do ever sell, is it a bullish or bearish signal? That they've made peace with the market, or know that a brutal crackdown is imminent (and thus selling at a the top)?
- jadeddrag 13y agoWhat if the defendant is found not to be guilty? Will the courts return the actual bitcoin, or the value of the bitcoin in USD? If USD, what date/time valuation would they use?
- Tuna-Fish 13y agoThey won't return them just because he's found not guilty. They are seized as a part of a civil forfeiture action, which means that their seizure is completely distinct, and is handled in a separate court with a lower standard of proof ("Preponderance of the evidence" versus "Beyond reasonable doubt"). It's entirely possible that the court finds him not guilty, and yet the civil court handling the forfeiture action finds the forfeiture legal. In order to get anything returned to him, he would have to contest the forfeiture in a civil court, and essentially the burden of proof would be on him to prove that the coins were not gained through illegal means, which would mean he would have to show where and how he got them. In the end, the US government measures wealth based on the dollar, so he would be returned whatever was gained when the coins were auctioned off.