6 ms·
Bitcoin becoming a standard part of lawsuit discovery requests
- minimax 13y agoFeds confiscates bit coins. Bit coin supply is reduced. Price of bit coins goes up. Simple economics. Thanks feds. Has anyone figured out a good way to invest pre-tax 401k money into bit coin? My portfolio is doing alright but I'd like to boost it up a little without resorting to gimmicks like high beta stocks or equity options.
- tylerkahn 13y agoIs this satire?
- knapp 13y agoPoe's Law strikes again. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
- onebaddude 13y agoThe constant flow of bitcoin articles on HN is starting to attract the delusional pumpers.
- minimax 13y agoYes.
- nkohari 13y agoYes, but I'm not sure the author knows.
- Tarang 13y agoIf I worked for the feds how would I go about confiscating someone's bitcoins?
- fatman 13y ago"Give us your Bitcoin or goto Jail"? There's nothing new under the sun. People have tried to hide assets from courts in the past. Sometimes they succeed - while sitting in jail under a contempt citation.
- dllthomas 13y agoMalware. Or frame them for something.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- PeterisP 13y agoTake all their hardware, storage media and notes (including online data storage services); interrogate the person; find out what accounts (and 3rd party sites) were involved from various sources including that interrogation, analysis of stored data, and internet wiretaps/logs to obtain the neccessary credentials, and transfer those bitcoins to a separate wallet that the feds control. If some bitcoins are stored at some 3rd party providers such as Mt Gox, subpoena them to freeze all such assets and transfer them to feds.
- Aqueous 13y agoThe Feds eventually send it back to themselves and convert the BitCoins into dollars once they have all the information they need in evidence. So they don't permanently leave the supply. The BitCoins they were able to seize, that is.
- nitrogen 13y agoThough this is not a serious request, isn't there a Bitcoin ETF in the works?
- jerkface 13y agoYes, the Winklevoss twins are (supposedly) putting one together. http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/11/12/winklevoss-twins-say-bitcoin-market-to-hit-400b-urge-regulators-not-to-push-innovation-to-china/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/11/12/winklev... Edit: Jeebus, hellbanned already, and in only 3 comments. Guess one of my prior comments may have struck a nerve?
- nitrogen 13y agojerkface 22 minutes ago | link [dead] Yes, the Winklevoss twins are (supposedly) putting one together. http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/11/12/winklevoss-twins-say-bitcoin-market-to-hit-400b-urge-regulators-not-to-push-innovation-to-china/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2013/11/12/winklev... Edit: Jeebus, hellbanned already, and in only 3 comments. Guess one of my prior comments may have struck a nerve? ----- Your previous comment was rather inflammatory.
- rayiner 13y ago> Now even lawyers, who are traditionally pretty technologically un-savvy, are recognizing that bitcoin is a potential method for storing (and hiding) assets. Lawyers deal with unfamiliar and new things for a living. I'd bet that among the small group of people really trying to figure out how Bitcoin fits into the big picture, a big percentage of them are lawyers (SEC regulators, DOJ attorneys, etc).
- fatman 13y agoYou may be correct, but the type of lawyers drafting discovery requests to collect on a judgment aren't going to be in that parenthetical group. They probably just heard somewhere that Bitcoin=money and threw it in. You ask for anything and everything in discovery, just to see what sticks.
- rayiner 13y agoA bitcoin article hit my Am Law Daily feed months ago: http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleALD.jsp?id=1202614423813&slreturn=20131103113714 http://www.americanlawyer.com/PubArticleALD.jsp?id=120261442.... Also the ABA Journal: http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/some_basic_rules_for_using_bitcoin_as_virtual_money http://www.abajournal.com/magazine/article/some_basic_rules_.... Finally, it's been mentioned several times on Above the Law this year: http://abovethelaw.com/tag/bitcoin http://abovethelaw.com/tag/bitcoin. I think these are pretty mainstream sources such that a lawyer would have at least run across the term.
- waterlesscloud 13y agoThere have been a series of articles in American Banker this year too. Even staid, conservative industries watch their horizons for things that may affect them.
- fatman 13y agoMainstream for the type of lawyers who go to court to collect on judgments? ABA maybe, ATL not so much. Oh wait, discovery after the judgment. Not a separate execution. Yeah, that could be a BigLaw thing.
- abstrct 13y agoKeep in mind, lawyers also have technical consultants they use whenever computers are involved - and computers are ALWAYS involved.
- saalweachter 13y agoI would also point out that lawyers use a lot of boilerplate, and it's pretty low cost to insert a paragraph into all of your boilerplate covering low-probability events. So you insert a paragraph covering bitcoin, your current clients feel happy to have such a good lawyer, and maybe sometime it will actually come in handy.
- jhgg 13y agoUnrelated to the topic, but it's always fun to see another 2 letter .gg owner around :)
- jsdotgg 13y agoIt's pretty rare! :)