...or Bitcoin Lost-and-Found 2.0
Clever little dude last week tried a novel legal approach to gain legal ownership over millions of lost/abandoned/dormant bitcoin #1498602
"structurally indifferent to judicial decrees" must be the coolest description of Bitcoin I've heard."structurally indifferent to judicial decrees" must be the coolest description of Bitcoin I've heard.
It was kind of a laugh but at least someone showed up to object to the nonsense. Amicus Brief sent to the court, and our pal Matt Levine is obviously on it.
Also, the law they're invoking is for physical items:
Article 7-B of the New York Personal Property Law was designed for physical objects physically found by human beings. It has no application to a computational scan of a public ledger. Dormancy on a public blockchain is not abandonment
Can't really get the coins, but doesn't matter. It's cool, browskies
Funny outcome:
Maybe 1, or 10, or 100 of their owners will eventually remember them, and transfer the Bitcoins to Coinbase to try to sell them, and Coinbase will tell them (perhaps after your cron job notices the activity and emails Coinbase) ‘hey this is stolen property, big headache for you, but the owner won’t make a fuss if you cut him in for 30%.’” And then of course the owner will say “what are you talking about ‘stolen property,’ these are my Bitcoins,” and Coinbase will say “not according to this New York court order,” and maybe you’ll get a cut.
Also a tax headache...
Perhaps a useful valuation for tax purposes. Billions of dollars of Bitcoin, or less than $10, or possibly somewhere in between.
The most interesting observation is that "any sufficiently cool party trick can be turned into real money somehow."
I need to work on my party tricks.
His specialty these days is digging up weird fun monetizing finance attempts so ofc he's there!!
It doesn't even need to be sufficiently cool.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHPmW-XKfCM