Replying to Avatar Knut Svanholm ∞/21M

You cannot "own" #Bitcoin in the traditional sense of owning stuff.

No matter what governments, courts, chain-anal people, or anyone else tells you, there is no way of proving that someone DOESN'T know a string of information such as a private key.

From this perspective, satoshis aren't ever transferred but rather reorganized on the timechain for communication purposes.

The twelve magic words do not belong to anyone. They're just twelve words.

What Bitcoin makes so blatantly obvious is that money was never anything but information.

A ban on "self-hosted wallets" is as absurd as a ban on using your brain.

Such a ban would have severe consequences.

It would deny you the right to keep a secret while granting the government the right to claim that you do, making everyone a criminal.

YOU would have to prove that you DON'T know something, which is impossible.

You would be guilty until proven innocent, which cannot be proven.

Any law trying to stop or restrict Bitcoin usage is nothing less than a crime against humanity.

IMHO, the Bitcoin community should do everything in its power to prevent such laws. Your ability to use a communications network shouldn't depend on where you were born.

Do your part and educate as many people as you can as often as possible.

Speech is never free but always costly. It's high time to separate speech and state!
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Ben Ewing 1y ago

We shouldn't be letting governments off the hook here. Their most essential function is to protect private property from mob confiscation (by violence, essentially). If they can't do that, they can't claim any moral basis for existence. America was the first country to protect the individual from the state with the bill of rights. How about another amendment to the consitution:

'Congress shall make no law that infringes on an individual’s right to own, use, and trade Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, nor shall any state deprive any person of their cryptocurrencies without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws governing cryptocurrencies.'

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BOL 1y ago

The "due process" is still a jumping off point for a court to force someone to prove that they DON'T know something... Or that they DIDN'T do something for that matter (I.e. transact for "contraband")