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!

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

can’t imagine how insanely difficult a 6102 attack would be to enforce

practically impossible

What is a 6102 attack? I only heard of a 51% attack.

It’s not money it’s just magic spells we tell each other. Let us LARP in peace!

Well said that man!

It's like an authority saying something like "From this day forward it shall be illegal for anyone to think of a pink elephant"!

Guys it is more simple than that: they just can't prove they have any jurisdiction on you or anybody private, at most they have jurisdiction over their employees, but they pay to them over your illegally collected taxes, so they are in full fraud.

Change the chip in your brain: you are not their slaves. They just pretend they are your masters. But they are not. Get out of the mind-jail.

Very needed "sober" voice!

Tremendous statement:

"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"

🎯🙌

Of course this is 100% true on a technical level. But there is another truth which the tyrants (and the pleb-level regulators just doing their job) are concerned with.

And that is that we “reorganize sats on the timechain” to exchange value in a way that they cannot easily trace, and which does not fit into their framework.

Yes, we need to educate and fight back against any technical inaccuracies. But we also have to accept that we are governed by some rule set of society, arbitrary as it may be, and the rule setters & enforcers are not operating on a “first principles” basis.

Crimes against humanity are what government do

Thanks Knut.

🫂

Well said…🔥

The semantics wont matter outside of our little bubble

RISE REMNANTS! RESIST!

FIGHT FOR YOUR LIBERTY, LIFE, & PROPERTY!

Awesome

👏👏👏

The government already assumes everyone is a criminal.

Given enough derivations all 12 words would get all possible addresses, no? So in a sense everybody owns all the bitcoin.

Hi Knut, thanks for your post. I wanted to share a few legal insights on the topics you brought up.

Legal systems have invented laws dealing with the "ownership“ of information. Such laws are called Intellectual Property. In practice, “ownership” of information means a monopoly granted by the state to use specific information. For example, as an author, you can own a sequence of words written in your book (copyrights). In some cases, you can even "own" ideas (e.g., inventions or trade secrets).

Therefore, creating legal ownership of bitcoin should not pose a special problem. The state may grant you a right to your bitcoin (private key) and even protect such a right. The problem of "proving" that certain bitcoin is yours may be important in practice, but it constitutes a separate issue, the so-called procedural problem. Being an owner and proving ownership are different matters and should not be mixed up.

Banning sovereign (unhosted) wallets is yet another matter. As is "stopping or restricting Bitcoin." I would agree that such ideas are totalitarian in nature. It would be like banning the use of language or mathematics altogether (as opposed to banning unauthorised use or theft of someone else’s private key).

Perhaps given the context you are using, you could replace the word "ownership" in the original post with poesession. The state can grant legal ownership over some bitcoin, but proving that you don't posess coins which the state claims you no longer own and must forfeit would still be impossible.

It's a valid point, thanks.

Lawyers are trained to differentiate between ownership and possession. The former is a legal (abstract) concept, while the latter is a matter of facts in the real world. Possession can be lawful (when the possessor is also the owner) or unlawful (when a the possessor is a thief). Generally, applying this concept to bitcoin should be easy.

Once again, proving that you are the "legal owner" of a UTXO is primarily a procedural issue. In principle, it's not fundamentally different from proving ownership of a physical item, although it presents different practical challenges.

chain-anal

Excellent! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼⚡️

The whole concept of banning "self-hosted wallets" is ridiculous. Any regulated exchange, for example, holding funds is storing private keys. You can't ban this element without banning the entire thing. And you can't really ban the entire thing so what the fuck are we even talking about anymore?

It's clear at this point that all the political drama is coming from bank owned politicians. Most banks won't make it and they know that.

Fuck 'em.

nostr:nevent1qqsfzzmxcneeukvmwdln3s44edv2kf9wpww7mynus8d5x20gu8zm0tqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfdupzpyktukrpelzjz0wcnu9x7cyyfphctehs8nltwzsn732e8qgkgvacqvzqqqqqqyzd787c

Nicely said. ⚡️

Please share and spread the word!

Basic human rights are not a narrative, as Harari says, they are fundamenal inherent rights of every human being, that can't be taken away!

Right of property, right of privacy and the right of free speech and communication are universal rights.

Act accordingly!

#bitcoin #nostr

Thanks nostr:npub1jt97tpsul3fp8hvf7zn0vzzysmu9umcrel4hpgflg4vnsytyxwuqt8la9y

nostr:nevent1qqsfzzmxcneeukvmwdln3s44edv2kf9wpww7mynus8d5x20gu8zm0tqpz3mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wcpzpyktukrpelzjz0wcnu9x7cyyfphctehs8nltwzsn732e8qgkgvacqvzqqqqqqylfm33x

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.'

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")

nostr:npub1jt97tpsul3fp8hvf7zn0vzzysmu9umcrel4hpgflg4vnsytyxwuqt8la9y

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

I love this man, it shows how no one has control other than the individual knowing these magic words... 👌

nostr:nevent1qqsfzzmxcneeukvmwdln3s44edv2kf9wpww7mynus8d5x20gu8zm0tqpp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyzfvhevxrn79yy7a38c2dasggjr0shn0q087ku9p8az4jwq3vsemsqcyqqqqqqgll3k44