So the Trump's 'crypto* EO is out, and I'm seeing lots of weak bitches cry that its a shitcoin reserve.
Given the fact that the proposed digital assets stockpile would possibly be built on *seized* coins, let me give you a quick introduction to forfeiture law, and why crying for daddy to please please make its pile of flying horseshit "bitcoin only" *literally* the most retarded thing you could be wishing for, ever.
Forfeiture law – or civil asset forfeiture, to be precise – is this fun little game the government plays in which it does not have to accuse you of a crime to confiscate your property.
Instead of accusing you of a crime, the Government claims that the asset itself has facilitated a crime, and can therefore be seized by the Government.
In civil asset forfeiture, there is no innocent until proven guilty. To get your property back, *you* have to prove that the Government is wrong – which turns out pretty complicated seeing how its impossible to prove a negative.
Civil asset forfeiture results in cases that are not filed against a person, but filed against the property itself. This results in fun little cases like US vs. Binance Account XYZ, or US vs. 123 Wilmington Drive.
To extend this idea to Bitcoin, in a civil forfeiture case, the US Government is in theory able to seize *any bitcoin* that has *ever* come out of a criminal transaction.
Made some bitcoin for selling a service? Bought some bitcoin on a P2P exchange? Unless you checked that the UTXO you received has never touched a criminal transaction in its entire history, your coins can be confiscated, and there's pretty much nothing you can do about it.
As Cato Institute points out in its piece on civil forfeiture reform, forfeiture law is routinely misused to enrich the Government – Philadelphia, for example, has seized over 1000 homes, over 3000 vehicles, and over $44M in cash over an 11 year period. In 2010, the city tried to seize *an entire fucking house* because a woman's grandson sold less than $200 of weed out of the basement.
If you think that taxes are bad, civil asset forfeiture is straight up evil.
It doesn't matter whether you participated in a crime. It doesn't matter whether you know that someone else participated in a crime. If it involved your property, even if said property was fully legally acquired, the Government will come and take it.
Civil asset forfeiture is the most insane Government funding technique that is out there, and you most definitely do not want this declared as a strategic means to pump the Government's bitcoin bags.
You are *literally* asking the Government to steal your coins with a practice that *every* libertarian advocate wants to see abolished.
