Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sowbug | Hacker News Reader

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Probably not. There's no such thing as title to money, so it's really hard to say "that's my money" in a situation like this. Relevant case[1] re fungibility of money. If money can be tainted, then eventually all money will lose value, which is bad. Especially important for finite supplies like Bitcoin.

A different argument is based on property law[2]. You can't transfer better title than you have, but a "bona fide purchaser" obtains something that's practically pretty close to good title. So you could see the result hinging on whether a charity knew it was receiving stolen money (again, question whether property concepts apply at all to money).

[1]http://legalhistoryblog.blogspot.com/2013/05/reid-on-scotlan... -- OP didn't ask about jurisdiction, but this principle seems to be somewhat consistent in various places

[2]http://law.jrank.org/pages/9188/Personal-Property-Bona-Fide-...

Disclaimer: this answer is the product of law school, which means it is likely of even worse quality than a Wikipedia search.

"Especially important for finite supplies like Bitcoin"

The law doesn't concern itself with the technical implementation of bitcoin. In addition, trackable and "tainted" money is dangerous for people to accept; bitcoin just makes it real easy to identify that.

"The law doesn't concern itself with the technical implementation of bitcoin"

That's an astounding statement to make without citation or qualification. In general, the law (at least in the form of U.S. appellate courts and congressional bodies) is very good at including public-policy consequences in its decisionmaking process.

maybe future laws and policy will take into account the more-or-less finite supply of bitcoin. maybe.

my point is that there is no guarantee that bitcoin will receive favorable decisions. it's hard for the lay person to understand (why not just print more?) and if ever declared a currency-non-grata could actively be attacked in this way.

i should add that i have engaged in btc currency speculation and had a positive result. the long term value/health of btc is of great benefit to me. but, it would be foolish for me to assume that because it would good for it to be so that it will be so.

That much I can agree with. The law eventually gets things right, but it can take a while, and it might harm individuals and individual technologies along the way.

There's the tort of conversion [1] which could work if the "bona fide purchaser" defence fails.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversion_(law)

I think the opposite is happening thanks to tainted coins, non-tainted become more valuable as they become scarce. Eg. If you Google 'freshly mined bitcoin' you will see they are quite desirable.

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