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Comment by mrtksn | Hacker News Reader

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Governments seized a lot of BTC in the past. As soon as they have physical access to the owner, it is seizable.

Bulgaria seizing 213K BTC: https://www.coininsider.com/bulgarian-government-owns-3-bill...

The US seizing 73K BTC: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54833130

are prime examples.

More recently, US getting back some of the ransom paid: https://www.fastcompany.com/90644461/stolen-bitcoin-is-hard-...

In fact, seizing property can have many complications and be very hard(ownership structures, occupant protection laws, debts and obligations etc).

But with a bank account they don't need physical access to the owner.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/aug/25/british-cit...

Re th last link, it is possible that they recovered the fee paid to the affiliate of the ransomware gang that installed the ransomware. This is possibly because the affiliate was an informant for the FBI. So it wasn't really seizing it, more like returning it.

> As soon as they have physical access to the owner, it is seizable.

This is incorrect. If the owner doesn't reveal the private key, the government cannot seize the bitcoin.

Sure it's seizable, but it can be much harder (impossible?) to seize if the owner knows what they are doing.

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