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Richard Stallman's Political Notes

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Confiscating bitcoins

samedi 14 avril 2018 à 02:00

There is a threat to wipe out bitcoin, and all cryptocurrencies, using a strained legal excuse. The threat is to confiscate individual bitcoins if those specific coins were used previously in some illegal transaction, or passed through a broker that was later accused of any sort of crime.

The article describes two alternative plans for choosing who to punish in this way, but the effect would be the same: to punish ordinary users of bitcoins effectively at random. Ostensibly it is not random, but rather based on a criterion that ordinary users couldn't hope to check, so it's effectively equivalent to punishment at random.

It is fundamentally unjust to subject people to punishment at random. Constitutions ought to insist that no one can be punished, or legally discriminated against, or have property seized, based on circumstances not feasible for them to have recognized and avoided.