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From: Tamas Blummer <tamas@bitsofproof•com>
To: Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock•name>
Cc: bitcoin-development@lists•sourceforge.net
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] The legal risks of auto-updating wallet software; custodial relationships
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 18:44:31 +0100	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <656E7756-5F0B-4594-B9F1-8CC68C7A5EE5@bitsofproof.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <2236907.ZtrNgikFVR@crushinator>


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Knowing the private key and owning the linked coins is not necessarily the same in front of a court.

At least in german law there is a difference between ‘Eigentum' means ownership and ‘Besitz’ means ability to deal with it.
Being able to deal with an asset does not make you the owner.

Tamas Blummer

On Jan 20, 2015, at 6:23 PM, Matt Whitlock <bip@mattwhitlock•name> wrote:
> 
> If you have the private keys for your users' bitcoins, then you are every bit as much the owner of those bitcoins as your users are. There is no custodial relationship, as you have both the ability and the right to spend those bitcoins. Possession of a private key is equivalent to ownership of the bitcoins controlled by that private key.


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  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-01-20 17:44 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 14+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-01-20 15:46 Peter Todd
     [not found] ` <CAHpxFbEoDLMGKB7arHbgB+4kx8BwgcX7nBUZz6yP9k4LjZeu1A@mail.gmail.com>
2015-01-20 17:15   ` Peter Todd
2015-01-20 17:23 ` Matt Whitlock
2015-01-20 17:40   ` Peter Todd
2015-01-20 17:44     ` Matt Whitlock
2015-01-20 17:44   ` Tamas Blummer [this message]
2015-01-20 17:47     ` Matt Whitlock
2015-01-20 17:49       ` Peter Todd
2015-01-20 17:56       ` Tamas Blummer
2015-01-20 17:47 ` Justus Ranvier
2015-01-20 18:48   ` Tamas Blummer
2015-01-20 19:31     ` Justus Ranvier
2015-01-20 21:33     ` odinn
2015-01-20 21:49 ` Roy Badami

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