Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Bitcoin Legal Defense Fund

From: Jeremy <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2022 10:34:45 -0800

If I understand the intent of your message correctly, that's unfortunately
not how the law works.

If there is a case that is precedent setting, whether it directly involves
bitcoin or not, a bitcoin focused legal fund might want to either offer
representation or file an amicus brief to guide the court to making a
decision beneficial to Bitcoin Developers.

More than likely, some of these cases would involve developers of
alternative projects (as they might be "ahead of the curve" on legal
problems) and heading off a strong precedent for other communities would be
protective for Bitcoiners in general. As an example, were the developers
building Rollups on Ethereum to face a legal threat, since we might one day
want similar software for Bitcoin, ensuring a good outcome for them helps
Bitcoin.

That said, all organizations must at some point have a defined scope, and
it seems the BLDF is primarily focused for now on things impacting the
developers of Bitcoin or software for bitcoin specifically. I "trust" the
legal team behind BLDF will form a coherent strategy around what is
relevant to Bitcoin defense, even if the particulars of a case are not
directly about Bitcoin.

cheers,

Jeremy
--
@JeremyRubin <https://twitter.com/JeremyRubin>
<https://twitter.com/JeremyRubin>

On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 10:25 AM qmccormick13 via bitcoin-dev <
[email-masked]> wrote:

> I very much hope the fund will not finance lawsuits irrelevant to bitcoin.
>
> On Fri, Jan 14, 2022 at 5:23 PM Aymeric Vitte via bitcoin-dev <
> [email-masked]> wrote:
>
>> (P2P?) Electronic Cash (Defense?) Fund or Electronic Cash Foundation ?
>> More neutral, potentially covering others than Bitcoin, mimicking a bit
>> EFF (even if as stated US is not the only target), referring to
>> Satoshi's paper where everything started
>>
>> Maybe I am not up to date but it would be good to know what are the
>> current procedures with the Tulip thing
>>
>> Aymeric
>>
>>
>> Le 13/01/2022 à 19:20, jack via bitcoin-dev a écrit :
>> > Hi Prayank,
>> >
>> >> On 13 Jan 2022, at 10:13, Prayank <[email-masked]> wrote:
>> >> I had few suggestions and feel free to ignore them if they do not make
>> sense:
>> >>
>> >> 1.Name of this fund could be anything and 'The Bitcoin Legal Defense
>> Fund' can be confusing or misleading for newbies. There is nothing official
>> in Bitcoin however people believe things written in news articles and some
>> of them might consider it as an official bitcoin legal fund.
>> > Excellent point. Will come up with a better name.
>> >
>> >> 2.It would be better if people involved in such important funds do not
>> comment/influence soft fork related discussions. Example: Alex Morcos had
>> some opinions about activation mechanism during Taproot soft fork IIRC.
>> > Yes. Will think through this and board operating principles we can
>> share publicly, which would probably include criteria for how cases are
>> chosen, to protect against this board and fund influencing direction.
>> >
>> > Open to ideas and suggestions on all.
>> >
>> > jack
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>>
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