Bitcoin Forum

I have read about people buying bitcoins that technically could not / should not have been sold because they were illegally possessed so legally the bitcoins could be taken away from you, despite having paid for them... is that true?

Also out of curiosity, is there any form of money (particularly interested in bitcoins) which are protected from confiscation?

Can you ever be safe with money that is online aside from cash which I'm not a fan of either.

thanks for any help

how do they track back if some coins are illegally possessed? this isn't that simple as doing it with fiat, mixers, vpn, mixing with other coins such monero ecc.. and all that stuff can basically turn your transaction completely anon, otherwise how you could explain that all these thieves/hackers in the bitcoin world, have not yet been caught


i presume that every money can be confiscated if they appear to be obtained illegally, unless you hides them well

I don't think there are any cases of people buying coins that were later proven to be previously stolen having them confiscated. In the eyes of a few tax authorities they are classed as property rather than currency so it might be conceivable. Another precedent waiting to be tested.

But how does mixing coins anonymity you if they can trace the transaction back to you? they would see a fragmented mess from the mixing on the blockchain, but what explanation would you give? other than admiting that you mixed the coins.

In the U.S., the government has the authority to confiscate property used in a crime, but they don't have the ability to confiscate bitcoins unless they have the private keys.

This is true. They can never get your private keys if it's done in the right way. You can comfort yourself with this after they've beaten, tortured and jailed you for not coughing them up.

BTC's impregnability is a fine idea in theory. The wider world isn't going to care too much when it comes knocking.

So I guess I'm okay?

I guess I'll look into bitcoins more thoroughly then, thank you for your responses.

The government may not be able to force you to give them your bitcoin, however they can coerce you into doing so with the use of force or the threat of the use of force. For example they could keep you in jail under contempt of court until you give up your private keys if a judge were to rule that you must do so

But if you recieve coins that come from ilegal origin, why should I pay? it's not my fault I mixed my coins or deposited on a exchange (same technique as mixing basically) and I end up with coins that have history of being around in silk road or whatever.

This makes me pretty paranoid about BTC. Imagine you pay someone for a coffee and the coins have history of being used to buy cocaine or something lol.

In theory it's the same principle as buying a car that's turned out to be stolen. You won't be prosecuted for it if you can prove the sale but it can be taken from you anyway because it never technically belonged to you.

This is assuming that a court would treat it as property. I really don't know if there are any precedents for that.

In reality it would be totally unworkable. Unless you only deal in your own mined coins, every single bitcoin user probably has some questionable dust from somewhere.

I think the US just passed a law about confiscating cryptos if the authorities think you are a threat to national security. Apart from that, bitcoins you purchased by legal means should not be confiscated.

yet they forced the silk road owners to hand over privkeys..

i think the secret is that if you publicly disclosed a known publickey.. then simply create new addresses and move the funds.. if anyone asks you can simply say you sold them on or gave them away to charity and the new addresses the funds can be seen going to dont belong to you.... after all unless you disclose your link to the public key no one knows who owns what.

This is very true.  Dang, I wish I did not live in the US when it comes to bitcoin and the chance the federal government could say I can't use them.

Yeah the us government is already coming down hard on cryptos and the game has just begun.  I don't think they want to take them away, they just want to tax them into uselessness.  As far as coins being randomly confiscated I have never heard of this happening.  With the division of coins, as others have stated, its very likely that all of us have at least a portion of some dirty money.