Law & Regulation
Taxing Bitcoin — Ordinary and tax concepts of “Money”
Continuing the look into the use of Bitcoin (BCH) as money we look at the legal definition of “money”. In [...]
Myths of permission-less
In the world of Bitcoin there are many false narratives and myths. This started with the myth of decentralisation. In [...]
Burning and why it matters that it is stopped
First, we need to note that Bitcoin is an economic system and in economics, incentives and intent matter. The loss [...]
Hearsay in the Blockchain world
In law, when presenting evidence to a court, there exists a rule on the exclusion of hearsay as evidence. [...]
OpSec and the Bitcoin business
There are a number of specialist topics in organisational OPSEC and concepts that need to be defined before going into [...]
Non-Repudiation — Does this exist?
There is a definitional distinction between the legal use of the term “non-repudiation” and the common use that has taken [...]
Effective Enforcement in the Vastly Distributed Wild Wild Web
Some time ago Hilary E Pearson (1996) noted that, “in many cases, liability will depend upon how a court faced [...]
Phases of the Bitcoin system
The Bitcoin system may be broken down into the following “phases”: Mining; Holding Bitcoin; and Transferring Bitcoin. Each of these [...]
Rights as property
In its simplest form, a bitcoin transaction involves the creation of an entry in a ledger. The value on the [...]
Monetary transfer and transmission rules
The exchange of bitcoin for other currencies clearly comes under existing AML[1] regulations, and where an exchange[2] has been used [...]
Symmetric Fair Exchange Protocol
Background In a fair exchange protocol two parties either both honour an exchange (such as a contract), or neither of [...]
The tax implications of bitcoin as money
As Bitcoin does not need to be held or processed by a financial institution[1], many people have concluded that they [...]