But anyway I'd personally stake out the postion that you can safely call bitcoins property...
You can call anything property, the trick is getting enough people to agree.
That's why I brought up intellectual property. IP only 'exists' as property because everyone concerned agrees it is rather then any physical existance of the property.
I think simply calling bitcoins property is the easier leap then trying to extend those 'property rights' into other realms of law. For example the bitcoin theft debate.
I think domain names can provide a good parallel in this example and have been found to be property in several cases.
Have a look at this...
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=807966I'm about half way through... but I'm not sure what you're stabbing at? He seems to be just making the argument that virtual property need laws to protect them? I'll have to finish it later though.
I think it really breaks down about how far you simply want to take the 'property' argument.
Are bitcoins property in the eyes of webster's? Yes
Are bitcoins property in the eyes of the law? I'd say in many cases yes.
Are bitcoins property treated the same way your car is? Ok now you're going to run into trouble. This is where the author of the paper seems to want to take things.