Post
Topic
Board Legal
Re: Is it illegal for someone to hack my BTC wallet?
by
Kesecer
on 11/12/2017, 11:57:14 UTC
In the countries where it's recognized as money, it would be.

I hadn't heard about that happening. Does anyone have a list of which countries BitCoin has been officially declared a currency?

Germany has declared it a private currency:

And seriously, read the title of the webpage. It's Bitcoin, not BitCoin.

It's the "virtual goods" part that makes it curious.
If you use bad crypto and I steal your Bitcoins is that more like me breaking into your house and stealing your cash (illegal) or more like me ganking you in a full-loot MMO and stealing the in-game stuff you bought with real money (legal)? Are Bitcoins more like dollars or EVE money where the law is concerned?

It's kind of a problematic situation though. How do you prove ownership of an address? Usually you only have your private key (so you could, for example, sign a message with your private key and people could check that you are in possession of said key). But if a crypto cracker gets your key, both of you kind of have 'proof of ownership'.
Unless you can show that, e.g., salary payments from your employer went to that address, proving ownership will be a problem.


Just like cash
Edit: Why the downvotes...?

Well, but to steal cash you generally have to commit some other sort of crime, like burglary or robbery, that generates a risk of being caught.
If you look at section 4.4 of this paper the authors effectively prove that someone has stolen 59 Bitcoins from 158 different addresses when people (or software) mistakenly reused nonces. Those people lost their coins anonymously with no recourse.
It's not clear if that's a crime, hence the topic.