Quote from: jseverson on June 06, 2018, 12:08:48 PM

Quote from: Wheelige on June 06, 2018, 12:54:50 AM

The courts are part of the judiciary not the government though. The government makes the laws and policy etc and the judiciary applies those rules.

I agree, but this potentially sets judicial precedence (or common law), so any future cases, and even their legislative branch, at this point in time, should acknowledge the fact that Bitcoin is formally recognized as an asset with measurable value until a law is passed that says otherwise. It's pretty big for people who get scammed out of their Bitcoins because the court would formally recognize that they were defrauded of something with actual worth.

Making litigation easier and less vague is beneficial (though not towards acceptance) for their citizens. It's also quite literally acknowledgement because the courts have ruled that it as an asset with value. Their government itself has already treated it as such by proceeding to seize the 191 Bitcoins ruled to have been earned illegaly.

Either way, we seem to agree that the ruling doesn't really bring South Korea further as far as government acceptance goes, so let's just agree to disagree on the other points.

Agreed on the agree to disagree. But I feel i should note that Korea has civil system not a common law, so their laws are all codified and there is no 'precedent' per se in any decision of a court. In a given case a higher court overrules a lower one however in a future case no consideration is REQUIRED to be given to previous decisions so a flip flop could happen (although this is pretty unlikely because of decision is sound).

As for the previous decisions there was not really a debate as to whether bitcoin was an asset as such is was more around whether the state was legally entitled to seize bitcoin as its intangible (just numbers on a screen). The ratio decidendi was that the tangibility of an asset is not relevant to its seizure.