Quote from: murraypaul on March 14, 2014, 11:39:12 AM

Quote from: Phil Dann Ward on March 14, 2014, 06:55:47 AM

Quote from: Clobered09 on March 14, 2014, 12:45:16 AM

Quote from: Phil Dann Ward on March 14, 2014, 12:16:23 AM

I'm guessing that if a trade goes wrong at the moment (in any jurisdiction) and somebody effectively 'steals' your bitcoins, no jurisdiction recognises bitcoins as being money, and thus no legal system will consider you to have made a financial loss and they won't get involved.

Why would it matter that what was stolen isn't money? If I trade my motorcycle to Bill for his car, and he finds a way to defraud me (fake title or something of the like), you honestly think the court says "oh, well, since no money was involved, there was no theft"? That's not how the legal system works.

It doesn't matter whether what is stolen is money or not. What matters is that you have been defrauded of something that has legally recognised, financial value, in your example, your motorcycle.

The point I was trying to make is that fiat money is legally recognised as having financial value but bitcoins (probably?) are not recognised as such so if somebody steals your bitcoins it is not at all clear to a court of law that that you have suffered any sort of financial loss that they could try to sort out on your behalf.

Gold is not legal tender, but has value.
Shares are not legal tender, but have value.
Land titles are not legal tender, but have value.
And so on.

Sorry, I should have been clearer...I had made a somewhat assumptive corollary from "XXXXX recognises bitcoins as legal tender" to "XXXXX's legal system recognises bitcoins as having implicit *financial* value" and progressed my argument from the latter proposition, not from the former.

So even from Clobered09's example of being defrauded of his motorcycle, motorcycles are not legal tender either but the legal system recognises that a motorcycle has financial value and that financial value belongs to the legally recognised owner of the motorcycle. The same argument applies to gold, shares and land but there appears to be no equivalent precedent for bitcoins.