📅 Original date posted:2015-01-20
📝 Original message:On Tuesday, 20 January 2015, at 12:40 pm, Peter Todd wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:23:14PM -0500, Matt Whitlock wrote:
> > If you have the private keys for your users' bitcoins, then you are every bit as much the owner of those bitcoins as your users are. There is no custodial relationship, as you have both the ability and the right to spend those bitcoins. Possession of a private key is equivalent to ownership of the bitcoins controlled by that private key.
>
> Posessing a private key certainly does not give you an automatic legal
> right to anything. As an example I could sign an agreement with you that
> promised I would manage some BTC on your behalf. That agreement without
> any doubt takes away any legal right I had to your BTC, enough though I
> may have have the technical ability to spend them. This is the very
> reason why the law has the notion of a custodial relationship in the
> first place.
I never signed any kind of agreement with Andreas Schildbach. I keep my bitcoins in his wallet with the full knowledge that an auto-update could clean me out. (I only hold "walking around" amounts of money in my mobile wallet for exactly this reason.) I would love it if Andreas offered me an agreement not to spend my bitcoins without my consent, but I doubt he'd legally be allowed to offer such an agreement, as that would indeed set up a custodial relationship, which would put him into all sorts of regulatory headache.
Matt Whitlock [ARCHIVE] /
npub17q…upwet
2023-06-07 15:28:47
in reply to nevent1q…ux54
Author Public Key
npub17qxssk9sj2r7jswvh3y32e7vwz7mcckhz33gk9nurdmw0lhsfkgswupwetSeen on
wss://relay.nostr.bandPublished at
2023-06-07 15:28:47Event JSON
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"content": "📅 Original date posted:2015-01-20\n📝 Original message:On Tuesday, 20 January 2015, at 12:40 pm, Peter Todd wrote:\n\u003e On Tue, Jan 20, 2015 at 12:23:14PM -0500, Matt Whitlock wrote:\n\u003e \u003e If you have the private keys for your users' bitcoins, then you are every bit as much the owner of those bitcoins as your users are. There is no custodial relationship, as you have both the ability and the right to spend those bitcoins. Possession of a private key is equivalent to ownership of the bitcoins controlled by that private key.\n\u003e \n\u003e Posessing a private key certainly does not give you an automatic legal\n\u003e right to anything. As an example I could sign an agreement with you that\n\u003e promised I would manage some BTC on your behalf. That agreement without\n\u003e any doubt takes away any legal right I had to your BTC, enough though I\n\u003e may have have the technical ability to spend them. This is the very\n\u003e reason why the law has the notion of a custodial relationship in the\n\u003e first place.\n\nI never signed any kind of agreement with Andreas Schildbach. I keep my bitcoins in his wallet with the full knowledge that an auto-update could clean me out. (I only hold \"walking around\" amounts of money in my mobile wallet for exactly this reason.) I would love it if Andreas offered me an agreement not to spend my bitcoins without my consent, but I doubt he'd legally be allowed to offer such an agreement, as that would indeed set up a custodial relationship, which would put him into all sorts of regulatory headache.",
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