<p>According to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content" rel="nofollow noreferrer">this article</a> from the Guardian</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery</p>
</blockquote>

<p>and </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>“Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based systems as soon as it contains illegal content,” the researchers wrote.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>This as well as other possibilities (the article also mentioned distribution of malware) shows that blockchains can be used to store illegal information, making downloading and possessing it potentially illegal. While it is quite possible that blockchain users wouldn't all automatically be arrested, it provides a simple case for arrest against individuals possessing such a blockchain if needed. Therefore, the use of this technology would become a legal gamble, because investors who are not programmers or can't afford to hire some (or lawyers) would face a certain risk of imprisonment, at least in some countries.</p>

<p>Does this mean that <strong>most or all</strong> current cryptocurrencies could become potentially illegal/useless?</p>

<p>This question is different from <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/14056">that one</a> because I focus on the legal implications of end users. While a company that unintentionally hosts illegal material may be protected by <a href="https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/14058/80215">ISP-like laws in the U.S.</a>, users of the blockchain provided by the company can basically come from any nation of the world, and in some the mere possession of illegal material in digital form by private people is forbidden (e.g. the Guardian article explicitly lists Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. as such nations). The accepted answer in the other article also seems to assume that illegal content could be detected before it is downloaded, which is simply not true. <strong>The assumption we have to make here is that by using the service the user unintentionally downloads illegal content.</strong> </p>

<p>The reason I ask this here instead of Law.SE is simply because I thought it would be more on-topic here, be of high interest for the community of this site and surely someone law-experienced is also found here. It would also be interesting to hear the opinion of people which may make more or less a living of this technology or are about to and the opinion of people who have a deeper understanding of the financial markets.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T20:38:00.320Z
@NateEldredge I just noticed that the other question is only about Bitcoin and concentrates on the legality of the company rather than the legal issues for users using this service.
SK19
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T20:52:28.017Z
The usual convention on SE is that if your question was previously asked, but the answers are unsatisfactory, you can leave comments on the previous question, or [start a bounty](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/bounty), but you should not ask a new question.  It seems to me the other question does ask exactly your question: "Would it be possible to make using Bitcoin illegal...?"  And I don't see any reason to think that other currencies would be treated any differently from Bitcoin.
Nate Eldredge
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T20:55:12.610Z
@NateEldredge Other currencies could be treated differently alone when their companies are not located within the jurisdiction of the U.S., which was an important fact for the accepted answer.
SK19
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T20:57:33.363Z
I don't understand the reference to "companies" at all.  Bitcoin doesn't have a company.  There's a nonprofit foundation which attempts to propose standards and offer guidance to users, but it doesn't "own" the currency - there is nothing to own.
Nate Eldredge
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T21:03:01.450Z
@NateEldredge As far as I know, there is a transaction cost for bitcoin and that money has to go somewhere. There are servers hosting the blockchains for others to download that belong to someone. I have little idea how Bitcoin works, but you are free to replace "companies" by "server owners". Makes one wonder if the U.S. ISP laws apply for them, too. It doesn't matter for my question anyway since I'm interested in end users.
SK19
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T21:51:30.487Z
Transaction costs go to miners, who can be anybody in the world with appropriate hardware.  The blockchain is downloaded in a peer-to-peer fashion.  One of the major design goals of Bitcoin is decentralization - that no single organization should control it.  And I think you may have a hard time making sense of any answers you get without first having a clear understanding of how the technology works, and how it is (and isn't) controlled.
Nate Eldredge
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T22:09:33.393Z
@NateEldredge But I'm quite willing to learn and please don't make this Bitcoin-specific. When a government releases a crypto currency (as it recently happend), your argument doesn't apply anymore. In addition, P2P makes even less sense of the answer in the other question and distributing illegal material over there would incriminate the sender and the receiver in some countries. That is worse than distributing pirated games by P2P. But I enjoy the irony of the situation being worse than I originally thought.
SK19
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T22:30:51.043Z
@SK19 keep in mind that it is possible to encode illegal images/data into just about ANY data structure. A blockchain is a data structure that is downloaded and stored redundantly many times, so I think it is an easy target to point to and say *"that contains illegal data!"*. Consider this: what if a malicious actor injected an obscure encoding of illegal data into a popular website's html code? Everyone accessing that site would unknowingly download the data, even if they don't know it/can't see it. As mentioned in the answer on the linked question, intent is probably important here.
chytrik
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T22:38:53.107Z
@chytrik I am aware of this. Here browser technology comes into play and can make a difference (which doesn't apply to the crypto currency): There are rulings (e.g. in Germany) that make a difference if you just merely "watched" something through your browser (thus caching it temporarily on your computer to be automatically deleted) or if you actively downloaded it or copied it from the cache. As the article stated, there are no rulings yet for blockchains. I'm asking how negative rulings would influence crypto currencies using blockchains. Would they be avoided? What about assets?
SK19
CC BY-SA 3.0
2018-03-20T23:06:10.510Z
@SK19 I think you misunderstood me, I didn't mean that the illegal image would be automatically presented to the user, just that it would be loaded quietly in the backend. If the user knew about it, and had an application that could extract and interpret that data, they could view the illegal image. This is a different situation than streaming vs downloading pirated content, in that the user does not necessarily know the illegal data is there/have no intent to access it. In general though: in regards to your Q, obviously a negative ruling not be a good thing for cryptocurrencies.
chytrik
<blockchain>
Does potential misuse of the Blockchain enable any cryptocurrency to be ruined in the long term?
SK19
# Does potential misuse of the Blockchain enable any cryptocurrency to be ruined in the long term?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2018-03-20)

According to [this article](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/mar/20/child-abuse-imagery-bitcoin-blockchain-illegal-content) from the Guardian

> unknown persons are using bitcoin’s blockchain to store and link to child abuse imagery

and

> “Since all blockchain data is downloaded and persistently stored by users, they are liable for any objectionable content added to the blockchain by others. Consequently, it would be illegal to participate in a blockchain-based systems as soon as it contains illegal content,” the researchers wrote.

This as well as other possibilities (the article also mentioned distribution of malware) shows that blockchains can be used to store illegal information, making downloading and possessing it potentially illegal. While it is quite possible that blockchain users wouldn't all automatically be arrested, it provides a simple case for arrest against individuals possessing such a blockchain if needed. Therefore, the use of this technology would become a legal gamble, because investors who are not programmers or can't afford to hire some (or lawyers) would face a certain risk of imprisonment, at least in some countries.

Does this mean that **most or all** current cryptocurrencies could become potentially illegal/useless?

This question is different from [that one](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/14056) because I focus on the legal implications of end users. While a company that unintentionally hosts illegal material may be protected by [ISP-like laws in the U.S.](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/14058/80215), users of the blockchain provided by the company can basically come from any nation of the world, and in some the mere possession of illegal material in digital form by private people is forbidden (e.g. the Guardian article explicitly lists Germany, the U.K. and the U.S. as such nations). The accepted answer in the other article also seems to assume that illegal content could be detected before it is downloaded, which is simply not true. **The assumption we have to make here is that by using the service the user unintentionally downloads illegal content.**

The reason I ask this here instead of Law.SE is simply because I thought it would be more on-topic here, be of high interest for the community of this site and surely someone law-experienced is also found here. It would also be interesting to hear the opinion of people which may make more or less a living of this technology or are about to and the opinion of people who have a deeper understanding of the financial markets.

**Tags:** blockchain

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: @username_1 I just noticed that the other question is only about Bitcoin and concentrates on the legality of the company rather than the legal issues for users using this service.  
> **username_1**: The usual convention on SE is that if your question was previously asked, but the answers are unsatisfactory, you can leave comments on the previous question, or [start a bounty](https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/help/bounty), but you should not ask a new question.  It seems to me the other question does ask exactly your question: "Would it be possible to make using Bitcoin illegal...?"  And I don't see any reason to think that other currencies would be treated any differently from Bitcoin.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 Other currencies could be treated differently alone when their companies are not located within the jurisdiction of the U.S., which was an important fact for the accepted answer.  
> **username_1**: I don't understand the reference to "companies" at all.  Bitcoin doesn't have a company.  There's a nonprofit foundation which attempts to propose standards and offer guidance to users, but it doesn't "own" the currency - there is nothing to own.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 As far as I know, there is a transaction cost for bitcoin and that money has to go somewhere. There are servers hosting the blockchains for others to download that belong to someone. I have little idea how Bitcoin works, but you are free to replace "companies" by "server owners". Makes one wonder if the U.S. ISP laws apply for them, too. It doesn't matter for my question anyway since I'm interested in end users.  
> **username_1**: Transaction costs go to miners, who can be anybody in the world with appropriate hardware.  The blockchain is downloaded in a peer-to-peer fashion.  One of the major design goals of Bitcoin is decentralization - that no single organization should control it.  And I think you may have a hard time making sense of any answers you get without first having a clear understanding of how the technology works, and how it is (and isn't) controlled.  
> **username_0**: @username_1 But I'm quite willing to learn and please don't make this Bitcoin-specific. When a government releases a crypto currency (as it recently happend), your argument doesn't apply anymore. In addition, P2P makes even less sense of the answer in the other question and distributing illegal material over there would incriminate the sender and the receiver in some countries. That is worse than distributing pirated games by P2P. But I enjoy the irony of the situation being worse than I originally thought.  
> **username_2**: @username_0 keep in mind that it is possible to encode illegal images/data into just about ANY data structure. A blockchain is a data structure that is downloaded and stored redundantly many times, so I think it is an easy target to point to and say *"that contains illegal data!"*. Consider this: what if a malicious actor injected an obscure encoding of illegal data into a popular website's html code? Everyone accessing that site would unknowingly download the data, even if they don't know it/can't see it. As mentioned in the answer on the linked question, intent is probably important here.  
> **username_0**: @username_2 I am aware of this. Here browser technology comes into play and can make a difference (which doesn't apply to the crypto currency): There are rulings (e.g. in Germany) that make a difference if you just merely "watched" something through your browser (thus caching it temporarily on your computer to be automatically deleted) or if you actively downloaded it or copied it from the cache. As the article stated, there are no rulings yet for blockchains. I'm asking how negative rulings would influence crypto currencies using blockchains. Would they be avoided? What about assets?  
> **username_2**: @username_0 I think you misunderstood me, I didn't mean that the illegal image would be automatically presented to the user, just that it would be loaded quietly in the backend. If the user knew about it, and had an application that could extract and interpret that data, they could view the illegal image. This is a different situation than streaming vs downloading pirated content, in that the user does not necessarily know the illegal data is there/have no intent to access it. In general though: in regards to your Q, obviously a negative ruling not be a good thing for cryptocurrencies.  

---

## 0 answers

