Ah ...
So it's just a virtual thing used for speculation and money laundering?
A man seeking repayment for Bitcoin lost in the Mt Gox incident has seen his lawsuit dismissed in a Tokyo District Court, with the judge ruling that the gumblecash is "not subject to ownership" claims. A resident of Kyoto, the plaintiff has stated that he had 458 Bitcoin, contentiously valued at about ¥31m (£160,000), which …
So how do they deal with other forms of crime involving digital assets? Most money transfers these days do not involve physical assets. Likewise with high frequency trading in various stock markets. Under this ruling, if I hacked into the Nikkei or a local bank and skimmed some virtual assets, it wouldn't be theft, would it? This sounds like the quote was taken out of context given that these sorts of things would presumably already be covered under Japanese law. Perhaps these actions are better covered as fraud. Of course, it is also possible that this ruling might be overturned on appeal.
"Now they can just steal everyone's money from their bank accounts because it's "not tangible"..."
Right, right. Bitcoin is either a currency or it is not. If it is a currency then it must be subject to all the standard restrictions that currency transactions face, and then you can sue for theft. If it is not a currency, then you are on your own.
Bitcoin enthusiasts/pump-and-dumpers want the Wild West with regards taxes and regulation, but when things go wrong they go running crying to their government to put it right. Maybe he should have spent some Bitcoin on the book Quantum cake: a guide to having and eating.
"Now they can just steal everyone's money from their bank accounts because it's "not tangible"..."
That's a good point. Unless you're on the gold standard with some kind of physical reference, no currency in banks is tangible it's not cash in a vault, just digital data. In addition, since banks do not have the assets to 'pay (all) bearer on demand ...' the content of your account is by definition intangible.
So the bank lost our money ...
"Dear Mr Loser,
Oops, sorry, byeeee.
Yours,
Intangible asset manager."
Mtgox was operating a fractional reserve bitcoin banking, at the same time that it was being robbed blind.
Think of it as a bank that was hacked by some user and they started to empty the atms, in this case the banknotes were the "real bitcoins" and what Mtgox has left are bitcoin promises.
An individual's reputation is even more intangible than bitcoin. One could use $160,000 worth of bitcoin to buy a nice car, where a reputation is obviously far less tangible.
So, by the judge's own logic, I could point out that he's a complete daft idiot and there's no harm, no foul, nothing he could complain about.
"because transactions between users are structured in such a way that calls for the involvement of a third party".
If he wants to try and rule based on technicalities of how the system works, he should probably get several people experienced in understanding complex network protocols to analyse both the banking system and the bitcoin transaction mechanisms and come to a consensus on the similarities and differences first.
For example is this is a reference to the fact that a transfer is verified by publishing a cryptographic verification to a distributed log as it reads to me then I think he'll find that bank transfers are verified by publishing them to a third party "clearing house" database. A fraudulent bank transfer is actionable in court last I checked.
Talk about Japanese Whispers! This has been summarised, translated, interpreted; its a wonder there is anything left.
If a laundry went bust, it would owe money to its creditors and also would have a load of clothes that had been left for washing. The point of the "tangible asset" law is just that the clothes can be reclaimed by their individual owners, while any money goes into a common pot. So someone who has left a load of dirty laundry gets their clothes back, but the bank can't use the same logic to say "the money we lent them last week is ours, so we should get it back".
The court in this case has said that Bitcoins are more like money than clothes; the plaintiff in this case was arguing that he had deposited a load of Bitcoins at MtGox, so he should get those Bitcoins back, exactly like clothes left at a bankrupt laundry. The court has decided that Bitcoins are more like money than clothes, so his argument doesn't work. That is all.
As any form of currency is only worth what its mutually agreed value is (whether it be paper, precious metal, shells, stones, animals or a series of algorithmic derived numbers) the only difference between Bitcoins and say US Dollars (substitue Sterling, Euro, Yen, etc) is the level of acceptance. The only real difference between a 'standard backed' currency and a 'fiat' currency is the notional value of what the currency is denominated against.
was he expecting the state to return his gambling losses like the Names of Lloyds or was he attempting to extract cash from Mark Karpeles?
Pesumably Mt Gox is bankrupt and since all the real money has gone where does the guy expect the money to come from?