UK ruling complicates China's claim to 61K bitcoin

This is a story that we actually had reported on in the past. UK chances of keeping 3.8 billion pounds of Bitcoin haul rise after high court ruling. So when I say we talked about this before,

I told you the fact that uh 61,000 Bitcoin had been seized by the British government in the investigation into Jimin Sean.

I'm sure that I butchered that. You're welcome.

Uh so the victims are in China, but the coins are in the United Kingdom. And Monday's High Court judgment determined that Chinese law governs the relevant claims given the fraud's connections to China.

But there's no actionable way for China to get their hands on the 61,000 Bitcoin, which means that those, as it says, could remain property of the King.

personally and his family. No, of the United Kingdom government.

Now, we've seen examples of this that go largely undiscussed in the United States. You might remember that the United States government seized 100,000 Bitcoins, maybe more, uh, in the from the Bitfinex hackers, right?

Does that belong to the United States government? When we see the accounting of the likely holdings of the United States government of Bitcoin, we still see them include those Bitcoin. They're actually the bulk or at least half of what would be our strategic Bitcoin reserve.

Think about it this way. If a robber comes into my house and steals my wife's jewelry, and then the police find that robber, they take the jewelry back, and then they say our jewelry.

That's exactly what is happening here and may happen with the United Kingdom as well, although this is just a ruling, so we don't know what will happen.

But yeah, the Bitfinex customers did not get back the assets seized by the United States government that belonged to Bitfinex. They've gotten some restitution, but it's very, very complicated when governments seize Bitcoin to actually get that back to the victims. So it's great when we see a criminal prosecuted, when we see them go to jail, when we see the assets clawed back.

But whether those assets actually make it back to the right people is a huge question.