A judge can say whatever he wants. That doesn't mean that he can necessarily do anything about it.
There are tons of bitcoin addresses that we KNOW have been used to buy/sell drugs, for example, any address that has sent or received money from a silk road address.
I am sure that these judges would LOVE to confiscate all of this money that is being used for illegal things. But they can't do shit. Because bitcoin has proven to be pretty robustly immutable.
That is one such value of immutability.
Unfortunately for ethereum, it seems to now be much more vulnerable to the attack vector of a government court order, whether that court order is from the US trying to crack down on pot purchases or donations to wikileaks, or China trying to crack down on payments to journalists that are critical of it.
If a contract pays out Ethereum to someone, and a court decides this should not have happened, the coin can still be returned manually by the recipient. If he refuses, he is in contempt of court and has to face the consequences of that.
I guess you could play funny business by making it functionally impossible to return the coins (lock them up for years somehow? Hand the private key to a Russian friend?) but the the court will cheerfully seize your assets that it can.
" but the the court will cheerfully seize your assets that it can."
And how in the world would the courts do that? This is crytocurrencies we are talking about. The contracts I am talking about would be done anonymously between two people who have never met before, and have no chance in a million years of finding out who the other person is, or where they are. Thats the whole point!
I'm sure courts would love to confiscate all of the bitcoin donated to wikileaks or that is used to buy drugs on the internet. They've made a few high profile arrests and confiscations, but nothing on the scale of mass arrests of silk road customers, even though they would if they could.
Tumblers? Or even just transfer between crytpo currencies.
I even pulled a quote from your sources:
"Bitcoin “laundry services” do exist: Bitcoinlaundry, Bitmix, and Bitlaundry are several examples. Once you pass your money through such a service, it is much harder and almost impossible for law enforcement personnel to establish their origin."
The question is, do you want to defy the court system if it's bringing down the force of law on you? And spend the rest of your life trying to avoid/evade the consequences? Courts don't forget.
It seems like it'd be easy to say "hur hur I'll tell the court to piss off, move to a country with no extradition, and live it up there," but really? That's your plan? That's the advice to give to people, "use bitcoin, if you get busted just skive off to somewhere with no extradition"?
Certainly it's doable, but is that the life you want, or want to encourage others to seek?
There are ALREADY people who are forced to live that life.
If you are support separation between church and state, and you are living in Turkey, you are ALREADY being targeted, being arrested, and being tracked down, eventually to be executed (They are trying to bring back the death penalty. Who do you think for?).
What do you tell those people? Just stop fighting for what they believe in? Turn yourself in to the government and hope for the best?
So, the judges were able to do something about it. So much for immutability. You can't escape the legal system just because you don't let people change the blockchain ledger.
And what about the tens of thousands of bitcoin addresses that have sent or received money to silk road addresses?
Have THOSE people been arrested? We KNOW that they used money to pay for drugs. Doesn't mean the courts can do anything about it.
Sure, there have been a few high profile arrests. That tends to happen if you start mailing thousands of drugs to people using the postal system.
And just like in the real world, if someone finds your physical wallet, they can confiscate it.
But the amazing thing is that we are sending money over the internet, and there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. No bank account freezes. And no confiscations unless they physically find you in the real world (but at that point, they can do whatever they want to you, so you've already lost.).
Right. My point is that immutability doesn't mean anything when the government can simply arrest you and coerce you to reveal your password, it's no different than a gangster stashing cash in a hidden safe.
There are tons of bitcoin addresses that we KNOW have been used to buy/sell drugs, for example, any address that has sent or received money from a silk road address.
I am sure that these judges would LOVE to confiscate all of this money that is being used for illegal things. But they can't do shit. Because bitcoin has proven to be pretty robustly immutable.
That is one such value of immutability.
Unfortunately for ethereum, it seems to now be much more vulnerable to the attack vector of a government court order, whether that court order is from the US trying to crack down on pot purchases or donations to wikileaks, or China trying to crack down on payments to journalists that are critical of it.