the only way to maybe have a key that is proved to belong to you in the first place is to vanity address a public key that means something. such as your username.
but even that is not full proof
Topic: Discussion: Duplicate private keys - Who has Bitcoin ownership? - page 2. (Read 3568 times)
the one who moves the bitcoins off the shared private key first is the one who owns the bitcoins
Will
Will
At the end of the day your private key is your cash. If you leave it out, anyone can take it. If it gets stolen, it's lost. If you give it away, that's all there is to it. If a government forcefully taxes it from you at gunpoint, it's still gone.
It's not so much about "proper ownership" at that point, it's who has it.
It's not so much about "proper ownership" at that point, it's who has it.
If you can prove someone stole the private key from you, best of luck, but for practical reasons whoever has access to the private key has control and ownership of it.
I think this is more of a moral question because theft is still theft no matter how you want to look at it. 
If you can prove someone stole the private key from you, best of luck, but for practical reasons whoever has access to the private key has control and ownership of it.
That is a lot to consider. In a practical sense the owner of the private key is always going to be the "owner" of the bitcoins, right?. Since that person, good or bad, can spend the coins.
Sharing a private key would require a huge amount of trust.
Sharing a private key would require a huge amount of trust.
In light of the current discussions about regulations and education of government entities,
I have some questions for the Bitcoin Foundation and the community about Bitcoin ownership:
I know Satoshi said: "The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key", but in case you say: "it depends on the way they obtained the knowledge of the private key":
e.g. How would you treat it differently if...
And to make things more complicated
I have some questions for the Bitcoin Foundation and the community about Bitcoin ownership:
- What is the stance of the Bitcoin Foundation and the community on the situation where more than one person has knowledge of a private key?
- Who owns the corresponding Bitcoin?
I know Satoshi said: "The owner of a coin is just whoever has its private key", but in case you say: "it depends on the way they obtained the knowledge of the private key":
e.g. How would you treat it differently if...
- a computer was hacked to learn it?
- it was read while somebody was accidentally exposing it?
- guessing was done through weakness in random number generation (either accidentally which it unlikely, or running a program)?
- agreements were made between two or more people to have shared knowledge?
- the person who made a/the transaction to the corresponding public key, is not the same as the person who generated they private key
- ... any scenario I missed?
And to make things more complicated
- How should we deal with these situations where knowledge is spread over different nationalities and/or borders?
- With the near impossibility of proving the act in disputes, would you still acknowledge theft or rather treat it as an inherent risk to using the Bitcoin technology?
- Where would you draw the line between morally wrong and legally wrong?
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