Nobody truly owns any bitcoins..because the ownership is only established when you are able to apply a correct private key in a "send" tx (via hardware device or something else), albeit validation of the private key (at some other point in time) is possible. Before that, it is all allegedly. This is in principle, of course.
This is like saying that your house is not truly yours, until you put the key in the lock and open the door...
Eh...apples and oranges.
With a house, whoever legally holds the deed owns the house, regardless of who owns the key. If you have a mortgage loan, you may have the key, but the bank owns the house...you just own the debt. If the deed is lost, there is still usually a backup trail of docs that correctly identify the last owner, who can still lay claim.
With bitcoin, the private key
is the deed, and whoever holds it owns the bitcoin. As we have seen with CSW, (so far) a lawsuit can hardly prove otherwise. And if the private key is lost,
no one owns the bitcoin, nor ever will again.
I totally agree with what you're saying. Physical keys don't mean anything in terms of house ownership. You missed what I was trying to say, and it looks like my house-key analogy may have been somewhat misleading...
Biodom suggested that our BTC is not truly ours, until we actually make a transaction using our keys and the transaction clears in the blockchain. Before that, our coins are in a "limbo" state, not truly owned by us. Something like how Schrödinger's cat is neither alive nor dead, until we peek inside the box. What he suggests has more of a philosophical than practical significance. I argued that code, math & science practically guarantee that our coins are
really ours, even
before we make a transaction.
In terms of my house-key example, think "house access" instead of "house ownership". Biodom suggests that we don't truly have access to our property, until we physically put the key in the lock and turn it to open the door. Before that, there is no guarantee that we have access. We get in, we have (and have proved we have) access; we leave the house, we lose the certainty of having access, until we turn that key again. Philosophically (even metaphysically) this theory may have some value, but not so much in a real-life, practical setting.
I hope it's now clearer.