Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Is Bitcoin Hostile to Property Rights?
Is Bitcoin Hostile to Property Rights?
Mar 18, 2025 6:36 PM

Over the last couple of years there has been a lot of criticism over the crypto-currency Bitcoin—some of which I’ve made myself (I think it is doomed as a currency but would be a great “alternative to Western Union”). But Neil Stevens at RedState recently made one of the most intriguing criticism’s I’ve heard so far: Bitcoin, if adopted widely, would be a grave threat to property rights.

There may be another cryptocurrency that isn’t hostile to our liberties, but Bitcoin is patible with freedom under the rule of law.

If our nation’s founders are to be believed, our government exists to protect life, liberty, and property. The reason it exists, and the way it has legitimacy, is that it serves the people to protect our fundamental rights. That’s how the rule of law is better than anarchy, because we can have laws against murder, slavery, and theft.

Recently in Virginia, a man was caughtafter stealing $2 million worth of gold. One of the jobs of police in this matter is to recover the stolen property, including through a pawn shop where the thief ran $340,000 worth of the precious metals.

If the man had stolen Bitcoin instead of gold, that would be out of the question. Money in the form of cash or a bank account, or tangible goods like gold or silver, can always have unlawful transactions reversed. Money can be sent back to the person it was stolen from. Property can be taken and returned to its rightful owner. But Bitcoin?Bitcoin advocates brag about how Bitcoin payments are irreversible. Anything the thief spent is gone forever, andanything the thief didn’t yet spend is meant to be gone forever.

Perhaps I’m missing something but I think there is a key flaw in Stevens’ argument: being foolish with one’s property is not a violation of property rights.

Let’s imagine I put $10,000 worth of Euros in a glass box and sit it on the curb (inside my property line) in front of my house. I go out for some frozen yogurt and when I return I find—quelle horreur!—that while the glass box is still there, someone has snatched all my cash.

Now the thief certainly violated my property rights by illegally entering my property without permission (trespassing) and taking my property without my consent (theft). But having a glass box full of Euros on my law does not mean Euros are a threat to private property or to property rights.

To make my example more like Bitcoin, let’s also imagine that the thief has a magic money laundering box. As he takes the Euros out of my glass box, he dumps the cash into his magic box and makes them immediately untraceable. Even if someone were to see him taking the cash, they’d have no way of proving he actually took them or that they were in his possession.

This is essentially how Bitcoin theft es untraceable. A thief takes the currency from your glass box (what Bitcoin users call a “wallet”) and dumps it into their magic money laundering box (a Bitcoin tumbler). It has been estimated that there have been 818,485.77 stolen Bitcoins, presently worth some $502,081,166.11. That means one out of every 16-17 Bitcoins belongs to someone who stole it. Yet I can’t find evidence that anyone has ever been prosecuted for stealing Bitcoins.This makes Bitcoin theft an ideal crime.

The only real way to truly protect Bitcoin is to store the currency offline, in a physical Bitcoin wallet not connected to the Internet. That process is essentially like taking cash and putting it into a safe deposit box. But because Bitcoin is a highly volatile, speculative currency, the money in the “safe deposit box” could increase or decrease minute by minute.

Personally, I can’t imagine why anyone in their right mind would hold significant amounts of their money in Bitcoin (for me, that’d be a couple of hundred dollars). Holding Bitcoin is less safe than holding cash and has many more drawbacks. It’s essentially an onerous, unstable, easily stolen type of currency for people who seem to care more about philosophical concerns (i.e., theories about non-state currencies)rather than financial ones.

But that doesn’t mean Bitcoin is a grave threat to property rights. It just means Bitcoin holders are likely being foolish with their property.

See also: What Christians Should Know About Bitcoin

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
How growth rates affect the wealth of nations
Note: This is post #74 in a weekly video series on basic economics. In the previous video in this series we learned a basic fact of economic wealth—that countries can vary widely in standard of living. How can we explain wealth disparities between countries? The answer, as Alex Tabarrok of Marginal Revolution university explains, is growth rates. Tabarrok examines the growth rate of the U.S. economy and considers what would life be like if our economy had grown at an...
The Social Capital Index: A geography of ‘associational life’ in America
In recent decades, America has experienced a wave of economic and social disruption. In our search for solutions, however, we tend to look only at the surface, assessing the architecture of particular policies or stroking our chins over economic measurements like Gross Domestic Product. But what if we had a deeper view of the dynamics beneath the surface? What if we had way to measure, assess, and observe the state of“associational life”in America (as Alexis de Tocqueville may have called...
Unemployment as economic-spiritual indicator — March 2018 report
Series Note: Jobs are one of the most important aspects of a morally functioning economy. They help us serve the needs of our neighbors and lead to human flourishing both for the individual and munities. Conversely, not having a job can adversely affect spiritual and psychological well-being of individuals and families. Because unemployment is a spiritual problem, Christians in America need to understand and be aware of the monthly data on employment. Each month highlight the latest numbers we need...
Fifty years later, cities still suffer the economic effects of the 1968 riots
This month marks the 50th anniversary of the riots that began in 1968 after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The riots—sometimes referred to as the Holy Week Uprising or King assassination riots—spread through 110 cities across the United States. As historian Peter B. Levy notes, Fifty-four cities suffered at least $100,000 in property damage, with the nation’s capital and Baltimore topping the list at approximately $15 million and $12 million, respectively. Thousands of small shopkeepers saw their...
Is there a connection between opioid use and unemployment?
For the past several years the U.S. has been undergoing an opioid epidemic. Opioidsare drugs, whether illegal or prescription, that reduce the intensity of pain signals reaching the brain and affect those brain areas controlling emotion, which diminishes the effects of a painful stimulus. According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), in 2013 there were more than249 million prescriptionsfor opioid pain medication written by healthcare providers. This is enough for every adult in America to have a bottle of...
Virtues, once again
“Crisis of Responsibility: Our Cultural Addiction to Blame and How You Can Cure It,” by David L. Bahnsen; Foreward by David French; PostHill Press, 2018; 170 pp.; $26. It’s been a long, hard slog on humanity’s path to the current century and its peculiar predicaments. Along the way, there have been numerous guidebooks to assist our respective generations’ quests for living honorable lives in the face of varyingly difficult circumstances. To list them, in fact, would create a magnificent bibliography...
Remember the intangibles: A caution to the 21st-century economist
Today’s economists have no shortage of confidence, offering models and measurements aplenty. But are the tools of the field keeping pace with the actual forces and factors at work? bination of economics with statistics in plex world promises a lot more than it delivers,” economist Russ Roberts recently wrote. “We economists should be more humble and honest about the reliability and precision of statistical analysis.” Indeed, in our plex economy, what can economists actually know? In a new essay at...
Video: Dispelling myths about economic inequality
The lure of socialism lies in its promise of “equality,” a hazily defined concept that educational and political leaders transform into an even more ambiguous social goal. The word itself triggers the innate sense of fairness and equity cherished by everyone raised under the influence of Western culture. The Bible, after all, repeatedly warns believers to have no respect of persons when meting out justice, which Aquinas ranked as “foremost among all the moral virtues.” But do modern-day social engineers...
Radio Free Acton: Discussion on Communism in Cuba; Tech & work part II: Growing technology in agriculture
On this episode of Radio Free Acton, Acton’s director of programs and education, Paul Bonicelli, talks to John Suarez, research director at the Center for a Free Cuba. This talk is a preview of an ing event at Acton on April 17: Communism in Cuba, its international impact, the democratic resistance and U.S. Cuba policy. Then, on the next Tech and the Future of Work segment, Dan Churchwell, Acton’s associate director of program outreach, speaks with Kevin Scott, a soybean...
Cronyism fueled the murder of a Slovak journalist
“Slovakia has been living through one of the most turbulent times in its young history,” says Martina Bobulová in this week’s Acton Commentary. “It has been almost a month since the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová, which have put these events in motion.” Much has changed in past four weeks – the nation went to the streets and the country experienced the biggest public protests since the Velvet Revolution in 1989. Robert Fico’s third...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved