The human who claims to exist Satoshi Nakamoto says 2022 is the year the police force comes for Bitcoin. Writing on his personal blog, Craig Wright offered a view of Bitcoin's future which doesn't bode well for operators of Bitcoin's Lightning Network, or the coin's miners.

1 of Bitcoin'due south biggest attractions is its supposedly permissionless, authority-resistant nature. But according to Wright, these are illusions.

Wright claims that any corporeality of Bitcoin purchased without coming together legally recognized CDD (customer due diligence) and KYC (know your customer) requirements is, in effect, stolen Bitcoin.

According to Wright, that spells problem for Lightning Network operators who receive such 'stolen' Bitcoin:

"Lightning is about creating a arrangement that is not built on individual tokens, but rather balances, because they are treated very differently under law. Yet, the Lightning Network cannot piece of work without Bitcoin tokens as the initial seed base. Hither lies the greatest flaw of the organisation."

Wright claims the Lightning Network'due south system of symbols and balances won't shield information technology from legal investigation and enforcement.

"If stolen bitcoin are passed into a Lightning channel, the purchaser in the Lightning channel does not proceeds good title. Equivalently, the civil dominion of nemo plus iuris ad alium transferre potest quam ipse habet, or, 'one cannot transfer to another more rights than he has', means that it does non matter whether you ship bitcoin to a Lightning channel; if the bitcoin are stolen, they cannot be transferred."

Wright as well cites the legal principle of Nemo dat quod non habet - or, "no i can give what they don't have." If the legal rights to the 'stolen' coins are not transferred legally, then in Wright'due south view, this would leave the Lightning Network open to the threat of a court-sanctioned freezing order.

Going further still, Wright reiterates another ominous scenario for Bitcoin miners. Namely, that whatsoever miner who receives or mines 'stolen' Bitcoin can be pursued by authorities under a nation'southward standard theft laws.

Wright cites a department of the Britain'south Theft Human activity (1968) which covers the handling of stolen goods - a charge that comes with a fourteen year maximum prison judgement in the U.k..

"A person handles stolen appurtenances if (otherwise than in the class of the stealing) knowing or believing them to be stolen appurtenances he dishonestly receives the appurtenances, or dishonestly undertakes or assists in their retentivity, removal, disposal or realisation by or for the benefit of some other person, or if he arranges to do and then."

Craig Wright'southward prognostications are based on his assumption that Bitcoin is stolen if non purchased under the purview of CDD and KYC laws. At the moment, no such enforcement of ownership laws surrounding Bitcoin actually exists.

Chaser at law, Preston J. Byrne, notes that Wright'southward scenario doesn't play out unless a universally agreed upon 'blacklist' of stolen coins were bachelor for all to see. Byrne says:

"If there were a central annals of stolen BTC established by law of which every BTC purchaser in a given jurisdiction was deemed to accept effective observe of these claims, observe could be imputed if whatever party failed to bank check that annals and so accepted payment in blacklisted coins."

As Byrne points out, no such register currently exists. The law may very well come to run across Bitcoin one day, but volition it be under the circumstances that Craig Wright suggests?