If your bitcoins are stolen, how do you prove to a judge that they were yours?

The standard answer is to sign a message with your private key.

The problem is that in this case, the thief has the exact same key and can sign the exact same message with the same validity.

A signature proves you have the key. It doesn't prove it's yours.

What a court does accept, in practice, are two things: KYC registration from an exchange and a previous tax return.

So, the person who bought in person and stored them safely for eight years, doing exactly what we all told them to do, is the one least able to prove that those bitcoins are theirs.

That's what we've called custody by exhaustion.

There's no need to prohibit self-custody: it's enough to make it indefensible the day something goes wrong.

Will the time come when we have to justify our orange money 🍊?

I'm interested in the answers 🤔