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An Anonymous Coward writes:

https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/2/5/22268646/german-police-bitcoin-digital-wallet-missing-password [theverge.com]

The wonderful thing about bitcoin is many of its apparent benefits, like the ability to be anonymously owned and securely transferred, are also the things that often create situations like this: police in Germany have seized more than €50 million ($60 million) in bitcoin, but they can’t access any of it because, as Reuters reports, the person they took it from won’t tell them his password.

The man in question was sentenced and has served his time in jail for covertly installing bitcoin mining software on people’s computers, but throughout the entire process, he never shared a peep about how German authorities should get in. “We asked him but he didn’t say” is the explanation Reuters was offered by a prosecutor. It presents a big, and probably obvious, question: can you really seize something, particularly money, that you can’t access or use?

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