[pjbyrne]

> The construction was specifically designed such that the person who figures out the hash collision is the owner... It's not a matter for courts to decide

Anything is a matter for the courts to decide. Look up Popov v. Hayashi, where the courts tried to sort out who owned the ball that was Barry Bonds' 73rd home run. 2 guys caught it at more or less the same time. There was a dispute. The courts applied equitable principles to determine how ownership should be divided. The day will come when someone needs to make a similar call in relation to BTC.

[esotericn]

In the specific situation of petertodd's transaction, the blockchain will resolve the first solution as the owner.

There is actually a technical flaw in those transactions in that a miner that is aware would just rewrite the receive address to their own as there's no signature.

But ultimately a confirmation will hit the chain and transfer ownership of the UTXO.

It's already a solved problem. This is literally the entire point of Bitcoin - decentralized consensus without need for trusted third parties.

Courts cannot move Bitcoin from address A to B. They simply do not have the power. They can muscle in and lock people in boxes and stuff but the actual coins cannot be seized because of the nature of the system.

[PeterisP]

Sure, courts cannot freely move Bitcoin from address A to B, but that's not really relevant. The relevant part of ownership in this context is whether moving Bitcoin from address A to B was legal, i.e. did you have the ("ownership") right to act with that Bitcoin? And the answer sometimes may be "no", even if you had the key (which you obviously did, if you made the transaction); the question "whether that transaction was fraudulent, did you commit a crime by making it" depends on who legally owned these Bitcoin, not on who knew the keys.

And in many cases courts can move Bitcoin, and have done so - hardware can be seized, people forced to reveal passwords, and Bitcoin transactions executed. For example, see the multiple auctions of seized Bitcoin by U.S. Marshals Service. They can't be guaranteed to succeed, but that's nothing new (it's not like stolen goods or cash always get recovered), and they certainly can try.

If someone steals something edible and eats it, courts also can't return that thing back to the owner, it doesn't mean that edible things are owned by whoever eats them. In both such cases, the courts can order (and, as much as possible, force) the culprit to compensate the rightful owner - but it matters who the rightful owner (in the opinion of the court) is, so it is meaningful to debate who owned it.