From: Nicolas Lamp
<nicolas.lamp@queensu.ca>
Sent: Friday 10 January 2025
17:05
To: Robert Stevens;
obligations@uwo.ca; ENRICHMENT@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject: RE: Bitcoin and
Restitution
Here is a
New Yorker article from 2021 about the background to the case:
Half a
Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/13/half-a-billion-in-bitcoin-lost-in-the-dump
I ve used
the case as the basis for an exam question on lost/intentionally abandoned
property in my Property class.
______________________
Nicolas
Lamp
Associate
Professor, Faculty of Law
Queen s
University
Kingston,
ON
613 533
6000 x79118
Macintosh-Corry
Hall, Room C519
Queen's University is situated on traditional Anishinaabe and
Haudenosaunee Territory.
From: Robert Stevens <robert.stevens@law.ox.ac.uk>
Sent: January 9, 2025 9:09 AM
To: obligations@uwo.ca; ENRICHMENT@LISTS.MCGILL.CA
Subject: Bitcoin and Restitution
An amusing
case, combining two of the things I am interested in.
https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2025/22.html
The
claimant, by mistake, in 2013 deposits a hard drive containing the key to his
Bitcoin wallet in a landfill site in Newport. Claims that the Bitcoin now worth
in excess of 600m (more than the value of the landfill site. Or, indeed,
Newport.)
Seeks a
declaration that either the council digs up the site to find it, or allows his
team of experts to do so.
Claim is
struck out. Lots of proprietary restitutionary stuff.
Rob