Governments May Have Had Some Successes, but Seizing Bitcoin and Crypto Is Still Very Hard
It may have strong competition, but one of the most disturbing things to happen to crypto in 2022 was the Ontario Superior Court of Justice issuing a Mareva injunction. Set against the backdrop of demonstrations and blockades that “paralyzed” Ottawa early this year, this injunction permitted the seizure of cryptoassets belonging to protestors, who had been receiving financial support in the form of bitcoin (BTC) and other cryptoassets.
When combined with reports of the US Department of Justice seizing USD 3.6bn in BTC in February, for instance, the injunction seemed to fatally undermine the notion that cryptocurrency is immune from government control. Indeed, US government agencies have seized cryptocurrencies on numerous occasions in recent years, helping to create a suspicion that any sense of cryptocurrency’s inviolability is mostly an illusion, and that a sufficiently determined government can seize bitcoin, ethereum (ETH), or anything else whenever it wants.
However, figures working within the crypto industry affirm that successfully seizing cryptocurrency ultimately depends on seizing an address’ private key, something which should be more or less impossible, assuming that holders keep their funds in their own self-custodial wallets. That said, they also acknowledge that with the continued popularity of crypto exchanges and increasing anti-money laundering regulations, seizing funds held in custody by a third-party is becoming easier.
It’s worth pointing out that the aforementioned injunction wasn’t entirely successful in actually seizing cryptoassets donated to protestors in Canada. Based on the latest published information (released by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police), Canadian enforcement agencies managed to
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