A court in the United States that follows federal laws. has agreed that it’s okay to use information from a Bitcoin transaction to let a defendant know about a lawsuit. This case is the first one to accept this method. It might help solve many cryptocurrency theft cases where we don’t know who the attacker is.
Federal Court allows the use of Bitcoin Op Return to notify a person.
Bitcoin is being used for communication in legal matters. A court has agreed that using information from a Bitcoin transaction is okay to tell someone they are involved in a lawsuit. This situation, mentioned by the security website Krebsonsecurity as the first time this method is allowed for this job, could make similar actions where serving defendants is hard to do or not possible happen faster.
A healthcare worker from California named Ryan Dellone had $100,000 worth of cryptocurrency stolen from his Coinbase account in December 2021 because of a SIM swap. In December, the court said it’s okay to use Bitcoin’s Op-Return to tell the attackers about the case.
Dellone’s lawyer, Ethan Mora, and a group of experts in cryptocurrency were able to follow the money to a Bitcoin account. Dellone was told that the Bitcoin address is being looked into for being involved in stealing cryptocurrency. He doesn’t know who has the money now. But, he got permission from a judge in California to use the address.
The message was hidden in a payment of $100 to an address and a link to a lawsuit stored on Google Drive. Mark Rasch is a person who used to work as a lawyer for the U. S government The Department of Justice said:
The courts are changing how they give legal papers to people, which is good and needed.
However, some people do not believe that this procedure is valid. Peter Todd, a person who works on Bitcoin, said:
This is a really bad way to help someone. I haven’t seen any wallets that show OP_Return information for money coming in.
