Ahn’s sentence will remain the same, however, he’ll have to sacrifice 191 bitcoins, value about $1.4 million at press time along with a few $654,000 in cash. Tracking Ahn’s trades on Bitcoin’s ledger, the court was able to ascertain how many bitcoins he acquired as payment.
“It isn’t suitable to confiscate bitcoins since they are in the form of electronics without bodily things, unlike cash,” the court ruled. “digital money cannot assume an objective standard value. ”
“Korean legislation stipulates that a seizable hidden advantage ranges from cash, deposits, stocks, and other kinds of abstract and concrete items holding standard value,” the judgment from that Tuesday reads. “Bitcoin is intangible and stems in the form of digitized files, but it is traded on an exchange and may be used to purchase goods. Thus, receiving bitcoins is a means of earning profits. ”
The nation ’s Supreme Court thinks otherwise. Even the Suwon District Court’s no decision was sentenced, and, upon being challenged in South Korea’s highest court, it didn’t maintain.
Seeing as Ahn accrued his digital luck in exchange for a illegal provider, the court reversed the decision also mandated it is legal for the authorities to confiscate it.
According to the court, the authorities could not grab Ahn’s bitcoins since, unlike other assets tied to illegal dealings, so they aren’t tangible.
South Korea’s Supreme Court just ruled that bitcoin is a legally recognizable advantage.
The judgment is a critical, should necessary, routine for cryptocurrency’s legal status in the country. After hammering a domestic ban on ICOs in September of last year, the South Korean government has now approached the cryptocurrency sector with ambivalent solve. Tuesday’s judgment and the prognosis of an official framework for nominal earnings, but appear to be steering policy at a clearer, more proactive direction.
Back in September 2017the Suwon District Court charged 33-year-old Ahn with the selling and distribution of child porn. Running a site since 2013, Ahn was detained in May of 2017 for distributing some 235,000 disgusting files. Despite the fact that the court handed Ahn a guilty verdict and 18 months in prison for his actions, it did not confiscate the 216 bitcoins Ahn accumulated in market for the porn.
“[Ahn] obtained bitcoins by providing a certain bitcoin speech to porn watchers online. Records saved on the Bitcoin blockchain demonstrated that bitcoins delivered to him ought to be seen as profits online,” the court judgment states.