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Comment by phoe-krk | Hacker News Reader

As long as there is illegal content on the blockchain, they can simply state that you are hosting a node connected to a network that downloads and shares illegal content, which will be true, and therefore that you possess it, which will also be true. And that can be enough to get you prosecuted regardless of how many crypto bros are going to try to convince you, or them, otherwise.

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They being who, under what law?

It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain, not familiar with any prosecutions that have happened.

Pretending that the law trumps all technology is as naive as pretending technology trumps all law. No extreme is true: you can build technological problems to solve many social or political problems (example: VeraCrypt with plausible denialability)

>It's widely known there's child porn on the bitcoin blockchain,

Are there actual bytes of child porn embedded in Bitcoin blockchain or only encrypted-or-obfuscated urls of possible websites that lead to child porn?

Example story from 2018 saying child porn bytes are not in the blockchain and non-tech journalists are misreporting it: https://news.bitcoin.com/no-isnt-child-porn-bitcoin-blockcha...

Any credible embedding of child porn bytes in the blockchain since that story?

Related question: does the cost of storing data on the blockchain on a byte basis decrease over time?

Meaning would such attacks (attaching CSAM content to a blockchain) become more feasible at lower cost in the future?

There's no fundamental link between the cost of storing data on a blockchain and time. However, practically, it does look like the most common blockchains have gotten more expensive over time: Bitcoin, Ethereum, even Dogecoin. However, you could imagine a blockchain that gets cheaper over time i.e. by issuing more coins or even stays the same.

If not, an enforcement agency could always upload it itself to create the pretext. It might be expensive, but nation states can afford mining hardware.

> They being who, under what law?

Governments, under any law they wish to create. In some countries (eg Australia) they can (and have) created retrospective legislation that makes what was perfectly legal when you did it now illegal, and then prosecute you for it.

So, if some bad actor embedded child sexual abuse material in the blockchain it would become illegal to run a Bitcoin node?

Seems like somebody could short Bitcoin or eth, do that, make it pubic, cause a furor, and profit despite the cost.

Well, sure. They could make owning a computer illegal, or whatever. Anything outside your skull is censorable. The readme doesn't pretend that this works if you can't access the Handshake chain.

> Anything outside your skull is censorable

Given a bullet and a gun, anything inside your skull is also censorable.

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