A German court of appeal ruled that the use of portfolio passwords known to transfer the cryptocurrency without authorization may not violate criminal law.
The decision consists in strongly criticizing the legal and cryptographic communities which warn that it exposes a dangerous gap in the existing statutes.
German legal flaw allows the crypto thief to walk freely
A man helped someone (the complainant) create a cryptographic portfolio to contain 2.5 million euros from certain tokens.
The thief created the portfolio and kept the 24 -words recovery sentence. Unfortunately, the victim has never changed this recovery sentence.
Later, without authorization, he used the correct recovery sentence to transfer and potentially steal all the parts. The defendant was not allowed to move the parts and made false declarations.
The superior regional court of Braunschweig concluded that the defendant did not “hack” the portfolioSince he used passwords, he had legitimately configured and preserved.
Consequently, the action did not meet the requirement of “Overcome special access security” as defined in the Penal Code of Germany.
In addition, the court judged that there was no deception involved, rejecting the charges of computer fraud.
Blockchain systems said the court, does not assess User intention or authorization. He only affirms the presence of a valid cryptographic signature. The court also rejected the allegations of data falsification.
This means that as long as someone has a password or a valid recovery sentence – without knowing how he obtained it – Transfer of assets cannot count as a crimeat least under the current German law.
The decision effectively removes criminal responsibility for actions which would otherwise be considered as theft in traditional finance. It highlights the struggle of the legal system to adapt to the technical structure of decentralized assets.
The court noted that although the conduct could violate civil obligations, Offenses to contracts, or broken trust, are not automatically considered to be criminal offenses.
However, the decision does not suggest that the whole cryptographic flight is legal. If skills titles were obtained by fraud or hacking, different charges could apply. But this case was centered specifically on non -technical access using preexisting and known identification.
For the moment, the judgment exposes a gray area that German legislators have not yet approached.
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