In it episode thirty-two Separating Money and State, Iván Gómez talks with Clara García Prieto, tax lawyer and author of Bitcoin: a new form of private propertyto trace the philosophical and legal genealogy of property and argue that Bitcoin does not fit into any existing category of law.
It is not possession in the classical sense—there is no physical thing—nor ownership in the registry sense—there is no third party to recognize the title. Its central thesis is that in pure self-custody both collapse into one: Whoever controls the seed possesses and is the owner at the same time, without the need for anyone external to certify it.
This new category, which Clara does not finish baptizing but does describe precisely, makes Bitcoin the first asset in history that grants non-confiscatable property to those who historically could not have it: women in countries with unequal rights, minors under unreliable custodians, citizens in States that tax or expropriate without notice. Responsibility, he warns, is the exact price of that freedom: there is no safety net, there is no recoverable password, there is no one to complain to if access is lost.
The most relevant:
- The stated motivation for writing the book was to dispel the fear of Bitcoin, taking as a witness case his own mother, who went from skepticism to understanding after reading the manuscript.
- According to Clara, in Roman law—citing the manual The Art of the Good and the Just—there were already limitations on private property codified in the 12 Tables.
- Clara argues that in pure Bitcoin self-custody it is not possible to separate possession and ownership: whoever has knowledge of the seed words has both simultaneously.
- According to World Bank data cited by Clara, in more than 90 countries women do not have the same property rights as men.
- In Spain, approximately 50 years ago, a woman needed her husband’s consent to open a bank account or sign certain transactions.
- Clara identifies three main risks in the inheritance of Bitcoin: total loss of funds due to lack of planning, heirs who are unaware of the existence of the asset, and funds that cannot be tax credited by the person who receives them.
- The figure of the digital executor – a person with technical and legal knowledge who accompanies the execution of inheritances with digital assets – is proposed by Clara as necessary and still without a consolidated legal framework in Spain.
- Clara’s book was included in the library of the University of Valladolid for consultation by law students, a fact that Clara describes as a sign of institutional legitimation of the topic.
- According to Clara, MiCA requires that assets collateralized in a custodian be kept in a segregated account and cannot be re-mortgaged, which represents concrete protection for the user in the event of bankruptcy of the custodian.
- In the Netherlands, a project was promoted to tax unrealized profits on crypto assets that was stopped due to pressure from criticism, according to Clara; data that requires verification of the date and current status of the legislative process.
- Clara declares herself a critic of hyperregulation, with the position that legislating too quickly produces rules that “immediately deteriorate or have not been known in reality”, and advocates a balance between individual legal security and innovation.