Bitcoin’s blockchain is full of content that can land you in jail

If you are someone who has downloaded Bitcoin’s blockchain, you might have violated a dozen of your country’s laws, at least according to research published by Germany’s RWTH Aachen University.

The research suggests that Bitcoin’s blockchain could be storing anything that could make mere possession of the blockchain illegal. The researchers’ examples ranged from image depicting the sexual abuse of children to copyrighted material, to any other digital files that could be illegal in the user’s jurisdiction.

The knowledge that Bitcoin’s blockchain contains dodgy stuff is not a revelation. Even though this is the first time it has been confirmed through research, there have been speculations dating as far back as 2013.

In May 2013, CNN had reported that there were coded messages hidden in the ledger that track Bitcoin transactions; most of these were innocuous, but some were discovered to contain malicious transmissions filled with porn links — including some leading to child abuse imagery.

Jeff Garzik, a Bitcoin core developer, came up with an explanation at the time about why this was not as big of a problem just use it with knowledge@thenextweb