Bitcoin spam test allegedly violates UK law

CoinWallet’s planned bitcoin stress test may have violated UK law, a legal professional has suggested.

The assertion was first made by Reddit user 'btcdrak': "These actions (stress testing) constitute deliberate damage to computer systems under the UK Computer Misuse Act 1990."

Eitan Jankelewitz, a partner at British law firm Sheridans, agrees with that assessment.

According to CoinWallet itself, these stress tests are designed to test whether the Bitcoin network can handle small transactions under high pressure. CoinWallet's first test took place in June, which consumed a total of 105 BTC from the company, but due to a server crash, the test only reached 15% of the target value of 200MB.

“I am inclined to argue that there is a good argument that CoinWallet’s stress testing violated section 3 of the Computer Misuse Act 1990,” Jankelewitz said.

Reckless behavior

“The experiment that CoinWallet is conducting may be good for the purpose of proving the capacity of the network, but they should not conduct this test recklessly (see Section 3, Clause 3),” the lawyer explained.

Some Reddit users claimed that these tests were essentially 'authoritative' because they could also send such transactions, which is the purpose of the Bitcoin network in the first place.

"However," Jankelewitz explained, "courts have previously said that there are limits to these 'authorized actions' and that breaking those limits can be illegal."

Jankelewitz used the analogy of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack to illustrate his point, explaining that these attacks are often similar, but the affected service providers would not authorize such actions because their services would be overloaded as a result.

When asked about whether CoinWallet plans to take control of the Bitcoin network, CoinWallet’s COO, James Wilson, said in an interview:

“It’s a ridiculous allegation, if we can control billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin then that suggests Bitcoin has no value.”

According to CoinWallet’s plan, the next stress test day will be held on September 10 at 10:00 GMT.

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