United States v. Gratkowski, No. 19-50492 (5th Cir. 2020)
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The Fifth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of defendant's motion to suppress evidence obtained through a search warrant. In this case, federal agents used an outside service to analyze the publicly viewable Bitcoin blockchain and identify a cluster of Bitcoin addresses controlled by a child pornography website that defendant used to download material.
The court held that defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in his information on the Bitcoin Blockchain where the nature of the information on the Bitcoin blockchain and the voluntariness of the exposure weigh heavily against finding a privacy interest in an individual's information on the Bitcoin blockchain. The court also held that defendant lacked a reasonable expectation of privacy in his Bitcoin transactions on Coinbase where the nature of the information and the voluntariness of the exposure weigh heavily against finding a privacy interest in Coinbase records.
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