Cash payments are special [LWN.net]

Cash payments are special

Posted Jul 15, 2026 21:44 UTC (Wed) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: UI automation is necessary for accessibility by Wol
Parent article: An update on the scraper situation

Which is why I asked for references, because all the ones I could find specifically say they cash is special. See for example [1] which specifically notes the situation was settled for banknotes in the UK in an important case in 1758 which I'm too lazy to look up.

In particular:

> When the identifiability of an asset falls toward zero, the owner’s incentive to search for it after a theft falls toward zero, the buyer’s incentive to investigate title falls toward zero, and the value of any title rule as a deterrent to theft falls toward zero. At that limit, the efficient legal rule is not a better-calibrated allocation between owner and purchaser. It is the abolition of the contest: the recipient in good faith and for value takes a fresh title good against the whole world, and the transaction is final.

If the hypothetical tokens for payment for web access are effectively anonymous and fungible, then every transaction is by definition in good faith and final.

See also the "Money has no earmark" rule.

[1] https://singulargrit.substack.com/p/the-asset-the-law-gav...

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Cash payments are special

Posted Jul 16, 2026 8:42 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

> If the hypothetical tokens for payment for web access are effectively anonymous and fungible, then every transaction is by definition in good faith and final.

Just to thread that in with another sub-thread here (which I know Jon has indicated that it should be left to peter out) - this is why Monero (in addition to the much lower transaction fees) is better for online payments to something like Bitcoin. Monero's ledger is not transparent, and hence Monero is fungible - not so for Bitcoin.

Cash payments are special

Posted Jul 16, 2026 9:28 UTC (Thu) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link] (1 responses)

I followed that link, and looked up the case law it references; the key to it is that there are two separate rules around the return of stolen goods:

Compensation for loss; someone stole a car from me, you took it in, failed to make adequate checks for whether it was stolen, and parted it out. I now have a claim against you for the value of the stolen car. The case law the site you reference references says that a good faith cash transaction definitionally cannot fall under this rule - not checking at all qualifies as "adequate checks" for cash, since otherwise it would be impossible for a cash economy to function.
Return of actual stolen property. This is impossible for coins (since any suitable identifying marks would make it not a coin), but is possible, if improbable, for bank notes; if the victim of theft can show that they scrupulously and accurately record the serial numbers of all bank notes of that value that they receive and lose (both spent and stolen), and you have a stolen note in your possession, then this is enough to establish that you must either return the stolen bank note or something of equal value.

Case law only deals with the first of those situations; the second is as-yet untested in court, but based on similar cases with postage stamp collections, it's plausible that the courts would rule that because I'd shown that you had the specific cash stolen from me, you have to return it to me.

Cash payments are special

Posted Jul 16, 2026 14:24 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183) [Link]

> Return of actual stolen property. This is impossible for coins (since any suitable identifying marks would make it not a coin), but is possible, if improbable, for bank notes; if the victim of theft can show that they scrupulously and accurately record the serial numbers of all bank notes of that value that they receive and lose (both spent and stolen), and you have a stolen note in your possession, then this is enough to establish that you must either return the stolen bank note or something of equal value.

Nope. That was the whole point of the Miller vs Race 1758 case. At the time cash notes were a sort of "bearer cheques" and so easily identifiable: they had a bank name and a person's signature on it. The judge ruled that, even though the bank note was easily identifiable, it had currency and as far as the law was concerned not identifiable (no earmark).

It has no Wikipedia article, but the equivalent case in Scotland is here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crawfurd_v_The_Royal_Bank

> In a unanimous decision, the judges decided "that money is not subject to any vitium reale; and that it cannot be vindicated from the bona fide possessor, however clear the proof [of] the theft may be";