Chinese Court Treats Bitcoin as Property in 107 BTC Memory Theft Case

A court in eastern China sentenced a man to 10 years and nine months in prison after he stole 107 Bitcoin using a wallet mnemonic he had memorized, according to Cointelegraph. The case centered on access to a crypto wallet through its seed phrase, rather than a conventional account breach.

The ruling matters because the court treated Bitcoin as property in the theft case, a point closely watched by crypto users and companies operating around custody, wallet security and digital asset disputes. While China maintains strict limits on crypto trading activity, the case shows that courts can still address Bitcoin ownership in a criminal context.

Mnemonic phrases, often called seed phrases, are the human-readable backups that can restore access to a crypto wallet. Anyone who knows the phrase can potentially control the wallet’s assets, making it one of the most sensitive pieces of information in self-custody.

The sentence also underscores the legal exposure tied to stealing digital assets, even when the method does not involve hacking software or breaking into an exchange. In this case, the reported theft depended on remembered access credentials and resulted in a prison term of nearly 11 years.

For crypto holders, the case is a reminder that wallet security depends heavily on controlling access to recovery phrases. For the broader ecosystem, it adds another example of courts applying property concepts to Bitcoin when resolving criminal conduct involving digital assets.