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Question: I have been learning about bitcoin. Is it considered like money or a shtar (document) for a variety of halachic issues, e.g., marrying a woman, buying property?
Answer: We will not express a view about the value or danger (there are claims of links to money laundering and other criminal activity, dangerous volatility, …) but will look at a few areas in halacha in which determining bitcoin’s status would be significant.
Kiddushin can be accomplished by a groom giving a bride anything of value, whether a currency, a commodity (Kiddushin 2a), or theoretically even a service (see the complication discussed in Kiddushin 63a and Shulchan Aruch, Even Haezer 28:15). If a groom transfers to the bride rights to a debt a third party owes to him, even if done by speech without handing her a shtar, it can still work (Shulchan Aruch ibid. 13). The important thing is that he provides value, as long it is done positively, as opposed to something such as forgiving paymentof a debt (ibid. 10). Even in the latter case, if one says he is marrying her with the benefit she receives by forgiving the debt, it is valid (ibid.). Therefore, with the right wording, a bitcoin transfer from groom to bride can work (it is a good question at what point in the electronic process the kiddushin would take effect).
Bemare Habazak - Rabbis Questions (659)
Rabbi Daniel Mann
213 - Filling in a Copy of the Ketuba Late
214 - Halachic Status of Bitcoin
215 - Early Reading of Megillat Esther
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Halacha distinguishes between currency (tiv’a) and commodities (peiri). One contemporary application relates to the kinyan of chalifin(appr., barter), which applies to commodities and not money(see Bava Metzia 44a-45a). Another is in terms of a Rabbinic form of ribbit (usury) called se’ah b’se’ah. That is, that it may be (depending on complicated parameters) forbidden to lend a certain amount of a commodity, demanding that it be replaced by the same amount of that type of commodity. This is because loans are defined in terms of currency. If one borrows 5 lbs. of apples costing $10, he is to return $10 in some form (including apples), and not 5 lbs. of apples, if the price has changed. If one borrows $100 of cash, he is to return $100, even if the dollar’s value has gone up or down. In these regards, bitcoin is a commodity, not a currency. The clearest reason is that bitcoin is not presently universally accepted as payment (Bava Metzia ibid.). Even a national currency has that status only in a country in which it is widely accepted among people. Bitcoin is not yet close to achieving that.
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Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
