In the opinion of Nick Szabo, a long-time researcher and computer scientist, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are minimally trust-free, not trust-less, and this difference is important for how states and private actors can push back.
Szabo cautioned that while layer 1 of a robust trust minimization system can withstand many kinds of interference, legal pathways remain a significant vulnerability.
He said financial rules are one set of risks the ecosystem has learned to deal with, with the help of developers and extended legal expertise focused on cryptocurrencies, but laws surrounding arbitrary data create a much broader and harder-to-predict attack surface.
Image: Global Sign
Minimal trust Not no trust
Szabo told readers that while the design of technology reduces the need for trust in a single party, it does not completely eliminate the need for trust.
In his view, abandoning the phrase “no trust” and using “minimize trust” is important because it points to real limitations. Developers must make careful choices to inform the protocol.
Anarchist capitalism is a surprisingly abstract ideal that can spark innovation. This helped inspire me to invent cryptocurrency.
However, actual cryptocurrency is not trustless. That means trust is minimal. Each cryptocurrency has a legitimate attack surface.
— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) November 16, 2025
He said lawyers have also become part of the defense and that their legal work has enabled them to manage financial law attacks in many cases.
The argument is not that Bitcoin is vulnerable. The threats are not only technical, but real and legal, and these threats change with new laws and court rulings.
Regulators face practical limitations
Not everyone agrees. One critic, Chris Seedor, who runs a Bitcoin seed storage company called Seedor, called some of the legal fears a “boogeyman.”
Seedor, based on reports of his remarks, argued that while states can attempt to use the law to stop tools and protocols, history has its limits.
Respectfully, I think you are giving too much weight to the speculative legal boogeyman.
Bitcoin’s resilience was not about anticipating every possible area of the law, but about minimizing the technical points where coercion could bite. If regulators could shut down universal data…
— Coinjoined Chris ⚡ (@coinjoined) November 16, 2025
He pointed to PGP and Tor as two technologies that have become unpopular with some regulators but can still be used. His point is that without a central control point in the code, courts and agencies lack the real leverage to shut it down entirely.
Arguments from various angles
The debate is partly about emphasis. Szabo focuses on open legal questions and new kinds of laws that can be used to target arbitrary data or content on chain. Seedor highlights how technical design can remove lever points that make implementation easier.
Both are talking about the same problem from different directions. If you look at a legal map, you’ll see a lot of untested routes. The other looks at past enforcement and sees that countries rarely win against widely decentralized protocols.
Featured image by Yagi Studio/Flavio Coelho/Getty Images, chart by TradingView
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