U.S. Congressman wants courts to be able to reverse crypto transactions

U.S. Congressman Bill Foster must think that blockchain’s immutability must be a joke following his comments that the judiciary should be able to roll back blockchains.

During a virtual event organized by Axios on Tuesday, Foster suggested that courts should have the power to unmask crypto users and reverse transactions with the help of “a cryptographic backdoor.” According to the Congressman, who co-chairs the Congressional Blockchain Caucus, the ability to reverse fraudulent transactions and unmask crypto users could help shield the U.S. government and citizens from future ransomware attacks.

You have to be able to go to a court to unmask participants under some circumstances.

As expected, Foster’s comments attracted a lot of criticism from the crypto community. Caitlin Long, CEO of Avanti Financial Group stated that the crypto industry had “some work to do” in D.C. Prominent podcaster Preston Pysh also noted that it would be hard to get more clueless than this.

The idea of rolling back a blockchain due to a fraudulent transaction has never happened without miners colliding. Attempts to roll back a blockchain following a security breach gave birth to Ethereum Classic and several other blockchains.

To many crypto proponents, the idea is simply heresy. However, to be fair to Foster, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao briefly suggesting the same thing after his exchange got hacked in May 2019.