KOREA NTS DERIVES MULTISIG FROM FIRST PRINCIPLES — SEIZING THE HARDWARE DOESN’T SEIZE THE COINS. THE STATE WROTE THE MAXIMALIST HANDBOOK.

South Korea’s National Tax Service published a working paper acknowledging what Bitcoin operators have known since 2011: seizing the hardware doesn’t seize the coins. Four NTS authors walked through the mechanics — a holder who kept the same seed elsewhere is unaffected by device confiscation, and enforcement action against a self-custodied wallet is enforcement against the shell, not the value. Their proposed fix: three-party joint custody, split among court, rights holder, and investigators — because one agency holding one key invites leaks and theft. That is multisig. Derived from first principles, in a government journal, at the state’s own expense. The Maximalist doctrine got written down in the language of the enforcement authority most likely to be tested against it. When the tax service admits the technology defeats the seizure, the argument has moved past whether the tools work. It has moved to who runs them. The state proposed a design where no single agency holds the whole key. Every operator has been running that design since Coldcard added multisig support in 2019.