We did think about including some references to protections for private keys while they remained in your control and you could prove as much. In theory it should be no different to dropping money on the floor. The money still belongs to you, even if someone else comes along and finds it. The onus of proof is on you as the owner to demonstrate private keys are yours, but you also need the goodwill of the person finding the money.

However, this raised a number of issues including whether finding private keys attached to coins and moving the funds constituted theft, in which case there are already criminal protections if you are able to track the coins to an individual. We decided not to include anything specific in the draft licence to keep it simple, relying instead on the generic definitions of rights to private transaction data of which private keys would come under.

Regards,

Ahmed