Children and Pornography on Bitcoin: The Current State of Blockchain and Regulations

The question raised by Ethereum developer Vlad Zamfir is not only technical but fundamentally ethical and legal: “Would you stop running your node if you discovered child pornography encoded on the blockchain?” This issue has become more relevant after RWTH Aachen University published a detailed report containing alarming findings—a graphic image of child abuse material and 274 links to prohibited content stored on the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Real Issue: Why Is the Community Alarmed?

This discovery has caused significant concern within the crypto community regarding the nature of blockchain and the obligations of those supporting the network. The core issue is not as you might remember—the child pornography here is not in the form of direct images visible on a computer.

The improperly encoded content is embedded in the blockchain as obscured links and random text strings that are part of ordinary transaction data. Coin Center, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit, explains: “The Bitcoin blockchain does not literally contain readable text or images, but rather random unintelligible data strings that, if you know where to look, can be decoded back into their original form.”

The critical point is this: most node operators and miners do not know what kind of data is running on their machines. As a result, many in the industry believe that the RWTH report is confusing and potentially alarmist in its presentation of the problem.

The Legal Dilemma: Who Is Responsible?

The legal implications are even more complex. In the United States, the controversial SESTA-FOSTA legislation aims to hold Internet service providers (ISPs) and other users accountable for prohibited content, even if they are unaware or did not create it.

Before SESTA-FOSTA, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protected individuals like you—internet users and service providers—from liability. The law states that you should not be treated as the publisher of content created by others.

But the legal landscape is not that simple. Arvind Narayanan, a professor at Princeton, tweeted that mainstream media coverage has been “disappointingly shallow,” adding that “the law is not an algorithm. Intent is crucial in determining legality.” Aaron Wright, a professor at Cardozo Law School and co-chair of the Ethereum Enterprise Alliance’s Legal Industry Working Group, said:

“This is part of the tension between the immutable data structures of blockchain and the requirements of current legal frameworks. In the U.S., it could appear as child abuse material. In Europe, it could be an issue of the right to be forgotten.”

The key catchy point: most laws state that it is only criminal if you “know that the owner, creator, seller, broadcaster, or accesser” has such content. Since the average Bitcoin user has no idea what data is stored on their node, many believe the legal risk is minimal.

Technical Solutions and Challenges

The good news is that there are potential technical ways to address the issue. Emin Gun Sirer from Cornell University pointed out that standard cryptocurrency software lacks decoder tools needed to reconstruct full content from encrypted encoding.

Alternatively, developers have proposed that network participants could simply say “no” to storing questionable transaction content. Instead, they could store only the “hash and side effects”—a way of verifying without needing to store the full content.

Bitcoin core developer Matt Corallo suggested other approaches: “If having such information in encrypted form is acceptable, simple encryption of data would solve the problem. If it’s more complex, there are still other solutions.” But he added that clearer legal certainty is needed before developers implement these solutions.

The Current Situation and Future Outlook

The clear legal obligation is: if you personally possess child abuse material on the blockchain or know who added it, you should alert authorities. This can be challenging due to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous nature, but Wright clarified that law enforcement has ways to trace uploaders.

“If you record information on the blockchain, there is often a record of who uploaded it. Similar to tax evasion or terrorism financing issues, you can mine on the blockchain and try to de-anonymize the parties,” Wright said.

The global crypto community continues to collaborate in addressing the ethical and legal implications of immutable ledgers that allow anyone to add unmoderated data. BitGo, for example, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2025 at $18 per share (valuing the company at around $2 billion), is one of the custody providers navigating these regulations and ethical issues.

The consensus is emerging: blockchain is probably not the best place to store harmful or exploitative information. As cryptocurrency adoption continues to grow, the community should develop clearer guidelines and technical safeguards to protect the network while respecting principles of decentralization and privacy.