# The Bitcoin Legal Commons > Free, permanently-useful legal resources for people who hold Bitcoin. > Published by The Bitcoin Act (https://thebitcoinact.xyz), > a twice-weekly newsletter on Bitcoin law and regulation. Editorial rule: every page explains structure and mechanism rather than current figures. The site deliberately contains no thresholds, tax rates, filing deadlines or country-by-country tables, because those expire. Each page instead shows the reader how to locate the current position in their own jurisdiction. All content is general information about law, not legal advice, and creates no lawyer-client relationship. Law varies by jurisdiction and changes. ## Learn the law - [How law actually works](/how-law-works.html): A complete first-year law course in 33 parts with worked examples throughout. Covers what law is and how it differs from morality and custom; natural law, legal positivism and legal realism; sources of law and the hierarchy of norms; the state, sovereignty and the asymmetry between private persons and public authorities; constitutions, constituent power, generations of rights, the proportionality test, derogation and horizontal effect; separation of powers across presidential, parliamentary and semi-presidential systems; checks and balances, both models of constitutional review, and the grounds of administrative review; the legislature and legislative procedure; the executive, discretion, fettering, abuse of power and procedural rights against the administration; the judiciary, court hierarchies, jurisdiction, and judicial independence versus impartiality; legal instruments (statute, delegated legislation, agency rules, individual decisions, soft law) with a four-country comparison; unitary, federal, devolved, confederal and supranational structures; civil law and common law traditions, stare decisis, ratio and obiter, distinguishing and overruling, plus religious, customary and hybrid systems; the branches of law and the public/private divide; legal personality, capacity, subjective rights, real versus personal rights, ownership, possession and obligations; legal facts versus legal acts, nullity and prescription; the legal syllogism, qualification and forms of legal argument; the five methods of interpretation and the presumptions courts apply; burden and standards of proof, presumptions and admissibility; adversarial and inquisitorial procedure, the stages of a case, fair trial guarantees and alternatives to litigation; criminal, administrative and civil sanctions and remedies; the nine stages of a rule's life cycle; conflict rules; jurisdiction and private international law; the rule of law; how to read a legal instrument; and dedicated parts on the great principles of public law, private law, criminal law and tax law. - [Legal glossary](/legal-glossary.html): Legal terms defined in plain language, A to W, covering statutes, courts, contracts, property, obligations, procedure, evidence, tax and public law, including Latin maxims. Flags terms that mean different things in different traditions. - [How to read Bitcoin news](/news-sources.html): How to check who owns a publication, the five recurring errors in regulatory reporting, and how to find primary sources. ## Documents and templates - [Bitcoin contract templates](/bitcoin-contract-templates.html): 25 structural skeletons for Bitcoin-related agreements and declarations. ## Inheritance and estate - [Screening an estate lawyer](/screen-your-lawyer.html): Twenty questions to ask a prospective estate lawyer about self-custodied Bitcoin, what a competent answer sounds like, and disqualifying answers. - [The executor's guide to Bitcoin](/executors-guide.html): For someone administering an estate containing Bitcoin. First steps, what each type of storage means, valuation, distribution, and irreversible mistakes. ## Exchanges, banks and compliance - [Source of funds](/source-of-funds.html): The difference between source of funds and source of wealth, what evidence institutions accept, and how to build the file before it is demanded. - [Exchange froze your account](/exchange-froze-account.html): Why freezes happen, what to do in order, escalation routes, and the reactions that make it worse. - [What exchanges collect at KYC](/kyc-data.html): Data collected beyond uploaded documents, third parties that receive it, retention periods, and data protection rights and their limits. - [What a compliance department actually is](/compliance-department.html): The compliance function of a financial intermediary, the difference between KYC and AML, and why compliance is not the legal department. - [The travel rule, structurally explained](/travel-rule.html): The three-layer structure of transfer reporting rules, how transfers involving self-hosted wallets are treated, and how to find the current rule in any jurisdiction. ## About - [About](/about.html): What the site is, its editorial rule, licensing and corrections. ## License Creative Commons Attribution 4.0. Free to copy, adapt, translate and republish with attribution to The Bitcoin Act (https://thebitcoinact.xyz).