If someone steals a private key by committing another crime like stealing a laptop, that is a crime because you own the laptop. If they learn of your private key without committing a crime, that is not theft.
You don't own 'space on the blockchain.' I have no idea what that even means.
You do need to understand elliptic curve cryptography to have confidence (not faith) in bitcoin because you make the transactions in bitcoin. You are responsible, not some third party. People understand the dollar because it is physical and you can get them on demand and they originally got their value from Gold, not some abstraction like proof of spent energy one time awhile back.