Topic: 15% Discount on the Trezor Model T (Read 331 times)

Who's forcing you to do coinjoins is not relevant.  What matters is who's forcing you to not do coinjoins.  Wasabi team do, if they happen to not like your coins.  Partnering with a company which prohibits you from coinjoining, while pretending to be the last piece of Bitcoin's fungibility is a straight up "no" to me.  Especially at the same time when there is joinmarket.

It's not Trezor or Wasabi that will/are doing the censoring. It's zkSNACKs based on the unpublic and private information they receive from their blockchain analysis friends. But since zkSNACKs is run by Wasaby, the two are basically the same thing. I think both RickDeckard and o_e_l_e_o posted parts of zkSNACKs' terms of service that tell you everything you need to know.

Just because some things aren't available on this forum or the internet, doesn't mean they aren't happening. You can't seriously think their cooperation with a blockchain surveillance firm is an April's Fools joke or that they share pictures of cats with each other and eat cake. The surveillance of all UTXOs is the agenda. 

I consider any entity which actively works against the privacy of all bitcoin users by funding blockchain analysis, and actively works against bitcoin itself by enforcing government sanctioned blacklists, to be malicious. I do not think such a stance is in any way crazy.

15% discount is still valid for Trezor Model T but I think that this is still way overpriced and I wouldn't spend my money on this device now.

Sorry but I have to say this is straight up crazy statement to say.
I can be toxic sometimes with my posts, but you are going super toxic right now  
Nobody is forcing you to use Coinjoin feature if you don't like, and your addresses will not be known to anyone except you.
Continue using centralized mixers and your addresses will 100% be known to governments in future.
Why don't you complain about centralized mixers? Or there is no problem with them?

I am not suggesting any hardware wallets for a while now, because I found negative stuff in each of them.

^{PS
I am still waiting for a single proof of someone getting censored by Trezor/Wasabi.}

That too, but certainly with limitations. There will be those whose money they will gladly take and others who won't have a say in their decisions. For example, Chainanalysis is a US-based company. They will surely not sail against the wind or do anything that will put them on the radar of regulators and national agencies.

Or depending on which government provides them with the most money.

zkSNACKs doesn't want to provide any additional details about it because I don't think they know the specifics themselves. Whatever blockchain analysis company they lay in bed with makes the decisions, and the coordinator doesn't care. The blockanalysis company won't disclose anything so as not to help anyone try to cheat their made up system of determining taint and having their UTXOs classified as not tainted. And I am sure they are going to tweak the rules as time goes by depending on who the biggest enemies are at the moment.   

While I'm sure no one doubts o_e_l_e_o words, and to show everyone how broken those Terms of Service are, here is the relevant paragraph within Wasabi Terms of Service[1]:
The concept of "coin tainting" is already pretty abnormal but the fact that they are able to suspend any UTXO's under "sole discretion" and not provide any kind of details about it really shows how obscure and danger this way of acting is towards the whole system. I can't imagine no other good reason to build this system but only to have a free tool to censor any kind of UTXO's that an entity so desires, without the need to disclosure anything more.

I'm still baffled how Trezor managed to side with the company (and implement other privacy shady operations in the last months), but I guess the only thing that I, as an individual, is able to do is stop promoting their products and advise people that are better options out there.

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[1]https://raw.githubusercontent.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/master/WalletWasabi/Legal/Assets/LegalDocumentsWw2.txt

I hope they don't read this forum (of course they do), so such an idea will not occur to them - although I am convinced that the service of "washing tainted coins by the government/central bank" would not come for free, but with at least a 10% fee. When we think about it, maybe CEX will think of something similar, so when there is already a withdrawal/service fee, maybe they will add some kind of "clean your coins fee" which would actually be some kind of centralized coin mixer

If their ultimate goal was actually providing privacy, then they could have partnered with a coinjoin implementation which A) actually works and B) doesn't directly fund mass surveillance. Their ultimate goal is profit, and they don't give a crap about selling out their morals and their users to get there.

And don't believe the lie about "serious criminal activities". The Wasabi Terms of Service clearly state that you can be censored for any reason whatsoever and Wasabi won't tell you why.

For anyone interested, this is their response:  https://forum.trezor.io/t/trezor-wasabi-cooperation-with-chainalysis/12224


More or less the same crap Wasabi team answers back when get asked about this.

Both Passport and the ColdCard might not fit everyone's interpretation of an easy-to-use hardware device. Passport is airgapped, requiring users to work with QR codes and camera scans. It's not difficult to learn, but is different if you have gotten used to the USB-connected Ledgers and Trezors.

Additionally, ColdCard isn't open-source. They have verifiable code, but nothing is released under an open-source license. I have said before that if I am an end-user interested in checking and verifying the code myself, ColdCard allows me to do that. So, that's ok. The reasons why they aren't open-source should be of secondary importance.   

My current suggestions would be either Passport or Coldcard.

Very sad to see them partnering with zkSNACKs.  I don't own a Trezor, but I have recommended it to friends of mine who weren't technically experienced enough to setup a wallet themselves safely.  No Trezor, no Ledger.  What easy-to-use hardware wallet is left with good reputation, source code transparent and professional maintenance?

Even better than that, why not hand over your dirty bitcoin to the government, and the government will hand you back the same value in squeaky clean CBDC! Perhaps Wasabi could implement this feature directly for any UTXO their blockchain analysis buddies tell them is "tainted".

As absurd as this method may seem, I have no doubt that it will be used in the fight against Bitcoin when some other agendas no longer make sense. All coins will be marked as tainted at some point, and we know who will wash them and return them to the market - the same ones who do it today. Maybe they could do the same with their currency, because some say that most US dollar bills have traces of some drug on them, so why not withdraw all the dirty bills and clean them...

Wow, this is really a sad day. I used to like recommending the 'Model One' to people with very tight budget. Even though it has no secure element, I found it good enough for most users and it fulfilled my 'open source hardware & software' requirements.

I'll stick to recommending people to save up for a Foundation Passport for now then, and potentially look more into DIY solutions as well. How about trying to build a Passport ourselves using the published OSHW files? I reckon that would be a fun project.
In my experience, building a new device from scratch (like the current DIY wallets) has a higher potential to fail / stall since without funding there eventually comes a time when nobody will continue working on the codebase and update the device to new standards and such.

Absolutely. As I've said many times before, it's only a matter of time before every satoshi in active circulation can be linked to some malicious activity somewhere in its past. It is already a completely arbitrary decision on behalf of blockchain analysis firms as to how far back they choose to look, and therefore how likely Wasabi are to censor perfectly innocent users.

QFT.

If society were to apply the same concept/ideology to the fiat system, I wonder how many would see their bank accounts being blocked due to the reasons that somewhere deep in the transaction chain that money was tied to "illicit activities" or was suspected to have been associated with illicit activities. No entity should have domain/control from our own coins and any attempt to have that in effect is an attack to an individual sovereign and privacy. I will sadly also not be able to keep recommending Trezor products to my closer circle (and within bitcointalk forums) due to this greedy decision.

I've explained here about some of the inherent problems with Wasabi coinjoins: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.61220171

However, even if Wasabi coinjoins did not have these problems which the devs try to sweep under the rug, every time someone tries to coinjoin some of their coins, Wasabi pay a blockchain analysis company for information about those coins, and will then censor the coins in question if they don't like what they find. We don't know which blockchain analysis companies they use because they keep it secret, and we don't know what their criteria are for censoring users. Their terms of service also make it clear that they will not tell you why you are being censored. By doing this, Wasabi are surveilling all of their users and enforcing blacklists drawn up by governments and other unknown authorities and third parties regarding who is and is not allowed to coinjoin their coins.

I certainly don't want my wallet asking blockchain analysis companies to investigate my coins, and I certainly don't then want my wallet to then refuse to let me use my coins in the way I want based on secret criteria handed down from secret third parties. Not to mention that the fee you pay by using Wasabi's coinjoin is directly funding this blockchain analysis surveillance. By implementing Wasabi's coinjoin, Trezor are directly supporting all of this. All the UTXOs in your Trezor wallet that you try to coinjoin will be investigated by blockchain analysis, you will be censored if they don't like what they see, and you are paying a fee for this privilege of being spied on and censored.

I consider directly funding mass surveillance and enforcing government blacklists to be actively malicious behavior, and antithetical to the very concept of bitcoin. I will never suggest anyone ever buys another Trezor product again.