Topic: A Warning Against Using Taint - page 3. (Read 16246 times)

So what if Apple makes a Bitcoin app and only allows "Apple Coins" approved by Apple to buy Apple approved products and services from Apple vendors in Apple Land? They would call any non-Apple coins "tainted" and will void your Apple Health Insurance and send you to Apple Prison.

I read the forums

imho people should boycott mt gox for such things.

I guess that means MtGox is already using taint.  Are they really?  How did you find out?

Do you mean that the money in my wallet that is tainted is somehow "taken" from me because I can't use it to buy something from... someone... somewhere who sees the taint?  There are plenty of other people to transact with, no?  Remember, it's a personal blacklist.  Most of the people on this thread here have insinuated that they would ignore any taint.

This reminds me of an assumption I made while I was growing up without realizing it, which is a really stupid assumption:  That prices should be the same for everyone.  That's just BS.  If I like you, you'll get a better price.  If I don't like anybody, then my price to all of them will be higher, and I won't get to trade much.  The same thing goes for this taint idea.

The biggest problem I see is lack of original judgment.  Too many people just do what they're told - they're sheeple.  Because of that, the mere suggestion that address XYZ belongs to a thief can ruin the owner of that address.  But I don't think that would happen much, because the average BTC user is a bit brighter than that, and the "mere suggestion" will get the suggester a large load of chastisement for jumping to conclusions.  Or maybe I'm wrong.  Again, it's a faith in the community that perhaps I have too much of, at least as pertains to the exposure of transactions from alleged thieves.

Absolutely not!  I don't even think any of the other things are necessary.  It's like puling the curtain back so people can see the old man.  They are free to ignore him and continue kneeling before the "wizard".  I think if the ONLY effort is pulling back the curtain, the net effect will be positive.  But I respect the consensus that it won't be positive, so I'm agreeing to disagree, and participating in this discussion now only to point things out that I think are important.

Yes, that's how to try to get around it, but once Mt. Gox starts "rejecting" (read: keeping for themselves) the coins at P because someone some time ago back said a transaction was a theft, how long can such a service remain viable? Why would they give you coins from Q and R when they know they can't use the coins at P?

True, the coins at P could be split to several addresses which are passed around on paper via private keys (similar to Casascius coins.) But if those coins can't be spent on the blockchain, and instead they require that one private key to be constantly passed around yet kept secret, that doesn't seem like a workable plan either.

Once someone chooses to believe in "tainted" coins (just like believing in "dirty money",) they'll be set on trying to "reject" any transactions even tangentially related. The best approach to dealing with this and avoiding having innocent people be defrauded and stolen from is to just ignore their belief and refuse to use code or services that implement their schemes.

I'm 6 pages in before my reply, but here's my thinking:
 
I don't support this at all, because I view bitcoins as cash.  Let's say you sell something for $100 on craigslist, and you get a nice $100 bill, you try the ink mark and determine it's a legit $100.  You go into the bank to deposit it and they say, "this $100 was stolen last month, we have its serial number written down.  You cannot use this $100 anymore"
 
I call bullshit.  It's my money, I got it through legal means.  It sucks to the person who had it stolen, but I'll be damned if I'm going to give up my money (government stealing notwithstanding).

Afaik, a typical bitcoin laundry service works like this:



You transfer N bitcoins from address A to P.
They Someone transfers X bitcoins from address Q to B, and Y bitcoins from R to C (where X+Y ≈ N minus a random fee of ±2%).
No money is transferred between A and B, A and C, P and Q, P and R, or Q and R.

Can the coins at Q or R now be considered dirty?

(the ones at P are eventually cashed out at MtGox)

Well, that's the problem, but apparently the solution is, to use the blockchain to declare unclean ALL other coins that may have ever directly or indirectly touched the "tainted" ones, no matter how much tracing back has to be done.

You would think the unworkability of this would be obvious, yet here we are, having to point this out to people who want to reject your money because it's evil. (And by "reject," they either mean keep or naively hand over to someone else, since they seem to know full well that a payment can't really be rejected, even though they keep using the word.)

Not true. Tainted is not a stolen bitcoin, it's a bitcoin merely accused of being stolen, big fking difference.

I see, thanks.

Doesn't seem like a working concept to me. If somebody steals bitcoins (by hacking someone's mtgox account or whatever, and transferring bitcoins stored online to an address of his own) he can simply mix them up with other bitcoins, send them through a few transactions combined with other addresses, or use one of the dozen bitcoin laundry schemes or services, and there's no telling which bitcoins are tainted anymore.

A stolen bitcoin.

Like someone steal a bitcoin, well then this bitcoin is "tainted" and whoever receive it will like be "omg you have a tainted bitcoin you CRIMINAL" wich of course make no sense cause bitcoins keep moving from an address to another and if you sell something to someone and he pay you with a "tainted coin" you are not a criminal.

No customers will just use cash or some other system which retains fungibility.  The customer will just ignore worthless Bitcoin and all the complications which produce no value and undermine the system.  That is the whole point.  Once Bitcoin loses fungibility is ceases to have any value as a medium of exchange.

"Here is this new medium of exchange which just happens to suck royally as a medium of exchange.  Please stop using your existing highly fungible payment systems and adopt this one instead"


At which point:
a) Bitcoin loses a user likely forever
b) The store loses a customer possibly forever
c) A class action lawsuit lawyer gains a lucrative plaintiff.

You can follow the trail of a coin. Just say a bitcoin was stolen from bitcoinica you can see in the blockchain which address it goes too and how many transactions have happened in between.

Sorry if this is a stupid question (couldn't find a non-ambiguous answer anywhere) but exactly what is a tainted bitcoin?

Mt Gox has recently blocked peoples access to coins then forced them through onerous ID requirements claiming they came from the bitcoinica hack. You can bet the major exchanges have "blacklists" only know one before they deposit whether they are on this.


If such a thing exists I would like to know beforehand rather than risk having to deal with a  goxing because i unknowingly received tainted coins.

Unsub.


[Edit, damn, didn't work.]

The problem is that the people who respond with violence are not bad actors, they are honest people who have had their money taken without compensation based on nothing more than the belief that the money might have been involved in an illegal transaction at some point in its history. Remember, YOU CANNOT CONTROL WHO SENDS YOU BITCOINS! If an honest person happens to receive "tainted" bitcoins from someone else, there is absolutely nothing that they or anyone else can do about it, and any attempt to do something about it will simply be punishing innocent users for other people's actions.

Here's another experiment you can try: Open a store and keep a drug kit behind the counter. Drug test every note a customer pays you with, and if the result is positive, refuse to accept the money but don't give it back. See how long you can last without either getting punched in the face or having the cops called on you. I guarantee you'll be out of business one way or another before the day is out.

No, it's not like that at all, and I'm not sure why you even think that. They are different because the exchange rate assumes that bitcoins (and dollars, for that matter) are fungible, meaning that one bitcoin (or dollar) is just as good as any nother. This is because when you make an offer to buy bitcoins on an exchange, you have absolutely no way of knowing who, out of thousands of other traders, will actually be providing your bitcoins, and so you have no way of knowing whether you'll end up with good bitcoins or "tainted" ones. As I have already pointed out, setting prices will be impossible if "tainted" bitcoins are valued differently from "clean" bitcoins.

Tainting will likely happen after/when Bitcoin is widespread, I would give it 12-15 years.

How do you prove that the coins are stolen?

If you can´t prove it, they wont be tainted.

That's no remotely likely. The coins will usually be going to a safe place not accessable by the on duty clerk. If the customers doesn't want to pay or can't pay the essentially random extra tax are you going to return the coins.. later? different ones?

You are not going to have a popular store that way.

The only way this would happen is if someone forced stores to do it. And even then they would probably bail on bitcoin unless someone was forcing them to keep using it.