Topic: Bitcoin Confiscation - page 3. (Read 4435 times)

I am reminded of FDR's executive order 6102 of 4/5/1933 which, by the stroke of a pen, made the mere possession of gold a federal crime, and offered rewards to anyone who betrayed anyone else. Sure, a handful of brave people tried to hide their gold, but the practice became as marginalized and shunned as, say, drugs or porn today.

I hate to say it, but if possession of a bitcoin privkey became a federal felony, with informant rewards, I can think of a couple of relatives who would rat me out in a heartbeat.

It's more complicated than that.

If the powers that be wanted to stop bitcoin they would just buy a lot of hardware and do a simple 51% attack and be done with it.

Sure If you are trading, carrying counter-party risk is basically cost of doing business.

perhaps it is time to consider moving to a banana republic then - hell, what a brainwash this is - to believe that one cannot possibly live without a bank account.

I agree with you - one should not trust anyone with his Bitcoins and should at all time keep it in his/hers wallet.

But what I described is different - if one has his Bitcoin and/or fiat deposited at an exchange for the purpose of trading, then those funds are not protected, they are indeed exposed to any regulator to seize at will.

I am also thinking that the time is ripe for someone to conceptualise and start operating an alternative exchange, where the user's funds are never deposited but exchanged in real time - that will negate the risk of loosing deposits to the regulators quite handsomely, add dramatically to the strength of Bitcoin.

a cracking password on block chain and a back up of all your priv keys should see you through most anything

In banana republics may be yes, but not in the developed world. If you have a job or business, you have to have a bank account, because you cant be paid and cant pay for many thing without a bank account. This is not necessary with bitcoins.

sure, like it is entirely optional to hold fiat in a bank account

It is entirely optional to hold bitcoins in exchanges.

If one considers that exchanges hold peoples deposits (in both Bitcoin and fiat), and those exchanges already being regulated (most of them indirectly, some of them directly), what is stopping the regulators giving those deposits a "haircut", this time a double whammy - in both Bitcoin and fiat?

Nothing, methinks.

The sweet illusion of infallibility!

All censoring or filtering have failed this far. Technical solutions are always few steps ahead.

Sure the developers can be coerced but this is the beauty of open source software. Anonymous developers will join in, maybe even Satoshi will return. And with open source everyone could check the commits they made.

Coins are anonymous if your identity and your public key address are not connected. You just transfer them to a new address and it's going to be very hard to prove that you're also that new address. Plus, there are coin washing machines, coin mixing services, and shared hosted wallets, and even gambling games that send you back money that went through them. Sooner or later, zerocoin is going to be implemented.

As long as SOPA/CISPA stays out (and it's never going to stop coming up, it seems,) we have as much to worry about BTC being confiscated as TPB finally going offline.  But if this is just that much more incentive to lobby CISPA into existing law, get ready for a fun brawl.  The one chance we got at actual freedom, whether some realize it or not, remains in the Internet being entirely open.  Once government finds a way to censor (and they won't ever find a reliable way, just a good enough way for the typical uneducated,) we have a lot more trouble than Bitcoin being confiscated.  They could just end the system all together, along with several other certain services we currently enjoy.  I'd say civil unrest at that point will reach an all time high.

"One [could] not merely confiscate bitcoins", gloats a forum member regarding the Cypris bank crisis. Bitcoin is great, but it's not immune to 'powers that be' corruption.

Governments could legislate¹ a 'buy back'. Corporations could seize assets via heavy handed legal action. ISPs or agencies could subjugate the network via technical (ISP/Backbone) level filtering, man-in-the-middle attacks, denial of service.

What could be done to the bitcoin network to prevent - say a government, corporation - from network/developer/miner coercion? How resilient would Bitcoin be to any of these 'social engineering' scenarios?

At the technical level, consider ISP port filtering (ala Bitorrent) (I have not read the whitepaper as to how much thought was given to this). Bitcoin Network Monitor, Bitcoin address <=> IP monitor, ISP subpoena, etc. If BTC nodes end up requiring services similar to TOR to survive, what chance does legitimate BTC usage have? 

Offline, deposit only 'cold' wallets could protect against technical efforts. Pre-existing software security solutions might help when applied to BTC (i.e. randomize Bitcoin port, bundle Bitcoin-QT with TOR, one click cold wallets...)

Hoarding physical cash might prevent 'bank' level manipulation from effecting you, similar to cold bitcoin wallets. Think of physical fiat as a cold wallet, and electronic fiat as online wallets.

The benefits of 'running your own bank' might not seem significant if you can't connect to the network (i.e. you can't process transactions).

/TheEndIsNighRant

¹ 1933 Emergency Banking Act