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Topic: Bitcoin Violates Principle of Fungibility - page 2. (Read 1565 times)

legendary
Activity: 3066
Merit: 1147
The revolution will be monetized!
I dunno. I would consider it less fungible if the price were lower for some listed coins. However there is always someone who will buy them at full market value. Any blacklist would be a voluntary system and such systems never work broadly because everyone has to agree to leave money on the table.

There is also the problem of washing such coins. Its easy and makes "coloring" coins or assigning "taint" a pointless exercise.
legendary
Activity: 1512
Merit: 1012
Quote
and services are willfully denying their deposit into wallets held by exchange businesses.

yeah ... trust this ...  Roll Eyes
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
Quote
Don't virgin coins only fetch the premium due to paranoia or overly safety methods. Coinmixing has proven that tainted coins can spend just fine.

Yes, additionally one can easily mix coins buy going from btc - alt - btc (and repeat with another exchange if paranoid) to even further clean your coins and produce fungibility just like with fiat.

Tracking the funds can be done but is just more difficult to accomplish either way ... exactly like with fiat.

Coinmixing with a centralized service isn't as good as some of the other methods of cleaning taint because of low volume, honeypots, and the fact that you are mixing your coins primarily with other tainted coins and high risk targets.
legendary
Activity: 1708
Merit: 1036
I have to disagree, more or less. Suppose a bank robber runs off with a haul of cash, which the bank has the serial # records for. The robber subsequently tries to deposit the cash elsewhere but his efforts fail because the receiving banks check the serial numbers and catch that they are from a crime.

So bitcoin shows itself to be similar to fiat in this case, not different. And just as the thief could use the cash at institutions that don't check the serial #'s, the Evolution thieves could spend the bitcoin at less wary outlets. Bitcoin is fungible in the way that matters, while enabling individuals and institutions to make their own decisions regarding particular coins. Which is a principle of liberty we should applaud.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
Quote
Where have you ever seen a coin blacklisted? I haven't heard of a thing yet.

There have been a few cases where exchanges or businesses have refused some of the currency, and certainly virgin coins fetch a premium above regular coins. This isn't much different than fiat however as accepting money from a drug dealer may be dangerous and have certain risks. Fiat uses distributed ledgers as well and tracks both digital and physical currency.
hero member
Activity: 658
Merit: 501
I don't follow...The same could be said about the lack of fungibility with fiat money associated with crimes. Some of the same problems and solutions with laundering fiat exist with bitcoin. Additionally, Fiat has a bigger problem because it is tainted at inception when it is created or minted to those who understand the inherent fraud that is occurring.
full member
Activity: 284
Merit: 122
www.diginomics.com

In light of recent events within the bitcoin industry, namely the Evolution Marketplace going up in a burst of flames with customer money, it has become clear that cryptocurrency deviates from traditional money in more ways than initially meet the eye. Bitcoin, among a slate of other cryptocurrencies, violates the principle of fungibility within money – that is, each coin’s transaction history differentiates them from every other bitcoin in circulation. With the collapse of the hidden Evolution Marketplace, these coins have now been tainted, and services are willfully denying their deposit into wallets held by exchange businesses.

Bitcoin fungibility has been called into question, and it is becoming glaringly obvious that this poses a threat to the stability and long-term usage of such currency. Exchanges want nothing to do with these stolen funds, and therefore, lessen their value in relation to otherwise identical cryptocurrency units.

Fungibility is the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. That is, it is the property of essences or goods which are “capable of being substituted in place of one another.”

– Merriam-Webster


Read the full post on Diginomics.

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