Topic: [Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges - page 9. (Read 2791 times)

And we have now hit the nail on the problem.

The masses only follow the person with the carrot-stick, because that's all they care about.

And the carrot-stick guy is the exchanges, and we ain't got nothing to incentivise these people not to use those exchanges.

It takes other (good) exchanges to destroy the rotten ones.

I'd agree that resistance is the only solution. We're always looking for technical solutions, but honestly, it's a political / social problem and it requires a political / social solution.
If anyone defines untraceable cryptocurrencies as illegal, it doesn't matter if you added the untraceability through a mixer ('high level') or protocol level like Monero. They'll treat them equally.

If we want to solve these issues, we need education and conviction of millions of people who don't want mass surveillance and cause pressure on politics. If everyone just complies, authorities will keep doing their thing.

Again, I don't know why the ones banning ChipMixer UTXOs would suddenly accept MimbleWimble. Or protocol-level anonymous Bitcoin.
I'm not sure you can find a technical solution to a political problem.

To be clear: privacy is possible today, with mixing, CoinJoin and Lightning. Maybe in the future with MimbleWimble and protocol-level changes. But there are parties that don't want such anonymous funds, funds that aren't tied to a real-life identity or funds that in the past have passed a casino. I don't see them suddenly accepting anonymous funds that have essentially just been anonymized in a novel technical way.
Just because the reason they don't accept it isn't that they don't like mixers specifically, it's that they don't like anonymity.

We can already and always will be able to use Bitcoin anonymously peer-to-peer; with or without any changes.
It's just that certain organizations don't treat all Bitcoin equal and I feel with enough pressure from end users (e.g. by educating) - as early as possible - they might actually be forced to change their terms wherever they're already just voluntary (e.g. Wasabi). And wherever terms are legally limited, with the huge amounts of funds they have, exchanges could do lobby work to be able to meet the users' demands (for privacy).

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Let me just frame this real quick

But we all know this isn't going to happen. Or it will take a long time before centralized exchanges notice a significant drop in user activity to the point they start worrying about their profits and maybe change their ways just a little bit. Incentivizing users with some free money, decreased trading fees, and in the future maybe giving them an NFT (with promises that it's going to be worth a lot soon) will still be enough for most to forget about all the negatives.

I don't think the paper bitcoin notes solves anything. If I withdraw coins from a gambling site to a paper note, and then that paper note changes hands 100 times before ending up with you, and you deposit those coins to an exchange, then the exchange will absolutely still look at the blockchain and just see:

Gambling Site -> Intermediary Address (the paper note) -> Exchange

No amount of emails telling them that the bitcoin had changed hands will convince them not to class those coins as tainted, otherwise literally everyone who is accused of having tainted coins can just email and say "It wasn't me".

Again, this is the real solution here. If the whole community stopped buying in to this taint nonsense and stopped using exchanges which enforce this nonsense, then the whole concept would disappear very quickly.

Privacy protocol changes would probably be best thing for some people or nightmare for others, but it's hard to imagine that happening right now.
I think mimblewimble has some chances to be implemented in BTC like it was for LTC, but this is only optional and most people probably wouldn't even use it like that.
Maybe we could see some better second layer solutions for privacy, or some wallets that couldn't be stopped by regulators.

We could always use bitcoin for trading p2p without third parties, but I guess there wouldn't be enough liquidity (mostly fake) that would attract big players and big capital.
As long as we have governments acting like our babysitters, we are going to have corruption and power concentration that will affect bitcoin for sure.

It depends how deep their detection software is going to search for Bitcoin connected with gambling, but they could always expend that to mixers, hacks, supporting truckers, sending coins to another country owner, etc.
This can go super crazy, especially with those carbon credits they are rolling out soon, this could soon become a living nightmare if we continue using centralized exchanges.
I like the idea of using offline paper bitcoin notes that could enable us to use this notes like cash, and nobody would find any online trace, until we spend BTC from that note.

This.

Privacy invasion, such as searching someone's home or devices or monitoring their communications or financial activities, is entirely justified if there is reasonable evidence to suspect that person of a non-victimless crime. However, such cases account for probably <1% of privacy invasion which takes place under the direction of governments and their associated agencies. What absolutely is not justified is the blanket surveillance of entire populations and countries, the wire tapping, the banning of end to end encryption, the government backdoors in to your devices and software, and all the other shocking revelations which have come from and since Snowden.

There is no evidence that such blanket surveillance has prevented terrorist attacks or any of the other things that governments claim. Its goal is population control, not crime prevention. It is never justified and it should be resisted.

It looks like taint to me. I don't think it's going to be difficult for them to prove (if they want to) that the deposited Bitcoin came from a gambling platform. The owner of the coins could have changed, but it's still the same "dirty" coins. Dirty in their own understanding of that term. If I can't use them on that exchange, it means they are tainted/tagged/dirty/unwanted/rejects... Call them whatever you want.

Just imagine being told the same thing when you use fiat. You go out to buy something and the shop clerk tells you can't use those bills because they have traces of this and that. Get out of my shop before I call the police.

Agreed. I noticed the word arbitrary in Article 12:
I agree there are limits. And I have no problems with government cracking down on (suspected) criminals.
What I do have a problem with, and which has been in the news several times in the past years, is government agencies illegally listening in on many private conversations (the so called drag-net approach).
Where I live, we have quite good privacy laws, but they're violated by many if not most organisations, including government itself.

You're probably right: they'll still try to get rid of Bitcoin, just like they're (slowly) trying to get rid of cash money.

There are many points to comment on here, and as I said before, it seems to me that this issue of privacy is going to give a lot to talk about. I think it's going to be like the never-ending story. When I have more time I will continue commenting on this and the other threads on other points of this matter, but there is a central aspect that I want to comment on.


I affirm that the right to privacy is a right that has limits and it is good that it has them, and I would like to know if you agree with this or not, because if not, it seems to me that it is not worthwhile to continue debating on the subject.
Privacy has to have some limits from the moment you live in society.

Part of privacy is the right to secrecy of communications, but if the authorities believe you are breaking the law, they can spy on your communications to check if you are indeed doing so.

Defending that you have the right to 100% privacy with Bitcoin is the same as defending it in this aspect and I, although I defend the right to privacy to a certain extent, recognize that it has to have some limits.

I don't know if you are arguing that the authorities should not have the right to violate your privacy either in any case such as the one above.

Alright; that's a good point, however I still don't know why the entities pushing against this human right (politicians, lawmakers, ...) would treat 'Bitcoin with protocol level privacy' any different from 'Bitcoin with high-level privacy' (that comes from ChipMixer or other non-traceable origin). To them I don't think it matters why they can't trace it, just that they can't - and that's what they push back against. They couldn't care less in which layer we implement privacy, in my opinion.

Honestly, if the majority of people (think 'Bitcoin Twitter' with most of their big 'personalities' and conference speakers) use and support centralized exchanges, Wasabi and similar, I can see a scenario where miners see it as more profitable to mine on that chain instead of the original one. Contrary to the UASF, in this scenario it's possible that the majority of (especially loud) voices side with the taint nonsense.

As long as the exchanges and government bodies behind them don't control the hashpower, it's not really a CBDC, but on the other side exchanges already 'issue' (sell) nonexistent BTC, so it's really close to be honest.

Thanks a lot, this is what I'm looking for! Will add with links to your post. Edit: Won't add Binance for now, since they didn't mention 'attempts to hide the origin', so I have to give them the benefit of the doubt that they just don't want funds that come directly from a gambling site.

It is 'taint', though: you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins. What if Pmalek sends me his coins (that he got from a gambling site) for a 3D printed steel washer jig that I sold him; and then I want to deposit those BTC on Gemini? Gemini will easily be able to claim that I am the one who withdrew the coins from a gambling site and that I just shuffled them from one wallet to another in an attempt to hide their origin.

I think it is important to note that this is different than taint. I believe they are saying that if they conclude, based on the facts, that you are depositing the proceeds from gambling, they will close your account. I understand that they are not saying they will necessarily close your account based on a single metric on a single report.

I wrote What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint last month.

I was told by Gemini support personnel that if they find out that you are depositing coins from a casino/sportsbook or you are trying to conceal the origin of your coins, your account will be permanently closed. Binance.US said something similar, although they didn't specifically mention the closing of accounts. "Actions will be taken" is the wording they used.

Let them try. You would either end up with a small number of centralized exchanges forking to some niche altcoin which would quickly die (and those exchanges along with it), or if you somehow reached consensus among a majority of large exchanges for a fork (which would be near impossible since they would all want to somehow exert majority control), then you would be left with essentially a CBDC.

Do people who use inappropriately high fees deserve segwit? Do people who use inappropriately low fees deserve RBF? Shouldn't they all just learn to look at the mempool rather than have us implement time consuming protocol changes? Changes are driven by what is good for bitcoin, not by what its users may or may not deserve.

Bit of all three. Modern life is filled with indoctrination that you don't need any privacy, or that giving it up is a good thing. Go to social media and broadcast your entire life to everyone. Sign up for an account and receive $5 off your next order. Let us track your activity for more personalized results. Let us record everything that happens inside your own home so you can turn off your lights with your voice. Complete KYC so you can buy some useless shitcoin.

Yes. Privacy is a human right.
Up to the point where BestChange went with the "taint" BS, I had recommended them several times and started to trust them. After this, I'll be more careful recommending them, and even though I still trust their service, it changed my view on them.

Let's highlight this part:
It's totally different! If I deposit money to my bank, they may ask me how I got the money, but they won't hold the previous use of that money against me.

It seemed futile there.

Most people's loyalties are flexible when it comes to earning money. But informing them is the first step: if they don't know about it, they can't take an informed decision.

That's another thing: I would never send my documents to Costa Rica! Let me quote the website right right next to their registered address: "We accpet gambling". That doesn't sound like a company I'd trust with my identity.
Isn't it funny they're licensed in Curacao but don't allow users from Curacao to use their site?

And this uncovers the weakest link in the chain of buying/sellng crypto: Sure, the crypto itself may be pseudonymous, but exchanges make the rules as to which users are "good" and which users are "bad". And we can't count on governments to step in and correct this because they are being lobbied by exchanges to do otherwise. They are basically the wild west of crypto.

Also, exchanges tend to make rules absed on what bad people are doing with cryptocurrencies (think scammers and criminals) and currently there is not a single action being taken against them to stop their illegal activities. Why? Because people think it's too hard to do so.

I've said this before, but cyberattacks and cyberscams happen through operating systems and browsers, these companies need to step up and dismantle their operational infrastructure similar to how copyrighted stuff is DMCA'ed.  Perhaps a similar bill needs to be introduced by the cybersecurity and tech companies to address that, so that all forms of malware and scams can be "copyrighted" (except that there is no legal owner of them, and anyone attempting to use them are stopped in their tracks).

I don't know, some of the casino licenses are from tax havens, with fairly lax regulations and low profit tax, if they impose any tax at all. Surely they have more leeway to be able to spend funds that have no clear origin than if they had a license, say, from some EU country. The reason I don't know, but there is a general trend in the world to more and more KYC/AML everywhere, even the number of tax havens has reduced considerably from a few decades ago to today.

I have been thinking a lot about this issue, which I think will be a topic of much discussion in the coming years, and so far, I have come to the following conclusions:

1) The top privacy advocates I see on the forum are on average quite a bit smarter than the average citizen and the average forum user and quite a bit more tech-savy than the average Bitcoin user.

2) I think that this blacklist is useless, because only the minority of people in point 1 are going to pay attention to it. Let's look at an example:

If Best Change is unreliable, it's not just a matter of not using their services. The responsible users of the forum should not advertise it in their signature either. There are currently 24 members in the Best Change campaign and one vacancy for which people are constantly applying.

This blacklist would make sense if it could convince at least some of the participants to leave the campaign, and convince at least some of the potential candidates not to apply for the vacancies.

Is something like this going to happen? No, not at all. That's what I mean by facts and not ideals.

By the way, to me what Best Change says doesn't sound crazy at all, and if it's so wrong that statement, I don't see why he hasn't been debated on that point in the thread.

The same will happen with Wasabi signature campaign, good luck trying to convince people not to participate in the campaign.

3) And the same could be said about the many casinos advertised on the forum. In this case not so much about clean or dirty coins, but in the attack on privacy. The casino I advertise has KYC requirements, like most of them.

The only ones that I clearly remember that operate without a license and without any KYC requirements are Lightlord's casinos, lol, of great reputation on the forum at least until recently, despite his habit of paying very late.

So, I would believe that this type of blacklists and the defense of privacy that you forum members described in 1) advocate will give any practical result if it would have visible results in the forum. Like convincing those of us who advertise to blackjack.fun or Best Change to stop doing so because they are privacy attacking companies. And convincing people not to apply to fill in the slots.

I'm not sure they would help a lot to be completely honest. Any service committing to this whole 'taint' thing would for one, heavily resist such a change to Bitcoin and maybe even try to fork it or some shenanigans like that (of course, not before spreading enormous FUD about the proposal and telling everyone that it's initiated by criminals, to protect other criminals). And secondly, if something like this were to be implemented, it would probably be optional (if not just for backwards compatibility) and they'd just define any transaction that uses this new feature 'tainted'.

In the end, even if implementing privacy on protocol level would solve all our issues and exchanges & authorities would suddenly accept that they can't easily track Bitcoin anymore (highly unlikely in my opinion), I'd like to bring up one question. Do the people who currently use Bitcoin with 0 privacy (who would gain some by this procedure), deserve it? Do people who are ready to sell out their own PII without blinking twice, who are ready to run with all the 'criminal tainted UTXO' nonsense, deserve protocol-level protections of their privacy?

Because everyone who actually cares about privacy and Bitcoin as a whole, can already use Bitcoin pretty privately as of today, without (risky and time consuming / costly) protocol changes.

Unfortunately, you are right. Do you believe this is because of ignorance, brain-washing or maybe it's much more complicated than that? I don't think privacy is a very hard thing to understand, yet a lot of people repeat 'I have nothing to hide [here, have my data]' like a preprogrammed mantra. Why isn't the 'default phrase' about privacy 'I don't have anything to show [so nope, you can't see my data]', instead?

Do these people ('many people will always be too willing to surrender their privacy for the smallest convenience') deserve deep protocol changes, though? Can't Bitcoin just stay as it is? Even if it means lots of people won't get to enjoy some of its core benefits?

I think you are conflating multiple issues. Blockchain analysis is going to reveal that a hypothetical drug dealer paid a bar $100. That same blockchain analysis is going to reveal that it is some merchant receiving that transaction for a nominal amount. Exchanges are generally not going to care about a merchant receiving nominal amounts of coin from a drug dealer, when the amounts are in line with what they expect to receive during the normal course of business from a single customer.

The above is similar to a drug dealer paying a transaction fee. If the fee is within an expected range, no one is going to bat an eye when the miner goes to spend the block reward. However, if the transaction fee is outsized, questions might start to get asked, especially if a particular miner receives large transaction fees on any kind of regular basis (when other miners do not).

I've said this before many times. Money talks. If, when Coinbase decided to spring "enhanced KYC" on all their users, all their users just said "No thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere", you can guarantee they would reverse that decision within the hour and by the next day they would be lobbying governments and buying out politicians to change the laws to be more privacy friendly. If, when Binance decided to start charging 100x more than they needed to for withdrawals to trick newbies in to accepting their centralized scamcoins instead, all their users just said "No thanks, I'll take my business elsewhere", you can guarantee that those withdrawal fees would drop by 95% within the hour. I'm far less optimistic than you, though. In a space filled with people who will throw money at obvious scams, who talk about centralized altcoins like they are the next big thing, who think privacy is only for criminals and that government oversight is a good thing, then the vast majority will quite happily roll over and accept whatever nonsense centralized exchanges thrust upon them.

There will always be a strong privacy focused group of users to build and promote things such as Bisq, ChipMixer, JoinMarket, and so on, but unfortunately there will always be a much larger group of users selling themselves and bitcoin out by handing over every last shred of data and dignity to anyone who asks for it.

This is only real solution, I think. Too many people will always be too willing to surrender their privacy for the smallest convenience. Even on this forum of all places we have plenty of users, including many senior users, who actively disparage privacy and privacy enhancing tools.

Isn't that because the owners too need to be able to spend their money legally? Anyone could create an online crypto casino, and as long as the owner is anonymous, they could run it on .onion and stay anonymous. But when they grow bigger, and the owners are swimming in money, they can't explain all that wealth to their local government without making their casino fully compliant.