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Topic: BOYCOTT all businesses associated to Alex Waters, Matt Mellon, and Yifu Guo! - page 2. (Read 16713 times)

legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1024
Must read, copied over from reddit

Quote
Preface: Your upvotes contribute to his google search.

I believe it is worth exposing each person in this new CoInvalidation team. Yifu is a dishonest criminal of bitcoins, dollars, time, and his actions speak to a nefarious character. Google him, it's been covered.

Well, what about the other guys? The coin purse, cofounder, and government connections guy is Matthew Mellon.

First, let me preface this with saying Matt has really great family lawyers. They have attacked (and removed) a lot of articles exposing him and reporting on his past. If you report on this on your blog, he will send legal to come after you.


So, who is Matt?

Matthew Mellon is part of one of America’s most influential and wealthy families — with ties like Gulf Oil, Carnegie Mellon University and Alcoa. Matthew inherited a $25 million trust fund at only 21, and started blowing it on cocaine, guns, celebrity company, and whatever other ridiculous or dangerous things he could get his hands on. He almost overdosed, and instead of reforming, he divorced his wife went back to hit the slopes some more. He fired his next fiancee, and left her financially dry, only to jump to another woman shortly after.


Some stuff he's done that went public:

Matthew Mellon historically had a nasty breakup which exposed his crack, cocaine, and business embezzlement.

Matthew Mellon is friends enough with this ex-Paris Hilton boyfriend asshat, having borrowed him funds which also funded Brandon's drug use.

Matthew Mellon was likely involved in a hacking scandal which his lawyers cleaned up nicely. The problem with making a website also apologize is it leaves traces.

Matthew Mellon also threatened lawsuit to take another article down here. "the wealthy Matthew Mellon thought they needn't act as average people, so instead they've, through their attorneys, tried to scare us."

A report still up shows that Matthew Mellon allegedly hired wire-tapping on his ex-wife. Do you trust him with your validation? On further research, he was arrested and charged.

For you political folks, I will let you make your own decision on Matthew Mellon's contributions to Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney. He has donated both separately (majorly to Ryan) and combined. This includes the defunding of Medicare and Medicaid.

I'm sure I could keep digging wonderful things, but this post is getting too fucking long. Matthew Mellon, and associates Alex Waters & Yufi Guo, if you read this: fuck. you.

Alex Waters, you're next. And Kashmir Hill - thanks for your previous exposure but you are a shill. Your spin shows your lack of spine and willingness to suck the institutionalized finance dick. Fuck you too.


TL;DR: Alleged criminal Matthew Mellon eager to help government in fighting "bitcoin criminals".


ya.ya.yo!
sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 255
Remember a couple of years ago all the conspiracy theorists were talking about one world currency, one world government, chips, all that stuff? Every day Bitcoin looks more and more similar to it. Sometimes I think we have been tricked into using a currency that offers us no privacy at all.

Yeah we may become insanely rich, but there is a price we pay for it.

And people say the Bible isn't accurate...
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 510
there are a lot of services out there which are a serious threat to privacy.

take Coinapult.  This company has an enormous database of Bitcoin Addresses to Email Addresses.  The NSA routinely buys such companies out(through their partner VC firms) and adds the database to their system for monitoring the populace.

But you can mask your email address fairly easily. I think a public key would work better than an email address because then the communications channel between you and the business would be entirely encrypted but also verifiable through a digital signature.

Anyway there is probably a technological solution to this but right now everyone is reacting with angry and talking about trying to mix their coins. Mixing the coins will not solve this problem but it might help protect fungibility.
hero member
Activity: 714
Merit: 510
You libertarians are just crazy, your whole focus on wrapping your self in secrecy and eliminating any accountability in society you create the very Dystopia you fear.  To stretch a metaphor from TLOTR (a better work of fiction then anything Ann Rand ever wrote btw), your think passing out copies of the one ring will make the world a better place because the common man will somehow be 'equal' to elites.  Equally unaccountable and equally likely to abuse that power I think (you know even Frodo succumbs to the temptation, because you know know power corrupts etc etc).  If you want a world free of abuse of power then you can't fight fire with fire, you need universal accountability and transparency so abuse of power can be seen by everyone rather then fester in the shadows.  

And seriously of all the realms of our lives were privacy might be justified, out financial and business transactions are the last ones that are deserving of privacy.  I would really expect more libertarians to understand how markets work, they require information and the more the better.  Information asymmetry between two parties makes a fair meeting of the minds impossible and thus leads to market inefficiency.

See David Brin (my favorite author btw) on the subject of privacy, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Transparent_Society  And
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/02.06.97/cover/brin1-9706.html


Privacy should exist everywhere but there should be a balance. A way to follow the money trail must exist to prevent institutional corruption. For this reason we cannot have secrecy in financial transactions. We can have privacy though. I don't think everyone needs to know what books everyone else is buying.

But I want to know if a politician or police officer is being bribed because democracy depends on it. A free society depends on transparency.
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1004
Firstbits: Compromised. Thanks, Android!
can we stop this?
Yes, but not by negotiating with every fool who attempts it, for there are far too many fools in the world.  I've personally talked two startups out of similar business models in the past.

We can stop this by making sure that its not viable, by tweaking our practices and the ecosystem to be an environment that things like this just can't work in. This means: Anonymous mining, Discouraging address reuse, coinjoin, etc.  Importantly, people need to step up and fund the development of privacy tools.  Today there is no business model for decenteralized privacy tools that people can use casually and thus pervasively.

We must vote with our wallets— not our spending, but how we choose to transact and what developments we fund. As a spending group the people who really realize the importance of privacy and fungiblity will always be a small enough minority that short-sighted business people will find it all too easy to go without their business.

I agree and support everything you said here, Gregory, but I'm afraid that might not be enough.

Working around balcklists is feasible, through the means you cite. But the threat here are not blacklists, the threat are mandatory whitelists.

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

The solution seems obvious (if difficult to implement):

A setup where you know the address you send money to... but where no one can determine where the funds in a given address came from.

This has downsides of course; you can't prove you sent a payment, only that payment was sent.

But developing this scheme seems worthwhile enough, as it will stop this nastiness cold.

EDIT: Frankly, the way bitcoin works, even if such an option was available, there will always still be an option to use direct payment, and the tendency will be to force users to do so. It's looking like we need a new cryptocurrency where direct payment isn't even possible.
sr. member
Activity: 313
Merit: 258
i agree boycott coin validation scam. bitcoin shoild me made more anonymous for the average joe to use
legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1024
np, love your username btw!

Brendan Diaz
works with Alex Waters at Apex (who I assume is "incubating" this startup) as the COO, you should put him down under Alex's "people" as well

Alex on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/user/alex_waters
yifu:     www.linkedin.com/in/yifuguo


Thank you! Updated.

Everybody feel free to contribute.


ya.ya.yo!
sr. member
Activity: 279
Merit: 250
Alex Waters has not worked for BitInstant for a long time, you should take that down. He helps run the Apex Incubator as far as I'm aware.

edit: source, i've met him in person. also his linkedin: www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-waters/10/605/29b

Thanks for the info, updated.


Whoever has additional information, feel free to post.


ya.ya.yo!

np, love your username btw!

Brendan Diaz
works with Alex Waters at Apex (who I assume is "incubating" this startup) as the COO, you should put him down under Alex's "people" as well

Alex on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/user/alex_waters
yifu:     www.linkedin.com/in/yifuguo
legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1024
I think I speak for many in saying thanks for your input Adam, it seems to me there are too many business minds involved in the decision making of Bitcoin whose only concerns are the profit for themselves aspect.


Agree. After reading a bit about Matthew Mellon (info updated) I'm even more concerned.



ya.ya.yo!

sr. member
Activity: 378
Merit: 250

Well towards getting some kind of reasoned response from Coin Validation I tweeted a link to Alex Waters & Yifu Guo for the above thread.  Couldnt find their email, but their twitter handle are easy to find, and they appear to be very current.

https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/401104148558397440

Adam


I think I speak for many in saying thanks for your input Adam, it seems to me there are too many business minds involved in the decision making of Bitcoin whose only concerns are the profit for themselves aspect.
hero member
Activity: 630
Merit: 500
Well towards getting some kind of reasoned response from Coin Validation I tweeted a link to Alex Waters & Yifu Guo for the above thread.  

With all due respect, but I feel that's analogous to a Jew in the early 30s trying to reach Nazi leaders in order to convince them of how wrong they were.

You're just putting your ass on the line. These people are working with regulators.
sr. member
Activity: 404
Merit: 362
in bitcoin we trust

Well towards getting some kind of reasoned response from Coin Validation I tweeted a link to Alex Waters & Yifu Guo for the above thread.  Couldnt find their email, but their twitter handle are easy to find, and they appear to be very current.

https://twitter.com/adam3us/status/401104148558397440

Adam
legendary
Activity: 3430
Merit: 3080
If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist.

You're assuming the white-list will be public. It needn't be.


A determined Belarusian computer hacker should put a stop to that.

Also, I don't see how disallowing public queries of the list could work. If you receive coins from a dirty address, you have no way of checking whether or not you can accept them.
hero member
Activity: 630
Merit: 500
If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist.

You're assuming the white-list will be public. It needn't be.

The alternative is to give up on "law abiding businesses"

How would you know in advance which business are helping the thugs create their whitelist and which are not? It's not like they need to publicly advertise it.
legendary
Activity: 1806
Merit: 1024
Alex Waters has not worked for BitInstant for a long time, you should take that down. He helps run the Apex Incubator as far as I'm aware.

edit: source, i've met him in person. also his linkedin: www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-waters/10/605/29b

Thanks for the info, updated.


Whoever has additional information, feel free to post.


ya.ya.yo!
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 100
I'm a little two sided about how this would play out.
Isn't this just going to create a non-white listed market that millions of people and companies will have to use whether they want to or not?
sr. member
Activity: 270
Merit: 250
  Scammers and now they want too play the perfect citizens whats next chargebacks if your coins arent clean makes me want to go out and commit crime i feel sick now i might as well use paypal from now on !!!
legendary
Activity: 2282
Merit: 1050
Monero Core Team
...

If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist. Work out how to prevent all "white" addresses from ever getting their transactions processed.

Now we have a freedom vs censorship hashpower war? And we also know why certain ASIC chips were not delivered on time.
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