Topic: [Brainstorm] Implications of Blacklisting DPR's Seized Bitcoins (Read 4987 times)

Coins weren't frozen, coins were stolen.

And here ladies and gentlemen is why this little monetary experiment called Bitcoin is doomed to fail.

Yes, this is not binary (one mafia or many). It is gradual and could be measured in cost of switching. The current world is not the best, since the cost of switching is pretty high, but it is not the worst, since it is not prohibitively high. Snowden have paid a lot, but he have found a place to go. What we should strive for is to reduce the cost of switching mafias. To the world where swithcing thugs should be as easy as swithcing your ISP. Then the competition would force thugs to actually serve and protect.

As for bitcoin, monopoly is bad. Do we want to become the hostages of one single cryptocurrency? There should be many, so if one will get rough, we would have a chance to flee/switch to other one.

1) What are the implications of Bitcoin as a protocol as a whole if the seized coins are blacklisted?
2) How does this affect the pending legal status of Bitcoin and its uses?
3) If they were blacklisted how would this be done? Would miners simply refuse transactions from these coins? Or could they be returned to the network in the least disruptive way?

Not actually advocating this, but its just been a thought that has been on my mind.

But IRL there are competing mafias, they're called "nations."  Sometimes the competition is peaceful (politics), sometimes not so peaceful (wars).  Just like any protection racket, it's not always convenient to take your business to the competition when your local thugs charge too much (immigrate).  This really is the best of all worlds

Right. But could you name a political system that is not a protection racket? We should compare not with a dreamland, but with the real world. And the read world is ruled by mafias. The only real choice we have is between competing mafias and monopolistic mafia.

And why exactly that doesn't really work? Because there is no competing mafia you can switch to.

You realize that what you're describing here is essentially a protection racket, right? Replacing one large corrupt Federal mafia for smaller mafias for hire.

It's just a little corruption, you know. As soon as the corruption spreads and the public becomes aware of it, they'll vote it out of offic- ... oh wait, that doesn't really work.

I would first like to see how the trial plays out. If the evidence they presented all is backed up without a reasonable doubt, then there would be no right to the coins. If it turns into a kangaroo court, I say why wouldnt we? Would this not be a perfect opportunity to tell the government no. Tell them enough of this bull shit. If they are not going to play fair then we have too.

If they are not going to play fair then we have too.

I don't WANT any of this.  I'm saying, Bitcoin might fail to become widely accepted without some kind of supervision.

Like i said, i guess there will be very few independent agencies who will take care of the blacklist.  Trust and reputation has to grow over the years I'm afraid. And yes if a member of this agency decides to screw you over, you can do nothing about it.

But it will be very unlikely that you will be affected by such a corruption. As soon as the corruption spreads and public becomes aware of it, people will start using another agency.

Most people are willing to pay that small price (of possible corruption) to have a working legal system (forced right now in the real world or unforced in libertarian & Bitcoin society) that takes care of the bad guys.

As market participants are unable to track down and bitcoins can be easily laundered the only way for the real world legal system to cope with bitcoin-criminals is to shut down Bitcoin completely.

The first criminal, who stole 144K coins and will probably use parts of it to kill civilians in  just another innocent country, just recently entered the market :-)

Correct. This idea of blacklisting bitcoin addresses is the most stupid idea ever, including even the stupidest ideas in the stupid film Dumb and Dumber.

The $2,200 million valuation of Bitcoin would be flushed down the toilet if the stupid idea of blacklisting ever got any traction.

If this ever happened, I think I would lose faith in the human race for all eternity.  Words cannot express how fucking retarded this idea is.

Output scripts are contracts. The contracts precisely specify what conditions are both necessary and sufficient for an output to be spent.

If the Bitcoin network ever stops honouring these contracts, then the currency and the network have a value of zero.

I hope all the people here advocating a blacklist are trolling. Its probably telling how ineffective a blacklist will be because none of the core developers have bothered to post a serious reply.

Bitcoin works because we trust the math and the network, once we add a blacklist we now have to trust people again.  Angelamerkel, you keep saying we should not push our ideals onto you, however it is really you pushing your ideals onto us. We got involved with Bitcoin based on Satoshi's principles and the core feature is a network based on math and not having to trust people.

Your blacklist is actually against what Satoshi wanted and thus it is anti-bitcoin. I understand you want lots of power to block payments similar to paypal, so I suggest you create a clone of Bitcoin and set it up so that you can satisfy your ideals.

This is DPR's fault for giving over his coins or having a stupid weak password or allowing a keylogger onto his machine. Lets face the facts, DPR screwed up big time, he is so screwed. I wonder what his wallet password to $28 million was? Couldn't have been too difficult.

Also Bitcoins are not actually coins, did you know via taint analysis 98% of all Bitcoin users have a trace of the 10,000 bitcoin pizza transaction? Bitcoins are just numbers and if you blacklist a set amount of coins eventually they will spread all over the network (see via taint analysis how coins dilute into one another)

The blacklist would only work if 51% of the network agreed, and then we have paypalcoin.

Angelamerkel, we are forcing our views because the ideals you are against are the reason most of us got into Bitcoin, you don't want Bitcoin, you want paypalcoin.

Grab the Bitcoin source, add the blacklist system and announce it over in the alt-coin section. Cheers.

You cannot call that stealing. If violence or threat of violence is used, it is a robbery. The FBI is a bunch of armed gangsters who robs their victims  

Even though this isn't the right approach, something should be done, they shouldn't have those coins.