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Topic: [Brainstorm] Implications of Blacklisting DPR's Seized Bitcoins - page 3. (Read 4987 times)

legendary
Activity: 1330
Merit: 1000
I'm not saying this is a good idea, but from an economic perspective we wouldn't even have to "block" the coins indefinitely or even for very long.  Just slowing their re-entry into the Bitcoin economy would be enough.
sr. member
Activity: 454
Merit: 250
People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

Again, who are you to force your fundamentals upon others.  There should be a client with blacklist option and the people are the only ones to decide whether they want to leave their black list blank or not.  I would add the FBI and noone else....

 Roll Eyes
legendary
Activity: 1400
Merit: 1013
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.
member
Activity: 92
Merit: 10
People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

Again, who are you to force your fundamentals upon others.  There should be a client with blacklist option and the people are the only ones to decide whether they want to leave their black list blank or not.  I would add the FBI and noone else....

Another important point:
Ross Ulbricht was one of the good guys.  Sooner or Later the really bad guys will discover Bitcoin: blackmailer, hitmen, trafficker, "real" terrorists. Only a few of these guys could pose a serious threat towards Bitcoin. A working blacklist system could prevent certain problems that the current cash money system inherits.

What do you intend to do if bad guys starting kidnapping children from rich guys to extort huge amouts of bitcoin?
legendary
Activity: 4690
Merit: 1276

If it is proven that Ulbright attempted hire the torture and execution someone to preclude them from turning states' evidence, then turned around and tried to get a hit on another person who hacked his enterprise, I would actually value the FBI coins *higher* than 'normal' ones.  Catching the guy is one of the relatively few instances where the government is actually doing what I pay them to do.

vip
Activity: 1316
Merit: 1043
👻
People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

sr. member
Activity: 454
Merit: 250
the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

According to reality, that's called fair and square.
hero member
Activity: 546
Merit: 500
the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.

AES-256 ASIC hardware i would imagine... or god forbid a 10 dollar wrench Sad

...as leet as DPR was, he used some pretty shitty judgement along the way, i'd be willing to bet his passphrase was less than stellar -and by stellar i mean 20+ char (special/num/upper).

No, I bet he gave up the passwords as part of a plea agreement. They definitely did not bother to go crack it themselves. He was intimidated into giving it up.
member
Activity: 92
Merit: 10



I vote for neutrality, but adding a blacklist to a client would not be difficult at all. Keep in mind that a blacklist would be mostly ineffective because it would be relatively easy to circumvent.
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How would you circumvent that?  The Blacklist will be handed over as parameter to the Client when it starts  and only the original Address is needed while all others can be calculated.   If the FBI sends 100 BTC to a wallet that already contains 100 BTC and that wallet spends a total of 110 BTC, I would automatically mark the last 10 BTC spent as black Coins.  

The blacklist could be left empty or automatically updated via open market strict or less strict "central" address lists, whatever the user prefers.  It would only make sense to add addresses  which still contain the Bitoins and which are about to stay there for a while untill most clients have updated their black list.

In the end it only works out, when enough people participate. Not sure that will be the case...

member
Activity: 100
Merit: 10
the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.

AES-256 ASIC hardware i would imagine... or god forbid a 10 dollar wrench Sad

...as leet as DPR was, he used some pretty shitty judgement along the way, i'd be willing to bet his passphrase was less than stellar -and by stellar i mean 20+ char (special/num/upper).
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 1007
the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.
hero member
Activity: 518
Merit: 500
Manateeeeeeees
Even if they were blacklisted, couldn't someone mint zerocoins out of them before everyone updates their clients, then withdraw them later?
http://zerocoin.org/
Theoretically, there'd be no way to figure out which coins were the blacklisted ones after the conversion, so the holder would be able to launder them of this blacklisting.  It could either work out well, or kill zerocoin because of association.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1003
the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion
legendary
Activity: 4690
Merit: 1276
how is it even possible, technically speaking?

Maybe he plans to completely monopolize the mining space.*

* Actually, that plan has been floated before to eliminate such bad actors as Persians and their ilk from the economy.  I would not rule it out as a practical mechanism with sufficient consolidation of the network infrastructure.  Just gotta get that fucking block size unlimited.

member
Activity: 92
Merit: 10
"Bitcoin needs to follow the rules of the Bitcoin network protocol for everyone, without exceptions.  Otherwise it's no different than a centrally controlled currency."

I'm really sad to read that you guys want to force your values and norms on others.  The opposite is true:  Forced neutrality is almost as bad as centrally controlled currency.  


I'd like to download and use a Bitcoin client that displays blacklisted Coins separately.  Any other wallet that receives blacklisted Bitcoins will also be blacklisted if it spends more blacklisted bitcoins than it receives.  It shouldn't be so hard to code, should it? Am i missing something here?

 I believe no core developer or anyone should tell anyone if Bitcoin should be neutral or anything. The people should decide whether they want to use the Blacklist-Client or the original.  I'm willing to donate BTCs for the first coder to provide a Client with a Blacklist option.  
member
Activity: 112
Merit: 10
Coffee makes it all better!
how is it even possible, technically speaking?
sr. member
Activity: 354
Merit: 250
One of the most effective disruptive activities I imagine the Feds or banking industry could do, is publish their own white/blacklists of coins, with the implications that as long as businesses accept only whitelisted and/or refuse any blacklisted coins, that they have the blessings of the powers that be.

Of course, this wouldn't really stop anyone from using blacklisted coins, and especially those outside the US could do as they please... those who didn't honor the fed's coloring of coins would not be impeded in any way... but I will bet that if the fed colors the coins, they could successfully force the market to start tracking a different market price for their different colors of coins.

Couldn't the owner of a significant quantity of blackened coins taint everyone else by sending out hundreds or thousands of small or large amounts to "clean" addresses?
vip
Activity: 1386
Merit: 1140
The Casascius 1oz 10BTC Silver Round (w/ Gold B)
One of the most effective disruptive activities I imagine the Feds or banking industry could do, is publish their own white/blacklists of coins, with the implications that as long as businesses accept only whitelisted and/or refuse any blacklisted coins, that they have the blessings of the powers that be.

Of course, this wouldn't really stop anyone from using blacklisted coins, and especially those outside the US could do as they please... those who didn't honor the fed's coloring of coins would not be impeded in any way... but I will bet that if the fed colors the coins, they could successfully force the market to start tracking a different market price for their different colors of coins.
legendary
Activity: 980
Merit: 1008
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?
This is the important point, in my opinion. How can this even be done?

If we can find no proper way of doing this, discussing the implications is irrelevant.

You have the right to refuse to accept any coins you want, as does everyone else. In order to effectively blacklist these coins, everyone would have to refuse to accept them. How would you get everyone to do that?
hero member
Activity: 593
Merit: 505
Wherever I may roam
because, someone might think it delightfully evil to disallow the fedz to spend or exchange the confiscated bitcoin, rendering those coins worthless.  Cry Cheesy

I don't think there are enough dumb guys who would undermine the stability, fungibility and possibilities of success of this currency just because they don't like laws and rules.. or at least I hope so.
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