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Topic: Coin Validation misunderstands fungibility and could destroy bitcoin - page 5. (Read 29380 times)

newbie
Activity: 15
Merit: 0
I agree that this is the wrong approach to be taking cleaning bitcoin.  But I do think it will have to be cleaned before it can become mainstream.
legendary
Activity: 1078
Merit: 1006
100 satoshis -> ISO code
It is also a ridiculous approach.  If they want to certify users, they should do that as optional KYC, AML certificates that regulated merchants in respective jurisdictions can request, which could be attached to wallets/identities, not to fully fungible coins. The certificates should be non-transitive they attest to the identity of the user, not the coins.  They should be optionally sent - if the recipient does not request it, it is privacy destructive and a security risk to send identifying information to unregulated businesses and individuals.

Their technical representatives of Coin Validation should be ashamed.  How can someone who doesnt understand a concept as basic as fungibility and its relation to transaction costs, and the difference between identity and coins hope to exist in this ecosystem.  

What they are proposing so far at least as explained by the Forbes article is stupid, dangerous and just wrong. 
Oh man, I'm sooooooo supporting you.


100% agree. This is the right approach.
legendary
Activity: 1470
Merit: 1006
Bringing Legendary Har® to you since 1952
It is also a ridiculous approach.  If they want to certify users, they should do that as optional KYC, AML certificates that regulated merchants in respective jurisdictions can request, which could be attached to wallets/identities, not to fully fungible coins.  The certificates should be non-transitive they attest to the identity of the user, not the coins.  They should be optionally sent - if the recipient does not request it, it is privacy destructive and a security risk to send identifying information to unregulated businesses and individuals.

Their technical representatives of Coin Validation should be ashamed.  How can someone who doesnt understand a concept as basic as fungibility and its relation to transaction costs, and the difference between identity and coins hope to exist in this ecosystem.  

What they are proposing so far at least as explained by the Forbes article is stupid, dangerous and just wrong.  
Oh man, I'm sooooooo supporting you.

newbie
Activity: 52
Merit: 0
Reality,

Boycotting won't stop them.  We need to put our thinking caps on, as Adam said, and figure out a better solution.  It seems the dark wallet and mixes is the best option.  If we figure out now what will fix the problem, we can popularize it while the coin is still young.
hero member
Activity: 588
Merit: 500
Great post Adam.

In every superhero movie there's also a scumbag traitor who sabotages a noble cause for personal gain.  These guys are it.  They know perfectly well the full implications of what they propose.  To assume they are just stupid or careless or misunderstanding, is to let them off lightly.  They should be shunned and berated and boycotted to the point of never wanting to show their face again in any context related to Bitcoin.  

The many thieves and scammers in this community are an unpleasant reality, but these guys are an even lower life form.  Traitors and collaborators were rightly assigned by Dante to the very deepest circle of hell.


 

legendary
Activity: 1792
Merit: 1008
/dev/null
Their technical representatives of Coin Validation should be ashamed.  How can someone who doesnt understand a concept as basic as fungibility and its relation to transaction costs, and the difference between identity and coins hope to exist in this ecosystem.
thats why i give a damn about media. they never understand what they are talking about...
sr. member
Activity: 404
Merit: 362
in bitcoin we trust
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/13/sanitizing-bitcoin-coin-validation/

Its based on significant misunderstanding about bitcoins value proposition - destroy its fungibility and the costs float up to meet credit cards and paypal.

It is also a ridiculous approach.  If they want to certify users, they should do that as optional KYC, AML certificates that regulated merchants in respective jurisdictions can request, which could be attached to wallets/identities, not to fully fungible coins.  The certificates should be non-transitive they attest to the identity of the user, not the coins.  They should be optionally sent - if the recipient does not request it, it is privacy destructive and a security risk to send identifying information to unregulated businesses and individuals.

Their technical representatives of Coin Validation should be ashamed.  How can someone who doesnt understand a concept as basic as fungibility and its relation to transaction costs, and the difference between identity and coins hope to exist in this ecosystem.  

What they are proposing so far at least as explained by the Forbes article is stupid, dangerous and just wrong.  

I am also incensed frankly that someone would step into the market with such a muddle-headed thinking, and attempt to sabotage or destroy the core bitcoin feature that gives its value, where the value has been created by Satoshi and a cast of millions of man-hours of contributions of the community and technical wizards developing it mostly on volunteer time.  I am not someone prone to swearing, but this is astonishingly stupid and dangerous.   Please stop now.  In the article it is claimed they sought advice from the Winklevoss twins, if the twins value their estimated $30million bitcoin holding they should advise them to stop: if fungibility is destroyed bitcoins value as a transaction currency is impacted.  

I encourage anyone with technical skills to put their thinking caps on to find ways to increase fungibility in the short term like CoinJoin, coin control in wallets, helping less technical people migrate to better wallets, educating people about privacy practices that defend fungibility.  And longer term privacy technologies like zero coin, homomorphic encrypted value and committed (hidden) transactions.

I encourage all bitcoin businesses to shun Coin Validation unless we see some major U-turn or corrections.  If your business depends on the success bitcoin, it depends on the fungibility of bitcoin, and Coin Validation seem to be set on destroying both.

You can quote me on that.

I welcome Coin Validations corrections of the claims in the Forbes article.  Tell me you were misquoted.

Adam

ps For people who have no idea who http://cypherspace.org/adam/ I am https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.237167 , my small part in bitcoin is I invented distributed mining in 1997 https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Hashcash (you can find the reference in Satoshi's paper) and worked on opensource ecash & crypto currency research & implementation for about a decade alongside Wei Dai & Hal Finney & others.
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