Topic: "Failure to Understand Bitcoin Could Cost Investors Billions" (Bitcoin's flaws) - page 10. (Read 43230 times)

Bitshares is supposed to be like a decenrralized bank via BitUSD or Bitxxx is this similar to your understanding of a decentralized exchange?

"No".

Are you in the process of making this coin a reality? If so, any expected timeline?

Mine it and may I suggest don't trade it for Bitcoin, otherwise you taint yourself (with potentially dire ramifications for claw-backs).

Instead exchange to fiat as needed via a decentralized exchange. I already know the design of a decentralized exchange. Thus there will be no AML nor KYC applied.

Essentially blacklist Bitcoin entirely, otherwise you taint yourself. Use fiat where you need to use Bitcoin. And push for merchants to accept your new coin. If enough people do this, then it will happen. You need to be passionate about it, just as the Bitcoiners were/are.

If you need to pay and only Bitcoin is accepted, then feel free to send your payment to an entity takes ownership of your coin, converts it to Bitcoin, and pays your intended merchant. Make sure the Terms of Service clearly state they take ownership of your coins, so that you are not tainted with liability of holding Bitcoins even for a millisecond.

If you have Bitcoin you would like to trade for this new coin, may I suggest you convert first to fiat. Then untaint that fiat somehow (e.g. get cash from an ATM), then use a decentralized exchange to trade for the new coin, i.e. in the USA mail a money order or do a meet up or deposit a (post office or convenience store, not a bank) money order (not the cash) to a bank account. Or better go buy more computers to mine it with but please untaint the fiat first, because claw-backs from Bitcoin will trace through to fiat!

By decentralized exchange, I do not mean localbitcoins, because they keep centralized records. I mean a peer-to-peer system that will be built in by default in the mining and transaction client!

Actively educate users to blacklist centralized exchanges and any coins that were processed through them. Support development of tools to do blockchain analysis and list coins which have become tainted by centralized exchange.

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Edit: tvbcof, on your "many currencies" idea, the problem is economy-of-scale to get merchants to accept them all. It seems like a last ditch futile sort of experiment. Might be willing to go there if all else fails. I'd rather fight first on a unified alternative to Bitcoin.

I'll support any and all serious efforts to make a secure and totaly anonymous coin. Now, I'm not a programmer by any stretch of the imagination, nor do I know enugh of the ins and outs and pitfalls to know what to ask for in a coin.

How can I help?

Essentially my stance is that as Bitcoin becomes more popular, the will of the increasing number of naive users will be supersede the idealism of the early adopters. The way a representative democracy (as opposed to direct voting on each issue which is impractical except for perhaps a townhall format) functions is that the government regulators (and a whole other echelon at the covert agencies level) have an obligation to appease that majority will.

Bitcoin being global provides a majority will demand for the governments to cooperate globally.

Although idealistic early adopters would like for Bitcoin to be a system which lacks repudiation the way credit cards and even wire transfers do in the case of theft, this would mean all liability falls on the shoulders of naive users. The will of the majority will demand consumer protection. The government has the power to force this on Bitcoin, because it is not anonymous and the users have a physical presence and identity. Now it is just a matter of time for the will of the majority to dominate and the governments to get organized on doing their obligation.

Idealistic users may prefer to use a different system. We will see.

Then some naive users may realize that different system is the one they need too. In short, some people learn, especially when they are being oppressed by the fall of society into the $150 trillion debt collapse coming.

With 7 billion people in this world, an alternative system only needs 1 in 7,000 people to use it in order to be widely accepted.

Let the majority have their NWO coin. Let's make the coin we want for ourselves.

No need to discuss my programming career. It is already on the forum any way if you want to dig for it. And in any case, there are many talented programmers if they are offered bounties and provided white papers with some oversight on design.

I think I've said enough, actually too much.

If the tokens were widely used they would be widely accepted.  The time-out thing (among others) makes this an imperfect analog, I admit, but generally speaking there is no economic reason why tokens won't work.  In fact that is all that cash is and arguably even gold in a way.  Or even Bitcoin for that matter.  It's all just an accounting system to me, and like many things in nature they all just seek their natural (low energy) state which makes pure systems self-adjusting.


I've not even described the system so you cannot make a judgement on how privacy is or is not accomplished.  The reason I've not described it is because I've not thought about it much.  Exchange currencies are not as interesting to me as reserve systems (the former needs a solid implementation of the latter to act as a foundation.)

In fact a situation with numerous limited life tokens which are fungible and only trivially distinct, and of which a fraction need to be renewed occasionally to preserve usability is kind of cries out 'mixing service' which is an important element of many anonymity schemes.

Just now I conceived of scalability in terms of budding as many 'mints' as needed such that each would have a nice ratio of overall load which kept it manageable by enthusiasts while being able to scale simply by forming more.  Tokens from the wrong mint could be passed to the right one through the network, and that in itself speaks to a ready-made proxy system.  Another feature of a privacy enhancing solution.

I'm probably dredging up some of my limited understanding of Chaum token stuff here.  Or at least that is how I'm conceiving of the actual token units insofar as they consist of data wrapped in routing/responsibility layers.

Ha!  Both actually  More the former is what I meant though.

No TX fees would be ok if you're going to add some inflation but there would be no mass adoption as banks, Multinationals and the govt would get behind a different coin [and kill yours] which was designed for massive fees (i.e. Bitcoin) so they can charge 7 billion sheep ridiculous fees and not just the 3 billion they're currently raping.  

Rock solid anonymity would be a dream but it's naive to think that would ever leave the crib for the same reasons listed above.  Banks, Multinationals and governments are not into giving up power and control over the information they gather about their citizens/customers, they're in the business of growing that power and control.

So once again, it would be you alone against the powers of the world with 7 billion sheep not understanding what you're really trying to do and not even caring - parroting instead what the media says while mocking your efforts.

This is why ZeroCoin, Ethereum, etc., will never see any real adoption - and will only ever be used by the CIA to anonymously transfer billions of dollars to their drug cartels cause it's cheaper and more efficient than using 18 wheelers and airplanes for transferring all those tons of cash.

As for the 15-30 second confirmations - I don't think there's issue there for BTC.  I've read that once BTC goes mainstream it can have instant transactions although I'm not a techie and don't know the details enough to properly explain it.

But let's say a 30 second block time is better than 10 minutes, that's an easy fix for Bitcoin (Easy Fork -Client/Protocol update) which would leave your coin with no real competitive advantages.

So the only advantages your coin will have are the first 2 which would make your coin a true people's coin and we all know the people forfeited control over their lives and destiny some 10 years ago and hence, such a coin would never gain any traction as the media and all the power and manipulation behind it would kill it quick and perhaps even expose you to some real personal risks.

Other than that your heart and mind are in the right place, brother!

AnonyMint,

You sound so confident about your programming skills and I have no reason to doubt you but would you share your background so we can have an idea what we can expect as far as quality and depth of your upcoming coin design?  I for one appreciate such things.

Thanks!

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.5420480

Those are not widely accepted. Because they don't have the economy-of-scale of not timing out.


But if they can be recycled, then you've accomplished nothing for privacy.

All you've done is given your privacy to the issuer of the token, who doesn't care if it expires because he has already been paid for the tokens.


I assume you mean transaction data and not source code control?

Yes.  Ever been to a laundromat or an arcade?

Things which someone will exchange for something else have value by definition.  I'd actually be delighted to buy a months worth of tokens using a part of my BTC hoard and a single transaction as long as it was reasonably easy and cheap to recycle the balance if I didn't use them all.  This would be especially the case if it assisted in maintaining some degree of financial privacy and the mild inconvenience contributed to facilitating a durable solution.

It pains me to admit it, but I'm looking forward to critiquing your design.  I expect that I'll see the same neglect toward persistent and growing data management issues that I see from about 98% of the developers I've worked with over the year (and even some damn good ones!)  But I'm always happy to be pleasantly surprised.

Oh I agreed. See where I posted in that related thread that it would be most economical to go after the Bitcoin millionaires to recover some value in a class action by the government (or G20 in concerted effort...the beginnings of the world government cooperation), so the gubermint can appear to be protecting the public-at-large and they can keep their NWO coin going.

Basically I see the Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires playing ball with the gubermint in order to keep some portion of their gains. Those who resist will lose it all and possibly thrown into debtor's prison when they can pay obligations after the confiscation of stolen property and very high taxes on the wealthy (capital gains, VAT, and a wealth tax in addition to bail-ins and other forms of crazy IMF "financial repression"). Take this in the context of a Mad Max $150 trillion global debt implosion wealth hunt from the G20,which I expect to start ratcheting up 2016ish.

So the Bitcoin paupers will be cheering on this outcome! Jealousy, greed, and self-preservation at-any-cost are root qualities of human nature.


Yeah I know as I stated upthread.

Thus I was implying we would need to mine and hold an altcoin


I wrote similarly in my March 2013, Bitcoin : The Digital Kill Switch, and I think it is a bad thing.

Transactions are not coin base rewards. Are we talking about the same thing?


Well if you are saying that newly minted coins don't pass the AML, KYC regulation and thus will tainted by default unless they were mined by the "approved" pools, then simply mine for an approved pool. Or buy from an approved pool.

Are you saying no minted coins will be untainted? Then all coins are tainted. Obviously you don't mean that.


Agreed on the G20 concerted effort. They are already announcing edicts on cooperation against tax avoidance.

Put your pool in a failed state or behind an anonymous proxy (that you control) in one

One of the key design points from my OP is the better altcoin needs to limit the size of pools, so there will be 1000s of them.

One of the key points of my design is the pools don't have to be trusted at all!


This only works if the gubermint can control the pools or otherwise destroy anonymity of users. That is a critical point.


There is no problem with scalability given a correct design. See the mini block chain design for example.

Limited life tokens have no value.

Have you ever seen money that goes poof become widely accepted?


You haven't seen my design yet.  

My argument that AML/KYC coins won't be tainted is not that it cannot be done.  It's that it won't because it would destroy an otherwise very useful system (and spur on the development of others which are not so convenient.)

I honestly don't know what you are talking about vis-a-vis 'self-mined coins'.  'self-mined coins' are ancient history.  A handful of pools mine most coins and get the block reward at this point.

I cannot take credit for the theory as Mike Hearn anticipated it way back in 2011, but a method to control Bitcoin would be to discriminate transactions at the mining level.  He theorized that mining would become so specialized and expensive, and thus centralized, that it would be practical to discriminate 'bad' transactions (from political enemies like the Persians to use an example) that it would be a practical choke-point.  Mike was dead right in this, and as best I can tell he considered it a good thing.

I expand this theory slightly based on the very real threat of tainting, or {color}listing if one prefers.  That is to say, induce not only transacting parties to honor a taint authority's output, but also mining pools and do so by simply tainting their newly minted coins.  As I anticipated years ago, no sovereign nation is going to welcome Bitcoin since it is a universal threat to all but failed states.  A trans-national effort to control Bitcoin is very likely which will leave pool operators nowhere to rest in peace unless they choose to cooperate (and hell, in that case they might even get free power!)

Once taint is established (initially for 'terrorists' and such) it will also be fairly easy to simply ratchet it up and taint coins for anything desired.  A good example would be coins which are not registered to a known owner in addition to ones which are not mined by a 'licensed' and cooperative miner.

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Anything resembling Bitcoin and it's persistent ledger is stupid for exchange currencies for scalability and privacy reasons.  Some sort of a limited life tokens system makes the most sense here.

As for the niche which can be served by a Bitcoin-like system (reserved storage and account balancing) a system which pays more attention to the transfer nodes makes a lot more sense.  The thought I had was to l had was to link transfer and mining such that mining rewards are proportional to the degree of demonstrable decentralization an individual brings to the game.  It should be blindingly obvious to all at this point that either CPU mining or non-predictable algorithm shifting regime (or both) are the way to go.

I would not rule out the use of sha256 hashing to periodically (say, once per quarter or once per version release) optimize a block-chain.  This would put the existing ASIC gear to work.  We'd just choose the winner as whoever had the best result when a re-org was needed for instance.

Ah, I see.


It might, actually, but that won't be because of some inherent flaw of bitcoin or it's protocol.  Bad image isssues are more difficult to argue against.

Because in theory only new minted coins can't have been stolen in the past.

As for tvbcof's theory that AML, KYC exchange sourced coins are more amenable to the authorities than self-mined coins, as far as I can see there is nothing tainted about mining your own coins for as long as you declare and can document the activity to the authorities, e.g. on your tax return when you create a taxable event.

I don't see how purchasing on an exchange stops the law from trying to obtain the stolen coins for the victim. As I covered in detail at the link above (dig to find my quotes of the Mt.Gox Terms of Service), an exchange is not a bank and your coin ownership was not transferred to the exchange when you deposited them.

So sorry I have to strongly disagree with you on that point. Sorry to give you bad news and cause you to have a headache. Better you face reality now and trade now for self-mined coins. Thus you would need a cpu-only coin probably.

You can clearly see the feature set for a new altcoin will drive its adoption in spades.

P.S. The Yes has risen from 33% to 38%.

Disclaimer: my usual disclaimer (seen upthread) applies to all my posts.

I'm missing something.  Why is it wise to trade out for new coins?

Another agreement vis-a-vis taxes.  I've been suggesting this for a while, and of course I personally am dotting all my 'i's and crossing all my 't's.  Beyond that, I think it might be advisable to be prepared to declare and document one's BTC holdings.  Do these simple things (while holding one's nose) and one might walk away quite well off.  A bit disappointed perhaps, but tempered with the thought that Bitcoin is mostly an important early proof-of-concept and has already achieved way more than it could have.

I think that if one can document buying BTC from an exchange that will be sufficient to un-taint them.  This because if coins that were legally acquired in this manner were tainted it would be to obvious to early how useless the solution is.

I, for one, am not about to go swapping out my holdings, which are deep in the blockchain, for newly mined BTC.  It could well be that miners who don't 'register', 'certify', get a 'bitcoin license', or whatever, and play along with the tainting protocol and transaction discrimination will have their own mined coins tainted from the start anyway.

Honestly, so am I.

They stated things they claim are facts.  That doesn't change the reality of the matter at all.  Yes, I really think the Winklevi lawyers made that up and that the SEC & their own lawyers are too stupid to see it.  They very much want to believe that Bitcoin can be regulated.  They know nothing of merit about cryptography, programming, decentralization or (for that matter) even economics.  They are lawyers; nothing more, nothing less.  If the Winklevi can make up convincing bullshit, let them.  It might work or it might not.  I don't care.  Unlike the both of you, I actually DO understand cryptography, economics and the Bitcoin protocol.