Topic: Fork The Blockchain And Block The Seized FBI Coins. - page 9. (Read 13501 times)

This has been discussed ad nauseum but once again:

Once the trial and appeals are all done the FBI will auction off the coins, most likely in medium sized blocks of coins on the one of the various goverment auction web sites they have already created for exactly the purpose of auctioning off seized assets.  Go check out these web sites, you can often find boats, airplanes, jewelry, helicopters, etc for a pretty good price.  To them Bitcoin is just another asset to be auctioned off for USD that they can use to line their budgets.

Anyway, the coins will be sold to whoever bids the most for them.

Your proposal would harm the auction winners - not the government.

Congrats to the OP on a thought provoking post. The purists' position should always be that bitcoins should be allowed to live and die on its own merits and if it happens, one of the other alt coins will take its place. Such is the way of the only free market left in the world. Personally I don't do drugs, aside from copious amounts of beer and I could give a flying fuck whether the FagBI thinks they're naughty. Wankers. Funny that they sue dpr but let big banks get away with much worse crimes. If the wallet in question was to be subjected to a random attack and those coins disappeared I wouldn't cry any tears.

Isn't Bitcoin that great because people cannot use if for political influence? Which would exactly be what you are proposing here?

You are suggesting a coin black list.  It is possible.  All you need to do is create a modified client and modified mining software that does what you want it to do:  ignore all transactions that contain any of the blacklisted coins (those coins currently contain in the two know FBI addresses),  and release it into the marketplace.  Those that believe in your idea will use your client, those of us that know it is stupid will not.  Once the coins move you will create a hard fork and your new alt blockchain will be born.  

See my signature.  I and others who understand the importance of fungibility will never accept the alt coins created by your fork.  Go ahead and create your fork today.  What are you going to call your new alt?  NotMoney is a good name since any alt you create that is not fungible is not money.

There are more attacks than just the 50%+1 attack. Orphaning blocks for instance. Commandeering major mining operations, a virus (like stutnex attacking nuclear facilities), DDOS (NSA has a lot of influence over the main DNS providers.), them figuring out the identity of Satoshi (What is the NSA's job again?) forcing Satoshi to give up his wallet then we'd have the DPR problem but on an even larger scale.


This would be more than "panic selling" where even the loyalist to bitcoin (such as myself) would have to logically realize that getting out of the market would be the smartest thing to do.

As it is right now Bitcoin could not survive ANY of these attacks and so we are relying on the charity of the very organizations whom want to see us go away.

That does not sound like a very good idea.



I'm not suggesting a "Colored Coin Solution" but to alter the block chain so the FBI's coins no longer exist. I'm not sure if this is even possible? But something to consider.

The solution to this problem is a technological one that makes such a coin seizure unlikely or infeasible in the first place, not banning coins. The Bitcoin community will just have to accept the 144,000 already taken as motivation to do better.

No the opposite would have happened.

As the coins would have come from wallets known to be in their control. Everyone would know that they were dumping the coins to Cause a price crash.  

In fact whenever they choose to sell, it will just be a bargain for anyone that has money on an exchange and I think the move would retrace in less than a day.  

Fungibility. Don't mess with it.

An easier way to "wash coins" is by exchanging bitcoin to an altcoin then back again. Especially a useless one such as Doge that won't be around long.

The tactic of screening (aka colored) to be more of a inconvenience than anything. The person wanting to trade with you will have to check their own coins and send the one's that don't fit your description - in which they will send to someone else thus not taking it out of circulation in the slightest.

It's like vaccinations. Either a whole society chooses to do it, or it don't really work.

I'm not supportive of the colored coin idea at all. It would be on the level of idiotic Government jurisdiction idea's (such as the war on drugs) that manages to cause a whole slew of problems without even slightly acknowledging the original issue in which it was created to fight.


This is the type of responses I'm used to hearing when arguing with "Fiscal Conservative Christians" in Texas who, failing to provide an intelligent response to my position, tells me to "Go learn History/Economics/Whatever first" in which I almost am certainly better studied in the subject than they are,  hence why I was able to present a position that had substance while they were limited to an emotional outburst.


I agree, it will also be a good thing when the original miners (such as Satoshi himself) finally use at least some of their coins, which will have the result of better distrubting the wealth to the masses allowing it to function much more like a currency than a commodity. But here is the difference;

Satoshi and the original miners have an invested interest (even if it where only based on greed) to do so in a constructive fashion, such as starting an ETF like TradeFortress had done.

While the Fed's (and their Masters) have every reason to bring down bitcoin, while their own financial gain by holding these coins are trivial. That is an important distinction to make. Even if the market isn't destroyed it could set us back by years. 

Honestly, if the feds dump the coins back into the market, that is a good thing.  Proof positive that the US government is treating Bitcoins as an asset with an actual value, as opposed to imaginary internet games.

I hope you do realize coin mixing won't stop reverse tractability at all.

We already know the BTC address with the coins, and we can see where they go after that etc.

No amount of coin changing will stop tractability.

That's quite a good idea and it is your privilege to accept/deny anyone's coins. Good luck with doing that after coin mixing transactions. I also hope an organization that you support doesn't get it's coins "banned" in such a way.

As long as you don't mess with the network I don't care what anyone does on an individual basis, so I'm ok with your concept, but not necessarily support it.

Allowing FBI to have any more control than they already do is bad.

It is similar to owning too much of a network, and a good example is 51%+ threats to Bitcoin.

This doesn't just mean Bitcoin networks, all networks in general.

FBI has enough power, they should not be allowed to gain more resources/power with these seized Bitcoins.

I will be using a Bitcoin tracking device to make sure I never get Bitcoins that the FBI once had and I will be able to track every company/person that accepted them.

This is very easy and possible to do.

We as a community can reject these coins all on our own.

1) You really have some insider information on FBI plans, don't you? (sarcasm)
2) We should seize bitcoins of every large wallet, because they are planning on dumping btc (sarcasm)

While I might or might not like what happened to DPR and might or might not like the FBI I think you are crazy if you think that people will keep believing in bitcoins if such decisions and actions are made by "the community".

Another issue is that "the majority" (as I understand it, a synonym for "the community") is not the best source for decision-making. Statistically speaking the majority tends to be average and while they may make good short term decisions, I don't think they will make good long-term decisions. I am not at the same time advising "a bitcoin goverment", but just ruling against making any decisions such as confiscating bitcoins by anyone.

The truth is not always as others present it or even as facts present it. Related movie: 12 Angry Men

Don't want the fbi having coins, don't do illegal things that can get your assests seized 

Even if the FBI were to dump all the coins at once creating a quick crash  (I highly doubt they will do that)  that still wouldn't be enough reason for me to want to take their coins away.

"Is the community going to take back bitcoins every time it doesn't like someone? "

There are only a couple of activities that would cause the entire community (we aren't just referring to bitcointalk here) A major hack resulting in funds being stolen, Government/bank interference, a centralized Minning pool carelessly (or aggressively hostile) takeover of the market.

It's not like you'd have to keep popularity with the Dev's otherwise they can blackmail you. I'm not suggesting the community give them that kind of power but I think that will be how a lot of people interpret it.



DPR did a lot of stupid things that he could of avoided. How the hell are there so many people who get rich overnight seem to forget even the basics of common sense?

I'm not worried about him getting his coins back but now we have to wonder what the US Government is going to use those coins for, and you know it's going to be soon.

Even a million worthless Bitcoins are still worthless.

Never know, OP could be the FBI and trolling us.

Unfortunate as it is, DPR didn't secure the wallet well enough, and those BTC are now being used as evidence in the case against him.

If I had been in DPR's shoes, I would've had a sort of "Dead Man's Switch" setup in case of arrest/death. Like a box somewhere that would trigger an upload of the wallet.dat and password, if a private key didn't get entered into that machine every 24 hours, or something. Illicit activities involving millions of USD? Seems silly to not have a Plan B... and Plan C/D/E/F...

Ironically, the only exchange that might consider taking those coins is BTC-E; the only major exchange that doesn't really require dox on clients.

Is the community going to take back bitcoins every time it doesn't like someone?