Would you mind telling me exactly how, from a technical standpoint, you would even white or black list BTC?
Given that there is no such thing as a coin but just a series of inputs and outputs, what do you taint and how is that sustainably identifiable throughout the life of a "coin"?
Given that there is no such thing as a coin but just a series of inputs and outputs, what do you taint and how is that sustainably identifiable throughout the life of a "coin"?
Just make people register. That was Yifu's angle as a principle at CoinValidation. UTXO's which are not registered to a known user or entity (e.g., Coinbase or blockchain.info) would halt a transaction from being valid. Very easy to justify in the name of 'fighting terrorism and child exploitation' and whatever. You can go before congress and argue all kinds of economic mumbo-jumbo about fungibility and freedom and what-not if you like. Good luck with that.
Sharp eyed viewers might notice that if one does not register, one cannot pay one's taxes. And there are well established ways to make people pay their taxes in almost all but the most failed of states. I'll register my stash the day I'm mandated to do so (which is why my conception of the best strategy is to avoid a mandate ever being practical rather than to resist compliance after it is been mandated.)
As a function of my Coin Validation service, I'd also run a service for miners so that they can ensure that they don't waste their time mining unvalidated UTXO's as inputs and their transaction set thus remain clean. If the choice is between taking this easy and popular step of using my government chartered service, and facing shutdown of their network support and confiscation of their gear, it will be a fairly easy decision in most cases. It seems to me that the new inverted bloom filter thing it could be remarkably efficient for a miner to ensure that they are not wasting their time with transactions which are going to be legally invalid because they contain unvalidated inputs. A side benefit of using a sorted transaction set.
I also find your suggestion that the likes of Russia and China are going to change their policies and welcome crypto-currencies with open arms to be laughable. And in case you have not noticed, piss-ant countries without nukes pretty much do what they are told by whoever's sphere of influence they fall under. Sure, there is a chance that your rosy dreams about totalitarian countries suddenly discovering the joys of individual freedom and geo-political power politics will come to pass, but I'm not betting a huge percentage of my financial statement on it.
this is exactly the sort of drivel i'd expect from your socialistic mindset. "i'd just mandate it be so".
notice that there is no depth to your assertions as they just represent your lips flapping once again. let me spell it out for you. the working assumption here is that there will be mass disobedience of your pronouncements as most ppl who are even remotely familiar with how the protocol works understands that it is impossible to "taint coins" as there is no such concept in reality. the trick for you is how to enforce your pronouncements. there are just inputs and outputs which get split & joined constantly giving "coins" that are ever lessening shades of grey as time goes by. and w/o a mechanism to identify owners of whatever unit you choose to monitor be it addresses or UTXO's, there is plausible deniability at every hop. the only way to prove someone guilty of a theft is to catch them with the private keys on their computer used at the time of the theft.
I actually agree with tvbcof on this, and that doesn't make me against bitcoin.
There are strong historical precedents for governments to outlaw forms of money and mandate the usage of their currency. FDR's ban on gold possession is the the most recent US based example. We can say "well many people ignored the ban and kept their gold", and that is true, but they weren't able to use that gold publicly for business, transactions with most firms, taxes, etc. So it didn't matter that many people kept their gold, it only matter that most people couldn't use their gold.
Also, most people are either apolitical on money or against bitcoin's libertarian purpose, and would happily comply with any Presidential mandate as tvbcof lays out.
Especially if compliance is required to receive healthcare through obamacare, social security, mortgages to buy housing, student loans to go to school, food stamps, welfare checks, etc. etc. An apolitical/collectivist population is an effective weapon for current governments against any sound money system.
It's not super simple. There is a reason why you do not pay tax when you buy firewood from your neigbor. He and you say no. There is a reason why they can not say: You to can not have sexual intercource, how could you think that, here it is WE who decide who is to have sex and not to have sex. But the people says no, no way. There is a reason they can not say that you have to go to church every sunday. Everybody say no, no way, basta! This is also what people will say to the blacklists or the whitelists. They will say, no, not a chance, basta, the coins are mine. Mine! Get out of my face. That is what everybody will say. Not super simple at all. Without support, they can do nothing. Whitout you giving them resources, they have no resources. Bitcoin will make that clear to a lot of people.
That only works for small private party to private party transactions. Try telling that to your locally owned pizza shop who's owner relies on his business to feed his family. He/she will happily comply with a mandate in order to stay in business. Sure, maybe if the two of you know and trust each other you'll agree to under the table transactions, but that is a small minority of transactions. Point is, any mandate will be followed by most businesses, and that is what matters.
