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Topic: IF the NSA wanted to take control over Bitcoin, how would they do it? - page 6. (Read 5943 times)

newbie
Activity: 45
Merit: 0
NSA ... could run smear campaigns on high ranked bitcoin founders and celebrities.

Number of [ex] Bitcoin Foundation directors doing time: 2 that I know of (Charlie and MagicalTux). No smear campaigns required Cheesy
member
Activity: 84
Merit: 10
★YoBit.Net★ 350+ Coins Exchange & Dice
NSA would most likely not be working alone in this manner and they could use dirty funds to manipulate the price if needed to make bitcoin look unstable. They could run smear campaigns on high ranked bitcoin founders and celebrities. Any step that did not work would escalate the issue till it was dealt with once and for all.
legendary
Activity: 3431
Merit: 1233
It would be easier for them to reverse engieer every address as there will be similarities between that and the rivate keys.
Are you sure you know what are talking about?
newbie
Activity: 29
Merit: 0
Capitalist Corporatist governments can also make BTC illegal/nationalize mines and even peoples possessions.

Quote
Executive Order 6102 is a United States presidential executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States". The effect of the order, in conjunction with the statute under which it was issued, was to criminalize the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.

FTFY

Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production. When you start talking about nationalizing things, you are no longer talking about capitalism.

Gold is "means of production"?
Though many countries that are considered to be capitalist "nationalize" the means of production when times are tough. Think Britain during WW2.
legendary
Activity: 1120
Merit: 1010
Capitalist Corporatist governments can also make BTC illegal/nationalize mines and even peoples possessions.

Quote
Executive Order 6102 is a United States presidential executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States". The effect of the order, in conjunction with the statute under which it was issued, was to criminalize the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.

FTFY

Capitalism is based on private ownership of the means of production. When you start talking about nationalizing things, you are no longer talking about capitalism.
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
What would be easier, to buy a billion Bitcoins and sell them on in stacks of 1 million at $1/Bitcoin deflating the market of Bitcoin and forcin people to withdraw from Bitcoin (they could also buy all the bitcoins mined and found at £500 each).
What would be easiest is just making cashing out into fiat difficult (banking regulations),
newbie
Activity: 48
Merit: 0
 they can try ... but I don't think they will achieve their goal . (unless the Bitcoin community goes retard and don't care about decentralization and privacy etc... anymore).
copper member
Activity: 2856
Merit: 3071
https://bit.ly/387FXHi lightning theory
Some ideas on how it could work:

- Read through the connection data (phone,email etc) from key figures of the Bitcoin community to gain insider knowledge
- Infiltrate core development and replace Bitcoin key figures with NSA staff
- Discredit respected members of the community
- Kill people, if they don't corporate.


Are core devs discussing this possiblility of a large scale infiltration and how to avoid?

It would be easier for them to reverse engieer every address as there will be similarities between that and the rivate keys.
Alternatively, broardcasting transactions and bypassing the initial core requirements for sent transactions would also allow for them to control Bitcoin.

Whilst improbable there will always be a way for certain eople to take over the network and manipulate it in their favour.

What would be easier, to buy a billion Bitcoins and sell them on in stacks of 1 million at $1/Bitcoin deflating the market of Bitcoin and forcin people to withdraw from Bitcoin (they could also buy all the bitcoins mined and found at £500 each).
newbie
Activity: 29
Merit: 0
Safe from NSA, not safe from Communist government which can make BTC illegal/nationalize mines Sad
Capitalist governments can also make BTC illegal/nationalize mines and even peoples possessions.

Good point, that too! Smiley
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". ...

- Find dirt on devs; offer laughably small sums of money to put on jackboots. Alternative: fed time.
- Offer Chinese miners actual IRL money > 12.5 BTC after the halvening to solve blocks.
- Block port 8333 at provider level.
- Be like Russia and Iceland, make BTC illegal.

Maybe you're just not looking?
-Dirt on Devs? Why would that make a difference in mathematical calculation? This is an open source project and any person on the planet can be a dev. The bitcoin core dev team is the most recognized team, but the community can chose any distro by simply running it.  Devs have absolutely no more control than anyone. They come up with ideas that are adopted by consensus. Some people may adopt whatever the devs write or support their work. That is a choice we all make equally.
When was the last time you audited the code? Do you even code? And sure, devs have much more control than everyone.

Quote
-So the NSA is going to offer millions (billions?) of dollars to miners in China? Where is that money coming from? It would take congressional funding. "Congress I want a billion dollars to give to the Chinese so that we can disrupt the bitcoin network for a few weeks. Oh, and we get nothing in return." that is not logical.
You think NSA can't raise millions, billions, or trillions of dollars? You think NSA is poor? The sort of money needed to buy out the miners is probably in their petty cash drawer Smiley

Quote
-Blocking port 8333 is extremely easy to deal with. It would also require the cooperation of every single provider on Earth. It is impossible to imagine. As I mentioned earlier, loss of net neutrality is the only way to broadly disrupt transactions. This would, however, only apply to servers in the U.S. I would just rent some server space in Panama and carry on.
It would not require every provider, just your provider. Also see the Great Chinese Firewall, Easily done on nationwide level.

Quote
Illegal on what grounds? The law is not just a guy who says what is illegal. There has to be a legal justification and the courts in the U.S. have already made their decision. Some people point out that liberty dollars and other currencies have been found to be illegal in the past. But none of those arguments were found to be valid in the case of bitcoin. If you live in a dictatorship or something then this may be a problem.
Please. You really think American people accept strip-searches before boarding a plane, no smoking in bars, but will somehow revolt when the currency already responsible for 40% of criminal payments on the internet Shocked gets banned? Just lol.
legendary
Activity: 3431
Merit: 1233
If the NSA was really hell-bent on taking over Bitcoin, they would have to basically get at the core of Bitcoin; the miners. If they can control them, either through technical or physical control, then they can decide how to move coins, restrict blocks, and other various things. They would have to strike at the heart in order to kill it, anything outside of that wouldn't mean anything.
So, bitcoin is safe because majority of miners are beyond the reach of NSA in China.

Safe from NSA, not safe from Communist government which can make BTC illegal/nationalize mines Sad
Capitalist governments can also make BTC illegal/nationalize mines and even peoples possessions.

Quote
Executive Order 6102 is a United States presidential executive order signed on April 5, 1933, by President Franklin D. Roosevelt "forbidding the Hoarding of gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates within the continental United States". The effect of the order, in conjunction with the statute under which it was issued, was to criminalize the possession of monetary gold by any individual, partnership, association or corporation.
newbie
Activity: 42
Merit: 0
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". Not in this thread, not in any thread in the last 6 years. The only possible concern I have is a loss of net neutrality. If that happens all decisions about what will be allowed on the internet are in the hands of a few people. It would be the end of all electronic privacy and bitcoin may be the least of our concerns. 

This thread is not about destroying Bitcoin.
You can control bitcoin if only you show heavily invested miners that you can destroy it.

>heavily invested miners
Cheesy

Miners aren't heavily invested, at least not in actual BTC, they sell it. Cometh teh halvening, their operations will be outright unprofitable, and then... Smiley
member
Activity: 84
Merit: 10
NSA can search cell phones and laptops of people travelling through airports and just create a program to quickly look for bitcoin addresses and wallets. Starting with harrassing travellers would get enough message out that people need to be weary that it will trickle outwards into concerned parents and family.
Crossing a state line/border could become a issue for any one with bitcoin and they could start rounding known bitcoin supporter up in roadblocks.
It really would not be as hard as people think to start making bitcoin harder to use. Have internet providers ban access to wallets,exchanges and anywhere that buys and sells.
Always point to this but look at black friday for poker online and how effective that was at dropping traffic.
You could make bitcoin illegal and easily get the same outcome but most likly more severe.
legendary
Activity: 3066
Merit: 1147
The revolution will be monetized!
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". ...

- Find dirt on devs; offer laughably small sums of money to put on jackboots. Alternative: fed time.
- Offer Chinese miners actual IRL money > 12.5 BTC after the halvening to solve blocks.
- Block port 8333 at provider level.
- Be like Russia and Iceland, make BTC illegal.

Maybe you're just not looking?
-Dirt on Devs? Why would that make a difference in mathematical calculation? This is an open source project and any person on the planet can be a dev. The bitcoin core dev team is the most recognized team, but the community can chose any distro by simply running it.  Devs have absolutely no more control than anyone. They come up with ideas that are adopted by consensus. Some people may adopt whatever the devs write or support their work. That is a choice we all make equally.

-So the NSA is going to offer millions (billions?) of dollars to miners in China? Where is that money coming from? It would take congressional funding. "Congress I want a billion dollars to give to the Chinese so that we can disrupt the bitcoin network for a few weeks. Oh, and we get nothing in return." that is not logical.

-Blocking port 8333 is extremely easy to deal with. It would also require the cooperation of every single provider on Earth. It is impossible to imagine. As I mentioned earlier, loss of net neutrality is the only way to broadly disrupt transactions. This would, however, only apply to servers in the U.S. I would just rent some server space in Panama and carry on.  

Illegal on what grounds? The law is not just a guy who says what is illegal. There has to be a legal justification and the courts in the U.S. have already made their decision. Some people point out that liberty dollars and other currencies have been found to be illegal in the past. But none of those arguments were found to be valid in the case of bitcoin. If you live in a dictatorship or something then this may be a problem.
legendary
Activity: 3431
Merit: 1233
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". Not in this thread, not in any thread in the last 6 years. The only possible concern I have is a loss of net neutrality. If that happens all decisions about what will be allowed on the internet are in the hands of a few people. It would be the end of all electronic privacy and bitcoin may be the least of our concerns. 

This thread is not about destroying Bitcoin.
You can control bitcoin if only you show heavily invested miners that you can destroy it.
newbie
Activity: 29
Merit: 0
If the NSA was really hell-bent on taking over Bitcoin, they would have to basically get at the core of Bitcoin; the miners. If they can control them, either through technical or physical control, then they can decide how to move coins, restrict blocks, and other various things. They would have to strike at the heart in order to kill it, anything outside of that wouldn't mean anything.
So, bitcoin is safe because majority of miners are beyond the reach of NSA in China.

Safe from NSA, not safe from Communist government which can make BTC illegal/nationalize mines Sad
legendary
Activity: 3431
Merit: 1233
If the NSA was really hell-bent on taking over Bitcoin, they would have to basically get at the core of Bitcoin; the miners. If they can control them, either through technical or physical control, then they can decide how to move coins, restrict blocks, and other various things. They would have to strike at the heart in order to kill it, anything outside of that wouldn't mean anything.
So, bitcoin is safe because majority of miners are beyond the reach of NSA in China.
hero member
Activity: 490
Merit: 520
If the NSA was really hell-bent on taking over Bitcoin, they would have to basically get at the core of Bitcoin; the miners. If they can control them, either through technical or physical control, then they can decide how to move coins, restrict blocks, and other various things. They would have to strike at the heart in order to kill it, anything outside of that wouldn't mean anything.
AGD
legendary
Activity: 2069
Merit: 1164
Keeper of the Private Key
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". Not in this thread, not in any thread in the last 6 years. The only possible concern I have is a loss of net neutrality. If that happens all decisions about what will be allowed on the internet are in the hands of a few people. It would be the end of all electronic privacy and bitcoin may be the least of our concerns. 

This thread is not about destroying Bitcoin.
newbie
Activity: 45
Merit: 0
I have yet to see a single feasible idea of how bitcoin can be "destroyed". ...

- Find dirt on devs; offer laughably small sums of money to put on jackboots. Alternative: fed time.
- Offer Chinese miners actual IRL money > 12.5 BTC after the halvening to solve blocks.
- Block port 8333 at provider level.
- Be like Russia and Iceland, make BTC illegal.

Maybe you're just not looking?
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