Topic: [LEAKED] Private Bitcoin Foundation Discussions On Blacklisting, more (ZIP dump) - page 5. (Read 61198 times)

Do be a little bit cautious about this.  Many people find many aspects of Libertarianism (and more generally, of various kinds of freedoms) to be somewhere between fringe and abhorrent.  If/when Bitcoin becomes 'mainstream' it is very possible that the Bitcoin Foundation members ideas about blacklisting and such will have surprisingly broad support among the userbase.

My personal feeling is that there will be unintended consequences to a lot of the plans (e.g., control methods and fantastic userbase growth) which will eventually kill the solution even though the individual efforts will be successful and solving the narrow problems that they are engineered for.

At the end of the day, though, the cat is out of the bag.  To kill distributed crypto-currencies means killing people's right and ability to interact.  This would be challenging to do in a airtight and durable way, but it does not mean that it won't be attempted.

This post seems to strike at the heart of it.  Community members, keep true to the manifesto!  Don't accept modifications that subvert the public interest.

One of my very early philosophies on Bitcoin, and why I consider it 'better' than gold (from the perspective of humanity), is this:

Ultimately what gives Bitcoin it's strength is it's userbase and that is a simple decision about what software to run.  In contrast, gold's strength is derived from it's scarcity.

A tyrant with vault full of gold is not easy to dislodge because he/they can store it adequately and safely.  Were he sitting on Bitcoin, the plebs could simply devalue it at the click of a mouse by switching to something else en-mass.  No more need to stick anyone on a pike poll.  They/we just need to organize effectively.

(Parenthetically, I believe that the extreme resources and mandate granted to the NSA have a lot to do with the threat of people being able to organize since mapping out the individuals and org structures is key to quashing such a threat.)

My advice to the Bitcoin Foundation is to not push their luck to far, though it is probably to late.  From day one they got off on a bad start, and in exactly in the way I was concerned about (and mentioned in the relevant thread before TBF was created) regarding transparency.  TBF had one chance to earn and retain the confidence of the userbase and I believe they may have already blown it.  Whether they take Bitcoin down with them will be interesting to find out...it depends, I expect, on how much damage they are able to do before burning through the 'default' credibility they obtained as a natural consequence of forming any such body.

  edit: spelling, and additional estimate.

What is the Bitcoin foundation?

The more I read about the entities that are getting involved with Bitcoin the muddier my picture of Bitcoin gets.

You say Bitcoin is decentralized? It is not and will never be as long as there's someone pulling the strings behind the scenes.
Whether it's an entity within the network (a large pool), a shady wall-street investor or the big brother foundation...

Where is the long term plan posted? Where is the list of planned features? Where do I send my feature suggestions? Where is the open discussion?
Where are the miners in all of this? Are we just dumb, cheap labor?

Seriously this. Doesn't matter if it's Bitcoins, USD, leaves on a tree or bags of sand, as long as it's something used to exchange goods and services, there will always be someone wanting more of it. And if we say that, then there must be a need to control it somehow, or else things would get out of hand very quickly. That's just human nature.

I'm just stating the facts be they PC or not.

and while I am not a fan of Paypal, it is anything but worthless.

As long as Bitcoin = Money, then Bitcoin = Power and there will be inevitable battles for control.

Start all the new coins you want.


If it attains a value of Billions USD, it will meet the same fate of control by the powerful.


~BCX~

People discussing here should not miss this thread - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/boycott-all-businesses-associated-to-alex-waters-matt-mellon-and-yifu-guo-332918

If its contolled, ie centralized,  then its not p2p and functionally identical to Paypal, ie. Worthless.

So your inevitability argument doesnt really support a case for bitcoin's use.

The bottom line is,

if any one of you think that any system that is value in BILLIONS of USD is ever going to remain "uncontrolled" you are seriously delusional.

Bitcoin = Money

Money = Power

If not the Bitcoin Foundation, then another.

There will always be a desire and battle to control it.


~BCX~

Lol.

Ya I agree, I am working on real code.  Should be out soon.  We also cant overlook that our underlying concepts must be sound as well.  Seems many of the projects pretending to be the 2nd bitcoin skipped that part.

Re. Osama bin laden, look up the writer John Perkins.  Its a good place to start re whats happening internationally.  Also Edward Snowden appears to be driven to expose the surveillance machine.  Theres lots of layers to it, Israel is a big part of it, much of the surveillance technology is developed there.  Also im a big fan of the original Cypherpunks.

It's all true what you saying and I couldn't agree more.
But your approach does not provide us with any solutions - does it?
And our job (as bitcoin developers) is to make solutions, not to cry about how hard the environment is...

Of course it is hard - and that is exactly why making solutions to these problems give us so much fun.
I mean: I can only speak for myself, but I'm not really such a unique person - as a human beings we usually all want the same things.

And Osama Bin Laden is for me just a character from a fairy tail, made for stupid people like Mike Haren, so they'd have some point to anchor to... since they are obviously to lame to anchor directly into my ass, which is certainly the point of the resistance that they ought to fight, in order to win this 'people vs. corporations' war.

Its part of the plan I think.

If you THINK no one can see you, then you are more likely to act candidly, and thats precisely what they want.  Keep generating technologies that make people believe they have privacy and they never demand the real thing.  There is a good case for ECC itself being such a technology.  The field is riddled with assumptions and "experts" with layman popular understanding ala Bruce Schneier.  Of course if you do attain privacy, you just might be a terrorist or a pedophile.  We were warned that this was coming, but not many people did anything about it. 

Edward Snowden for President.

No - don't get me wrong.
I'm saying: what do you have to offer that would provide a better anonymity for my coins that the mentioned Bitcoin Fog which charges 2% of my money?
I haven't seen anything better so far, but even as for this service I cannot be sure that it isn't run by NSA itself, can you?
So I am looking for something better, but I see nothing better on the horizon...

All these "stealth addresses" or "coinjoin" - for me it's just some PR bullshit that does not improve my privacy at all. Does it improve yours, BTW? I doubt it.
And no offence for the people who came out with these ideas (I believe they wanted well), but that is not a real solution for a bitcoin privacy, so people should not get so delighted about it.

Not looking to be a hero, but keep in mind the real software is the ideas behind it.  Code is just an expression of those ideas.  My general goal is to provide flexible tools for private equity creation.  Digital currencies fall under this.  Confidence chains is a generalized solution to this problem.  Im even hestinant to say anything because the moment I do the peanut gallery badtardizies whatever terminology I use.  Ive been in the digital currency world long enough to know what kind of forces your dealing with and they shouldnt be underestimated.

Im aware of your work btw, I think alternative bitcoin clients are certainly important.  Part of what the big firms are doing is monopolizing knowledge of the open source software.

Well, I surely appreciate your skepticism and awareness of the environment that bitcoin needs to live in.
That is exactly the approach that people who pretend to develop a privacy for Bitcoin need.

But you must admit that mixing services like "Bitcoin Fog" are exactly like coinjoin - except that they are definitely so much better than coinjoin.
Though, if you can propose an even better idea, a one which addresses the issues that you have just complained about - man, then you will be our hero!
But first show us how it works - because only then we have something to talk about... The other way around (just talk - show nothing) is only a waste of our time.

I was about to post about that, why aren't they releasing transcripts of all formal discussions?  there should be no such thing as a leak in regards to bitcoin's development.

Im not even sure mixing even offers that much privacy.  In most parts of the civilized world they track all your internet traffic, so given that they can track the ip origin of any tx, thus revealing the real world identity(at least to a degree).  By using data mining you can cluster the data with more complete sets, like from web wallets to hone in on virtually any activity on the block chain.  St. Snowden revealed recently that they are tracking you pc activity even when its not connected to the internet.  Mixing certainly makes it more dificult but not impossible to indentify bitcoin use.

If you havent figured out yet that the spooks are all over this board and this space, youre not paying attention.  If google is involved be afraid.

The technology im working on has an enhanced privacy model.

You are overestimating the privacy that the two features add to your coins.

Stealth addresses - they are only useful for those who'd like to receive funds from people they don't know. If they (like me) did know the people who send them the money, they could have just as well achieve the same level of "privacy" by giving a different payment address to each if the payers. So I don't know about you, but stealth addresses are not going to help me at all to improve my privacy.

And the conjoin - as I had said once: no matter what, always claim that your transaction was a coinjoin transaction, since they are completely indistinguishable from regular transactions, and so: we have all been using coinjoin already, without even knowing it... bear it in mind! Claiming that not all of the inputs and outputs were yours in a certain tx - this is the only thing that matters in the coinjon technology.

I think the real bitcoin privacy can only come from an off-chain mixers. Something like Bitcoin Fog does... But they charge 2% and we cannot be sure whether they actually destroy the logs. But this is definitely a proper way to address bitcoin privacy issues, while stealth addresses or conjoin transactions are not an actual privacy improvements - at least not according to my definition of bitcoin's privacy...