Topic: Mike Hearn, Foundation's Law & Policy Chair, is pushing blacklists right now - page 8. (Read 84415 times)

Why would you even think to change bitcoins just for the US regulation fetishists?
AFAIK Bitcoin is illegal in Thailand already and I didn't here any great plans to change the working system to fulfil Thailand's regulation.
Let the US forbid Bitcoins and let us see who looks like an idiot after China, Russia and Europe have sold their US $ for bitcoins...

edit: Exactly!

Exactly.
This is the hand, the hand that takes ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VIqA3i2zQw
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If the core development team is at the slightest risk of becoming politicized or even just influenced through links to the foundation, then it should be decoupled from the foundation immediately.

It seems obvious this is quickly becoming bitcoin's achilles' heel.

Well, if using legal tender is now a privilege granted by government, not a right then I can think of no better argument in support of an unregulated currency like bitcoin.

  

It is more likely than not in my mind that certain people within the U.S. intelligence apparatus took a significant interest in the solution at around that time if not before.  I'm pretty sure that the solution was leveraged by Wikileaks by that time since this is how I first heard of it, and I think that was late 2010.  If such an event (Wikileaks circumventing the U.S. financial embargo) did not spark a significant analysis then our intel personnel are completely incompetent/underfunded and not doing their jobs.  I find that conjecture absurd.

You don't know any of this for sure. Your crystal ball about how governments will react is no better than anyone elses. And by "our own approach" you mean the Foundation's approach behind closed doors.

You're not fooling anyone with this doublespeak.

Working with regulators is the opposite of supporting the right to disagree, because regulation is in fact suppressing disagreement with unilateral measures up to and including sending armed thugs to kidnap people who disagree and lock them in a cage.

And for the last time I don't give a fuck about Bitcoin's legal status, and neither should anyone else. In fact, we should assume that's illegal and make sure our infrastructure is robust enough that it doesn't matter.

FinCEN and their ilk in the District of Criminals are the enforcement arm of the Manhattan Financial Crimes Mafia. They are gangsters and we should be using all available resources to protect society from them.

It could - but within a short period of time most coins would end up being some shade of gray/pink so it would accomplish nothing in the end except possibly as bad PR for bitcoin since everything would be traceable to some kind of questionable transaction at some point in history.

If it were such a great idea we'd all be checking serial numbers on our banknotes - just in case they were from a bank heist xx years ago.

A far better solution would be to just track down criminals and prosecute them. Just like any other crime using any other currency.

I personally oppose most regulation and use all manor of privacy software, however once you involve fiat money you run into existing law. There is the rub. You don't "own" dollars, you have the right to use them. And there are all sorts of laws about how you may use them.

We could choose to not engage with government, but what would happen? Countries around the world would try banning it's use and eventually it may be seen as simply a tool for crime. I think it is much wiser to develop our own approach to address their concerns and shape future regulation.

I support anyone's right to disagree. Anyone could form a group of like-minded peers and make an attempt to give bitcoin a special legal status that can disregard laws. A status that allows you to receive stolen goods or transfer money around the world with no need to obey international agreements. But I don't think it will work.    

EDIT: @NorbyTheGeek   Well said sir.

@RodeoX, I know some people aren't voicing their concerns very eloquently, but there's no need to come down to that level.

I understand the points being raised.  Bitcoin is something that governments currently do not have any control over.  So, governments will do whatever they can to gain some control.  That is a fact.  Whether it be for "protecting the public" or "tracking the criminals" or "getting their share of the pie" or any other reason you can think of, good or bad.  But they will do whatever they can to get some control.

And even though Bitcoin is global, what the U.S. Government does WILL have an impact on how the currency is used worldwide.  For example, they can dictate that no U.S. Bank is allowed to do business with any Bitcoin exchange unless their conditions are met.  I can see that having a major effect on Bitcoin if no one is allowed to trade USD to BTC.

I can understand that maybe the Foundation is working to self-regulate in a way that the U.S. Government can stomach.  It's the only explanation that makes any logical sense.  But I do agree that these discussions should be more open to the public.  An RFC type of approach would solicit many different ideas from more of the world's population than a discussion open only to those who paid to join a Foundation.

The Foundation needs to be more open to outside ideas and criticism.  Foundation members are not elite, and what power does any group of people really have over an open-source piece of software?  If you want to continue to represent the Bitcoin community, you need to represent the Bitcoin community.  Otherwise, you will be replaced.

So let it be declared illegal in the U.S.

Then all of you who are so concerned can just stop using it and go on about your lives without facing any further risks.

Instead, you'd rather see a key aspect of Bitcoin eliminated, the anonymity, and in a way that's obviously destined for abuse no less.

That says enough right there.

This is not a matter for debate anymore. It doesn't matter what you or I or any agency wants to happen. There WILL be an anonymous cryptocurrency. We WILL take steps to ensure that Bitcoin is that currency. And if Bitcoin is morphed into one that's just another tool for tracking, then another will be built and we'll leave yours alone from that day forward. Will you then try to justify changing that new one too, because you like it and want to use it and make money with it but have to deal with regulators to do so? Is your goal simply to see U.S. financial tracking expanded, period? Because right now, that's all that's being pushed.

In order to use torrents , before you start the torrent and use dht, peer exchange or anything else you have to grab the .torrent file or the magnet link.
And without a place to go and grab those bits of information , you could run your utorrent all day long and connect to whole damn world , you won't get a a bit.

I fail to see the resemblance between bitcoin and torrenting.

He's comparing one p2p protocol with another. Can't you understand that?

LOL not in my country. We do what we like. We are free!

Of course regulation is going to happen.

That's why we should work to nullify it via code - design our systems to be immune to regulatory attack just like the filesharing space did successfully.

Well , he's comparing thepiratebay with bitcoin , so If i were to guess , you're not the idiot

If they start blacklisting coins in the US, everyone around world will still accept it, so they would need to blacklist more and more tainted coins until they have less than 1% of "clean" coins in circulation.

Also we will see many bootleg businesses exchanging "clean" coins for 110% of "dirty" coins for those who need to spend it in the US.
The same shit will happen as it was during Prohibition of 1920s.

It must be because I'm an idiot, but I fail to see what bittorrent has to do with anything? It is a tool for downloading. Why would that garner financial regulation?

BTW there are serious, active negotiation efforts underway to significantly reform the Foundation structure and excessive US influence.  If those efforts fail, it is a certainty that a decentralized alliance will emerge as a viable alternative.  Any public move from the current Foundation in support of "validation" or "tainting" will accelerate the current schism and isolate the USA from the rest of the world.  Read between the lines of this op-ed by Aaron Koenig:

http://bitcoinmagazine.com/7637/how-to-decentralise-the-bitcoin-foundation/

In my heart I just dont believe we can regulate it, because once those wheels start turning with registering addresses to peoples names and certain stolen coins becoming tainted and blacklisted, its a straight shot down all the way to where the US Govt has total control over our coins and how we spend them. Thats ultimately what this is all about, control, they want it because otherwise its too big a threat.

Bitcoin cant be regulated if it is to be successful. It has to be kept out of the hands of those who want total control. Its just to powerful to give the US Gov one inch of power over it, because it will rapidly become an unbridgeable mile of centralization.