Topic: My open letter to Bitcoin Foundation - page 2. (Read 3823 times)

Protecting the core client, the infrastructure and the protocol should have nothing whatsoever to do with endorsement of commercial enterprises.

It sounds like you want to implement something along the lines of the Better Business Bureau or the Heart Foundation - the methods of endorsement used by both are deeply flawed.

If a standards oversight organisation is formed - and I do believe that will ultimately happen - then it should only assess services against an objective set of standards.  Customer feedback plays no role in such a process and would ultimately undermine the whole purpose of establishing standards in the first place.


The seal will not prevent businesses failing.  What you've proposed would not evaluate the kind of information needed to assess the likelihood of a business going broke because its owners are incompetent, it's under-capitalised, it's expanding too quickly, or the hundreds of other reasons new businesses fail.  In fact, if BF starts endorsing Bitcoin businesses and people lose money because they relied on that endorsement BF may well expose itself to legal liability.

Not necessarily. Whenever I see a business proudly displaying a BBB logo, I wonder what they're trying to hide behind it.

you are conflating 2 separate things here.  gold serves as a useful analogy.  there is a huge amount of liquidity surrounding the trading of gold on the exchanges precisely b/c it has proven itself in the past as a useful store of value.  there is, otoh, almost a zero economy surrounding gold however.

Bitcoin is just a form of money.  the regulations you speak of concern businesses engaging in Bitcoin services.  there may or may not be a need for a certifying organization.  but it won't affect Bitcoin itself if it becomes a stable store of value like most of us here think it will. 

I would like to announce my new service called rent-a-customer to ensure all your feedback on CentBitCon looks nice and positive.

As a service you dont have to get that seal - but you will get less trust without one.

That seal must be linked to BS page with my organization details and approval status. With discussions and feedbacks from customers.

ok i officially give lucif a seal of approval



now what??

shal we remind you of bitcoinica, bitcoinsavings and trust. they could all meet the security standards and pay a fee to get a seal.. but still end up where they ended up

Well, i thought its a BF mission

https://bitcoinfoundation.org/about/

silk road

You ask to do this to centralized services only, but aren't they all centralized?
Tell me about one service that isn't. 

There is absolutely nothing preventing existing Bitcoin services from forming a professional organisation which requires its members to adhere to specific standards on a whole range of issues.

It should never be the role of Bitcoin Foundation to endorse individual services, although it should probably play a role in facilitating discussion about central issues affecting Bitcoin including desirable security standards and perhaps publish discussion papers on those issues from time to time.

Apart from anything else, it's almost impossible to play a standards oversight role without charging a fee to evaluate organisations for endorsement - you need qualified people to evaluate those applications and to assess whether organisations are actually complying with standards as they claim.  BF really isn't the appropriate body to do that given the composition of its board.

Likewise, the endorsement becomes absolutely meaningless the minute that an organisation which has been endorsed fails - and that will happen because the majority of new business ventures do fail.  An endorsement isn't going to help people get their money back - it may well lull people into a false sense of security, though.

You'll get responsibility when there are real world consequences for losing other people's funds - something a "tick of approval" can't address.

Well, I see I have to explain people what is resposibility.

Responsibility is an acknowledgement that all aftermaths of your doings were caused exactly by your doings.

Person who takes resposibility inspires trust in people.

If BS will give seals to anyone without resposibility - it will discredit itself as fundamental organization.

If BS will give seals to services WITH resposibility, with asking them to keep standards and forcing them to keep them, asking them for faults - it will be the center of trust.

I dont ask for centralization! I only ask to do this only with centralized services of Bitcoin - to be them subordinated to BS. This could bring trust, liquidity, stability and wide usage of Bitcoin in the world.

That isn't the problem with just this, but the entire foundation.

Security standard may be just copy-pasted from PCI-DSS with minor changing points about CVV2 storage changed to wallet storage. I think this standard could be easily adopted to Bitcoin.

Another question is responsibility. Someone have to take that. Otherwise there is no legal way for Bitcoin in the World. And I propose this to be taken by BF child organization. Lets call it  Bitcoin Superviser (BS) here.

BS takes resposibility for site seals it will give to bitcoin services. It should have a resposible contact from merchant/service whos will be asked for fuckups.

Without resposibility Bitcoin has no legal future, no trust, no liquidity, no stability.

I ask all for resposibility.

That's exactly what i thought.
It's the owners of those businesses you want to be forced/verified/whatever that are also board-members of the Foundation,
so what you ask for is, that they control and verify themselves.

Doesn't really make much sense to me.

One problem I see with your proposal is that some of the BF board members are also operators of high profile Bitcoin services, and there would be real or perceived conflicts of interest in them endorsing Bitcoin services in general.  If you put them in charge of writing and enforcing standards, the accusation will be levelled that the standards will be set at a level which they can easily reach but which newer, smaller services cannot.

These businesses are tiny by real world standards and the costs of compliance with the kinds of standards you're talking about are not trivial.  Very, very few existing Bitcoin services would have the capacity to meet such costs at this point in time - you're just going to create the very kind of monopolies which Bitcoin seeks to avoid or people are going to ignore official endorsement rendering it pretty much useless.

Yes, it's desirable that Bitcoin services hold themselves to high standards in terms of security.  No, it is not realistic to expect that they can spend more than their individual businesses are worth on the kind of security used by conventional financial institutions.  

Payment card industry standards aren't even especially relevant to many of the Bitcoin services you've mentioned.  The major risk comes from them acting as deposit-taking institutions, even though that is not their core business in most cases.  It's not at all the same as the card issuer>acquirer>transaction processor cycle.

problem0 numero 1 (i can add some later if i get payed  )

this can generate the same problem that "pay in 90 days" did for fiat world business, since the law say pays in maximum 90 days few business do pay earlier if you ask why the reply is "because the law say so", IF BF set the minimum standard in security practices and Bitcoin business gain the seal of approval there is not much incentive to do better, so this can become a source of stagnation, if shit happens BF can take some blame because it got a low/bad standards.

Seal of approval is a marketing tool for the Joe, this will have the same effect like "seen on tv" stamp on ads, "advanced" Bitcoin users can look more and ask about each Bitcoin business security practices , research for details etc, Joe wont, he will be happy with the seal of approval, when shit happens Joe will blame and point his anger to BF.

Maybe I can translate, cause I think I understand, but I think what OP is trying to say is, maybe the bitcoin foundation could be like a versign part. That would issue security standards and maybe can verify that companies are doing it correct.

He used Mt Gox as example, and he is also talked about how this influenced the price when it was hacked or other hacks took placed.

I am familiar with Payment Card Industry Security Standard (PCI DSS), how banks forcing merchants follow this standrard before they provide APIs.

I offer to do same organization with Bitcoin.

Which will verify services like gox, force them to keep security stadards and provide identity of responsible persons.

This will bring a trust to Bitcoin legal economy.

Liquidity comes with trust.

Stability comes with liquidity.

And wide usage of Bitcoins comes with stability.

I hope i will not have to reapeat this again

THIS IS NOT COMPLAINT ABOUT GOX Just forget it.

I'm talking about Bitcoin future.