[PROPOSAL] - lock the apparent Mt. Gox coins for now - page 5.

CompNsci

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Quote from: Lauda on March 03, 2014, 08:04:07 PM

Such a thing would destroy bitcoin. It should never be allowed to happen, no blocks will be erased.

I don't believe this requires any blocks to be erased or modified in any way. The miners can simply refuse to add transactions moving bitcoin out from the locked addresses to any other address, that is all. All other aspects of new blocks produced can remain the same.

Lauda

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Terminated.

Such a thing would destroy bitcoin. It should never be allowed to happen, no blocks will be erased.

CompNsci

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Quote from: repentance on March 03, 2014, 06:24:51 PM

Not only would you not be "assisting the legal process", you would almost certainly be breaking the law because you'd be denying people access to accounts without any legal authority to do so and without any conclusive evidence of who owns those accounts.

I don't know that miners are under any legal obligation to carry any transactions at all. Therefore, they can pick and choose. If they choose not to carry transactions involved in such a large criminal activity, that would strike me as reasonable, at least until the matter is properly settled in court.

repentance

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Quote from: CompNsci on March 03, 2014, 03:38:22 PM

The intention here would be to simply assist the legal process.

Not only would you not be "assisting the legal process", you would almost certainly be breaking the law because you'd be denying people access to accounts without any legal authority to do so and without any conclusive evidence of who owns those accounts.

Law enforcement and other investigators already have the power to seek injunctions which restrain MtGox principals from moving BTC from company and/or personal accounts. They can almost certainly obtain court orders compelling the principals to give them access to those accounts if they deem that to be necessary (and failure to do so under those circumstances would put the principals in contempt and subject to penalties). The community has not such authority and nor should it.

davidgdg

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Quote from: CompNsci on March 03, 2014, 03:38:22 PM

Given the possible recent leak of the Mt. Gox source code and database, what would the core developers and mining community think of locking the apparent large wallet balances belonging to Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, and Jeb McCaleb by changing the protocol for now?

The idea would not be to accept any transactions spending these bitcoin until the Mt. Gox bankruptcy case is sorted out. A committee, possibly appointed by the Bitcoin Foundation, could verify proper ownership before the coins are cleared for spending and a change back is made.

This would be a bit different than the idea of taking the coins permanently, or permanently invalidating them. The intention here would be to simply assist the legal process.

I know this is not something which can be done for every theft, etc., but we are talking about 6% of all bitcoin mined to date, which are presently tangled up in a real legal mess.

I suppose a general principle to govern this could be that when an entity controlling greater than some number of fraction of bitcoin is subject to legal action, such as a bankruptcy, charges of fraud, lawsuits, etc., that coins may be locked pending the outcome of litigation.

Possibly the most appalling idea I have read on this forum and I've read a few.

Zooey

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DannyHamilton

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Quote from: CompNsci on March 03, 2014, 05:32:44 PM

Quote from: Timo Y on March 03, 2014, 04:26:35 PM

neither the mining community nor the developers have the power to do this on their own. the majority of of users and businesses also have to be convinced to update their client. remember, a chain containing invalid transactions will be rejected even if it is the longest.

I think the idea here would be for the miners to not put such transactions on the chain in the first place. In that case, would a change in the majority of the clients be needed?

That depends.

How sure are you that 100% of all miners and all mining pools in the entire world will honor the agreement not to put such transactions into the chain in the first place?

If even one miner somewhere in the world puts such a transaction into the blockchain, how would you suggest the remaining miners handle the situation? Do they ignore that block, or do they accept it and build on top of it?

CompNsci

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Quote from: Timo Y on March 03, 2014, 04:26:35 PM

neither the mining community nor the developers have the power to do this on their own. the majority of of users and businesses also have to be convinced to update their client. remember, a chain containing invalid transactions will be rejected even if it is the longest.

I think the idea here would be for the miners to not put such transactions on the chain in the first place. In that case, would a change in the majority of the clients be needed?

I understand the whole fungibility issue and understand it is contentious.

Timo Y

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neither the mining community nor the developers have the power to do this on their own. the majority of of users and businesses also have to be convinced to update their client. remember, a chain containing invalid transactions will be rejected even if it is the longest.

since many of those users, and some miners, would oppose this out of principle, the result would almost certainly be a fork into 2 seperate bitcoins.

highly undesireable.

QuestionAuthority

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Search discussions - Re: Fungibility

CompNsci

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Given the possible recent leak of the Mt. Gox source code and database, what would the core developers and mining community think of locking the apparent large wallet balances belonging to Mt. Gox, Mark Karpeles, and Jeb McCaleb by changing the protocol for now?

The idea would not be to accept any transactions spending these bitcoin until the Mt. Gox bankruptcy case is sorted out. A committee, possibly appointed by the Bitcoin Foundation, could verify proper ownership before the coins are cleared for spending and a change back is made.

This would be a bit different than the idea of taking the coins permanently, or permanently invalidating them. The intention here would be to simply assist the legal process.

I know this is not something which can be done for every theft, etc., but we are talking about 6% of all bitcoin mined to date, which are presently tangled up in a real legal mess.

I suppose a general principle to govern this could be that when an entity controlling greater than some number of fraction of bitcoin is subject to legal action, such as a bankruptcy, charges of fraud, lawsuits, etc., that coins may be locked pending the outcome of litigation.

Topic: [PROPOSAL] - lock the apparent Mt. Gox coins for now - page 5. (Read 4956 times)