Topic: Risk of jail for developers. Should you be anonymous? - page 4. (Read 2132 times)

I totally agree with you on this. As the Op asked should we remain anonymous or not. than the real question should be like, is it possible to remain anonymous. Because "anonymity" is term that governments and organizations do not like if ordinary peoples are using it. Well yours point are so legit. because new things take time and i think that 1/3 of that time has gone. There are numerous developers of blockchain base projects enjoying there lives. i do not understand what's harm in there for developer. because it is not necessary for CEO of a platform to be developer if yes than developers could sign an agreement with the team leader that if things go south then i am out of this and i need your sign on this agreement. hahah i know in order to accomplish this, developers have to be worthy enough to gain leaders or his/her employer. well that will no doubt increase the quality of platform's coding. 

Your post reminded me of someone's post well let me mention it here: post is in URDU so i will interpret it in English in short.

A government officer is accused of taking bribe in crypto and an investigation is started by FIA. well crypto is ban and no fix punishment is declared for user of crypto, in Pakistan. so the gov officer did not mention in the statement of property that he own 30,000$ of crypto in his wallets. Well the investigation team after taking 15 Lac PKR bribe from that accused person, freed him, well the turning point in the story is during the investigation they (FIA team) withdrawal all the 30k$ worth crypto from his wallets. And when the accused officer asked the FIA about his money than they simply replied. You said you have only the mentioned property in statement then how can you demand us the money that you do not own. hahaha. well these are the scenarios are going on here. 

In result, no doubt if there is good use of crypto there than bad use is also there. the results depend on the uses.

It's a choice, and it doesn't have to be a war that has to be doxxed to be fought. Cryptography-based, censorship-resistant and privacy-enhancing tools were invented to empower anyone, and to leverage anonymity to make the war more on equal ground. Developers don't have the arms nor the armies to protect themselves, just their anonymity and privacy. It's those tools/technologies that could bring forth the path to real social change, and to weaken political strongholds.

Well, it's a war and maybe those who don't have the stomach for it shouldn't participate.

Bitcoin's very existence where it gives the option to the average Joe to stop using the corrupt banking system is a threat to the corrupted entities. Everyone should know that they won't just stand around and watch. Sometimes it is just propaganda and FUD, sometimes it is legal battle, and sometimes it is outright banning. On top of that we also have the abusers, trolls, criminals, scammers, etc. who would stop at nothing to do damage.

That doesn't mean we should stay silent either or discourage others from joining in the battles. Sometimes people forget the Bitcoin ethos and need to be reminded of them. They need to be reminded that bitcoin isn't just something you buy to make profit...

Sounds to me as if you (Greg) are trying to talk normies (and perhaps others) out of getting involved in bitcoin developing ..

Each of us likely have different callings in life, and surely sometimes, we might go down a path in which we are involved in one area in which we develop some specialties and skills, and frequently there will be career path changes in the lives of many people too.. and some people might not achieve real high levels of specialization due to changes in their paths in their lives (or maybe how high that they might rise within their specialty areas.. whether talking about software, technical or other kinds of skills/knowledge and or abilities that they might develop - and surely some skills/knowledge and abilities are more useful than others, depending on whether we are on a farm or if we are in software development or if we might be considered part of the "parasite" financial class. .I am not claiming to be a parasite.. hahahahaha)..  ..

Since I had already a full career, I am not likely to learn very much about coding, even though through the years and through osmosis, I have learned about some of the trials and tribulations of bitcoin coders and some of the difficulties in funding and/or political battles or other forms of harassing that might come through any kind of disruption of the status quo information/value paradigms  (there are ways that we are at war, so war has casualties, too, no?), so in some ways, I have considered some ways in which I could help to fund some developers.. or even to fund some of the legal defense matters that might come up from time to time, so it is not like I am convinced about "not getting involved" even though sometimes, there can be a difference between talk and action, and also different ways that normies might be able to contribute towards bitcoin even if they might not be able to code (or feel that they can learn), even though you are likely referring to some of the more hands on aspects ways that normies might get involved in bitcoin such as writing/reviewing code and/or getting involved in the discussions regarding code direction preferences that might be battled (cost and benefits of different code implications that have potential political ramifications too.. or that some no coiners, pre-coiners, bitcoin naysayers, shitcoiners consider the bitcoin proponents as a legitimate targets (maybe Vitalik came up the denegration term of bitcoin maximalist because he was thinking about Greg Maxwell.. hahahahaha?), and so targeting can surely come through a variety of kinds of pressures and oppressions, and surely some of the legal threats (abuse of patents and legal systems and lawsuits) are likely not very fair to normies and to people who might not have a lot of financial (or even time/energy) resources to deploy in order to participate.. and surely there have likely been some attempts to help developers through some legal fund initiatives (and surely maybe that is not close to enough resources that are spent or specifically deployable to help normie developers, as you seem to be suggesting.. because I do surely understand about various ways that rich people - and or those with access to resources (including governments and quasi-government entities - and I am not anti-government) are able to use legal instruments to cause injustices by punishing normal people in terms of causing legal costs on them (which takes a lot of time, energy and financial resources to defend.. including potentially zapping mental and creative juices too).

But trust and respect doesn't, or shouldn't, come if a developer/coder is doxxed or not. It should come from the work he/she has showed and done. Because Satoshi could be the Drug Dealer Paul Le Roux, but it will not matter because of his anonymity. Who the community truly respects is the man who dedicated his time in building Bitcoin.


I believe just let each developer do what he/she wants to do. Satoshi did it best. He probably pretended to be an Englishman, logging in the forum not in his real time zone, building Bitcoin in Windows because he was probably a Unix/Linux user, and changing his coding style.


Although, a respected developer like you needs to protect your family too, especially from the State. It's too much risk in my opinion.


That's why we in the community have the utmost respect for you and the Core Developers, and consider you and them, the rightful stewards of the network. Thank you ser.

Being anonymous doesn't eliminate the risk of being targeted, at best it might reduce it but the protection is fragile.  At worst being anonymous denies you access to a multitude of protections including the trust and respect of friends and the sympathy of the public.  In some countries it may even meaningfully deny you to the protection of due process.

Unless you carefully throw something over the wall and vanish it's essentially impossible to remain strongly anonymous:  Everything you write leaks information about your identity.  With the world population being less than 8 billion people, just 33 bits is technically enough to identify a person.  If you suppose attackers that have the power to seize and search your home at gunpoint then they don't even have to be particularly sure who you are-- they just need to reduce the list of candidates to one small enough they can search without too much trouble, and protecting your anonymity against an attacker that has physical possession of your computers is probably not possible.

Instead, I think sane people just shouldn't participate:  There is very little incentive to do so. Forget state attackers: you'll be aggressively attacked by the mentally ill, by crapcoin scammers and their bagholders who view you as an impediment to their dreams of riches and no one will stop them, you'll be exploited by "journalists" that would think nothing of ruining your life with some falsehoods just to gain a few pieces of click-stream silver.  The community as a whole will do little to protect you, mostly just pat itself on the back saying honey badger don't care and developers were a liability anyways.

As I've learned first hand the vulnerability created by participating isn't eliminated completely by stopping.  You can't change your mind later and go "gee, I don't really want to spend the few years I have left fending off scammers"-- once you've given someone a hook to go after you you're just stuck with it.  Especially in the modern world, saturated by fractal bureaucracy-- the best way to stay safe is to be invisible to those who would do you harm: Institutions won't protect you and don't permit you to protect yourself against attacks with adequate force.  The public is too mired in the drama of the week, whatever nonsense fake crisis the applicable media is shoving down their throat, to stand up and protect their own.  And being masked isn't invisible, it may well increase your visibility.

People like to imagine specific attacks that will draw an overwhelming defense, visions of Bitcoiners protesting the state house or whatever.  But attackers aren't limited to behaving 'honestly', they're not limited to attacking in ways they are sure to lose-- no, they'll attack in ways that won't draw a response if any exist and clearly such avenues do exist.

Ultimately, if it was too risky to participate relative to the rewards under your well known identity then you should reach almost the same conclusion assuming anonymity.

Bitcoin's prior lead developer has ended his involvement, specifically saying that he regretted ever participating because he's been awarded a pile of abuse including multiple lawsuits as a result.  That should be a thermonuclear wake up call, but few seem to hear it over inane debate about jpegs.

In fact, if we look back at the reasons, we still return to the classic reasons, which are only intended to make it seem like such a thing exists, but in fact, the reasons for money laundering or whatever is negative in crypto are exaggerated and if we look at it, there are actually more cases that are worse than that and the government actually knows that saying negative things like money laundering, terrorism or whatever it is doesn't have much real impact.

On the other hand talking about China which is still very vocal in saying they will not accept Crypto but on the other hand there are currently some news about Hong Kong which does have a goal of becoming a crypto center and China supports them in this case isn't this a comedy.

Source

This means that in this case the government only prohibits and punishes miners only as an alibi to smooth out the plans they make, even though we really don't know whether the conditions are correct or not, however, sooner or later such things may actually happen because they are indeed monopolizing the conditions of the government, it is clear that they is the champion.

You can do the same with cash and that is not banned. I do not think countries will ban cryptocurrency when they know that it is not used for money laundering and only a small part of the btc community do illegal things with cryptocurrency and there would be civil unrest if they banned it with that reason. Russia has endorsed btc recently after many years of banning and denouncing it I think they realized that they cannot destroy it and they benefit from btc income as much as any other country.

OK, so they will trust it. GOOD! In such a world, a scarce, censorship-resistant cryptocurrency will definitely be VERY valuable. Plus in China, here Bitcoin is banned,is where it's most valuable to go around capital controls amd move wealth out of their country seamlessly, without dependence on off-shore banking accounts. We can actually memorize our seeds, HODL as much Bitcoin into the wallet, and move across borders containing our wealth in our heads.

Governments, specially in democracies don't give a shit about respect. They want obedience and we've already seen that when they ban something, regardless of how ridiculous, majority of the population obeys.
As for taxes, the cryptocurrency market hasn't grown big enough and the revenue service's income is not big enough yet for them to really care about taxes. IRS in US for example has an income of about $5 trillion!

I love it when governments ban crypto, they make clowns of themselves and that can only be a good thing, because it makes people respect them less.

People will transact outside of the system, pay less taxes and the nation states will get skinny or perish altogether.

The EU is not Nigeria or India. Their banking system is better connected to the rest of the world, so I don't think massive market inefficiencies will emerge as people will be able to buy it outside of the EU by sending their fiat caca to a seller on Bisq, RoboSats or similar.

The only government that could SUDDENLY do this is the biggest terrorist organisation in the world ( US ).
In fact having anonymous ninja developers is the best course of action for those who want to use a certain coin for illicit purposes. *"what is scary is having a well established dev team becoming celebrities in developer's community."

If you see nobody has touched them for over a decade, start investigating the cause. And let me save you the time, the reason is for convenience, it saves the government the time  and resources, it's easier to control the situation if they know where they are and what they do all the time.

If you start to think like the crooked agents of evil ( governments elites ), you can see the reasoning behind some events more clearly.

*= one can imagine such a thing to be bad, it's not. Keeping the agents of evil satisfied is a compromise but worth it as long as we the normal users can do with bitcoin as intended.

A government can legislate that developing "cryptocurrencies" enables money laundering, terrorism and whatnot, and suddenly any developer is under threat ot being arrested if they are not anonymous. Of course any developed democracy would need to go through various proceedings to get such a thing done, but it's not impossible, and it's definitely possible in totalitarian regimes like Russia, China and whatnot (not to mention North Korea, where I sometimes cannot even fathom this nightmare state actually exists)

This is precisely why you need to be cautious with privacy. Anybody can send you behind the bars if they know every little detail from your life, because you do break the law once in a while; and that's fine. We all do. Sometimes it's just human. What is not human, is to have a few companies watching everybody like Big Brother's big brother, and do what police is supposed to do more cunningly.

Andrew Tate, as you used it as an example, while horrendously disappointing to have him as youth's paradigm, wouldn't be inside the jail if he wasn't the most influential male of 2022.

You see the sentence that talks about pathological selfishness I quoted on your response is killing the society gradually and dulls the impression of having a growing economy in the society. For instance, a person who is not capable of doing a job is hired to do the job because his uncle is at the top of the company. He'll go and screw things up. It hurts, but humans careless about the impact of what we're doing to ourselves. On the contrary, moving forward to what "serveria" said; about digging up someone's wrong deeds and using it against them just for the sake of being a bitcoin developer is possible, but its restricted to developers whose hands are not clean. That means if the Government should conceal their intentions and execute such actions not every developer would be affected. That's the main reason people should clean up traces and stay clean.

But then the entire problem comes from a different direction.  You are used to already believing your freedom is under continuous threat and in the hands of certain people.  And it should not be that way.

Maybe we are too complacent in the situation and with the idea that a stranger who has never been proved to do something wrong is under attack and enclosed in a cage just because some body said so.  If every body cared more about their surroundings, some of the people you mentioned would not be allowed by the society to stay behind bars.  But society tends to be more and more narcissistic.  In our society it works like this.  I do not care if you got brutally murdered long as you did not look very hot, were not belonging to an influential family or were not part of my personal circle of family and friends.

It sucks.  Honestly.  We know some of the people above did not do or say something so wrong they deserve jail time, but we silently accept the situation as is.  We silently accept that if you say something and some body decides to take your words out of context, you can get jail time.  Sounds so F ed up!

Finally, at least the people you mention have done something they can build accusations on.  Becoming 'traitors' of the United States, sharing very controversial view points and other stuff that can easily be exacerbated and turned into a reason to kneel and accept your now awful fate.  What does a Bitcoin developer do so awfully wrong they can easily wrap their head around it and find a way to put them down on their knees?  Coding?  Owning a Bitcoin Wallet?  We are talking full time programmers versus people who were part of very sensitive sectors of the society and institutions.  It is not as easy to randomly put them down because they do not have as much public history as a public figure does and they do not own information they can be targeted for.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

"Peter Schiff said so"

But anyway, banks refusing transactions is their problem, not an underlying fault in the cryptocurrency, because they are only blocking funds coming from an exchange (which ironically is also hacked by a bank). P2P trades can not be blocked because it looks like a normal send/receive money transaction.

As far as I know, most banks around the world still do not support cryptocurrency when it comes to conducting transactions from bitcoin or crypto to the bank, the number of banks open to bitcoin and cryptocurrency can be counted on the fingers.

Then how do you know that Bitcoin and ETH will have zero value by 2025? what is your basis? Your evidence must be strong on this matter.

No, no, no, no.

You cannot call something reliable or even efficient if it can only be used in one particular region.

How will this be any different from the fintech services that only allow users from the European Economic Area? It will not be a global service, but on the contrary, an exclusive one, just as all CDBCs ultimately are.

Well, there were Covid restrictions, now the war is going on - they didn't ask anyone if we would accept that. Democracy is a dream, it's a ghost - it doesn't exist. Hehe, now the most interesting part... certainly, they can't send every crypto user to jail but... they can do what they did to Assange, Snowden, Weinstein, Tate etc they'll dig up some unpleasant fact from your life, expose it, build their accusations based on that and then you're going to jail anyway.