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Topic: Risk of jail for developers. Should you be anonymous? (Read 1559 times)

hero member
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Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
These people should leave cryptocurrency developers alone. They are  trying to make the world a better place alone and instead they should go after those who they know are actually using bitcoin for various illegal purposes like money laundering financing terrorism etc. They know because they have their surveillance everywhere.

And yes, please developers should remain anonymous. Because they are easy targets for the security agencies, the Feds, the good, the bad and the ugly in the world. Besides, I have never seen a developer who doesn't hold their privacy and security in high esteem. One more thing for developers is to obey the laws and regulations binding cryptocurrency in any country so as to avoid legal and regulatory problems..

Regardless the fact what you say is true, but it is also impossible, at least the part of chasing criminals instead of chasing devs. Some of the biggest criminals are politicians, gnterprise groups CEOs, friends, family, etc. And these people are the ones making the rules and avoiding them when they don't serve them.

I agree that if I was a dev, I wanted to be anonymous, only know by aliases. But this is also very difficult, because you don't think of this at born time (so to speak), therefore, early in life you start handing out info about you everywhere by means of when your parents give you a smarphone, a console, a laptop, etc. And when the time comes, you realise that you need to be annonymous but it's late because your info is already everywhere.
Removing all your traces from the internet is quite difficult because many times, it forces you to change many aspects of life.

This is actually true, if they would attack the developers then much better they'll target the criminals that are surfing in the blockchain technology and crypto. As devs want to gain the trust of people they are putting their identity on public. Which is not actually good for them, it would be better red tagged criminal activities that are harmful for the community. But of course revealing those identity could led to even more worse scenarios. Such as hacking their IP address, threat and more worse crime. Which could be hard for them to escape those scenarios since people would always do something in the internet.

Not all good developers are good actors, it's another angle of this argument and I've gone through most responses and found that everyone thinks positive of every dev. Some of them develop the scam altcoins or project using the blockchain, which has lured investors to lose funds. Consequently, the good players also need to stay careful, because the security agencies think in weird ways once they're ordered to carry out a search spree on blockchain developers, out of what a bad player has committed using the network, maybe. So, I think that should be the foundation of this conversation, and only a few developer would go scot free since these law enforcement agencies employ literally top technicians from every department in the world to join their security agencies, it'll be easier to track down them developers. It takes a hacker to get a hacker. Except those who has stopped online activities, every developer who works online stand a risk of being caught, as I've realized recently, after the chipmixer scandal, that the FBI are well prepared tech wise, yet I believe some people, the few, can beat the system and still remain anonymous.
hero member
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Crypto Casino & Sportsbook
A few days ago, I had listened to a Citadel Dispatch podcast (from April 13) in which Matt Odell interviewed two attornies (Mike Hassard and Tor Ekeland) about the Roman Sterlingov case.

Their description of the situation comes off as quite the shitshow in which the USA govt is using (or claim to be using) chain analysis tools in order to provide evidence in order to support their prosecution of the operators of mixing services or whatever it might happen to be that the govt is claiming to unlawful, and part of the beef that the lawyers have about this whole case is that the govt is having a tendency to make elaborate claims about their surveillance capabilities, but not showing either the evidence or the ways that their surveillance tools are working.... and therefore they are coming to wrong and unjust conclusions and likely able to prosecute anyone that they want based on flimsy evidence (including that many times the accused peeps are tending to not even be able to fight charges because their funds get frozen.. and they just end up pleaing to charges that might not even be sustainable if they were to be fought in a court of law).

You raise an interesting problem here. If we focus on mixing service providers, the chance that they are doing something wrong besides providing a mixing service is quite high. I am not referring to something illegal, only something wrong. For example, they have both cryptocurrency and fiat funds and can't prove the origin because they don't have perfect accounting. The authorities could surveil them and find that they can't successfully prosecute them solely based on providing a mixing service, but they can collect much more data about the person as soon as they identified who is behind that service. Putting together a case that will lead to some result is probably easy. Not many people have perfect accounting books for the cryptocurrency transactions and I guess that someone providing a mixing service is probably literally mixing up some of the things that concern their private cryptocurrency dealings as well.

It could be all kinds of things that authorities put together. Perhaps the mixing service provider gambles sometimes and there you go, you make the case for money laundering unless the person can perfectly prove that the money has a legal origin and was not laundered. That can turn out to be very difficult. But there are countless other potential accusations besides the mixing service to take someone down. The podcast mentioned here proves that well. The surveillance can simply be extended to areas not connected to the mixing service and the case becomes so complex that properly defending yourself becomes prohibitively expensive. Even more so if your funds are frozen anyway...
legendary
Activity: 3654
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Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
A few days ago, I had listened to a Citadel Dispatch podcast (from April 13) in which Matt Odell interviewed two attornies (Mike Hassard and Tor Ekeland) about the Roman Sterlingov case.

Their description of the situation comes off as quite the shitshow in which the USA govt is using (or claim to be using) chain analysis tools in order to provide evidence in order to support their prosecution of the operators of mixing services or whatever it might happen to be that the govt is claiming to unlawful, and part of the beef that the lawyers have about this whole case is that the govt is having a tendency to make elaborate claims about their surveillance capabilities, but not showing either the evidence or the ways that their surveillance tools are working.... and therefore they are coming to wrong and unjust conclusions and likely able to prosecute anyone that they want based on flimsy evidence (including that many times the accused peeps are tending to not even be able to fight charges because their funds get frozen.. and they just end up pleaing to charges that might not even be sustainable if they were to be fought in a court of law).
hero member
Activity: 1176
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I rather die on my feet than to live on my knees
True but this circles back to it being because no one is building privacy preserving technology for day to day life. Everyone is comfy consuming centralized proprietary software so this is what we get.

Well let's focus our firepower at one specific target - the internet makes a good candidate for that.

We currently have:

- Adblockers
- Do Not Track
- Private browsing windows
- VPNs
- encrypted DNS
- Profile containers
- Tor (but hardly anyone uses that)

You'll get most of these when using Firefox/Chromium. And yet, data brokers are still reaping user information at obscene rates. It's because most of these users have poor to no opsec, give out swathes of their personal information to social media sites and "surveys" looking to make a quick buck, or they're making the fatal mistake of using Google Chrome without any add blockers.

And even here, privacy solutions do exist for that particular part of the problem: Private email a la protonmail and tutanota, one-time-use email addresses for signing up to stuff, and so forth.

Most people do not periodically review the sites they have connected to Google and MS. So it really comes down to users not being vigilant.

Yes absolutely true. People don't realise that info is more that a money maker. It's a weapon these days. Economic weapon, financial weapon and even military weapon. People actually fucking dye out of information leaks as we see in Russia and other such countries where you get poisoned and thrown out of windows because THEY know where you are, what you do, your habits, etc.

Yes, ad-blockers and other tools can be used but sometimes is a PITA because they break sites' functionalities. I use uBlock Origin, noscript, decentraleyes and ad-block. I know some of these overlaps themselves, but sometimes when site functionality gets broken, I try to deactivate one to see if site works or not. And this is boring sometimes, but I still do it.
Degoogling is another thing I started doing. Deleting Google emails, stop using Google Search, stop using Google Drive and other google services. Another gial is de-Android me. lol, but that needs a new phone that can use for instance, Debian or so!
That's a lot to do regarding opsec.
hero member
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The replica of a runner-up
In countries with a highly accepted rule of law, developers are pretty safe in my opinion for as long as they only write code for cryptocurrencies.
That's only true in fairylands not in reality Tongue
In reality the laws can change or even interpreted the way they want it to.

The same counts for instructions for weapons from 3D printers.
Let's use a better example: social media and VPNs. If you ask anybody in US if social media or using VPN is illegal they will tell you no after laughing at you for asking such a silly question.
The reality is that the authoritarian regime doesn't want you to use anything they can not control (sounds familiar? They can't control bitcoin either) they are making it illegal to use any social media that is not in full control of the authorities in this so called "democracy" where they can censor anything they don't like and not to mention the punishment for using VPNs that are not US and its allies honeypot would be up to 20 years in prison. They ensure these things by passing laws similar to the recent shenanigans with the legislation act 686 with the fancy name "Restrict Act". That's only one of many acts Wink
If I live in the USA and use a Russian based VPN, will I get punished for that? I've never heard about that, are you really sure?
Also, if the USA was so strict regarding to things that they can't control, then why do they let Tor project to exist? Tor is based in Winchester, New Hampshire.
They can't control bitcoin but no one will arrest you for using one, right? While I agree with you on social media thing, still, you can use VPN to bypass restrictions and access vk.com or any other website and no one will arrest or punish you for that.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
True but this circles back to it being because no one is building privacy preserving technology for day to day life. Everyone is comfy consuming centralized proprietary software so this is what we get.

Well let's focus our firepower at one specific target - the internet makes a good candidate for that.

We currently have:

- Adblockers
- Do Not Track
- Private browsing windows
- VPNs
- encrypted DNS
- Profile containers
- Tor (but hardly anyone uses that)

You'll get most of these when using Firefox/Chromium. And yet, data brokers are still reaping user information at obscene rates. It's because most of these users have poor to no opsec, give out swathes of their personal information to social media sites and "surveys" looking to make a quick buck, or they're making the fatal mistake of using Google Chrome without any add blockers.

And even here, privacy solutions do exist for that particular part of the problem: Private email a la protonmail and tutanota, one-time-use email addresses for signing up to stuff, and so forth.

Most people do not periodically review the sites they have connected to Google and MS. So it really comes down to users not being vigilant.
sr. member
Activity: 1624
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Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
These people should leave cryptocurrency developers alone. They are  trying to make the world a better place alone and instead they should go after those who they know are actually using bitcoin for various illegal purposes like money laundering financing terrorism etc. They know because they have their surveillance everywhere.

And yes, please developers should remain anonymous. Because they are easy targets for the security agencies, the Feds, the good, the bad and the ugly in the world. Besides, I have never seen a developer who doesn't hold their privacy and security in high esteem. One more thing for developers is to obey the laws and regulations binding cryptocurrency in any country so as to avoid legal and regulatory problems..

Regardless the fact what you say is true, but it is also impossible, at least the part of chasing criminals instead of chasing devs. Some of the biggest criminals are politicians, gnterprise groups CEOs, friends, family, etc. And these people are the ones making the rules and avoiding them when they don't serve them.

I agree that if I was a dev, I wanted to be anonymous, only know by aliases. But this is also very difficult, because you don't think of this at born time (so to speak), therefore, early in life you start handing out info about you everywhere by means of when your parents give you a smarphone, a console, a laptop, etc. And when the time comes, you realise that you need to be annonymous but it's late because your info is already everywhere.
Removing all your traces from the internet is quite difficult because many times, it forces you to change many aspects of life.

This is actually true, if they would attack the developers then much better they'll target the criminals that are surfing in the blockchain technology and crypto. As devs want to gain the trust of people they are putting their identity on public. Which is not actually good for them, it would be better red tagged criminal activities that are harmful for the community. But of course revealing those identity could led to even more worse scenarios. Such as hacking their IP address, threat and more worse crime. Which could be hard for them to escape those scenarios since people would always do something in the internet.
member
Activity: 98
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These people should leave cryptocurrency developers alone. They are  trying to make the world a better place alone and instead they should go after those who they know are actually using bitcoin for various illegal purposes like money laundering financing terrorism etc. They know because they have their surveillance everywhere.

And yes, please developers should remain anonymous. Because they are easy targets for the security agencies, the Feds, the good, the bad and the ugly in the world. Besides, I have never seen a developer who doesn't hold their privacy and security in high esteem. One more thing for developers is to obey the laws and regulations binding cryptocurrency in any country so as to avoid legal and regulatory problems..

Regardless the fact what you say is true, but it is also impossible, at least the part of chasing criminals instead of chasing devs. Some of the biggest criminals are politicians, gnterprise groups CEOs, friends, family, etc. And these people are the ones making the rules and avoiding them when they don't serve them.

I agree that if I was a dev, I wanted to be anonymous, only know by aliases. But this is also very difficult, because you don't think of this at born time (so to speak), therefore, early in life you start handing out info about you everywhere by means of when your parents give you a smarphone, a console, a laptop, etc. And when the time comes, you realise that you need to be annonymous but it's late because your info is already everywhere.
Removing all your traces from the internet is quite difficult because many times, it forces you to change many aspects of life.

True but this circles back to it being because no one is building privacy preserving technology for day to day life. Everyone is comfy consuming centralized proprietary software so this is what we get.
hero member
Activity: 1176
Merit: 647
I rather die on my feet than to live on my knees
These people should leave cryptocurrency developers alone. They are  trying to make the world a better place alone and instead they should go after those who they know are actually using bitcoin for various illegal purposes like money laundering financing terrorism etc. They know because they have their surveillance everywhere.

And yes, please developers should remain anonymous. Because they are easy targets for the security agencies, the Feds, the good, the bad and the ugly in the world. Besides, I have never seen a developer who doesn't hold their privacy and security in high esteem. One more thing for developers is to obey the laws and regulations binding cryptocurrency in any country so as to avoid legal and regulatory problems..

Regardless the fact what you say is true, but it is also impossible, at least the part of chasing criminals instead of chasing devs. Some of the biggest criminals are politicians, gnterprise groups CEOs, friends, family, etc. And these people are the ones making the rules and avoiding them when they don't serve them.

I agree that if I was a dev, I wanted to be anonymous, only know by aliases. But this is also very difficult, because you don't think of this at born time (so to speak), therefore, early in life you start handing out info about you everywhere by means of when your parents give you a smarphone, a console, a laptop, etc. And when the time comes, you realise that you need to be annonymous but it's late because your info is already everywhere.
Removing all your traces from the internet is quite difficult because many times, it forces you to change many aspects of life.
hero member
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duelbits.com
These people should leave cryptocurrency developers alone. They are  trying to make the world a better place alone and instead they should go after those who they know are actually using bitcoin for various illegal purposes like money laundering financing terrorism etc. They know because they have their surveillance everywhere.

And yes, please developers should remain anonymous. Because they are easy targets for the security agencies, the Feds, the good, the bad and the ugly in the world. Besides, I have never seen a developer who doesn't hold their privacy and security in high esteem. One more thing for developers is to obey the laws and regulations binding cryptocurrency in any country so as to avoid legal and regulatory problems..
hero member
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I rather die on my feet than to live on my knees
Another problem is that where Bitcoin Core (te most used client) is hosted in a platform already owned by one entity that likes to keep things in secret (closed source) and I believe that they would also be collecting data from its users. So, an interesting idea could be to have an alternative repository where to host the software, like Gitlab or maybe to create something new in nostr! Decentralize it!
legendary
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In countries with a highly accepted rule of law, developers are pretty safe in my opinion for as long as they only write code for cryptocurrencies.
That's only true in fairylands not in reality Tongue
In reality the laws can change or even interpreted the way they want it to.

The same counts for instructions for weapons from 3D printers.
Let's use a better example: social media and VPNs. If you ask anybody in US if social media or using VPN is illegal they will tell you no after laughing at you for asking such a silly question.
The reality is that the authoritarian regime doesn't want you to use anything they can not control (sounds familiar? They can't control bitcoin either) they are making it illegal to use any social media that is not in full control of the authorities in this so called "democracy" where they can censor anything they don't like and not to mention the punishment for using VPNs that are not US and its allies honeypot would be up to 20 years in prison. They ensure these things by passing laws similar to the recent shenanigans with the legislation act 686 with the fancy name "Restrict Act". That's only one of many acts Wink
member
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The legal standpoint is quiete clear. Ignorance won't protect you.
Meaning you develop an app which can be used to hack a computer well its clear.
While you develop an app which is based on trust, like a wallet, non custodial and the app is used in crime you are not to blame.




The difference is really intention in some cases but in other cases it's whether or not you have paid off the correct people. It might help to both have good intentions and pay some bills here and there.
legendary
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Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
The legal standpoint is quiete clear. Ignorance won't protect you.
Meaning you develop an app which can be used to hack a computer well its clear.
While you develop an app which is based on trust, like a wallet, non custodial and the app is used in crime you are not to blame.

The law is not as clear as you are proclaiming it to be.  There is no world-wide law that determines what is legal, illegal, criminal, civil, even though code can have world-wide impacts.  There are also various free speech angles (defenses) and even questions of how to read intent versus outcome, and whether there are commercial purposes or communicative purposes that are facilitate through software.. Also is there self-dealing and obfuscation in regards to what is happening or not. 

I doubt that the standards are even close to as clear as you are describing them to be - even if there are proponents of various standards, and you may well take a different perspective if you are developing software, using the software or someone who is looking at enforcement of laws (such as prosecutors in various jurisdictions).
member
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Looking for guilt best look first into a mirror
The legal standpoint is quiete clear. Ignorance won't protect you.
Meaning you develop an app which can be used to hack a computer well its clear.
While you develop an app which is based on trust, like a wallet, non custodial and the app is used in crime you are not to blame.


hero member
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Magic


I don't see that coming unless the developer himself is involved in shady actions with his own code

This will be the main point to decide if there will be possible jail for a developer or not. In general law systems will try to find out what a person was trying to do with his actions. If the action of a person intended something harmful he can end up possibly in jail, if a person intended good stuff he will not end up in jail.
Let me make an example for that: If you are a knife manufacturer that produces kitchen knifes then you will not end up in jail if your knife will be used in a murder. If you however make a torture device that is only produced to be given to a murderer and he than uses it, you will also have the chance to get into jail.
With bitcoin we do not produce such a harmful device, we produce a "kitchen knife" that has all sorts of uses.
This is at least my view on the current situation. If a government wants to take aggressive steps agains bitcoin, they could always fake some stuff to get you to jail, but that can be done for every other thing also.
legendary
Activity: 2030
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But that doesn't change that fact that developers are also on the governments' list...
But is this really surprising to any of us?  Would it surprise you if you heard they were on the Government's list?  After all, I think we are as well.  All of us for using Bitcoin and trying to pave a different path.  We are just very low on their list of priorities for now and they can do really nothing about it without making it seem like they do not care about freedoms.

Is it wrong to partially see the risks of being a Bitcoin developer somewhere near the risks of being a hacker and exposing Governments and their wrongdoings?  I see them pretty close.  As a Bitcoin developer, you are helping the world choose an alternative to dirty Fiat.  Of course some countries will come with a backlash for them.  In their eyes, you are not helping the world.  You are trying to destroy their power!

But listen, when Bitcoin developers will be in jail.  And Monero will be banned.  And Mixer users will be particularly investigated for crime.  And they will make Bitcoin usage illegal unless the Government implements a layer of KYC over Bitcoin and requests owners of every single Address to report to the Government.  When all of this happens.  There will be more freedom in jail than in the 'free world'.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

This is an interesting conversation you guys have and there came something to my mind that I consider important and should be in favor of developers, at least in countries with a reasonable rule of law acceptance.

Yesterday I watched a talk show and there was an expert from the Chaos Computer Club who said that AI is going to be so tremendously dangerous for society because the bad part about it is that in its final stadium you can create everything with AI, but you can't develop AI that detects AI. I found that sentence interesting for many reasons, but to not get off-topic here, the following seems to be relevant to me:
If a developer in the cryptocurrency space could be prosecuted by the government for writing code that allows people to transfer numbers over the Internet, what happens to developers of AI codes that allow you already to create the wildest deepfake? The developers will argue that they developed the code only for those who intend to do good with it. But on top of that, what about the users who use it to create a video I just linked here (Jordan Peterson talking about German politics, which he never did), and the users say that it was meant to be funny, not harmful? Where will governments draw the line? What is a funny meme and what is disinformation based on AI abuse?

In countries with a highly accepted rule of law, developers are pretty safe in my opinion for as long as they only write code for cryptocurrencies. They could defend themselves and claim that AI developers are at least as dangerous as they create tools for disinformation.

The same counts for instructions for weapons from 3D printers. What if someone publishes an instruction that does create a weapon that can NOT shoot, but anyone with some expertise knows how to extend the instruction in order to make that weapon shoot? Is the written code for the 3D printer to print that weapon illegal?

All these aspects are important as courts can't arbitrarily decide what is legal and what is not. They would have to draw very clear lines in order to not violate the rule of law. And all these examples have gigantic slippery slope potential where I don't see how governments could create a framework such that a developer could effectively be prosecuted for writing code.

When someone writes code and says "this is only meant to sent crypto-kitties from A to B and B to A" and the code is used to transfer value because people value what is transferred with the code, how on earth could that developer end up in jail in a country with a strong rule of law acceptance?

I don't see that coming unless the developer himself is involved in shady actions with his own code and that could be more of a problem where authorities seek for reasons that are secondary to writing the code itself.
legendary
Activity: 3654
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Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
(like for example, Afghanistan! Hell, this is exactly the kind of place that should be using BTC as a safe haven currency, but the Taliban are not exactly interested in that.)
The Taliban don't need Crypto, as long as crypto does not appear in the Corran people should be OK. The Afghanies should embrace crypto. I'm pretty sure there are mining farms in Afghanistan. And a few thousand people have wallets. I've seen a map of the world and it shows clearly that most users are from the developing world. Around 400 million Users worldwide, 300 m from the developing world.

Hopefully they are not so dumb as to fuck around with shitcoins (crypto).

Figure out bitcoin first, and then if they might see some utility in the various shitcoins, then so be it, but the primary idea for "enemies" should be bitcoin rather than shitcoins.... unless you are purposefully trying to reck (sabotage) enemies by luring them into bullshit fake products that fail to empower them in terms of being censorship resistant in terms of the value of their holdings or the various ways that they might store it or transact in it (though of course, bitcoin does not seem to have transaction channels for all avenues built out.. but some of that likely just has to do with adoption, too)...

Don't get me wrong.. I am not trying to support "enemies" by providing "good" (or "better") advice that applies to all equally, both friends and enemies should be figuring out their bitcoin allocations first, prior to getting into shitcoins.. sure it is going to likely take a while and sure if bitcoin is being used by "bad" people, then there will be attempts to demonize it, but bitcoin gives no fucks about whether anyone is good or bad, but instead are the rules of bitcoin being followed in terms of verifying that the transaction has been sent or received.. and surely every ten minutes the status and locations of such coins/keys are verified.

Actually, I have been coming around to the fact that there might be some use cases for some shitcoins in terms of sometimes having alternative channels, and surely many of the longer term bitcoiners likely realize that it could take 100 to 200 years for most of the value to flow into bitcoin, and there are also likely going to be various systems built around bitcoin, and so we cannot really know if there are going to be other tokens in the long term, even though in the short to medium term there are all kinds of tokens that might serve some useful purposes especially when some of the systems in bitcoin are likely not even completely well built in terms of even figuring out on and off ramps or the ability to get liquidity between one kind of an asset and another kind of an asset.
member
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Looking for guilt best look first into a mirror
(like for example, Afghanistan! Hell, this is exactly the kind of place that should be using BTC as a safe haven currency, but the Taliban are not exactly interested in that.)
The Taliban don't need Crypto, as long as crypto does not appear in the Corran people should be OK. The Afghanies should embrace crypto. I'm pretty sure there are mining farms in Afghanistan. And a few thousand people have wallets. I've seen a map of the world and it shows clearly that most users are from the developing world. Around 400 million Users worldwide, 300 m from the developing world.
legendary
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bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
Reading this thread is not without fun.
Most crypto holders are outside of the so called 1st world. In the 3rd world, or the developping world to open a bank account is not easy. Even to open a company is harder than in the 1st World.

It is outside of the 1st world where its decided if Crypto has a chance or not.

I do agree with this part.

Considering where I'm in right now for example, you can't just make a phone call to a company formation service to open a company.

Well, actually, you can, but the process is much longer and more annoying due to rampant bureaucracy slowing all the necessary paperwork down, creating long queues of people.



Basically, if you do not have your passport or ID card to do any of those things then you are screwed. And think about what happens to countries that go through unstable regime change all the time, have no functional banking system, and so on. (like for example, Afghanistan! Hell, this is exactly the kind of place that should be using BTC as a safe haven currency, but the Taliban are not exactly interested in that.)



Edit: To the newbie below, we really don't need to involve ChatGPT in this discussion... thanks.
member
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Looking for guilt best look first into a mirror
But listen, when Bitcoin developers will be in jail.  And Monero will be banned.  And Mixer users will be particularly investigated for crime.  And they will make Bitcoin usage illegal unless the Government implements a layer of KYC over Bitcoin and requests owners of every single Address to report to the Government.  When all of this happens.  There will be more freedom in jail than in the 'free world'.


Very true that is.
copper member
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Eloncoin.org - Mars, here we come!

So, yeah 2025 is not really that far from now, and the extent to which BTC's price is going to continue to appreciate is not exactly guaranteed, even though we continue to witness a lot of vulnerabilities in traditional systems, their reliance on debt and the lack of clarity regarding various aspects in which there might be collateral to back up the various kinds of debt that can be vulnerable to falling and towards cascading.


I highly appreciate your belief and unwavering confidence in Bitcoin which is definitely an outstanding digital asset with potential to outclass all trade able assets in coming months and years. I trust Bitcoin has already entered in Bullish zone when it broke 200 DMA and upcoming halving event scheduled in 2024 will definitely take it to new highs and hopefully we can see it above 100,000.
legendary
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Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
>>after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.

if you give me one potato for my one bitcoin my bitcoin will by worth one potato
if you give me one gold coin for my one bitcoin my bitcoin will by worth one gold coin

fuck bank

You are not really describing what you are wanting to say very well hexan123.  

Of course, it is already becoming quite difficult for any normies to really accumulate at least one bitcoin without any decently large commitment towards either accumulating over time or being able to reallocate some other investments or cash that such normies might have available... and also when we are referring to smaller levels of items we might have to start to refer to sats or fractions of BTC... just to clarify.. and it is even becoming a bit more cumbersome to consider that anyone might be spending whole BTC at a time, even though on the settlement level or just the holding and moving value around, it still seems reasonable to talk in terms of BTC, but even then, we might be better served to refer to sats or to be more particular regarding how many times we are going to be getting into fractions of a BTC rather than one whole BTC when we refer to some things that we might buy... so a truck load of potatoes might be one BTC, and surely several ounces or even kilograms of gold might considered as one BTC, so it would not be likely one gold coin would be one BTC, unless there were some collector's angle or valuation to such coin or we might say that this bucket of gold coins is currently worth one BTC.

By the way, personally, I don't really have any problem or issue in terms of saying that "I transacted in bitcoin" and thereby using the singular of the reference, even if there might be some vagueness as to the quantity of bitcoin that I transacted being greater than 1 bitcoin or less than one bitcoin, so in that regard, there sometimes can be some references to transacting in bitcoin that might actually refer to either several bitcoin or to fractions of a bitcoin.

I don't really give too many shits about ethereum or whether it might have staying power or not, since there are a lot of weak points in terms of its ability to defend itself; however, I suppose if ethereum continues to exist in bitcoin's shadows, then we likely are going to be able to see various ways in which systems are being built around it and being built around bitcoin too.. and perhaps even inter-related.. and there could be some senses that if ethereum is crashing more and controlled more, then there could be worries then the focus of enemies of bitcoin would be to come after bitcoin in the various ways in which people can be targets.

So, yeah 2025 is not really that far from now, and the extent to which BTC's price is going to continue to appreciate is not exactly guaranteed, even though we continue to witness a lot of vulnerabilities in traditional systems, their reliance on debt and the lack of clarity regarding various aspects in which there might be collateral to back up the various kinds of debt that can be vulnerable to falling and towards cascading.

I do have doubts about whether banks will disappear, even though they are likely going to continue to be challenged and likely have to change in a variety of ways that may well cause them to need to back themselves with sounder forms of money and sounder collateral.. and bitcoin seems to be the best of collateral... in respect to considering how some of these systems might evolve in the coming years, and the theme of this thread that involves how much activists (or developers) might be targeted in regards to their work on some of these various kinds of products, especially if there are ambiguities in regards to how much hostility that government officials have - including their likely ongoing desires to protect status quo institutions, such as banks.. and some banks are more hostile towards bitcoin and various crypto than others, and surely it seems that the evidence seems to be showing increased hostilities in recent times, including that even within the banking system, there seems to be more hostility towards banks that are touching upon bitcoin and crypto - which is not really a new development, except that there is ongoing growth and attempts at stamping out or directing that growth at the same time.
newbie
Activity: 17
Merit: 0

>>after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.


if you give me one potato for my one bitcoin my bitcoin will by worth one potato
if you give me one gold coin for my one bitcoin my bitcoin will by worth one gold coin

fuck bank
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 1695
Crypto Swap Exchange
But that doesn't change that fact that developers are also on the governments' list...
But is this really surprising to any of us?  Would it surprise you if you heard they were on the Government's list?  After all, I think we are as well.  All of us for using Bitcoin and trying to pave a different path.  We are just very low on their list of priorities for now and they can do really nothing about it without making it seem like they do not care about freedoms.

Is it wrong to partially see the risks of being a Bitcoin developer somewhere near the risks of being a hacker and exposing Governments and their wrongdoings?  I see them pretty close.  As a Bitcoin developer, you are helping the world choose an alternative to dirty Fiat.  Of course some countries will come with a backlash for them.  In their eyes, you are not helping the world.  You are trying to destroy their power!

But listen, when Bitcoin developers will be in jail.  And Monero will be banned.  And Mixer users will be particularly investigated for crime.  And they will make Bitcoin usage illegal unless the Government implements a layer of KYC over Bitcoin and requests owners of every single Address to report to the Government.  When all of this happens.  There will be more freedom in jail than in the 'free world'.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG
member
Activity: 616
Merit: 15
Looking for guilt best look first into a mirror
Reading this thread is not without fun.
Most crypto holders are outside of the so called 1st world. In the 3rd world, or the developping world to open a bank account is not easy. Even to open a company is harder than in the 1st World.

It is outside of the 1st world where its decided if Crypto has a chance or not.

What a nice batch, a suspected Spammer Wink
hero member
Activity: 482
Merit: 529
All I need's a win.
Does anyone really think the governments will be interested in going after random crypto developers now that fresh juicy mixers are on the table?

I wouldn't be surprised if they did, in fact they already did it before with tornado cash developer Alexey Pertsev.
While it's unlikely that they would waste resrourses on small fish, but any dev working on similar projects is at risk, it all depends on the outcome of Pertsev case, and how it's going to shape the road forward.
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
Does anyone really think the governments will be interested in going after random crypto developers now that fresh juicy mixers are on the table?
That's about priorities and you are right. At this point their priority is more about services and either shutting them down (like shutting down mixers) or applying maximum surveillance on that service (like payment processor, custodial wallets and exchanges).
But that doesn't change that fact that developers are also on the governments' list...
member
Activity: 98
Merit: 26
Does anyone really think the governments will be interested in going after random crypto developers now that fresh juicy mixers are on the table?

Doesnt matter, we should be developing privacy tech to make their efforts futile.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
Does anyone really think the governments will be interested in going after random crypto developers now that fresh juicy mixers are on the table?
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 733
The replica of a runner-up
The most we've seen is there development of the CBDC as a way to combat cryptocurrency which isn't going so well with them as we know it.
Government is using all means to fight and bring down cryptocurrency but they are losing the fight day and night. CBDC can not withstand with bitcoin in the test of time. Many countries have already abandoned they CBDC because natives / Citizens are not using to do any transactions. So in many countries they are failed project. And also the developers also need be improved.
The only way CBDC can do well is when it links with cryptocurrency Ecosystem for free transaction like exchange platforms then people might use them to transact funds daily. If not it will becomes a doom project.
I think that governments have one common problem, there aren't smart people there. Every successful company, every successful invention, etc was always done by non-government individuals after the end of war. Before and during the war, governments had great scientists.
So, to clarify, governments don't have talented individuals that will create something competitive of bitcoin or altcoins. Also, people in government aren't that smart to solve their, let's call it, problems, in a smart way.
So, people have advantage here, government only has power and authority. So, as a result, power and stupid people can't have an advantage here, that's why CBDCs are a failure.
full member
Activity: 238
Merit: 199
The most we've seen is there development of the CBDC as a way to combat cryptocurrency which isn't going so well with them as we know it.
Government is using all means to fight and bring down cryptocurrency but they are losing the fight day and night. CBDC can not withstand with bitcoin in the test of time. Many countries have already abandoned they CBDC because natives / Citizens are not using to do any transactions. So in many countries they are failed project. And also the developers also need be improved.
The only way CBDC can do well is when it links with cryptocurrency Ecosystem for free transaction like exchange platforms then people might use them to transact funds daily. If not it will becomes a doom project.
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 1794
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...
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.

I have my doubts regarding if you are really even attempting to grapple with the issue that is presented Wind_FURY.. in terms of the extent to which any one person might end up standing up and become a target of controversy and therefore sometimes situations devolved into real battles with real world consequences in terms of livelihood, employability, de-platforming and/or various ways that someone might consider himself/herself to be doing normal work that is actually within the realm of controversy and consequences, and there are all kinds of areas in life in which anyone can end up becoming a threat to the status quo or a threat to a side that has resources sufficient enough to cause difficulties for the one who spoke up or who got involved in certain kinds of work that are "deemed to be threats" to the status quo or even threats to some other project or world view.

Choices are made along the way, and sometimes a person can find himself/herself in a position/situation in which s/he becomes a target... For sure, there are folks who might never stand up and never become controversial and perhaps even continuously choose mentors who are in "powerful" positions, and if the mentor becomes a subject of controversy, some of these folks will just find new mentors, and surely there are choices in life, and sometimes folks do not necessarily realize that they are making choices that are to "take the easy way" and perhaps never really having as much conflict in their lives, because they avoid conflict.  I would not even suggest necessarily that such choices to always avoid conflict are bad ones because they are somewhat in the discretion of individuals regarding how much conflict are they ready, willing or able to tolerate, and do they actually believe in anything besides just getting along.. and likely there can be principle in those kinds of choices of non-choices too, and even questions regarding the extent to whch some folks who might have purposefully lived a sheltered life might have a bit of difficulties if they are put into another environment or they might have difficulties understanding or relating to other perspectives in which someone might end up being a target because s/he spoke up too much... if you are always agreeing with the boss, maybe the boss likes that, or maybe the boss might end up firing folks who are too agreeable.. Where is the balance?  How much can we tolerate someone who rocks the boat?  And is that "rocking" necessary?


The point is no one is forcing anyone to do something if they don't have the stomach, or the heart, for it. The other point is if someone decides to do it, be a developer for privacy-enhancing technology or a censorship-resistant application that utilizes public key cryptography, then they do not need to be doxxed if they are fearful for their own lives, and their loved ones' lives. Anonymity doesn't necessarily follow fraudulent behavior. Satoshi was judged for is work in Bitcoin, yet he remained anonymous. Doxxed shitcoin developers stole from their own communties, yet they had their identity public.

Plus if you truly believe I'm wrong, and that everyone should be fearful of the State Attackers, then who will take over to be the rightful stewards of Bitcoin Core, to continue its legacy, and to keep maintaining/upgrading it to be a multi-generational protocol?
legendary
Activity: 3654
Merit: 9972
Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
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...
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.

I have my doubts regarding if you are really even attempting to grapple with the issue that is presented Wind_FURY.. in terms of the extent to which any one person might end up standing up and become a target of controversy and therefore sometimes situations devolved into real battles with real world consequences in terms of livelihood, employability, de-platforming and/or various ways that someone might consider himself/herself to be doing normal work that is actually within the realm of controversy and consequences, and there are all kinds of areas in life in which anyone can end up becoming a threat to the status quo or a threat to a side that has resources sufficient enough to cause difficulties for the one who spoke up or who got involved in certain kinds of work that are "deemed to be threats" to the status quo or even threats to some other project or world view.

Choices are made along the way, and sometimes a person can find himself/herself in a position/situation in which s/he becomes a target... For sure, there are folks who might never stand up and never become controversial and perhaps even continuously choose mentors who are in "powerful" positions, and if the mentor becomes a subject of controversy, some of these folks will just find new mentors, and surely there are choices in life, and sometimes folks do not necessarily realize that they are making choices that are to "take the easy way" and perhaps never really having as much conflict in their lives, because they avoid conflict.  I would not even suggest necessarily that such choices to always avoid conflict are bad ones because they are somewhat in the discretion of individuals regarding how much conflict are they ready, willing or able to tolerate, and do they actually believe in anything besides just getting along.. and likely there can be principle in those kinds of choices of non-choices too, and even questions regarding the extent to whch some folks who might have purposefully lived a sheltered life might have a bit of difficulties if they are put into another environment or they might have difficulties understanding or relating to other perspectives in which someone might end up being a target because s/he spoke up too much... if you are always agreeing with the boss, maybe the boss likes that, or maybe the boss might end up firing folks who are too agreeable.. Where is the balance?  How much can we tolerate someone who rocks the boat?  And is that "rocking" necessary?
sr. member
Activity: 1064
Merit: 437
#SWGT CERTIK Audited
Unless you carefully throw something over the wall and vanish it's essentially impossible to remain strongly anonymous:  
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. 

Well, it's a war and maybe those who don't have the stomach for it shouldn't participate.
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.
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 1794

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...


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.
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
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...
legendary
Activity: 3654
Merit: 9972
Self-Custody is a right. Say no to"Non-custodial"
[edited out]

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).
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 1794
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.


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.

Quote

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.


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.

Quote

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.


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

Quote

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.


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.
staff
Activity: 4158
Merit: 8343
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.
hero member
Activity: 742
Merit: 612
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)
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.

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Hong Kong's Crypto Hub Ambitions Win Quiet Backing From Beijing
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.
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1080
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)
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.
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 1794
I believe the latest feedback on CBDC use in the African regions and China were not very good.

I can't comment on Africa but the news from China doesn't really look bad. It shows a solid growth in both adoption (number of users) and the number of transactions processed. The value processed was reported to surpass 100 billion yuan ($13.94 billion) recently, they claim that it is out of initial stage and is being used more.

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The people do not trust it.

I never understoond this statement about CBDCs! People use fiat that is printed by the government and the banking system that is centralized and corrupt. They trust both of them. CBDC is not really a different thing, it is centralized and both issued and controlled by the government and the banksters just like fiat is.

If people were to stop trusting the system, they would  dump fiat first and move to bitcoin not continue using fiat and not trust CBDC!


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.
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
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.
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!
newbie
Activity: 29
Merit: 2
Nope, many places have flat out banned all crypto transactions and the holding / using of crypto. And wait for it.....nothing happened.
The EU can ban it, and wait for it....nothing will happen.

It's like banning anything else, people will do what they want to do.
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.

In case of a ban within the EU the BTC price would be much higher within the EU than outside of it. Black market prices always come at a premium.
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.
copper member
Activity: 1330
Merit: 899
🖤😏
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.
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.
sr. member
Activity: 281
Merit: 408
I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.



Before any government could parade you then you must have done something that's incriminating and this case it's simple that the developers ain't doing anything that goes against or is inimical to the next neighbor.   For example; would the government go on to press charges or arraign a cooperate organization that's producing guns all because someone on the street use(bought) a gun developed by the company to murder somebody. I don't think so! So the issue of money laundering and terrorism is far fetched to be a problem from developers corner but rather a choice of users.
So I don't see reasons why crypto developers should hide for anonymity except the CBDC are nurturing an ulterior different from what you're making, perhaps to get ride of competition totally from the market.


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)
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 6415
Farewell, Leo
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.
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.
hero member
Activity: 1008
Merit: 508
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
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.  Grin
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.

Quote
 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.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

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.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 1695
Crypto Swap Exchange
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.  Grin
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.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
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.

"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.
sr. member
Activity: 1652
Merit: 434

The problem with  BTC and other currencies will be that you will no take any $$ - > banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0

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.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
digital euro is just a eurosystem initiative, it is a common european project. it will allow us to ensure that money and payments remain reliable, safe and efficient in a rapidly changing digital environment.

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.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1163
Correct, but you forget that governments are good at adjusting the laws to fit their needs. So, something which is perfectly legal today may become illegal in a blink of an eye. Then you're going to jail.  Roll Eyes
Too many people are using Cryptocurrencies today to get the general public to accept jail time for developers.  I think and hope at least.  If they get jail time, we are about to live a very dystopian world soon.  So either everyone revolts or we get to live the worst lives we could be living.  Our freedoms would be over with.

I really want to hope it is not as simple as 'they make it illegal and we go to jail'.  And I really hope you are not accepting this idea so easily that a change of law can retroactively turn you into a criminal.
-
Regards,
PrivacyG

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.  Grin

jr. member
Activity: 56
Merit: 20
digital euro is just a eurosystem initiative, it is a common european project. it will allow us to ensure that money and payments remain reliable, safe and efficient in a rapidly changing digital environment.
thus a digital euro would essentially serve broader public goals, such as strengthening Europe's strategic autonomy and economic efficiency.
Reference : Christine Lagarde concluded

I didn't read that Christine Lagarde would write off money or maybe the news I read wasn't up to date.
sr. member
Activity: 672
Merit: 490
I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.



Before any government could parade you then you must have done something that's incriminating and this case it's simple that the developers ain't doing anything that goes against or is inimical to the next neighbor.   For example; would the government go on to press charges or arraign a cooperate organization that's producing guns all because someone on the street use(bought) a gun developed by the company to murder somebody. I don't think so! So the issue of money laundering and terrorism is far fetched to be a problem from developers corner but rather a choice of users.
So I don't see reasons why crypto developers should hide for anonymity except the CBDC are nurturing an ulterior different from what you're making, perhaps to get ride of competition totally from the market.
sr. member
Activity: 281
Merit: 408
However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous?
It doesn't actually mean that and I highly doubt that in near future governments will declare all crypto developers as supporters of terrorism and money laundering. Also, development is highly paid job all around the world and even if you have problems in your country because you were supporting the btc, I think you can easily move in different country where US and EU laws don't apply, countries like Iran, Russia, Belarus (probably), North Korea.

And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy.
I think that anyone can feel safe from "some embassy" in the countries that I listed above, . Also, I believe that you can feel pretty safe in some other corrupt countries. And again, there is no way bitcoin supporters will be claimed as the supporters of terrorism and money laundering, I think that you panic a little there.

I do believe first world western democracies could be able to come up with measures that may sound totalitarian in todays standards, but the countries you have listed offer less life quality than if you were to find yourself in a first world jail.
hero member
Activity: 784
Merit: 733
The replica of a runner-up
However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous?
It doesn't actually mean that and I highly doubt that in near future governments will declare all crypto developers as supporters of terrorism and money laundering. Also, development is highly paid job all around the world and even if you have problems in your country because you were supporting the btc, I think you can easily move in different country where US and EU laws don't apply, countries like Iran, Russia, Belarus (probably), North Korea.

And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy.
I think that anyone can feel safe from "some embassy" in the countries that I listed above, . Also, I believe that you can feel pretty safe in some other corrupt countries. And again, there is no way bitcoin supporters will be claimed as the supporters of terrorism and money laundering, I think that you panic a little there.
hero member
Activity: 728
Merit: 1695
Crypto Swap Exchange
Correct, but you forget that governments are good at adjusting the laws to fit their needs. So, something which is perfectly legal today may become illegal in a blink of an eye. Then you're going to jail.  Roll Eyes
Too many people are using Cryptocurrencies today to get the general public to accept jail time for developers.  I think and hope at least.  If they get jail time, we are about to live a very dystopian world soon.  So either everyone revolts or we get to live the worst lives we could be living.  Our freedoms would be over with.

I really want to hope it is not as simple as 'they make it illegal and we go to jail'.  And I really hope you are not accepting this idea so easily that a change of law can retroactively turn you into a criminal.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG
legendary
Activity: 1344
Merit: 6415
Farewell, Leo
Why would the government kill someone that does not have any effect on btc?
Slightly irrelevant, but I can think of a reason or two why a developer like Satoshi would want to hide himself from the entire world, especially from the government. It doesn't have to do with decentralization, as I'm sure the governments know that targeting Satoshi isn't going to make a difference (maybe an extra FUD or two, but nah). One reason is that he may had thought it'd catch on, and revealing his identity would pose his physical integrity in real risk. Another reason is tax evasion.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1163
The government cannot arrest you based on something that you did when it was not a crime. If Bitcoin was made illegal to develop then using it would also be illegal. No one can be held responsible for open source projects unless they are actively committing changes to the project after it has been illegal to do so. I think there are a lot of reasons why you should remain anonymous when developing public open source software but I do not think this is one of the reasons.

Correct, but you forget that governments are good at adjusting the laws to fit their needs. So, something which is perfectly legal today may become illegal in a blink of an eye. Then you're going to jail.  Roll Eyes
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 634
Magic
The government cannot arrest you based on something that you did when it was not a crime. If Bitcoin was made illegal to develop then using it would also be illegal. No one can be held responsible for open source projects unless they are actively committing changes to the project after it has been illegal to do so. I think there are a lot of reasons why you should remain anonymous when developing public open source software but I do not think this is one of the reasons.

That is very true and is one of the fundamentals of law ever since the roman empire: "nulla poene sine lege praevia". If we however look at satoshi we can clearly know why it was a wise decision of him to stay anonymous and I guess ever developer should at least try. In any case the government will not have the capacity to come for every developer.
hero member
Activity: 2758
Merit: 595
https://www.betcoin.ag
Dictatorship do make a difference.  As far as I know Chinese government is pushy on what they wanted to implement, and at the same time they are releasing fake news in order to hide what really is happening in their country.  It is either of the two but I think it is more on the first one why CBDC in China is showing a solid growth.
Any evidence of them hiding news stories? I am sure that every government has hidden stories from the public that is why we have the freedom of information act which gets released after a certain time duration has passed.

I also think that the government knows who Satoshi is and I am also one among the people who believe in a conspiracy theory that Satoshi is already dead killed by higher authority to stop or hinder the propagation of Bitcoin.  They maybe somehow successful in hindering but these authority failed miserably in stopping the propagation of Bitcoin.
Why would the government kill someone that does not have any effect on btc? They would have known that Btc is decentralized and does not rely on Satoshi. Bitcoin was already being developed by other developers by the time Satoshi disappeared and if this conspiracy theory was true those developers and the current developers would be under threat.

You would have to connect more conspiracy theories to reach his conclusion that Satoshi is dead.  But if they got Satoshi first, I'm pretty sure Satoshi would be tortured so they'd get his key.

Most countries are hiding thier dirt, China has more to hide but one thing that they don't do is meddle in the politics of other countries. If they make business with the US, they can also do business with Russia.

As for the known developers, only time will tell. But getting your dev teams to have an office in Hongkong, seem a neutral ground. Because China allows Hongkong to be a crypto hub.
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1080
Dictatorship do make a difference.  As far as I know Chinese government is pushy on what they wanted to implement, and at the same time they are releasing fake news in order to hide what really is happening in their country.  It is either of the two but I think it is more on the first one why CBDC in China is showing a solid growth.
Any evidence of them hiding news stories? I am sure that every government has hidden stories from the public that is why we have the freedom of information act which gets released after a certain time duration has passed.

I also think that the government knows who Satoshi is and I am also one among the people who believe in a conspiracy theory that Satoshi is already dead killed by higher authority to stop or hinder the propagation of Bitcoin.  They maybe somehow successful in hindering but these authority failed miserably in stopping the propagation of Bitcoin.
Why would the government kill someone that does not have any effect on btc? They would have known that Btc is decentralized and does not rely on Satoshi. Bitcoin was already being developed by other developers by the time Satoshi disappeared and if this conspiracy theory was true those developers and the current developers would be under threat.

sr. member
Activity: 1372
Merit: 348
I believe the latest feedback on CBDC use in the African regions and China were not very good.
I can't comment on Africa but the news from China doesn't really look bad. It shows a solid growth in both adoption (number of users) and the number of transactions processed. The value processed was reported to surpass 100 billion yuan ($13.94 billion) recently, they claim that it is out of initial stage and is being used more.

Dictatorship do make a difference.  As far as I know Chinese government is pushy on what they wanted to implement, and at the same time they are releasing fake news in order to hide what really is happening in their country.  It is either of the two but I think it is more on the first one why CBDC in China is showing a solid growth.

Staying completely anonymous in the modern world is nearly impossible. I'm sure CIA, FBI and all other "three letter agencies" know who Satoshi was, who Bitcoin developers were/are etc. Anonymity doesn't exist, it's only a dream. If you start going against the system, you will be identified and tracked asap.

I also think that the government knows who Satoshi is and I am also one among the people who believe in a conspiracy theory that Satoshi is already dead killed by higher authority to stop or hinder the propagation of Bitcoin.  They maybe somehow successful in hindering but these authority failed miserably in stopping the propagation of Bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1232
Merit: 1080
The government cannot arrest you based on something that you did when it was not a crime. If Bitcoin was made illegal to develop then using it would also be illegal. No one can be held responsible for open source projects unless they are actively committing changes to the project after it has been illegal to do so. I think there are a lot of reasons why you should remain anonymous when developing public open source software but I do not think this is one of the reasons.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
Staying completely anonymous in the modern world is nearly impossible. I'm sure CIA, FBI and all other "three letter agencies" know who Satoshi was, who Bitcoin developers were/are etc. Anonymity doesn't exist, it's only a dream. If you start going against the system, you will be identified and tracked asap.

Tracked, yes. But to be suppressed, is much harder, especially in a decentralized setting.

I mean, we have the internet. So do they, but they only use it for collecting data (espionage and infiltration activities are restricted to what they call "important" cases that likely some other agency knows about as well).

With the internet, you become unstoppable at sharing stuff.
legendary
Activity: 2156
Merit: 1163
I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.


Staying completely anonymous in the modern world is nearly impossible. I'm sure CIA, FBI and all other "three letter agencies" know who Satoshi was, who Bitcoin developers were/are etc. Anonymity doesn't exist, it's only a dream. If you start going against the system, you will be identified and tracked asap.
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
I believe the latest feedback on CBDC use in the African regions and China were not very good.
I can't comment on Africa but the news from China doesn't really look bad. It shows a solid growth in both adoption (number of users) and the number of transactions processed. The value processed was reported to surpass 100 billion yuan ($13.94 billion) recently, they claim that it is out of initial stage and is being used more.

Quote
The people do not trust it.
I never understoond this statement about CBDCs! People use fiat that is printed by the government and the banking system that is centralized and corrupt. They trust both of them. CBDC is not really a different thing, it is centralized and both issued and controlled by the government and the banksters just like fiat is.
If people were to stop trusting the system, they would  dump fiat first and move to bitcoin not continue using fiat and not trust CBDC!
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 1794
I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up.


"Unstoppable"? Debatable, ser. I believe the latest feedback on CBDC use in the African regions and China were not very good. The people do not trust it. Perhaps unstoppable in implementation, because the government will try to force it on their citizens, BUT it's not unstoppable if everyone demands cash and harder forms of money like Bitcoin.

Quote

However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.


Roll Eyes

That's their narrative. The developers are developing a tool for permissionlessness and censorship-resistance. The U.S. Dollar is also used for money laundering and terrorism, is that the Federal Reserve's fault?

Quote

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.


When the government pushes Bitcoin, and crypto in general further underground, I believe there would be no choice but for developers to become more anonymous. Does that make the situation safer for the government? Or more dangerous?
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
Im still wondering how someone that has such a high level of expertise got hacked, that im considering he got compromised IRL somehow.
Everyone makes mistakes regardless of who they are and how knowledgeable they are, and sometimes one mistake can have big consequences.

Quote
But you are applying linear thought where the EU courts remain somewhat reliable against individual state rulings. Im talking about supranational laws that would apply all over the EU. Stuff like MICA applies on all members. They could just agree that Bitcoin posses systemic risk against the Euro or something along the lines, you know the classics (money laundering, financing terrorism) and ban it as well as prosecute anyone developing it.
This is why diversification is mandatory. EU is only 13% of all the countries in the world with only about 5% of the population.

Quote
I know this sounds insane but im talking long term. In 50 years things can change a lot, what seems now impossible may become possible eventually.
Actually the more time passes, the more bitcoin will be adopted ergo it becomes a lot harder to crack down on something that a large percentage of the population uses. Imagine if today they wanted to ban smart phones compared to banning them when they first came out!
sr. member
Activity: 281
Merit: 408
I also wonder if by being not anonymous you are more prone to hacking attempts. I mean the fact that Luke Dashjr got his coins hacked was pretty shocking to me. Im still wondering how someone that has such a high level of expertise got hacked, that im considering he got compromised IRL somehow.

Developer here.

However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

Bullshit. We would challenge such a notion in EU courts on antitrust grounds if they bring an iota of monopoly on the table.

That is how you use their own weapon against them.

Quote
How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers?

They can't go after developers of open-source projects because the no-liability clauses protect them.

For example, if Tornado Cash developer was not involved in money laundering himself then the Dutch would not have a valid reason to arrest him (OFAC sanctions do not count).

But you are applying linear thought where the EU courts remain somewhat reliable against individual state rulings. Im talking about supranational laws that would apply all over the EU. Stuff like MICA applies on all members. They could just agree that Bitcoin posses systemic risk against the Euro or something along the lines, you know the classics (money laundering, financing terrorism) and ban it as well as prosecute anyone developing it. I know this sounds insane but im talking long term. In 50 years things can change a lot, what seems now impossible may become possible eventually.
legendary
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bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
We're not talking about firearms here, but rather legal (your licenses, jurisdiction and international law) and popular support (public opinion, empathy, demonstrations & consensus).
Speaking of popular opinion and jurisdiction,
Is cryptocurrency or projects anything close to having those?
For the most we know, the population that aren't hooked up with the cryptocurrency or its derivative projects are far less compared to the few of us that have anonymously adopted the system today. How does that go for popular opinion and the government as we all know a several miles away from anything cryptocurrency or its related projects adoption.

At the moment, a lot of crypto projects have done a good job casting themselves in the devil's light (like Luna and OneCoin and BitConnect and literally any pump & dump scheme) that the public would like to see the developers behind them jailed.

Unfortunately, this concept is generalized to all crypto projects including the ones that have no intention of hurting anyone, such as Bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1386
Merit: 1107
We're not talking about firearms here, but rather legal (your licenses, jurisdiction and international law) and popular support (public opinion, empathy, demonstrations & consensus).
Speaking of popular opinion and jurisdiction,
Is cryptocurrency or projects anything close to having those?
For the most we know, the population that aren't hooked up with the cryptocurrency or its derivative projects are far less compared to the few of us that have anonymously adopted the system today. How does that go for popular opinion and the government as we all know a several miles away from anything cryptocurrency or its related projects adoption.

The most we've seen is there development of the CBDC as a way to combat cryptocurrency which isn't going so well with them as we know it.

Although, government in the ne of jurisdiction shouldn't make slave or inhibits a person's freewill to 8nbest when it doenst hurt nobody. The harms that might follow from cryptocurrency investments are often due to an investors inability to DYOR.

I don't see developers to be at any risk for putting something out there. That's no crime.
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 7315
It is pretty hard to stay anonymous on the internet. Especially if you are a dev that has to work on a project all the time. Fixing bugs, creating updates all the time, sooner or later you will make a mistake and lose your anonymity. Hell, even if you do everything right, you still may lose your anonymity because some clever bastard may hack you.

That’s one of the weaknesses of crypto imo. Crypto itself is bullet proof but their devs aren’t.

Such problem could be partially migrated with security/privacy oriented OS such as Qubes OS. With proper usage separation between VM/Qube, it's less likely you'll make a mistake. Even if you're hacked, the hacker most likely only have access of the hacked VM/Qube. And considering cryptocurrency is bulletproof could trip you up in the future.
legendary
Activity: 1526
Merit: 6442
bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
It is pretty hard to stay anonymous on the internet. Especially if you are a dev that has to work on a project all the time. Fixing bugs, creating updates all the time, sooner or later you will make a mistake and lose your anonymity. Hell, even if you do everything right, you still may lose your anonymity because some clever bastard may hack you.

That’s one of the weaknesses of crypto imo. Crypto itself is bullet proof but their devs aren’t.

Without people, crypto is defenseless [it can be taken offline or banned, it's not The Terminator].

But people have weapons they can defend themselves with. This includes devs.

We're not talking about firearms here, but rather legal (your licenses, jurisdiction and international law) and popular support (public opinion, empathy, demonstrations & consensus).

The above's for if its a nation state. If you're up against a bunch of internet stalkers then running some more handles usually does the trick in throwing them off.
legendary
Activity: 3052
Merit: 2313
It is pretty hard to stay anonymous on the internet. Especially if you are a dev that has to work on a project all the time. Fixing bugs, creating updates all the time, sooner or later you will make a mistake and lose your anonymity. Hell, even if you do everything right, you still may lose your anonymity because some clever bastard may hack you.

That’s one of the weaknesses of crypto imo. Crypto itself is bullet proof but their devs aren’t.
sr. member
Activity: 672
Merit: 490
I would like to stray a little in bringing up an analogy that could explain responsibility as per producer and user.

Let's Let's guns for an example. It is used for peace as much as war and spreading terror. Its not up to the producer to decide what purpose its user would be using it for. User defines purpose and is held responsible for that.

Anonymity in cryptocurrency has been some means to ensure there isn't any centralisation to it on the part of the developer and that's part of the reasons why Satoshi stayed completely clear of the network and not staying clear of issues with the government.

The development of all these CBDCs only points to one fact, the importance of a digital currency but for CBDCs, the are centralized and tide to a government still.
To buttress on what you have just said mate, I think the CBDCs as a centralized entity are just scared of loosing total control in the coming years as digital currency is gradually taking a centre stage all over the globe and this threaten their whims and caprices as it were before the coming of decentralized digital currency. And the anonymity of developers like Satoshi is one astute technique I must say that has outsmart the centralized systems (government) for sure and there has been no loophole to trace bringing an end to it.
sr. member
Activity: 1260
Merit: 267
★Bitvest.io★ Play Plinko or Invest!
The upcoming changes in the financial area in Europe - more precisely, the introduction of the digital euro is planned for 2025 yr.

The problem with  BTC and other currencies will be that you will no take any $$ - > banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.


I do not know - what about USA, CHINA and so on. I'm talking only about EUROPE.
or perhaps the European Union will fall apart.


How did you say this dude? I don't believe that by 2025 the value of bitcoin and Ethereum will be zero, this is just your speculation and I don't know where you got this opinion from.

    Don't you know that there are many ways to get bitcoin or Ethereum huh? It is very clear that bitcoin is called a peer-to-peer currency, you should know that here. So, meaning Bitcoin is far different from the banks.
hero member
Activity: 882
Merit: 645
I would like to stray a little in bringing up an analogy that could explain responsibility as per producer and user.

Let's Let's guns for an example. It is used for peace as much as war and spreading terror. Its not up to the producer to decide what purpose its user would be using it for. User defines purpose and is held responsible for that.

Anonymity in cryptocurrency has been some means to ensure there isn't any centralisation to it on the part of the developer and that's part of the reasons why Satoshi stayed completely clear of the network and not staying clear of issues with the government.

The development of all these CBDCs only points to one fact, the importance of a digital currency but for CBDCs, the are centralized and tide to a government still.
member
Activity: 126
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I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.


As we all know that there are some people who want to control the woord world and also it's economy. And as a world is going upward and moving towards digitalization, there are will be some flaws and also some pros and cons.
As for as digital euro or other currency is developing and that it could be a major problem too. And also there will be some famous developers might get charges and for those who are anonymous and wants to be decentralized than they can be saved from this types of scandals.
As still there are some governments think that Btc and other crypto are source of money laundering and it could be a true too. Cause a lot of many people are depositing money into Cryptocurrency and they are saved.
hero member
Activity: 728
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Crypto Swap Exchange
How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.
Public figures facing charges is probably the ultimate solution they have in store for us.  Fear of ECB is the last thing they want us to have.  For now, one strategy works very well.  The money laundering excuse to do all of this.

I really believe things will become worse and more severe the more resistance they meet.  If they get enough people out of Cryptocurrencies by a certain deadline, next plan is up.  Will it be public charges?  Will it be calling Bitcoin once again a currency used in crime?  I have no idea.  But if they impose through fear, they will meet too much skepticism and they do not want that.

They want to outlaw us slowly and only call declared addresses and transactions lawful.  This way, people will easily bend over and obey.

Think about it.  If I pointed a knife at you while telling you some body is bad, you would not know that person is bad.  You will first question why the pointed knife.  If I told you some body is currently investigated by the FBI and repeated this to you every week for an year, it is probable you will avoid interacting with that person.

They are playing mind games.  Do not fall for them.  I know for a fact that using Bitcoin the way we are using it today will be outlawed in the future by ECB calling it a support of crime.  They want to know every thing.  And they will at one point do whatever it takes to find out.  Yet there will be people like me who will not care.  To me, I rather rot in prison than obey their twisted plans.  At that point, prison will offer you more freedom than being 'free' will.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG
legendary
Activity: 1526
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bitcoincleanup.com / bitmixlist.org
Developer here.

However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

Bullshit. We would challenge such a notion in EU courts on antitrust grounds if they bring an iota of monopoly on the table.

That is how you use their own weapon against them.

Quote
How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers?

They can't go after developers of open-source projects because the no-liability clauses protect them.

For example, if Tornado Cash developer was not involved in money laundering himself then the Dutch would not have a valid reason to arrest him (OFAC sanctions do not count).
legendary
Activity: 2870
Merit: 2043
after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.


I do not know - what about USA, CHINA and so on. I'm talking only about EUROPE.
or perhaps the European Union will fall apart.

In case of a ban within the EU the BTC price would be much higher within the EU than outside of it. Black market prices always come at a premium.

Either way I don't think CBDCs will become much of a thing within the foreseeable future. Sure, governments will dabble in it and some people will use it but I don't think it will replace cash any time soon. Even for societies that are already cashless the incentives to switch to CBDCs seem to be rather limited.
legendary
Activity: 1344
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Farewell, Leo
I think you should, especially if you're designing something that emphasizes on privacy. We're moving towards a more oppressive regime, all of us in Europe, no doubt.

Is that even possible? Do you have any reference to support this being in the "agenda"?
There's indeed tendency to repeal cash, and switch to completely digital money. I don't know what kind of reference you want, though. One where Lagarde makes such tremendous statement?

banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.
Seriously, that's your conclusion? You haven't understood bitcoin well, buddy.
legendary
Activity: 2828
Merit: 7315
As a developer, should you remain anonymous?

Some people contribute to open source software to fill their resume/CV, so i expect some developer chose not to be anonymous.

agenda of banning cash
Is that even possible? Do you have any reference to support this being in the "agenda"?

OP probably refer to discussion of cashless idea or ban of transaction using cash above few hundred/thousand euro.
hero member
Activity: 1008
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Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
Doxxing developers and arresting them over building or helping the  existence of a digital currency wouldn't get too effective till everyone goes anonymous. The profile pictures you see on GitHub may not be their actual faces and could be the only picture they've uploaded online and it'll be difficult to doxx them. Though the Government have got advanced technology to track down who they wish. But, I don't see any crime in working on an open source program, and the digital currencies are not nefarious to anybody. Except that the government want to engage in an imposible mission of getting rid of digital currency developers.
legendary
Activity: 3388
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Crypto Swap Exchange
.....after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0......

Nope, many places have flat out banned all crypto transactions and the holding / using of crypto. And wait for it.....nothing happened.
The EU can ban it, and wait for it....nothing will happen.

It's like banning anything else, people will do what they want to do.
Unlike banning something like drugs, having a piece of software on your phone / PC is a lot easier.

-Dave
legendary
Activity: 3402
Merit: 10424
agenda of banning cash
Is that even possible? Do you have any reference to support this being in the "agenda"?

Quote
However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.
This FUD is nothing new. They have been spreading it from early days that bitcoin was created and challenged the centralized banking system that was corrupt. CBDC is part of that corrupt system.

Quote
How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous?
A good question. It depends on how spread the developers are in the world. For example if the top devs are all living in one jurisdiction then we are facing a real risk (similar to if all hashpower were from the same jurisdiction), but the more spread they are the lower the risk. After all one government deciding to crack down on developers in their own country would not halt bitcoin development in other countries.

Quote
Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy.
They don't have to move, they have to already be elsewhere. As I said like mining. For example when China banned mining, none of the miners in other countries cared about it and the Chinese miners also moved their equipment abroad.

Assange situation is different though since they attached "national security" to that, it is going to be pretty hard to do the same with the globally recognized Bitcoin.
legendary
Activity: 1162
Merit: 2025
Leading Crypto Sports Betting & Casino Platform
The problem with  BTC and other currencies will be that you will no take any $$ - > banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.
How so? First of all, think outside the box: you can earn and spend Bitcoin directly, without touching a bank. That was actually its main idea.
Furthermore: you can definitely buy and sell Bitcoin peer-to-peer - again: how it was intended. Peer-to-peer electronic cash.


I believe he is talking about the fact banks and traditional financial institutions still play a role when comes to provide liquidity to the Bitcoin market, mostly in the form of people trying to buy Bitcoin and other alternative cryptocurrencies with FIAT on exchanges which allow to do so, like Binance or Coinbase.

It does not sound impossible banks would block such purchases in the future, in my opinion (debit and credit card). On Binance P2P it is already advised not to tag or add any crypto-related description to the transactions to avoid flagging by banks.
hero member
Activity: 868
Merit: 5808
not your keys, not your coins!
The problem with  BTC and other currencies will be that you will no take any $$ - > banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.
How so? First of all, think outside the box: you can earn and spend Bitcoin directly, without touching a bank. That was actually its main idea.
Furthermore: you can definitely buy and sell Bitcoin peer-to-peer - again: how it was intended. Peer-to-peer electronic cash.

I personally recommend Bisq as a platform to facilitate securely buying and selling Bitcoin (even through banks) peer-to-peer. As far as the bank is concerned, you just bought or sold something from / to someone.
They won't refuse a regular sized transaction from a regular other random person. The funds will not come from a centralized exchange's bank account.
full member
Activity: 209
Merit: 103
Dr WHO on disney+
The upcoming changes in the financial area in Europe - more precisely, the introduction of the digital euro is planned for 2025 yr.

The problem with  BTC and other currencies will be that you will no take any $$ - > banks are already starting to refuse transactions.

after 2025 BTC , ETH and so on will be worth real 0.


I do not know - what about USA, CHINA and so on. I'm talking only about EUROPE.
or perhaps the European Union will fall apart.

EDIT:


are you remember?

And makes everyone:
small and great,
rich and poor,
free and slaves
receive a birthmark on their right hand or forehead
and that no one can buy or sell,
who has no birthmark -
the name of the Beast
or the number of her name.


this means: digital euro, digital juan, digital dollar
sr. member
Activity: 281
Merit: 408
I was looking at Christine Lagarde's latest remarks on CBDC's and it seems pretty clear to me that the agenda of banning cash and then replacing the euro with the "digital euro" is now unstoppable, which will for sure make the Bitcoin price go up. However, it basically means that if you are supporting BTC, you would be developing a tool that "enables money laundering, terrorism, etc" and challenges the CBDC monopoly.

How realistic is it that public figures would be facing charges in the future? As a developer, should you remain anonymous? At the end of the day satoshi knew he was going against the status quo and managed to stay safe, however, what about all these doxed developers? I can see how they'll look on github and try to hunt contributors. We are facing a scary future. It's better to say steps ahead and plan accordingly. Someone with resources probably could move jurisdictions before it's too late but what about the rest. And even if you could move you could see yourself in an Assange situation trapped in some embassy. I would like to know if developers here think about this at all and what is your escape route if shit hits the fan.

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