Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 102. (Read 387493 times)

However that design doesn't include protection against denial-of-service, i.e. where either party repeatedly (perhaps through numerous identities) initiates the transaction but does not complete it, thus causing the other party to enter an endless loop of delay. One way to throttle DoS in the case would be to charge a transaction fee, except who do you pay the transaction fee to if it is decentralized? You'd prefer the transaction fee goes to the ether but who can be trusted to generate an address and throwaway the private key? An altcoin could include a transaction type for spending to the ether, but I don't think Bitcoin has one or can nLockTime be set to infinity? Much better if transaction fees to the ether could be eliminated or minimized.

The meaning of this is that you aren't focused on scaling. You are playing games.

The Nxt exchange works on the blockchain and is decentralised.

However the gateway part isn't decentralised, because the bitcoin keys are held by someone. The actual sending of bitcoins is not handled automatically.

You are right, I think people are getting confused between the gateway and decentralized exchange where they are issued.

Correct me if I am wrong.

When you generate a deposit address, the key is cut in 3 parts and stored on 3 different servers. This avoid having keys stored on the Nxt client that could potentially get stolen.

Since then, all transfers and trades happen on the Nxt Blockchain so everything is decentralized except the address generation.

Wow. Such a good post. I hadn't seen it before either. Thanks for linking that. This one is definitely a classic and will be brought up again and again.

I explain above that I think they can't ban my idea for a solution.

There is another reason they probably won't attempt to ban my idea for a solution. That is because they can't trace exchanges of anonymous good & services, thus if they ban some technology which makes anonymous what they can otherwise normally trace (the non-anonymous, physical economy which they can tax), they will drive the crypto-currency economy much faster towards the Knowledge Age and kill the Industrial Age even faster thus imploding their tax base and power structure. They will have to move to 666 embedded tracking in the body, that is the only hope for the power vacuum of democracy to continue to be funded as the physical economy gives way to the virtual economy of Knowledge production.

Because we know taxes must go up egregiously over the next decade or two, to pay for the bankrupt socialism which has promised everything to everyone, especially those who are or will soon retire. So unless you are a fascist oligarchy corporation with a FATCA exemption (ding dong Europeans you are not exempted as you will eventually find out as your EU overloads in full cooperation with the Russian Oligarchy take control in the coming false flag war with Russia), then you have no choice but to move underground with crypto-currency. These elite bastards have painted themselves into a corner. We've got them by the throat if we implement.

It is analogous to how OPEC cartels were self-defeating because the more they raised the oil price, the more the world moved to newer, more efficient vehicles.


It makes no difference which alphabet soup agency or propaganda slogan (e.g. T for terrorism, HT for human trafficking) our fascist oligarchy overloads use, bottom line is they want to trace every thing fully so there is no leakage where you can find ways to avoid their coming taxation wealth confiscation, capital controls. The goal is only they remain standing and all your wealth ends up confiscated into the heaping pile of socialism failure which they control.

As George Bush said, "you are either with us, or against us". So either line up in your milking stall, or prepare to be destroyed. As one Treasury official said, "we will burn the fingers of goldbugs up to their armpits".

There is a solution.  

Hint: the solution is holistic because some bans just won't scale, and note that ring signatures are not essential to crypto-currency.

Hint#2: requiring accurate bookkeeping scales because there is an existing framework for it in place in all countries, especially the G20. Banning crypto-currency entirely doesn't scale (at least not within the 2016 - 2020 critical timeframe). Such a ban infringes on many other things and would have domino cascade...

Try to explain to the police that you did not want to intrude on their privacy by giving them a receipt...

As for the tax people, they do not care where you got that money from, only that you did not pay taxes on it.

This post by gmaxwell ...

wow. You're kidding right?  Can you suggest a _single_ widely adopted financial system in the history of the modern world which made everyone's transactions and 'balances' mandatorily public?

Imagine you collect a paycheck in Bitcoin— when you get a raise, do you want your landlord increasing your rent?  "I know you're good for it."

Imagine you resell a product you paid for in Bitcoin and hear from your customers "I know you paid less for it, I want a better price!" or from your suppliers "We want a bigger share, we know you're selling these items for top dollar.".

Do you want your competitors knowing what your sales figures are, what products you're selling, and to which customers you're selling them to?

Do you want your employer potentially questioning the causes you donate to?— or just the risk that they _might_ question them, forcing you to self censor your actions for fear of losing your job, "It's just not working out".

Should the barista at the coffee shop know your bitcoin-net-worth or your lack thereof? Or the mugger they pass the info off to know that you're the ideal person to kidnap? Should loan-sharks know when you're tight on funds and most likely to take a predatory loan or participate in some long shot investment gamble?

Should your in-laws know you're paying for contraception while they're clamoring for grandchildren, or what kind of porn you like?

Should people in your community know what you're paying for your child's education— funds you could be instead spending supporting the community garden?

Should bidders for a deal know what your prices were— undermining the inherent motivation to be honest in auctions which depends on keeping some information secret?

Good fences make good neighbors and financial transactions frequently reveal a bit about our most intimate secrets and values.  Being able to answer "it's none of your business" when it really isn't is what frees people from feeling they have to impose their values on everyone else and frees people from everyone else constantly imposing their values on them for all things.

Transparency is an essential tool in our social tool-belt too— but like all things it must be used in an intelligent and controlled manner. Sunlight can be a disinfectant but it can also cause skin-cancer.

In a world where massive power asymmetries exists having control over your private information is one of the few re-balancing forces which are theoretically available to everyone... and this applies in a multitude of business and personal contexts far more numerous than what I've listed here, sometimes in gross ways and sometimes subtle ways. In some sense a financial transaction underlies every interaction we make with another person— though sometimes the scarce assets exchanged don't include money— sometimes we trade with less formal systems like reputation, trust, future obligation, etc instead of or in addition to money... but such trades are always happening, and without some privacy in them we can have privacy in nothing. (Some people hope that Bitcoin, or Bitcoin inspired systems might help create formalized versions of some of these non-monetary value exchanges in the future too… hopefully not while also undermining their privacy.)

Used in a poor way (as some wallets have enshrined and some businesses seem to be promoting) Bitcoin is one of the least private transaction and value systems ever created. I'm hopeful for the human-welfare-enhancing possibilities that Bitcoin could create in the future, but if it goes a route that further erodes the privacy we have in our interpersonal interactions then it could instead fuel a terrible dystopia.

There are also some Bitcoin specific risks— In Bitcoin our goal is to build a system of exchange which minimizes the need for trust... but we still must trust miners to establish the ordering of transactions. As a result miners have a substantial power to censor, but privacy undermines that risk— so long as we have enough of it. Anything that creates an incentive to control mining— e.g. to achieve censorship goals— risks undermining the whole system, so we're all better off if the system is more private... even the non-existing hypothetical person that has no need for privacy.

So back to your question— I'd turn it around, if Bitcoin undermines people's privacy how could it possibly be adopted— are people that foolish? And if so, could free society survive the harm such an outcome would create?

I really think Bitcoin is anonymous already. I know it's not 100% but if someone wants to mix Bitcoin can't they just send x to address A and withdraw x from address B when they need it? Then someone else who wants to remain anonymous sends y to address B and withdraws y from address A. Or some extension of this system.

I really think Bitcoin is anonymous already. I know it's not 100% but if someone wants to mix Bitcoin can't they just send x to address A and withdraw x from address B when they need it? Then someone else who wants to remain anonymous sends y to address B and withdraws y from address A. Or some extension of this system.

If you don't feel that privacy is important, I invite you to publish ALL of your UNEDITED credit card and bank statements, ever, on the Internet.

No?  Now consider someone who actually has wealth.  Suppose you have a billion dollars in spare change (after the last multinational corp you bought) and a daughter in elementary school.  Do you want every Corsican and Byelorussian ex patriate within 500km to be able to determine just how large a ransom to ask for, when they leave her left hand in your mailbox?

Suppose instead that you are a middle-level cadre running a department in a satellite city of Chongqing.  Making arrangements for entrepreneurs to build the New China has provided you with a substantial quantity of yuan that you need to move to Cambridge, for Harvard tuition, a boxster and a nice flat.  BoC is off the table.  Bitcoin leaves a trail similar to the heat trail a satellite sees when watching a nuclear submarine transit the pacific:  A big red arrow pointing directly to your location.

These are not merely "first world problems".

No one is asking you to use monero if it doesn't serve your interests.  But I do claim that it is a crucial protection from totalitarian control of your political and religious activism, and can be used to deny ANYONE who may wish to seize your wealth the information necessary to do so.  The tech to make this easy enough to use so that those who are motivated, but not technically exceptional, can do so, is not present.  But Monero puts it in reach.

We live in a world of increasing risks.  Transactional privacy enables you to manage many important risks in useful ways.  The captive coopted mass of circus-goers will not fret about this, as they butter the bread for their grilled government cheese sandwiches.  Those who have something which they consider their own, something to protect, will understand this.

Governments control the cheese consumers.  But those who control the governments have something to protect.

But once they get to you with a well implemented ring signature-based coin, the trail ends. There is no way for you deanonymize people who sent you coins. [ ... ] Unless you collected the sender's ID as the car dealer did with you. If we all turn into car dealers recording IDs for everyone we deal with (and presumably reporting that information or at least having a recordkeeping requirement for it), then no coin technology is going to help you.

Of course not. Computers are essential though, and most of them are being turned into glorified iPhones. The rest are contraband. Game over.

note that ring signatures are not essential to crypto-currency.

Everything else can be simply banned, and you go to jail for even using it at all (assuming you can arrange for illegally modified hardware to run it).

But Steve [Job]'s first words were that it wasn't scalable, and he hit the nail on the head. He was like that.

I already answered that up thread. The point is that they can force the tracing of the coins all the way back to where you obtained them. The anonymity of the coin is useless. It can't help you obscure the source of your funds. Even cash can't help you, because you always get your cash from someone else, thus you are responsible for accurate bookkeeping.

But I said there is a solution.

Note that with mixing on the block chain, e.g. Cryptonote, Monero, Zerocoin, authorities can compel you to reveal your private keys and unwind the anonymity, e.g. you end up with some physical asset or fiat system asset which you can't be anonymous on. It shows you paid for it with mixed coins.

Also mixing that is off the block chain, e.g. CoinJoin, DarkCoin, Tor, I2P, authorities can compel you to reveal your inputs and outputs.

But what if there was a way where the authorities could compel you to release everything and they still couldn't break the anonymity.

Now that would truly be an anonymous coin.

Exactly. The car dealer is engaging in a traceable transaction. He got your ID and can identify you to the authorities. It doesn't matter what you use to pay. Cash, gold, bitcoins, Moneros or "fully anonymous" pixie dust crypto coins, its all the same at that point.

But once they get to you with a well implemented ring signature-based coin, the trail ends.