Topic: Should miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government? - page 2. (Read 12932 times)

We could just add 1 or 2 bonus btc for each block reward

After read on this thread my IQ dropped by a few points.

We should really give "idiot of the year" badges to everybody who voted "Yes" and the topic author.

It would be so much easier to populate ignore lists later without wasting time for discussion.

is so hard to understand that the consequences of this would be the death of bitcoin ?

Yes, the network is based on consensus. But if the consensus were to be that it's ok to freeze accounts in some cases, that will be the day I quit bitcoin and move 100% of my funds to Litecoin (or perhaps some newer, better alt.)

The government stole the user's fund. Stealing the funds will be very hard but not impossible. How ever the government stealing things is legal where ordinary people doing it is illegal.

its a good question that everyone asks

the short answer is that you can't force the network to do something that 99.99% do not want to see happen EVER


i think we can all agree no one wants to see the network "collude to steal funds" ....

So you are adding yourself to his ignore list? 

It's a good thread to populate your ignore list.

Also, I have to say, I'm not crazy about how this poll question was worded.  Shouldn't the question be asked in a more neutral manner? E.g.:

Q: Should miners collude cooperate to steal by refusing to recognize the legitimacy of funds from wallet confiscated stolen by US government a violent, criminal gang calling itself the "US government"?

(And again, my vote is probably not.)

Please don't.  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men leave bitcointalk.  Or something like that...



This.

They have something they want to say?

Why are people still posting here. Why not just let this thread die?

I think 'no' is probably the right answer, but I strongly disagree with the idea that it would "destroy everything that Bitcoin stands for" if we prevented the feds from spending those coins. To me, Bitcoin "stands for" a system that is voluntary and based on consensus rather than coercion.  The ledger is whatever the network collectively agrees it is.   Here, we have witnessed a very large, unambiguous, and high-profile theft of bitcoins where the thieves have not yet made any attempt to launder the stolen coins.  So we still could make the stolen coins unspendable without harming innocent third-parties.  In this scenario, which will almost by definition be an extremely rare one, I don't see why the network couldn't collectively agree that the thieves should not be allowed to profit from their bad acts.  Now, that doesn't appear to be the consensus that has in fact been reached. Instead, the consensus appears to be that it's more important to keep "the rules" simple (i.e., the owner of the coins is whoever has the private key and the network isn't going to "look behind" transactions), keep the network "neutral", and not undermine confidence in the protocol by departing from "the rules" even in extreme cases.  And that's fine, and like I said, probably the right result in this case.  But again, the most important "rule" is consensus. And in an even more extreme case, e.g., the feds steal DPR's (probably-mythical) 600,000 coins, I could see the network coming to a different consensus -- and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Should miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government?

i dont think so. NO.
this is a dangerous idea, stealing from government
the word "stealing" itself is illegal

If 51% of miners did something, their blockchain would then be the "real" one.  It would take active measures to abandon their chain in favor of another.  People would have to do something to abandon it.

"We" can't, even if "we" wanted to.  But 51% of miners could, at least especially right after a transaction they wanted to nullify.  However, they have very good incentives not to do that.  It would basically amount to nuking their own assets.

I hereby quit bitcointalk.

If they did that, then they would be off on their own version of the blockchain and we would be on the 'real' one.  It wouldn't change ANYTHING for us.  They would just be removing their hash power from the real blockchain and mining blocks that don't effect our chain at all.  In effect they would be blowing millions of dollars worth of hashpower to mine worthless coins that no vendors can accept because they won't ever see the transactions.

Once they forked off, they would essentially be in a race with the real blockchain trying to make their branch longer than ours.  Everyone would notice the fork growing out there and the obvious drop in hashpower by the real pools and adjustments would be made to ignore their fork.  I would say that it would be completely impractical after about 6 confirmations on the main chain.

Completely impossible.

So this is how stupid misinformation about bitcoin is spread?  Great, now people will think we can just erase transactions at will. *sigh*