Topic: The absolute insanity Congress is writing now... (Read 1457 times)

fine. but when the government passes laws related to bitcoin mining those laws apply to people. the asic owners or pool managers, if you will.


would you consider bitcoin "broken" if the government decided to reclassify people who own bitcoin miners and pool managers as MSBs? apparently you consider LN to be a failure possibly due to this fact. because that's the danger we face if we allow the government to come up with the definitions and then decide what activities fit those definitions. but it seems like you are willing to let them do all of that.


well there are 50 states in the usa. all it would take is one of them to decide to reclassify people who own bitcoin miners or pool managers as MSBs and everyone would be screwed. because we have to follow the law right? there is not a single person that owns bitcoin miners or any pool manager who would go to the trouble of getting licensed in even a single state, thus requiring them to do KYC on ALL THEIR "CUSTOMERS" to make sure that they don't live in that particular state. yeah that's right bitcoin would no longer be semi-anonymous!

nope a miner in bitcoin is not a person. mining does not require human labour(sweat and muscle). its done by digital devices
the humans are asic owners or pool managers. but the mining and miners are the actual digital devices working by doing hashing.


nope they are not forced to include a output for the fee. infact i can many a tx with one output to the destination recipient of the funds without having to designate another output specifically for the mining pool. i dont need to designate which mining pool will get it either. i am not contracting my transaction to be handled by a particular service.
this is where you need to do a little more learning of how bitcoin works. its a system of having less value of the output than then input so that the mining pool that does include the transaction can take value from the difference. some people make mistakes and have a big difference between the input and output meaning a mining pool can end up with alot more than rational people would decide to lose on the transaction


yep, and thats the trap.. if you cant learn who your channel partner is or the non router service customer is at the start of the payment.. when deciding you want to be a router.. you then end up getting caught if a(for example) new york authority wanted to test your service by doing a route through you and if you dont have a licence and they know who you are but you dont know them, but they know you dont have a new york MSB licence. they can sting you.. its called a honeypot trap
this is where services that want to continue operating end up having to go further down the obscurity rabbit hole to not get caught. or go legit and start KYCing their channel partners
this is one of those scenarios where legit businesses that already set themselves up as MSB end up doing the routing(controlling the markets/payments), and then small operators who cant afford or dont want the hassle. end up getting pushed out.. thus the barrier of entry becomes part of the minimum competition for joining and how payment systems become dominated by the institutions and then its the little guys that get punished by trying to compete

also its kinda weird these days to just randomly connect and join a channel of a stranger you know nothing about. so joining a channel usually is where you found and located a channel by them advertising it and offering it publicly by promoting themselves and who they are. again this creates a network effect that institutional MSB win and individuals lose

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some of these regulations are not about making bitcoin itself be treated as a "criminal tool" but instead creating barriers of entry to promote bitcoin as being serviced by institutional level services setting a barrier of entry of needing institutional level services to access features and gateways in and out of the currency

miners are people. that's what i think they are.

maybe you are confusing the verb "mining" with the noun "miner"? a machine just doesn't assemble itself and plug itself in for its own benefit. there is a person the manages it and they are the miner.

isn't that kind of splitting hairs though? people are forced pretty much to include an output for the transaction fee which goes directly to the miner who mines their transaction into a block. no, the transaction doesn't identify the bitcoin address of the miner but the way bitcoin is setup, it still goes directly to their wallet anyway. that's pretty much a direct payment in my opinion. it's like writing a blank check and someone picks it up and writes their name as the payee. so you paid them directly even though you didn't know who they were when you wrote the check. it came from you and went to them.


apparently you have to register as a MSB in every single state of the USA that you will be handling peoples' money from. but how many bitcoin LN nodes even know where their "customers" are located? how many of them do KYC? probably none! no one is going to follow rules that are pretty much DOA. register in every single state? how much is that going to cost? how much time is that going to take? too much probably! but apparently people are just ignoring that issue and running nodes anyway.

they are not going after wallet providers. they are going after service providers that utilise tumbling via single use addresses to be classed as the same suspicion rating as mixing.

americans are not taxed to death*. however many americans are not taught tax law to know all the exemptions, loopholes and methods to legally avoid tax. yes the tax law is designed to be complicated so that if you want to attain the most benefit of tax exemptions and loopholes you have to either research it yourself and understand their terms or employ an accountant/tax adviser. which is the real game. laws are made to be complicated to create new industries of professional advisers, meaning only the rich and wealthy that can employ these advisers get to benefit from the exemptions/loopholes(unless you put in the time/effort to research it yourself).

*most americans that cant afford tax advice are normally on lower income thus low tax brackets.. however the wealthy which usually have higher tax brackets then have advisers to find the exemptions and loopholes to legally avoid paying that higher tax rate

..
anyway point of what i have been saying all along in relation to the topic
if you learn what governments are actually doing and reading the real wording of their stuff, you can learn whats actually happening and then learn/find/use the loopholes and exemptions and methods to get around what they have done.
you also then would know enough factual details of whats actually happening to then campaign/petition against whats actually happening to hopefully effect change. however just taking nonsense versions of whats not happening will just result in all campaign/petition efforts falling on death ears.
EG shouting "there going after wallets" is not a good argument and congress will just respond "no we are not" and they instead continue pushing the path of tumbling with single use addresses being classified similarly to mixing. . so its best to know what they are actually pushing so you can effectively object and petition against what they are actually pushing

but to just use a blogpost that doesnt understand whats happened and then just cry that its happening is not helpful to you or others. so this is where research is actually helpful for many reasons

You might truly find this hilarious, but to me it looks very grim.  Americans are already taxed to death (which is why very few people can attain wealth and preserve it), and they're going after wallet providers with this idiotic piece of legislation with ignorance combined with great power, and that's a disastrous combination.

Hopefully this shit never comes to fruition, but with the government's microscope so focused on crypto as of late, one never knows what's going to happen.

Congress is likely involved in passing or debating controversial or complex legislation, causing public concern or disagreement. If you provide more specifics, I can give a detailed explanation.

firstly.. miners are not a service because miners dont do what you think they do..
miners are just ASIC devices that hash.. end off (learn the mining pool <-> miner process of bitcoin)
miners do not get paid directly by transactors
mining pools do not receive value and then reprocess the value to a destination on behalf of a transactor.. the value in a transaction doesnt define/use/designate a mining pool as a facility to process the value. a mining pool just collates the receipts(data proof) and publishes publicly. thus not a money service
again the difference is notable if you were to compare it to LN which a person gives funds in full to a LN channel partner and that channel partner then uses its own value in another lump to pay to the next person in a route.. thus LN is a system which is highly involved with routers being MSB, which becomes where LN is a failure of its model
again the difference is notable if you were to compare it to mixers where to spend the value to a mixer and a mixer uses funds from another lump to pay the intended recipient

finally now your seeing the big picture

mixing as its own thing. using things like DEX/Dapps or whatever separate thing of code that operates separate to bitcoin core.. if you want to become a mixing coordinator im pretty sure you can find via google a lot of different codebases that can set you up as a mixer using software separate to core

i just thought the miners were already performing a service by mining peoples' transactions and putting them in blocks AND getting paid. people pay these miners directly by including a transaction fee. people are paying miners to process their transactions for sending electronic cash to other people. i think uncle sam could make a case that bitcoin miners needed to register as MSBs.

well i wouldn't want bitcoin to require me to KYC just to use it so if that's what the outcome of adding mixing into the protocol then i guess we can't do that.


what is the secondary app? can you just tell me? 

now i do so if that's what would happen then we obviously can't have that. i don't agree with mixing as being regulated but apparently that's how it is. i just didn't think they would care if it was integrated into bitcoin core. maybe i was wrong.

bitcoin is not permissionless.. it seems you have picked up a buzzword from a idiot group that sound like a cult tht just echo chamber stupid thoughts thinking they are right because they repeat it to each other to cause confirmation bias, without them actually doing any research to learn anything

bitcoin code has some rules(less then it used to) which required transactions for conform to a certain format to be acceptable into being in a block. such as you cant just broadcast a XMR coin tx into the bitcoin network relay between node peers. as it will get rejected instantly and not be passed around
also you just broadcasting a tx is no guarantee it will end up in a block. many transactions are dropped and not accepted (insufficient fee as one reason)
also your coins on the address you control needs your permission via your signature to spend those coins..
and also bitcoin used to have a stronger consensus(consent of the masses) where new features would only activate when the network reached a threshold of node readiness signalling they want a feature to activate.
so there are many things in bitcoin that do need "permissions" and yes thats a good thing.
we dont want situations where random junk can be added that can mess with bitcoins purpose.(rules have been softened in last <7 years)
we dont want some random user to be able to just take other peoples funds and spend them as they please without keyholder permission

imagine how useless bitcoin would become if someone could just take your coins anytime they please without permission


but YOU want to change bitcoin core from just being devs offering software, to devs offering a service which would then require the devs to become regulated and require them to then add more code after the service feature you want added which would then require things like KYC.

do you now understand and agree why asking for a feature that changes software to become a service which then requires things like KYC to then be added due to it..  as being a stupid suggestion that goes against your actual desires
..

lets just take the example of mixers as a sole stand alone service.
when regulators defined mixers as a MSB developers were not arrested simply for writing code.. they were arrested for offering a money service and being directly financially involved with facilitating payment transfers for others and profiting from direct involvement, without being licenced and without following regulations which required them to KYC their customers

so when mixing became a service. a mixer could have registered as a MSB, added code to KYC users and then followed guidelines to monitor suspect behaviour of users and report it, and legitimately been able to continue operating...

so do you really want to have bitcoin core change to being a service just so you can save your hand doing 2 clicks to open a secondary app?
is the 2 clicks(using a separate app) really such a ordeal for you that you want to cause core to become a service and then be subjected to regulations just to save you a couple clicks*

have you got the hint yet at what would occur if your desire for mixing integration into core would cause

*personally as a decentralised safety aspect there should be more then one "reference client" that offers protocol proposals so that if core did get in trouble people would have other choices that can run on the network and apply proposals without ending up in some regulated system(which currently core are centralised and at risk of)

that explains WHAT he did but not why he did it that way.

then satoshi didn't design bitcoin properly since it is permissionless. anyone can use bitcoin, even a convicted felon. bitcoin itself has no system in place to stop anyone from using it, no matter what their purposes and goals are.

listen closely franky so you can understand this important point: the fact that bitcoin ended up being a "PUBLIC ledger thats fully auditable" is mainly because that is the easiest/simplest kind of blockchain to design.

All they are is software developers. Nothing more than that. I'm not handing over an ID to someone like that. Nor should I be required to.

There are still teams behind decentralized wallets such as electrum. It’s not that they don’t have the ability but rather they just choose not to. They choose to build a wallet that is open to the community and to the general public to be accessed and used by everyone.

Even developers can earn from decentralized wallets just like with centralized wallets. It’s really up to the group of people what kind of wallet they want to create.

satoshi invented a blockchain thats a PUBLIC ledger thats fully auditable by anyone with a full node, thus privacy is not a thing.. anonymity(more precisely pseudonymous) is different to privacy, because the blockchain does not ask for peoples birth certified details
he was also aware of issues if grey area services started using it. such as wikileaks and silkroad. he did not want those services involved because he knew authorities and monitoring services would get involved

fiat currency has never been close to fungible..
just look at your own fiat income
if you get a salary but before receiving it to your bank you had an agreement with employer that a certain amount goes to pension.. then you receive your salary.. those two payments are treated differently for tax purposes.
if you pay for a product in a retailer and then pay your neighbour as thanks for some help. those two payments are treated differently for tax purposes
if you then received fund from investments, vs funds from a relative on your birthday. those two payments are treated differently for tax purposes
money is and always has been treated differently depending on the activity it related to

but if you dont know your enemy you wont win a fight against them
bitcoin does not absolve you of crimes. it does not immunise you of criminality.

a real test for you is this.. if you fear the government, open the front door of your home and look around your street. is there a swat team aiming guns at your house right now.. no? well then lower your fear, stop reading media crap trying to scare you and instead learn what your government is actually doing so you know what real fights you need to be wary of

much like this topics misunderstanding.
single use addresses are not the fight.. tumbling whilst using single use addresses is. and when you learn the real threat then you can learn defensive strategies

maybe i want to do things that press the issues. it's not like bitcoin is ever going to be a friend to the usa government so we should just get that out of our heads. they are at odds with bitcoin and everything it stands for and that is never going to change. what you're suggesting is "don't ruffle the feathers, maybe they'll leave us alone" when did that philosophy ever work out when it came to the usa government.

well, to me, companies like chainalysis they are invading peoples' privacy. certainly satoshi probably never thought some company like that would ever exist. i'm not sure satoshi thought much about how bitcoin lacks fungibility though. to be really useful something needs to be 100% fungible. fiat cash is close but since it has serial numbers, it can be traced so i wouldn't say it's 100%. but it's probably the gold standard.


repeat after me, franky. "the government is the enemy." trying to get along with an enemy isn't necessarily the path to freedom but enjoy your ride.

In most nations, public places are free to not only record but share as well, you can totally publish it, in USA that's like that too, and it's like that in other parts. You can only not publish it if it's private property, and even in that case they are finding legality is quite grey, why? Because you do not share it on some news company, but just open a secret twitter account that's based in some small island nation that has basically no law or something, and share it on that twitter instead, so you can't be sued.

However, back to the real point, using more than one account should not be issue, more than one address neither, you just want to use the most out of crypto and that means having multiple accounts without worrying about it.

here's a definition of "service" for you:

a service is anything that exists outside of the bitcoin core protocol such as "ordinals". i know that's not your definition but that's my definition.


apparently you have found some loopholes and things. good for you. i guess you buy a pack of gum every now and then.

adding features that cause governments to invade and control bitcoin is a negative for bitcoin
YOU want to do things that would cause more issues

YOU need to learn how the real world works and then learn about ways and means for bitcoiners to do things without government intrusion.. not the other way round

again.. because i feel you just dont understand reality:
mixing WAS PROMOTED as a method to avoid monitoring... yet REALITY IS that mixing actually causes those users of mixer to be highlighted more and monitored more closely, with investigations which can lead to reports going to authorities if suspect behaviour reaches a certain level...

so mixing is not doing the job it was promoted to do..
this is where people should be smart and think up a new feature that doesnt use the buzzwords that regulators define as red flags. and do it in ways that are not going to trigger investigations/monitoring/reporting.. and then if it satisfies the tasks it promotes to offer in a way that not going to cause government intrusion.. then that feature could be used

however now you know "mixing"(specific word) "tumbing"(specific word) are actually defined by regulators as activities that allow government intrusion and also allows them to delegate services to do things.. its not a good idea to then ask for "mixing" and "tumbling" to be included in software which would then change the software into becoming a service which governments then have jurisdiction over

so here is an idea for you
wipe the words "mixing", "tumbling" from your mind.. and form idea's around a totally different feature that uses bitcoin features in a new unique way to allow people to swap units of currency in a way thats not regulated.. and then use that

heres an idea
do you know that going to a retailer and handing them $10 bank note and asking for $10 in nickels and dimes is not mixing, is not exchanging. because its not trying to promote itself as mixing or exchanging(regulated)

so learn the loopholes. learn the work arounds. learn how to do things that do not fit the laws and regulations
even Uber did this when they started, they promoted their brand as something thats not a taxi service to avoid the laws and regulations about taxicab licencing..

get it yet
uber did not cry about taxicab licencing rules. instead they learned what the rules were and found a work around/loophole
get it yet

..
anyway.. about the topic
due to the OP starting the topic by misunderstanding what congress is writing, the OP is fighting a dead fight
EG
by him initially presuming its just about single use addresses. if he ever formed a petition to tell congress not to write that single use addresses are mixing. they would laugh and respond that they are not even doing that so just go away

however if he learned(i hope) that its more about tumbling using single use addresses, then he would have more of a legit cause to petition his government on whats actually involved.

so its always best to try to research and learn whats actually happening to then be able to actually fight it or work out a way to work around it  or find a loop hole if it became law
(and there already are work arounds and loopholes to do ownership transfers in a way that then dont become defined as tumbling/mixing)

Bitcoin’s main purpose was not to hide our transactions but for us to conduct a transaction even without an intermediary. We are anonymous but we are not totally invisible.

If there was an built in mixer in bitcoin, most likely it will decrease the security of the blockchain. If one aspect of bitcoin rises, the others goes down. Bitcoin has a very complex protocol as it is already.

dude, we're not talking about terrorism.


and so? that means bitcoin should censor itself and not include certain features in bitcoin core so that the governments can all be happy? you and franky would get along good together since he has been advocating that it's enough to just try and blend in with the crowd. "blending in with the crowd" so that you don't get punished. what a philosophy. no one has a backbone anymore.

no wonder bitcoin is being trampled all over and threads like this exist. people have become weak.

You are so fucking naive. Terrorism is world wide.

Russia had a children's school blown up by terrorists
France has had attacks
25 countries have had them at a minimum.

So all countries that were attacked will likely do the same as the USA.

The 911 event showed all of us what 19 people with just razor blades and some money can do.

Like it or not it is what it is.  so lock downs of btc will happen in far more countries than the USA

and you keep on trying to take away capabilities from bitcoin and wanting to segregate them to outside services. pretty soon, there wont be anything left except people running nodes but no miners.