Topic: The beginning of the end? (Read 4281 times)

Free yourself of your chains, for today, you cease to be a debt slave. 

I liked the quote I saw somewhere on this forum: Bitcoin is a human rights movement.

$= Slavery
€= Slavery

Exactly.

How do we defund or disolve the Bitcoin Foundation? It's obvious they have become shills for the US government.

I think that if darkwallet implements coinjoin (or similar) and bitcoin-qt does not, then we need to begin promoting darkwallet as the defacto client.

Ideally, all wallets would support maximal mixing/privacy.  Until that is the case though, lets support those that do.

In other words, vote with our feet, and withdraw support from non private wallet solutions.

They just had a big story with Max Keiser on RT television interviewing a developer for Dark Wallet who discussed coin join and other stuff.


Good to see people fighting back against this madness!

I'm confused, in one sentence you make the claim the closure of Silk Road didn't have "any impact", then in the next you seem to be making the case that the recent price hike was due solely or mostly to it.  I'll assume your point is that you think closure of Silk Road made price go up instead of down.

Correct me if I'm wrong about your position but I believe you are making the assumption that for bitcoin to exist in any interesting way at all it must be able to be regulated and controlled through redlists.  You then go on to make the assumption that closing Silk Road had the impact of making investors believe mainstream adoption was more likely and that this was the primary reason for the recent climb in bitcoin valuation against other currencies AND that this bolsters the credibility of your redlists assumption.

It's very possible you aren't wrong but I think there are too many unknowns and assumptions in your argument to consider it a forgone conclusion.  3 years ago I didn't know anything like bitcoin would exist.  Through bitcoin things are possible that were never possible before.  Let's not stifle it right out of the gate.  Let's adopt the same attitude that allowed bitcoin's creation in the first place and do what we can to make it the currency we want and not the one we are stuck with.  Remember we are forced to use our respective government issued currency, bitcoin is voluntary, I choose not to volunteer to put power and control of bitcoin in the hands of a few that want to make authoritative redlists.

To tell the truth, you may call me a twit. I knew about bitcoin for quite a while, when only a couple of crypto nerds heard about it and i laughed. Later i heard people actually used it to buy drugs and stuff, with a blockchain saving all transactions for all eternity and laughed again. Well, since i didnt buy a couple of BTC back then or at least mine a couple of blocks the laughs on me i guess.
Anyway, i dont see how BTC is going to change anything on a different scale than, lets say, PayPal. PayPal used to be a big thing back then, easily move money around the internet. For business it may be PayPal 2.0, possibly lower transaction fees, no chance of invoices fizzling. The "transaction tokens" are basicly "shares" in a distributed network. Not a bad state to be in imho.

Well, why do you think the price is as high as it is? Why didnt the take of the "major" bitcoin site silkroad have any impact? Can you tell me any other conclusion other an uptake in mainstream usage is what the "investors" believe?

I´m fairly sure the mixing pools, which basicly are laundering services, take the first hit. Without those tracing becomes easy. Might still take a couple of years, but i think the "wild west" days nearing an end.

I used to like that quote, but it is important to remember that just 5 years ago the global central bank fiat monetary system fell into the bucket of "accept the things I cannot change".

Then along came a billiant individual who decided to not accept this, and he/she created an opportunity to change the most fundamental aspect of our global economy and sources of wealth/control.

Then a few people saw Bitcoin's possiblities and decided that maybe this now fell into the "courage to change the things I can" category, and was worth significant time and effort and code development and ecosystem building.

My point is numerous times in history someone has decided enough is enough and changed a fundamental problem that previously everyone thought you just had to live with. With this understanding I've now come to dislike that quote and believe it encourages people to just give up.

I think bitcoin's potential to be disruptive to our current monetary system is an interesting factor.  Of course it will only be disruptive and interesting if it is more widely used in the future.  I suppose I'm just not as positive coin taint use is as inevitable as you seem to assume it is.  I accept that given main stream adoption coin taint, at least on some level, may be inevitable, I don't accept that either are yet a foregone conclusion.  I'd rather use bitcoin in a manner that attempts to retain it's full utility until I can't any more or it becomes too costly.  I'll let others pretend there is wisdom in their decision to not put even a basic effort in fighting for their ideology.

Actually its part of the reason i think bitcoin will be adopted more widely.
As for liying down, there is an old quote.
"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And wisdom to know the difference."
The blockchain is publicly available, obviously, and thats as opposite to bank secrecy as you can get. That implies both possibilities and dangers or, more simply, opportunities.

I'm confused.

If you're an exploited granny then this doesn't stop you being exploited. There's a possibility you could track "coerced" bitcoins back to owner, but the mechanics of proving that require another level of usability and tracking.

If you're a criminal then you work around it by avoiding passing tainted coins into networks which check and/or set up your own laundering/mixing service, probably exploiting more unsuspecting receivers.

If you're receiving tainted coins, your choice is to somehow report them/return them, or use them in places which don't check, which encourages the same criminal laundering/mixing behaviour above.

Only makes sense at a law enforcement/controlling Bitcoin level.

In your scenario I think bitcoins are still an improved system over transacting in USD, so in that sense I suppose it doesn't matter.  I don't know what will happen, it might be inevitable but I don't see any reason why we should lie down for it.

Do you really think it even matters?
What do you think will happen? Hmm, lets say BTC actually gets mainstream adoption. IRS will want to know the bitcoin adress every legit business uses. Law enforcement sees BTC from a suspect being spent on legit online-shop and goes there to collect the shipment address. No changes needed on protocol level. Just normal regulations. Just wait till the exchanges are required use verified adresses and a transaction number instead of one use adresses. Or do you doubt that will happen?

It's encouraging to see the majority of bitcoin forum and reddit users speak out against coin taint and realize the danger the loss of fungibility poses.  Hopefully as Holliday said we all practice what we preach and starve out businesses that use these methods.

One thing I worry about is that we are working towards mainstream adoption.  Coin taint might just sound like a good idea to all the average joes out there we are trying to get on board.  Or at the very least I doubt most of them would stand up to stop it.  The more forcefully the idea is rejected now before more followers adopt bitcoin the better.

Personally I think the idea is plainly awful in concept.  If you are in support for blacklisting at all in any form then you are supporting a threat to bitcoin and I believe you should re-think your position.

While I doubt "redlists" will gain much traction for now I do see it as a legitimate threat to bitcoin moving into the future that this community needs to stay on top of.  Hopefully this plan gets bounced out so hard it won't be tried again for a long time, enough for coded solutions to be put in place to render this topic obsolete.

Also I'm anxious to see cheap and feature rich hardware wallets with offsite paper or encrypted "cloud" backups that will help prevent these thefts that provide the "moral" motivation for those that are misguided enough to believe redlists are a good idea.  This of course won't do anything to deter the idea being pushed by those with ulterior motives unfortunately.

how about expanding noobies section and creating a well written sticky guide on how to keep coins safely, password protect, backup, different geographical location etc.. then we can overcome certain dangers that can overspill into epidemic forcing foundation to react or create excuses for centralisation.

BitcoinAshley, a-mother-fucking-men. +1

If this bullshit actually happens (and is supported by the community/code etc), I will loose my support for my beloved bitcoin.

so those who talk to the government on behalf of bitcoin users (foundation) - how do we know they dont get corrupted eventually? government might have extremely sophisticated people working for them that could literally influence front line bitcoin representatives once they spend too much time communicating.

Absolutely, it also seems the government right now does not have a law that would be convenient enough to put arbitrary bitcoin user behind bars if needed. So tainted coins might be helpful for them - since mechanism taints every coin that was mixed with stolen coins once - soon most of circulated coins become toxic, limiting acceptance. This should never happen and therefore it would never happen - especially since it will *not* solve the problem it is allegedly designed to solve - cryptolock author could switch to litecoin, making this effort completely useless.

In short, again, silly proposal, most people on the board understand that it is a completely wrong direction, it will never pass, I am surprised we even have to discuss it, but that is the nature of opensource, everyone can have a say

Marked bills? Following serial numbers after a bank robbery? You think a blockchain wouldnt be used if it were available for paper money?

Ever heard of Statute of limitations?