Topic: The effect the mixer ban has had on the forum. - page 4. (Read 4426 times)

He likely did what is best for himself and the forum.

People not living in the USA do not understand the reach the government has if they want to get you they will.

Theymos could leave the USA and do the forum elsewhere but he would never be able to return to the states. And there would be a ton of countries that would grab him and hand him over to the USA.

Look what Canada did for usa in the case below

https://www.yahoo.com/news/justice-dept-huawei-exec-poised-161512518.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall


the usa said she was a spy she was in Canada and they grabbed her and held her for 3 years.

theymos could easily face the same shit if he moved the forum to a country like El Salvador  and runs all mixer action


 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-67637245

The very day before Theymos announced that mixers are then banned on this forum, I remember making a thread where I emphasized on the dangers this forum is in if we continue to allow mixer ads here, seeing how the US government have been on and after every mixer that becomes any bit of popular, and we all know that the more popular a media becomes, the higher the chances that that media is already a government watchlist, seeing again, how the US government have been on and about bitcoin and cryptocurrencies at large, I will 100 percent believe that are already aware of the existence of this forum and are watching things that are being advertised here.

So, to me, Theymos banning mixers ads and discussing on this forum is still the best decision, regardless of how it affect the forum and it's users in terms of signature ad campaigns, I think it's better the forum run short of campaigns and still exist and operate nomally, than there is a surplus of campaigns including mixers, and sooner than later, the forum is seized and taken down forever.

The US government must have tried to find out how and where bitcoin began its journey from, and i am very sure that in the process of their research, theyve discovered this forum and are watching things going on here.

Yep, and I'd be willing to bet many people (especially younger ones) in the US don't realize how close to 1984 we've gotten because of that day.  I couldn't name every rule created in the Patriot Act or every new restriction, but if you need quick evidence that ordinary citizens continue to be treated as potential terrorists, look no further than your nearest airport and all of the TSA employees and equipment they have at their disposal.  Sadly I think you're correct that those terrorists did score a major, long-lasting victory with the 9/11 attacks.

But the reach of those rules in the Patriot Act is far too extensive IMO.


I'd answer "no" to that question, but not because of a profit/income motive.  Discussion and promotion of mixers ought to be allowed on an internet forum, especially since mixers aren't illegal per se (right?).  Some mixer owners have broken the law, and no doubt so have some mixer users but it irks me that there's what appears to be a witch hunt going on, i.e, mixers as a whole are being shot down by the government for spurious reasons and Theymos was essentially forced to take the step that he did so as to not put the forum and everyone on it under the government's scanning election microscope.

Oh by the way, people should care about their financial profits, and it's not unreasonable to expect that most people do very much care about their income and finances on a forum that's dealing with money.  Yep, they ought to care deeply about privacy as well, but just look at how many people put their whole lives on social media for christ's sake.  I'd say most people don't value privacy at all, or at least don't realize the peril they put themselves in when they do crap like that.  Anyway, end of rant.

To be honest I never questioned the admin, the sole reason being that he focuses on the existence of the forum. There are multiple ways he could have hidden himself but unfortunately he came face to face with the FBI. Which led to his conclusion that this forum should not be palce to disrespect the US government and its security services.

That being said why not theymos hand over his admin responsibility to someone who can stand against the cruelty of the US. It is evident that he cannot give such a responsibility to someone who can handle those issue and the next problem is to not make this forum a one control entity. A lot of you will question his part to date and I don't see any reason to disagree with you guys.

To which he has said to create a decentralized forum, as of my understanding it is possible but that will make this forum nullified. To which I think that the forum now need 5 admins and using the power of democracy they can vote to approve or disapprove. Why not work around these line to make the forum fully decentralized.

Why should theymos leave a country? I guess, his quality of life in the USA is very good, he is young and probably has a lot of fun with the amount of coins that he holds. I think that there is no reason for him to leave the USA.

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To be honest, I think that it's very sad how many people care only about their financial profits. I have only one question, is it okay for you if mixer owners will be able to create ANN threads and have an open discussion in their ANN threads but they'll be prohibited to run a signature campaign or any kind of promotion? Let me guess, your answer is no. Many people only care about mixers because they were paying lots of money to signature campaign participants. That's all, many people want to get that pay rate back and that's why many people complain so much about ban of mixer signature campaigns. If theymos tells them that he will return mixers but will prohibit them from promoting their services, I bet that this will make people upset Long story short, many care about pay rate and not about the right to privacy.

The USA hit a major turning point with the 911 attacks.

They decided to use it as the reason for more security and stricter rules.

Basically one could argue those terrorist won as they turned the government on to all its citizens.

We are subject to a lot of endless financial rules. blah blah blah

Quite interesting and a nice idea, iff: what theymos lives for is Bitcointalk.
Instead of theymos toeing this lane, he will rather form a group that will transform the forum to a decentralized one.

To me, these ideas are not needed yet because the forum is not doing any illegal deals. The last time I checked, arms and drugs are not sold here. I also feel that theymos has an informant from the government. Anytime US wants to come for this forum, it will not take him unaware. Could be the reason he stopped mixers, who knows with this recent attacks on mixers, BTT would have been implicated and suspended by now.

I cannot recall any member stating that they wanted (or suggested) theymos to move to a different country in order to run the forum but I recall reading the question being asked a couple of times.

The question should be dropped because theymos will never move to a different country in order to operate the forum from a different jurisdiction and furthermore, the forum is not doing anything illegal.

Well, banks and other financial institutes were being used by all sorts of nefarious entities long before crypto was ever invented. It seems as though by associating crypto with crime some countries are blurring lines and it does not help.

It's not like I talked about that in the post you quoted, but I'll tell you.
Here you are expressing the attitude of the average American and what the government served him. The fight against terrorism has always existed and will always exist. Does every country need 9/11 to start the fight against terrorism? It's like a disease, you don't wait for someone to die and then decide to fight against that disease, you work to prevent it. And so it is in every part of the world, the US is nothing special in that regard.

Their claim as the reason for the pressure on Mixers & co is just a show to keep the semblance of freedom

As for the forum, and its management (including where it is located), theymos probably made the best decision according to the situation. But we can't pretend that we don't see the attitude of the US government towards Bitcoin (and cryptocurrencies), which is very similar to the communist regime. Some decisions and ways of acting are very reminiscent of China/Russia from an earlier time.
It is logical that ^crypto businesses move to where business conditions are more favourable.

btw check this discussion Crackdown on mixers and privacy tools is ineffective: it may even help criminals

As I wrote a few posts ago, most criminals are amateurs who have zero understanding of how a mixer works. Or they do have an inkling of understanding about Bitcoin's anonymity and are using Monero because of that. But they are definitely not using a bitcoin mixer in most cases, either because they don't understand the concept of privacy or because they know Bitcoin is fundamentally not anonymous.

You only have a small percentage of the most skilled cybercriminals or terrorists using a bitcoin mixer in any case.

So much of what Congress and executive branches are saying is waffle, but they don't care because, you know, eroding freedoms is more important! (how ironic that is considering freedom is supposed to be a cornerstone here.)

If that friendly country turns their policy similarly to the USA. theymos will need to leave that country, find a new one, and the cycle will repeat.

It will not lead to a happy ending for theymos and the forum and the point is if theymos returns to the USA. or that friendly country, he will be arrested.

theymos will not do this and will not put his security at risk only because of bitcointalk and signature campaigns from mixers.

So you want theymos to leave the USA and find a friendly country to run bitcointalk.

The USA claims mixers are used by terrorist groups to help fund terrorism.

The world trade center attacks on 911 will always be used to restrict freedoms in the USA.

it is what it is. 

Yeah? What else?

I said my thoughts on centralized mixing services many times in the past. They all are crap.

Do you see the code? Is it decentralized? No? Then it is useless.

Same goes for the VPN services too. Any centralized closed source service that promises to provide privacy is potentially running a scam so I can't comment on anything else other than their signature campaigns.

Activity on the forum would certainly decline. Believe me, no matter how much you enjoy the forum, it's much less fun when there are very few real discussions. Such is the case on Altcoinstalks, what is worth reading is written by (no more than) 10 people.

All campaigns together have no more than 1000 people. It is not a significant number that changes the economy, only a few individuals significantly improve life through them.

Yup, I have said it before at least for me I will post here even if I am not wearing a sig. But, so long as I can I might as well make some BTC
Not wanting to put words in peoples mouths, but I *think* most of the long time members who are still here and posting have the same thought.

I like this forum and enjoy engaging with people on it, and will not really change how I do things even if all signatures are removed.
It might also help the forum a bit since people who are 'posting to post to make $' will fade away.

Obviously, my view is a bit skewed since I am an American and the amount I make here posting is a very small percentage vs. what I make in my job.
In poorer countries the dynamic will be different, since $100 +/- a week can make a substantial difference in the quality of someones life.

-Dave

So we are still looking at the mixer ban through signature campaigns. Is the usefulness and quality of a service really seen through whether it has a signature campaign on the forum? The conclusion is that any service is not worth mentioning if it is not on Bitcointalk (without sig. cam.), also other forums if they do not have active sig. campaigns are completely irrelevant, right?

Isn't the bigger problem that a certain type of service is completely excluded from the forum? All for a reason, because there is no certainty as to how it will be legally interpreted and what the consequences could be. A possible scenario starts from the fact that everything is allowed, up to and including prosecution.
If someone here sees a problem only in signature campaigns, then, in fact, we don't have a problem, in the end, this forum can be complete without paid signatures.

Ban on mixers on this forum has the most devastating attack on users privacy and i expect if such should even happened, that shouldn't have been from here, bitcoiners are feeling that the community which supposed to guide against every form of attacks on users privacy are now going by the government regulations on mixers clampdown, another one I've seen is the reduction from the numbers of post and active members on the forum, you can imagine if all the banned mixers were still very active till date, things could have been more fast increasing with the number of users and their post on the forum.

There were (are?) a couple of casinos that were advertising there.

In the end it probably does not matter. What nobody talks about is that when you change your sig here, it changes your sig on every post you have ever made. When that happens all of a sudden when search engines go to look to make sure that links still exist and they are now gone it hurts your rank fast. At some point in time you have to have more then just here. If I change my sig that is 7500+ links that just went poof if you (mindrust) change yours that is 11000+ links. Which is why some other places don't want to use sig links.

-Dave

Campaign managers don’t seem to care at all. Many campaign managers that are active here are also active in the shitcointalk forum and they only manage mixer campaigns there as far as I know since no other business (exchanges and casinos) use that forum for advertising.

It is like they think they can get away with it after all that happened and I can’t really blame them because money is worth fighting sometimes. Sometimes it pays to take risks. Sometimes you can really get away with it.

I am not saying these managers will or should get punished for promoting mixers but getting a call from the police is more than enough of a punishment most of the time. I just don’t want to see any government official’s face or their voice. It gives me goosebumps.

I think that's the reasonable approach, it's the FBI that's on the tail of these mixers after all and I don't think that any campaign manager on their right mind would probably keep a campaign that's basically hot and dangerous lest they want to risk becoming a part of the investigation, might even become an accomplice because they willingly continued the promotion of those mixers just because there's money in it and it would be easily proven since there's evidences. It's a relief that there's not a lot of these campaign managers that decided to tempt fate and play games with the FBI because you can only imagine the headache that would be on other users.