Topic: USA blacklists 2 bitcoin addresses, threatens with secondary sanctions! (Read 563 times)

There is noway of tracing the originating wallet ID through the "mixing algorithm". It is random and you can't reverse-engineer a random formula. But it is true that some of these mixers may be operated by the authorities. A number of dark market vendors got arrested during the past 2-3 years after the authorities were able to trace their transactions.

Who's the idiot quoting something that is 9 months old, Yes I was here but not all went down. And nope The US hasn't taken everything. And yes I know for facts they still suck in mixing algorithm and chain analysis. They can't even analyze a transaction accurately if the sender adds just 3-4 "hops" to his Tx. Not talking if you add 12...

Everything is always about America. Honestly, wtf is wrong with that country. I use to think countries in Asia were weird and had some odd laws and things but America still takes the cake.
Don't give your personal info to anyone. They don't need. As for threats I would lol at that. Their laws don't apply here so they can kiss my arse.


Lol the mixing algorithms? Umm ok. You can't predict something that is random. No two mixes are the same. Also, you seem paranoid. Backdoors? Give me a break dude.

I guess things like this will not make a significant impact, both on the two governments and on the market going forward, this is more or less limited to just passing news.

Blocking those address is just dig a hole to close another hole.

This probably means that in case any American citizen transfers his coins to any of these addresses, then he will be investigated. But considering how easy it is to create a Bitcoin wallet, I think that the Iranians will just create a few more fresh wallet addresses and continue their business through those wallets. The FBI won't be able to link the new ones with the two identified wallets.

You're a fucking idiot if you don't think the US government hasn't already taken over the mixers or have backdoors into them where they know the mixing algorithm. Did you miss when these all went down?

I for one MUCH prefer governments flexing their weight on exchanges on specific addresses rather than trying to block an entire technology.

Werent most of the miners in China?

The chinese government tried to outlaw bitcoin two times, and failed. The miners are still there, operating their machines.

If the US government want to outlaw bitcoin with this "blacklisting" thing, I dont think its gonna work.

And yes, they blacklisting two addresses is a attack against the blockchain, since the money can be easily transferred to another address, and this address can belong to another person. Will they blacklist the other addresses? And if those coins passes through a exchange in another country, will they blacklist this exchange? Will they sanction the other country as well?

Also, the grounds for blacklisting are xenophobic, to say the least. You cant apply xenophobia to the blockchain. Bitcoin is a global, not national currency. It knows no borders. If they want to sanction iranian citizens using their dollars, which they control, fine, but they cant do it with bitcoin. It would defeat the purpose of the project, in the first place, as bitcoin was created to circumvent censorship.

But as the internet becomes more and more censored, and sites such as Reddit (a true cesspool of censorship) becomes more popular, the cuckolds who are the majority of users will just bow down to the almighty power of the modern State, and accept its iron dildo up their asses.

This is an interesting event in the world of cryptocurrency, but the owners of bitcoins at these addresses can easily bypass the restrictions by using decentralized exchanges. Bitcoin was thought for just that. Although for supporters of anonymity it is possible to better use coins like Monero.

funny thing is that i see you complaining about businesses that are FIAT handling
i said in other topics.

if you want decentralisation YOU have to move away from using centralised FIAT services
if you want to not be held back by FIAT based sanctions/regulations. then stop using fiat regulated exchanges

organise a meetup and swap hand to hand with someone in a coffee shop

bitcoin is not sanctioned/regulated by fiat rules. you will not find a single fiat rule in bitcoin code,
the problem is people using FIAT services and then crying when FIAT rules apply

if you dont want the controls of fiat to apply then you need to not use fiat.
organise your local towns bitcoin meetup to discuss getting a local grocery store to accept bitcoin.

detach yourself from FIAT and FIAT rules will be of no concern to you.
didnt you read the regulations it only applies to BANKS and MSB's aka fiat regulated services

solution: dont use an MSB and you wont find funds getting blocked.. simple

It looks to me like you haven't been living in a country that doesn't care about your personal freedoms when it comes to fighting organized crime and terrorism.
Imagine a situation where your friends are involved in drug trafficking and you happen to lend money to them, not knowing what they're doing. They were always paying you back with interest, so it looked like a good and safe way to make some money.
If this was happening in the US and they got caught, the agencies would raid your home just like that. They'd break the doors, put you in jail for the night, search your house, take your computers and drives, and you wouldn't see most of it ever again. They'd even steal your money, if there was a chance that you were profiting from their drug business. They can do whatever they want, it's a wild west. If they get a warrant, they can shove an old sock down your throat and you won't be able to prove that it happened.

Bullshit! Pure garbage.
How could one "break the law" by sending his bitcoins to anybody? It is my asset and I wish to transfer it to another person, so what? I could have bought weed from the peer and feds hate weed? Ok they could hunt my dealer by more than few other ways, why should they stick with ruling over my money? It is my money, for the god sake! Isn't it Orwell 1984?

FYI:
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency/movement invented to defend people against the ruling monetary system that constantly steals money from them by generating money from thin air and taking advantage of it to get even stronger, like exponentially and expanding its surveillance/censorship capabilities. You don't like it? Don't waste your time hanging around here, go watch Fox News or something and join Trump's campaign to make America centralized again.

Logic

Dont break the law and expect bitcoin to keep you safe....pretty easy for most of society to follow that rule.

The fear mongering in this thread is lol

Terrorism is a fake word invented for the same reason that is now used against anybody who is not US's bitch.

There is no such thing in real world. Nobody calls himself terrorist, some people desperately try to commit attacks against other people for some political agenda they have. They could be called like 'violent Islamic extremists' or something more specific like 'Saudi backed Islamic Fundamentalists".

I think the whole AML thing is an excuse for centralization of power by bankers and corporates behind US gov. Fighting criminals and so-called terrorists should be carried out in the actual battle fields. For instance like billions of dollars worth of weapons have been sold and smuggled to Syria and no single cargo has been seized as long as it was about ISIS or Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists ad fundamentalists who were fighting Asad and beheading civilians at the same time.

Trump isn't against terrorism, there is no fight against terrorism, they want to re-innovate slavery using technology and financial systems. This is what AML/KYC shit is about and now Iran case is a test bed for next and probably the final wave of aggression against humanity as a whole.

Bitcoin and alt coins could help terrorists for money transferring therefore I suggest Govt should unable and look another method to utilize Bitcoin. Its decentralized system so hard to find who using bitcoin, etc.

Pools are far more than an IP address, they are service providers, hence centralized.
Farms are inevitable and distributed enough.

As service providerس, neither theoretically, nor practically they couldn't be categorized as anonymous, they are not. With dick heads like trump in power, they are single points of failure. US could easily make a deal with Chinese communist party and impose censorship on "terrorist addresses".

It is a false argument. Change winner-takes-all approach and you are done with pools, as I said, I have been on it for a while, I don't know why, but I just resist to include links here (why really?) ... anyway you could check the threads I've started by navigating through my profile in case you were interested. check threads started by this user

pools no
a pool is just a stratum address used as a gateway for multiple asics to share work together. pools dont need physical locations.
FARMS on the other hand are fixed.
it takes too long to move such huge amounts of equipment and organise contracts to pre-buy electric at discount(many farms contract for 12 months, to ensure constant supply without brownouts aswell as getting the physical capacitors/cabling to supply the facility sorted)

though you may think that most pools are just 1 farm facility per company tag on the pool pie chart
https://www.blockchain.com/pools
each of them segments are actually more than one facility/farm

if you click on the block tally below the pie chart and then look at details of the blocks made by a particular tagged company/group. you will see that the blocks they mine differ.
some blocks are pure legacy and use a legacy address for their coin reward. some use bech32 addresses for coin reward. meaning although tagged as one group. they show that tits actually diverse facilities that individually choose what/how to mine

that said. getting back to the point. a pool is not a facility locked down to a physical location its just in essence an IP address which a group links to. a company/group could easily make many ip addresses as backup so if an IP is taken down the asics autoswitch to another IP address in seconds.

as for farms(physical facilities of large amount of asics) well thats for them to motivate themselves as to how to protect themselves.

no amount of code will ever stop people pooling effort. even PoS is seeing people pooling their stake together

Maybe, but if anything, it seems more indicative of an incoming war against exchanges and MSBs who don't fully comply with AML/KYC laws.

They didn't announce secondary sanctions against Bitcoin addresses. They just identified addresses associated with individuals they've deemed Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) because the individuals are high volume Bitcoin exchangers and US persons are prohibited from dealing with them. They expect exchanges to block funds tainted by those addresses:

I want to make it clear that no matter how stupid this action would look to us, announcing secondary sanctions against bitcoin addresses, it is an evidence of the war that is coming and bitcoin community is barely prepared for. Well may be not a complete war but certainly a major battle like what Satoshi would probably say.

1- Devs are no more anonymous, they are subject to prosecution by US feds and those bastards are so strong, they had pushed a social democracy like Sweden to fake criminal accusations against Julian Assange not for prosecution but for extradition of him to the masters in the US! The same accusations that they dropped last year, not with good faith but to void his asylum status in Ecuador embassy and let British jurisdiction to prosecute him for not to surrender. It is no joke, we should go underground, period.

2-Bitcoin is pseudonymous hence it is traceable, mixers are trust base, special measures should be taken to help people with anonymity and privacy issues in case they feel being subject to brutal surveillance/censorship/sanction threats/actions.

3- Centralized exchanges are gateways to hell. We need to abandon them once forever.

4- Most of the whales, speculators and high stake gamblers will be pushed out of the ecosystem because they won't choose messing with US feds as a reasonable greedy person, hence both the price and network hashrate will drop even more. We have to be ready for that.

5- Pools are the weakest part of the chain they should be understood as a flaw in bitcoin that needs serious treatment and fix. I've personally done a lot of research and development on this issue but it is not about my work and its details, I'm just saying there exist ways out of pooling situation and it is because the pressure behind this flaw is based on bitcoin's winner-takes-all approach to PoW, which is not the only option.

Bottom line:
True bitcoiners should re-unite and tightening their anonymity policies, be ready for a major battle. Opportunists, speculators, gamblers, ... are free to join Faketoshi Wrong and get scammed and regulated at the same time.

Exactly.  How will they trace the coins if they use mixer services and how are they going to stop the money if it goes through the corrupt Banking system?

Now take that money and push it through Banks in countries where the USA has no jurisdiction or authority and see how difficult it is to stop that money.

I think this is just political show boating to scare Iran from trying to circumvent the US sanctions with Bitcoin or Crypto currencies. The US should focus more on the corrupt Banks and the monster that they created. 

If the miners decide as a group to blacklist an address by not inserting any transactions into the blockchain that contain it, then it can't make it to a mixer.
Plus it only take 51% of the miners to make a blacklist happen with a PoW coin.

It seems you need the extra classes on how btc works.  

 

FYI:
Imagine you run the company that run an ASIC Warehouse, the government approaches you , and says
"we have a list of known terrorists & criminal btc addresses, and we need you to make certain that you don't enter any transactions related to these address into the blockchain"
1.  You comply and nothing happens to you, (they may even get the utility to give you a cheaper rate on electricity prices).
or
2.  You refuse and they cut the power to your Mining Equipment and place you on trial for aiding and abetting known criminals,
     plus they confiscate all of your fiat as they claim it was ill gotten gain, which makes mounting a legal defense next to impossible,

Which do you choose?
(If you have a family , they will directly suffer if you are thrown in jail and won't be there to provide for them, so what do you choose?)

* In the Beginning, when BTC was truly decentralizes and ran on PCs, No one knew the location of all of the miners (making the above scenario impossible), however now that mining requires warehouses full of ASICS drawing industrial amounts of electricity , tracking their location is as easy as a call to the utility companies .*
Unless someone finds a way to Decentralize BTC mining as it was in the beginning, it's current centralization will lead to global censorship.