Topic: Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion - page 3452. (Read 26712937 times)

Explanation

I have debated that with myself for years.  My conclusion is to the contrary:  The way that Bitcoin made decentralized, permissionless money an accomplished fact before governments could react, it could have done the same for privacy.  If only the technology had existed—which it didn’t, because the necessary technological developments were motivated by Bitcoin’s existence.  (One of the principal inventors of modern zero-knowledge proof systems now runs a company building Ethereum L2 stuff.)

Flip this around.  Imagine that we are now in 2008, and some guy who calls himself Natoshi Sakamoto proposes a new centralized, permissioned digital money system.  Would you suppose that we need to accept that, to avoid opening an attack vector for TPTB/regulators?  Or would you say:  No, let’s go instead with Satoshi Nakamoto’s idea for decentralized, permissionless money, which you can use with no KYC by generating a keypair on your computer.  You know how much TPTB/regulators love that!

Accomplished facts are powerful.  Now, regulators have been in the reactionary position of responding to the accomplished facts of “decentralized” and “permissionless”.  They have needed to adapt.  But now, Bitcoin is in the reactionary position of fighting accomplished facts of a transparent blockchain, Chainalysis, “tainted” coins, etc.  The precedent is set—one way for better, the other way for worse.


Not to discuss altcoins in WO, but as raw data for contemplating the hypothetical of a Bitcoin with strong privacy:  Gemini supports Zcash shielded withdrawals.  That is a NY Bitlicensed, notoriously ultra-KYC exchange, under one of the most onerous regulatory regimes in the world.  They started support for shielded withdrawals, after Zcash was hit with some high-profile exchange delistings during a FUDstorm; Tyler Winklevoss made Gemini’s position quite clear.  The Rock Trading in Europe is another regulated KYC exchange that supports Zcash shielded.

The exchanges have users’ KYC dox.  Police, tax enforcers, et al. can tell targeted persons, “Give us your view keys, or else”; view keys permit viewing, but not spending of shielded money that is otherwise entirely invisible on the blockchain.  Gemini or The Rock Trading users who withdraw shielded Zcash are concealing their private finances from the world; they will not end up on any “rich lists”, their finances are protected from snooping by cyberstalkers, and they can sleep quietly at night without worrying about armed robbers.  But they are not in any position to hide from their governments.  This issue is not as simple as it seems at a glance.

I think that Zcash has walked that tightrope pretty well.  Bitcoin could have done similarly—and it could do similarly, in the future.


Since the dawn of human history, criminals have been able to transact anonymously with gold coins in the hand, with paper cash, etc.  More importantly, so could good people who deserve to have privacy—who should not be punished for the actions of others.

Now that the world is going all-digital, truly private digital money only restores, in essence, the way things were for thousands of years.

That’s a good thing—unless one idealizes transforming the whole world into a giant panopticon, where everyone is presumed guilty and thus kept under watch.

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A little coincidence:


That is from technical discussion of my original idea to use zero-knowledge proofs for emergency salvaging of BTC, in case a large quantum computer is developed.  Zero-knowledge proofs are not only useful for privacy; they have at least three or four non-privacy use cases that I want to see in Bitcoin.  Perhaps I should stop writing forum posts, and write some code.

Snowden is a Zcrap insider.

+1
I would argue that KYC is designed to make Bitcoin assets end-to-end traceable

Explanation

You can keep the btc private, You can mine to a virgin btc address via nicehash.

And as long as you do not cash it in it is private.

If you want cash for it and privacy along with that good luck. I would argue that if that were possible the governments of the world would end it.

The do not mind that it can be moved from address to address around the world. They do mind if you convert it to cash on the sneak.

I would argue it was never designed for that purpose.

There is one area where BTC's current restraints in terms of privacy , is sort of a good thing.  Regulation. (try not to vomit)

I wonder if BTC would be where it is today if it was a privacy coin...... I mean it opens up an attack vector for tptb/regulators....

Feel like BTC has walked that tightrope pretty well......

A world with widely adopted truly private digital money, could well come with issues of its own, some positive, and, some negative.

But, 100% on the fungibility issue, and privacy issue as a whole.

Now, reading that sentence makes more sense to me. I agree, it's a good thing to have different kinds of money in competition...

I agree with Snowden.  Loth though I am to say this, Bitcoin has a problem:  Privacy is Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel.

To say that “Bitcoin goes far beyond privacy” is like saying that a tower goes far beyond its foundations.  Privacy is a fundamental characteristic, it is an economic necessity insofar as it affects fungibility, and it needs to be built-in:  It is a part of the foundation, not a roof ornament.

Mixing does not work; that is a child’s game, and it costs you money in fees to achieve an inferior form of something that should be built-in, provided out of the box.  (On another note, Monero is essentially a coin with a built-in mixer.)  I have spent a ridiculous amount of money over the years on Bitcoin privacy, so I think I am qualified to opine.  And no, LN is not an adequate solution.  I am not inclined to make an extensive technical critique here—just saying, um, no, that doesn’t do it.

None of this is any criticism of Satoshi.  Given the state of the art in 2008-era cryptography, Satoshi had two choices:  Try to build a centralized currency with transactional privacy, like Digicash—or build a decentralized system, which exposes all transaction data so that every P2P node can validate it.  Either/or.  In 2008, the technology did not yet exist for anything else.  Satoshi made some breakthroughs with Bitcoin, but he himself was obviously not a cryptographer; and it would be unfair to expect him personally to solve every major problem at once, all by himself!

In 2010, when he was still here, Satoshi was struggling with this issue:


Bitcoin gave the impetus to terrific advances in cryptographic research.  A wave of breakthroughs in zero-knowledge proofs started in 2013–2014.  Alas, by then, Satoshi was long gone.  Not that we need his permission to improve Bitcoin:  I think he would have liked to have seen that, and to have been involved in it as Satoshi.

Thus, as it stands:

• Bitcoin has less practical privacy than bank transactions.  (Your bank knows your bank transactions.  The whole world knows your Bitcoin transactions.)
• Such monstrosities as Chainalysis exist, and they invisibly spy on you much worse than you know.
• Bitcoin’s fungibility is always more or less under threat—in the large, systemically, and in the small, for each user.  Governments and spy-companies draw up blacklists of coins.  Bitcoiners fret over avoiding “tainted” coins—a ridiculous concept which should not exist.  Even if you are irresponsibly apathetic about privacy, you need to pay attention to what this does to Bitcoin economically.
• The only major implementation of zero-knowledge proof privacy is an altcoin which, I recently discovered to my dismay, now plans to go POS.  Snowden likes that altcoin.  So do I—as long as it stays POW.  (I am proud to be a Zcasher since Sprout.)

A constructive solution:  Bring real privacy to Bitcoin!  Don’t say, “We don’t need that,” when we obviously do.  I say, “We can do it.”


Payments without privacy are—a problem.

I also agree with Snowden that competition is good.  Bitcoin doesn’t retain its dominance due to meme graphics.  It stands on being the best.  That means it needs to be the best.  The best never fear competition; and Bitcoin will only be improved by competition, if its response is “we can do it!” rather than “we don’t need it”.

I also like that Snowden tweet about gold being a non-networked form of Bitcoin.  Quotable.  He apparently has quite a high regard for Bitcoin.  If he offers some constructive criticism of it (as I do often), that is for the good of Bitcoin.

Explanation

He also warned of the dangers of the financialization of the crypto industry. He said that the space was becoming increasingly divided “because of the financialization of cryptocurrency” and hinted that he thinks users are not focusing enough on the technology itself.

“[Users are] not thinking primarily about what are the networks that are going to serve us for 100 years for transferring value,” he said. *“I am worried about a world in which our money is used against us.”

Snowden said that he hopes to see people get access to “free money in the independence sense.” In what could be interpreted as an endorsement of the broader crypto ecosystem rather than any one specific asset, he suggested that having multiple assets that could act as money was a good thing for the world. “I think the more competition we have there, then all the better,” he said.


...and he is not wrong, this is what I think too. ...would be better rephrased as "having multiple assets that could act as money was would be a good thing for the world"


....and he is right about the privacy thing also in a way.

*(he/we already live(s) in that world)

competition?
Between POS shitcoins.... Yes.


But POW competition to Bitcoin... nothing that I can see  (especially when that mETH lab blows up, soon)
 

I am a very fan of Snowden, especially or what he did, although his statements about BTC do not like this time, he wants more privacy, but does not understand that BTC goes far beyond privacy.

Bitcoin “Is Failing as an Electronic Cash System”: Edward Snowden




Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-failing-electronic-cash-edward-snowden/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss

I think everyone is looking for is focusing more on payments, Fiat money and do not see the complete potential that BTC represents.

Explanation

THOSE ARE ROOKIE NUMBERS !! PAMP-AP THAT INFLATULATION !!!   

yup... I think abiotic oil theory is the right way to look at it. ...But that's bad for oil business

imho, bitcoin priced in these price increases in 2020-2021 and now it is showing what will happen in 6-12 mo: perhaps a severe recession/depression or at least a significant catastrophic deflation.
We already see that stocks are dropping fast (a forward looking indicator).
RE to follow, imho.

Explanation

The same universe where the U.S. Dollar has been trusted by anyone anywhere in the world, at any time after the Nixon Shock (or the gold ban and seizure in 1934; was France surprised not to get its gold, after the United States had ripped off the American people for their gold?).

The same universe where official CPI inflation was kept at non-terrifying levels around 2008–2013.  LOL.  Did anyone with two eyes and a brain notice prices at the time?

I once saw someone^* sum up the way the CPI is calculated as, “Last year, you ate steak; this year, you eat hamburger.  Inflation was only 2%, because your beef costs only 2% more.”

The way that things are going, instead of beef, you will soon eat bugs.  Inflation will stay at only 9%:  Your protein will have only 9% YOY increase in price!

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Now, is anyone here surprised that I distrust the CPI—or that I distrust pricing that is distorted by the pernicious, psychologically deceptive effects of inflation?  Adjusted for the dollar’s real-world loss of value, I think that BTC must now be well below its December 2017 peak (never mind 200 WMA).  What goods and services could $19k buy in December 2017?  What goods and services can $28.5k buy now?

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^* Many years ago.  Sorry, I forget who/where.  The wording here is mine.

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Wall Street Silver
@WallStreetSilv
In what alternative universe does this add up to an 8.6% inflation rate?

https://twitter.com/wallstreetsilv/status/1535612309762088960?s=21




They’re robbing you blind, man. I will buy bitcoin all the way down, IDGAF.
Every satoshi you buy now & in the future is the smartest move you will ever make.

Do the opposite of what the herd do, the price is down but so what. The smart money does the exact opposite of what the plebs do.