Topic: Wasabi blacklisting update - open letter / 24 questions discussion thread - page 4. (Read 1967 times)

Which would be bad enough on its own, but they guy in the second video is Norbert Lévai, the project manager at zkSNACKs, meaning you can't pass this off as a PR fuck up. The highest level people in Wasabi are promoting Chinese spyware to all their users. And the Wasabi Twitter account has never struck me as being run by some random PR hire, but by the developers themselves.

I honestly can't wrap my ahead around what is going on here. They are either so completely out of touch with all things privacy that they genuinely have no idea TikTok is spyware, or they are aware of this fact but the just don't care at all. Which is worse?

Wasabi developers continue acting childishly. TikTok, ok. Next. 

Um, evidence?

Sure, marketing did help, but it is certainly not the main reason we're currently paying 22 grand for a bitcoin. Yes, purely P2P transactions would have lessened market manipulation and blunted the idea that bitcoin is an investment. Without Coinbase, Binance and the rest, we would have less benighted people who would be willing to hand out personal data and money for the feeling of acquiring something they don't even understand. Wouldn't that be better?

That's what I was thinking!  Two ticktock videos, 17 seconds of my life invested, and absolutely no twerking?!?  What is this world coming to? [/sarcasm]

---

Ticktock isn't a social media app, it's a CCP surveillance app.  Any and all infringements on your privacy while using the app are specifically by design.  That's probably why the version Ticktock that's available in China is used completely differently, for example: https://video.foxnews.com/v/6309696840112#sp=show-clips

But I do get your point, a privacy wallet that's so out-of-touch, they think they'll find clients by advertising to those who have no clue how to secure their own privacy.

Now i'm almost sure they hire PR people who don't know much about Wasabi or privacy.

Next up on Wasabi's Twitter account: Check out our new Wasabi Smart Box!  $59.99 for pre-orders!  Link your Smart Box to Alexa and start Coin Joining by simply asking out loud!

Man, this is getting worse almost every day it seems.

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

Umm, what the actual fuck is this: https://nitter.it/wasabiwallet/status/1550510985022169089

TikTok is one of the worst privacy invasions in existence (a few selected links at the bottom, but you can find thousands more with a simple web search). So much so, that the FCC is recommend that the app is banned in the US. Here's a quote from FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr:

So Wasabi want its users to follow them on TikTok, therefore linking the fact that they use Wasabi to their real identity, their biometrics and facial scan, their location, and all their clipboard data, for starters. Did you so much as copy one of your addresses? Maybe you looked up your transaction on a block explorer? Maybe you saved a couple of screenshots of your wallet, or some back up file? Great, now we've linked your entire wallet to your real identity too. Privacy = zero.

This is mad. Even if you want to argue that this isn't actively malicious, it is so incredibly naive that it beggars belief coming from a team which are supposedly focused on privacy.

---

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/tiktok-circumvent-apple-google-privacy-140000271.html
https://www.engadget.com/fcc-commissioner-google-facebook-ban-tik-tok-064559992.html
https://techcrunch.com/2021/06/03/tiktok-just-gave-itself-permission-to-collect-biometric-data-on-u-s-users-including-faceprints-and-voiceprints/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/tiktok-tracked-user-data-using-tactic-banned-by-google-11597176738
https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2022/07/tiktok-app-phone-access/

I do not buy the rumor that Wasabi is using blacklisting as a decoy while buying time to move to Seychelles.  I have two reasons.  In this case, I think a reply to n0nce's open letter would have been avoided and declined by them.  And secondly, why would they have to use 'decoy tactics'?  It is not like they just robbed a bank and have to quickly flee the country.  I do not think there is anything illegal in moving things to Seychelles, or am I missing a key piece of the puzzle here?

-
Regards,
PrivacyG

In the same way that $1M is of no use to you on a desert island.

If a deflationary currency as of today after all the mining of 13 years, the entire market cap was $19k would mean that the theory that it is deflationary does not match the practice, as the price would have remained more or less stable in 13 years instead of growing, which is what it should have done, as opposed to fiat currencies, which are inflationary and against which Bitcoin was created.

I also would not want us not to get bogged down in discussing this unrealistic example.

The point I was trying to make is that people tend to like the price of Bitcoin to go up. If you bought Bitcoin at $100 and have been able to hold it until today, you are certainly going to be much happier if it is worth $20k than if it goes back down to $100.

Centralized exchanges, as bad as they are, have provided liquidity and ease of exchange that have helped a lot in driving the price up.


I could agree with you if we specified but I don't want to derive this debate into an off-topic because the main thing is Wasabi's Blacklisting, but I'm happy to continue debating if you like. I will wait to see how the events of what dkbit98 comments about changing their stance on blacklisting end up.

Why would it be 'bad in practice', though? I guess a lower price would be correlated with lower market capitalization, which may be the result of less people buying Bitcoin (to then potentially use it). But I'm not sure how a lower price would directly make Bitcoin less usable or a higher price make it more usable. Ultimately, when it comes to the utility / usability of Bitcoin, I'd say centralized exchanges may do more harm than good for various reasons. To summarize, their whole business concept relies on people not withdrawing and holding and / or using their coins as intended, but leaving them on the platform. It manifests itself in exaggerated withdrawal fees and advertisements that are purely based on the 'story' that cryptocurrencies are primarily an investment asset.
As well as scaring users that their coins can be frozen stolen by the exchange if they dare to withdraw them, use them (e.g. for gambling) and send them back to the exchange to realize fiat profits.

I appreciate your more neutral position; and in general I always welcome having a healthy discussion instead of just an angry mob of people that all share one opinion.
For me personally, the 'wrong direction' was chosen the moment they decided to even consider blacklisting as a viable option, even before they announced it publicly - no matter if they ever did it or not. The next step 'into the wrong direction' for me was them defending the decision over and over, in written and spoken form and giving me a totally untrustworthy impression of their understanding of privacy (especially in the spoken Twitter group chat thing), see below.
The last step 'into the wrong direction' for me, was how they advertised the 'first Wasabi 2.0 CoinJoin not using the blacklist' as a 'promotional feature'. Besides the fact that privacy is a serious thing for me and shouldn't be used as a marketing gimmick that is turned on or off based on their mood or the daily occasion, I don't get how it's so risky for them to not have a blacklist when it comes to business partners and whatnot, but at the same time they can opt not to use it for such an event. Doesn't really check out for me.

Then why would they announce it and double-down on it so many times? I'm just a bit puzzled right now if they really end up not implementing using it.

No pressure is the key - they might not implement blacklisting on the default coordinater for years, or may even drop that initiative entirely if they suspect that its not worth the effort.

They barely openly talked about it even when they announced it. It's not really surprising why - obviously they don't want a lot of publicity around the fact that a so called "privacy wallet" is now anti-privacy and pro-censorship.

They've been moving in the wrong direction solidly since this announcement. They have doubled down on a lot of things and continued to attack others to such an extent that I cannot believe it is all just some clever ruse.

Well, they've had loads of time to do it, and apparently no pressure to implement blacklisting. So why not launch an alternative coordinator first, change it the default, and then announce blacklisting on zkSNACKs? Makes no sense.

They are not openly talking about blacklisting anymore, but there is certainly a big reaction from other people about initial news, and bitcointalk forum is included.
I don't know what's the real truth behind this story but let's give them benefit of the doubt, until (or if) we see moving into wrong direction.

Listening to one of their developers speaking I am sure there are people now actively working on creating alternative coordinators with different jurisdiction.
You can't expect them to come up openly and show all their cards in public, that would be like shooting yourself in a foot.
Tainted coins concept is a stupid )and dangerous) idea, but it was not invented by Wasabi wallet, centralized exchanges first started doing this and lot of rich people supported it.
I am not defending Wasabi, but I am taking more neutral position here.

And now here lies the problem - nobody can even agree on the taint of the UTXOs so they will end up like the antivirus companies, who cannot even agree on even whether a file is malware, let alone agree on the names of the malware: "This EXE is safe, this RAR file is not (simply because only pirates use this extension), this .DOCX with embedded macro gibberish is safe, but this one is not!"

(N.B. the entire model of anti-viruses on microsoft windows is a complete joke, as they all depend on MS ultimately to integrate their codes into their closed-source kernel. Let's not turn Bitcoin into a fragmented abomination policed by chainanals behaving like rogue AV companies.)

Any source for this?

Their legal documents for Version 2 already state that zkSNACKs is based in Seychelles and has done for over a month already. If they are already based there, and the whole point of their move was to avoid blacklisting, then why are they still talking about blacklisting and not reversing their position?

Completely agree with this. They are not blacklisting yet, but are still operating, meaning there is no legal requirement forcing them to blacklist or be shutdown. So there is nothing stopping them from continuing to operate without blacklisting while they move jurisdictions.

And even if this were the case, then the honest thing to do would still be to direct people to other coordinators while they spin up a different coordinator in a different jurisdiction, rather than supporting this taint nonsense.

It does matter.

An invention that in theory is very good, because it is decentralized, autonomous and limited in its production, for it to be really good it lacks that people believe in it and that is reflected in the price.

If the price of Bitcoin were $0.01 today, after 13 years, it would still be a good invention in theory but bad in practice. And this forum would be long dead, for example.


I am not clear on that either, as for example crypto casinos, which have tax havens licenses (most of them) are imposing more and more KYC requirements and some blacklisting mixed coins as reflected in n0nce's thread. And there would be no sense in all the explanations given to then change to a freer country, so to speak, and then going back on what was said.

Btw: budget for the Wasabi signature campaign has been reduced and the participants have gone down to 15 from 40, with a maximum of 30 paid posts per week, instead of 50. In other words, the budget has been reduced to 25% of the initial one.

They could be transparent about it and make everything public. But are they going to? I seriously doubt that. I even tried to get them to talk about it and maybe reveal something in What Do Centralized Exchanges Consider as Taint? But that didn't go so well. And that information is surely above the pay grade of a regular support agent.

That wouldn't make any sense: they could have quietly moved from one tax haven to an even bigger tax paradise without supporting and encouraging the foolish concept of tainted Bitcoins.

I've said it before: I believe the idea of taint can actually damage Bitcoin, and I also believe many people have an interest in doing so. Whether or not they go through with it, normalizing the believe that taint even exists is bad.

Paradoxically, if they all were to cooperate and agree on what to consider tainted, it wouldn't make sense to have more than one surveillance company in place. If it were possible to interpret objectively what is going on in the blockchain, we wouldn't even need a single surveillance company (I am talking about businesses that have to hire these firms to comply with AML policies, not individuals making P2P transactions since no sane individual would support the harmful activities of these firms) because individuals themselves could track every payment and prevent money laundering and financing of other crimes.

But we have what we have. Inasmuch as it is physically impossible to interpret occurring objectively, we witness the intense competition between chain surveillance firms, where everyone is trying to sell their own subjective interpretation of transactions in the blockchain. Clients of these firms aren't seeking truth or justice, nor do they interested in protecting the rights of their customers. They simply need protection from regulatory pressure and chain surveillance firms kind of provide such protection by selling convenient and convincing interpretations both to businesses and governments.

I use a p2p exchange that leaves a light footprint, but it's certainly not infallible.  Regardless, if they want go through all that trouble just to find out that I pay my taxes, at least I didn't make it easy on them.  

---

Thanks for the heads up.  I'm not in a hurry, but I did get around to downloading it and checking the signature.  I do have a couple of nodes under the staircase, both running electrumx, so I can point it there if it gives me trouble.  I also have an unpruned QT running on my main PC that I use as a hot wallet most of the time, so I might try it connected directly to that first.



That's the point.  If I'm converting my coins on a regular basis, in varying amounts, with multiple people I'll get bitcoin with diverse history.  Some form exchanges, some from other p2p, some from "tainted" UTXOs.  I don't really care what that history is, as long as it's diverse enough that even multiple transactions with a single individual are random enough to appear to be exactly what they are; me obfuscating the origin of my coins for privacy reasons.



I got your meaning without the tiny hint, but I don't begrudge people for picking up a slot on Wasabi's campaign.

---

I'd like to know which provider or method or algorithm any "legitimate" exchange is using to determine what's tainted or not.  If they're going to operate in this space shouldn't they at least be transparent with that?

---

Lol, this is some 007 shit.  If it wasn't you posting it I would think it was a joke.  If this turns out to be true these bitches will be my new heroes.

Wasabi actually didn't start to blacklist anything yet, and from some information I am getting they are not even going to start doing that in near future.
All this operation appears to be decoy tactics, while in background they needed to buy some time while moving from Gibraltar to Seychelles.
They can't come up and publicly say that, but this is my speculation based on latest information I got.
To conclude, until I see bitcoin transaction actually being blacklisted in Wasabi, I am not considering they are blacklisting anything.

It's legal reasons for sure, maybe that's the reason for them moving to other country with less regulations
Let me say this in public, I will be the first to criticize Wasabi if they officially start to blacklist and track anything, but until then I think it's time for everyone to chill about this.