Topic: 'Wasabigeddon' article discussion (it supposedly solves fungibility) (Read 1027 times)

congratulations

another step forward.
you finally getting it.. (though you then try to not openly just say you actually know by then twisting things into a point finger in  different direction after omitting it)
the answer is: stop using services.. especially ones that are in print of regulations know to cause red flags

funny part is you and your group idolise the DCG who pay blockstream and LN devs... and who own bitpay, kraken, coinbase, circle, gyft and chainanalysis

i have been saying the solution is not to use more middle men services(which you are advertising)
so stop trying to twist things around

i have shown you that mixers do cause red flags and all coins that went through a mixer is on a chainanalysis watch list which is sold to exchanges.

again.. your groups pretence is o imply that the blockchain openly tells the world how many sex dolls you bought if they/you didnt use a mixer..
if that was reality.. show me ANY bitcoin transaction that shows what product someone bought.
show me the raw blockchain data that proves your point.

again. can you agree that its not a flaw of bitcoin. but a issue of SERVICES that are a privacy concern.
you know the services you idolise and advertise so much.



get with reality.
telling people to use mixers is telling people to get red flagged and noticed and surveilled more than people that dont

https://www.fatf-gafi.org/media/fatf/documents/recommendations/Updated-Guidance-VA-VASP.pdf
VA = Virtual Asset - VASP = Virtual Asset Service Provider - AEC = Anonymity-Enhanced Cryptocurrency


try to read and do research instead on what the hopes and dreams and scripts your buddies tell you where you aimlessly then believe the utopian hope because you hear the same echos from the other buddies reciting the same crap

look outside your groups utopian scripts and learn what actually is a surveillance red flag.. and then when you learn the ACTUAL red flags you then know what actually to avoid

and yes.. the blue writing in previous posts quotes are a hint to the other project you advocate for being another red flag trigger..
LEARN and then understand

i am not acting like a government agent, i am just not afraid to do research to know what reality is and what actually happens in the real world.
i dont reply on the fantasies friends tell me to make me feel good with lies. i actually do the research.. so go try it and stop trying to find your social groups confirmation bias. and then stop trying to push your silly adverts on others knowing full well it will red flag them


oh..
and as for your use of de-fi /dex
much like the old local bitcoins. they to are running into regulations
oh and when you do crypto to fiat. what you find is that instead of an exchange having automated scripts(no human eyes watching your account). de-fi users manually type in their bank account associated birth name and their bank account number, and the person on the other end does the same thing to send you the fiat.
(many human eyes)

so each time you use de-fi you are adding one extra person that knows your name and local bank branch
so again your not being that private by letting loads of people know your name and bank account details.

oh and another lesson
even with your bank. when you receive random deposits from lots of different people(de-fi). your bank red flags that too.. far more so then regularly doing deposits and withdrawals from one exchange
so even de-fi doesnt actually help privacy.

but hey, your not thinking deeply about actual privacy. you just want to advertise certain services.

i guarantee you if someone was to read your post history. they would see YOU have advertised the most amount of services that are red flag triggers..

the more services and the more middle men you use.. the more noticeable you become

think about that

---

here is the difference between me and you

you:
"by using an exchange the government watches your every move"

^ WRONG
reality. by actually doing research is this

when using an exchange. your data just sits on the EXCHANGES computer where no human eyes bother to look at it. as it raises no alarm bells and because they have millions of customers they just dont have the time to care.

however by using a mixer then an exchange. you WILL get highlighted as worthy of looking at. by which then and only then would your details most likely end up in a SAR

so learn how things really work in reality.. then you can learn how to work around such things to stay under the radar

My last response to franky1's nonsense and then hopefully we can stop derailing this thread.

It is both. Centralized exchanges and now Wasabi treat bitcoin as non-fungible, but the ability to do so is based on an open ledger which is not private (like Monero's is, for example).

Mixers have never once let me down. My coins are impossible to trace through the blockchain, and I've never once been subjected to taint analysis or had coins frozen because I do not use centralized exchanges. Blaming mixers for exchanges implementing taint is like blaming Tor for Google spying on you. The correct response is not to stop using Tor and make Google's data collection as easy and thorough as possible - it is to stop using the products and services of Google, a company which is intent on invading your privacy and selling your data. And the correct response is not to stop mixing or coinjoining or otherwise obfuscating your funds and allowing centralized exchanges to track every single payment or transaction you make - it is to stop using centralized exchanges which are intent on invading your privacy and selling your data.

All I get is that you behave like a government agent, advising people to open up themselves as much as possible, take no steps to protect their privacy or even actively surrender it, and allow the government to monitor absolutely everything that they do in order for the government to leave them alone. This is just the "Nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument, which has been debunked so thoroughly so many times that anyone who still repeats it is either stupid or malicious.

I'm choosing to ignore the rest of the post since it is just the usual completely off topic junk about big blocks and Lightning which franky1 shoehorns in to every post he makes.

point is exactly that

YOU were blaming anti-privacy based on the blockchain. where now you have omitted the problem is in services.
(one step forward. congratulations)

the funniest part now you have omitted it, you might now realise that asking everyone to stop using the blockchain
to just move funds, but instead lock funds up to middlemen services that control who gets what. and altnets involving partners and custodians will some how in your mind resolve the pretend bitcoin fault you wish to imply

sorry but no.
just read this very topic.
wasabi is generating blacklists.. the very thing you think mixers prevent.
they are literally telling you to your face that mixers are not what you think they are.
your response is then get angry that mixers have let you down. but then trying to sales pitch mixers to everyone else to use as their 'must use' thing to avoid normal blockchain usage

do get it yet(your hypocrisy)

using middle men services and forcing others to lock funds up to services and altnets pretending your offerings/advertised services hides people.. doesnt. ....it actually red flags those users.

try to read, try to learn, try to understand

---

again it seems the lagging is in part by certain people not wanting to do the research or actually think for themselves what actions people themselves are advertising that actually causes people to be highlighted and surveilled

so because your crowd want to not do the research and instead want to promote middlemen services

let me show you one more time..
and this time actually read and understand and take the time to understand.. and not just hit the reply button trying to defend a service you pals want to advertise for personal greed, malicious intent

maybe i should make it more colourful to grab your intention


yep mixers will earn people a red flag that puts them not in the normal user data base that doesnt get looked at for 5 years before getting deleted.. but instead gets users put into a suspicious activity watch list

GET IT YET

..
lets put it another way
imagine there was a known law for years that anyone depositing funds into a casino would be on a watchlist by default, no matter the purpose or source of funds. just using a casino gets you surveilled

and now your group come along and try to scare people that every cent people spend is being watched, so they need to use casino's to hide.
sorry but no.. not everyone was being watched.. but those using casino's are. and you are trying to get everyone watched by telling them to use a casino

do you know why oeleo and yourself cant find my stash or my real life info
yep i dont use silly middle men services to the extent that you lot advertise.

as for why i am against the silly groups tactics of advertising silly things. is because their underlying motives is to declare bitcoin as dead, try to tell people not to use bitcoin. and instead put people at risk of being watched or have their funds controlled by others, for their own malicious greedy motives.
because they dont care about other people. they only care about getting profit at any cost as long as that cost is passed to others and they can get away with it

take their silly agenda of saying bitcoin cant scale for daily use by the unbanked. yet they then WANT bitcoin to be spammed up with useless mixers tx's and data that cant account for its good money limited supply accounting mechanism. thus making bitcoin useless as good money so they can declare their crappy flawed altnet is deemed (by them) bitcoin 2.0 that everyone should use.

back to the point though
ignore the silly mindset of a few idiots.. and realise once and for all
using a mixer WILL GET YOUR RED FLAGGED and surveilled

The problem is that more and more coins get solely acquired trough kyc, what is preventing them from doing it? They benefit from it and i think we don’t need anymore proof if mass surveillance is happening or not, it has become clear over the last years. We should think of what we can do against it, before things are getting really bad. And it would be hard to get this information out of closed circles, we’re always lagging behind in getting to know about surveillance measures.

Expected, but doesn’t change anything.

If all of your hoard would’ve been acquired trough kyc, all of a sudden there would be a lot more potential attack vectors on you. If everyone goes completely trough kyc for all of their hoard in the future, we might have a problem.


I don’t hate you franky and i still don’t have anything against you personally. Our opinions just differ on this.

I wouldn’t dox you even if i had the ability to. Because i respect your privacy and revealing yourself should be your decision only.

It’s not broke, but the practice of linking more and more sensitive data to it and making it mandatory for more and more people, is risky.

franky1 of course totally missing the point here, as usual. The ability of a random person to track you down or trace your transactions with no starting point and only using a public blockchain explorer is in no way equivalent to a massive blockchain analysis company which is collecting data from most centralized exchanges, including your real name, all your deposit addresses, all your withdrawal addresses, and your IP addresses, and cross linking that against huge amounts of data bought from data brokers and their own private blockchain analysis software. Saying "Well, you can't find me therefore I'm anonymous" is utterly juvenile; it is akin to inviting you to hack my computer, and if you fail then declaring my system impenetrable.

yawn
my coins are not KYC linked nor surveilled by default

BUSINESSES may link my id from one site to another. businesses may keep records of how many sex dolls your chums buy.. but none of that is put on the blockchain

emphasis the blockchain does not store data about how many sex dolls doomad/blackhat/oeloe/or yourself buy
again emphasis the problem is not the blockchain. its the middle man services that are the points of failure

also you just got caught out exaggerating things with the "surveilled by default" nonsense
maybe if you can back it up by some regulation/business policy.. then you might have a point.
yet the funny part is that regulations actually show that its users of coin mixers that get red flagged and surveilled by default, not the normal people just doing normal peer to peer transactions

heck there are some mixers that dont care to such an extent they want peoples coins red flagged as being mixed.. they use the vanity address "1chip" to actually super highlight that people have used a mixer

...
anyways. i set the challenge to o_e_l_e_o .. but ill now ask you.
find me on the blockchain, find what my birth registered name is and my location

my birth certificate is in a government registry, my bank knows it. and some exchanges know it, my name is on drivers licence which another government registry has. same with passport.
the tax office and so many places know my real life name.

but they dont know where my hoards of coins are nor do those who know where my hoards are know my life info.
so if you want to pretend you can prove it wrong. come on tell me my life story via the blockchain

show me a transaction that reveals my info.
find anything about me via a bitcoin transaction. anything

...
oh and your buddies are trying hard to kiss ass the owners of chainanalysis. so how about ask your buddies you pal around with on this forum for a character reference. but first. you might want to prove that you can find real life info about the most irritating person your chums hate so much, just to prove you have the skills required for the job you want

so the challenge is set.
please give it a try and if you succeed you probably could add it to your resume that you were able to dox me as a credible provable skill they would want to pay you for.
so go at it

prove that blockchain is broke and reveals private info..

So by your logic it’s more privacy preserving that all transactions are kyc linked and surveilled by default, than breaking this connection as much as possible trough mixers etc and simply avoiding using government-simping services that never had the courage to do what’s right for Bitcoin.

It seems the right path going forward is less centralized services in the first place, so if most people chose option B the result is looking more promising in the end(it’s enough if they don’t use centralized services already, mixers are optional for whoever sees a benefit for themselves, but let’s not act like using a mixer is a shady act, that’s ridiculous too, it’s ridiculous that 3rd party companies get access to sensitive information and that people are almost powerless against it, stop bashing mixers or other privacy services, start with why your beloved government allows this to happen in the first place). It will be harder to stop Bitcoin if we stop using services of soft ass ceos that want Big Brother to govern them harder, because they’re scared of losing their bag. With option A we already lost in the long run, more P2P and decentralized services would be unstoppable on the other hand. It will probably take a lot of pain tho, before people realise that going into the bed with the government will only lead to bad outcomes and absolute mass surveillance down to the last penny leads to dystopia and dysfunctional economies.


It’s actually not that hard to make a link between purchasing behaviours and stances on blockchain surveillance. The color of underwear of most authoritarian surveillance loving control freaks is pink mixed with kittens. Maybe chain analysis should hire me so we can do some targeted marketing to government officials, ceos and the bunch of useful idiots that comply while loving it. Sales will go trough the roof.

bitcoin does not ask you to be naked
bitcoin does not even ask you what is in your pockets or what colour underwear you have on

the problem is not at the bitcoin level.
its at the business/service level..

wake up

by using a mixer. you are literally putting a flashlight on yourself and shouting look at me, im doing something shady.
which obviously is going to trigger a response

so again..
dont do things that are going to get you watched.
if you avoid such things then you can preserve your privacy

EG.
im not on a watchlist. no physical pair of eyes has investigated my exchange account.
yes my transactions data is on a database(congratulations you finally learned what a ledger is)
but no one is physically able to look at the blockchain and find out all the products i purchased or where they got delivered to or what colour underwear i have on right now.. and i dont use a mixer

however if i did use a mixer. i would get flagged by an exchange/chain analysis and i would then have to explain the origins of funds and have to be questioned about other personal details
not due to the taint being from some ransomware/hack. but purely due to being linked to a mixer
where by i then have to prove my pre-mixed funds were not criminally obtained. which becomes a harder job to do if you cant prove funds(x) that went into a mixer is funds(y) coming out of a mixer are related to me and are not some other transaction of similar amount randomly plucked from a block explorer.

do you get it yet. mixers and privacy tools cause exchanges to question you more.. not less

bitcoin does not ask for your wifes bra size or how often you had sex in the last year. so stop pretending that using bitcoin is like going through a airport metal detector naked.. because its not

..
ok here is a challenge about privacy for o_e_l_e_o
show me where on bitcoins blockchain that any transaction of your reveals that your professionals skills is in the medical sector

now show me a service to which you personally gave out personal info about yourself, to which i read and now know about you

and now go back to the blockchain and again try to find me a transaction that repeats your omission of your private life..where by that omission appears on the blockchain after you announced it..

hmm
cant find anything on the blockchain.. hmm i wonder why(rhetorical)

now here is the next challenge
i know i have revealed i live in the UK
but try and use bitcoins blockchain data to find my home address. what vehicle i use, what where my last X products i bought using bitcoin. what colour underwear i am currently wearing.
try and find out something about me using bitcoin blockchain data.
something unique that is not publicly known from other sources

goodluck
well should i need to wish you luck? i mean i never use a mixer so it must make it really easy for you to learn everything about me, right?

oh then go check this out and see if mixers help you hide or get you noticed more
especially read the last quoted passage
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.60729993

have a great day

Indeed. When the average user does not understand the importance of protecting their privacy, it is unfortunate. When a so called privacy wallet does not understand the importance of protecting privacy and advertises themselves on lies and deliberately misleading information, it is a scam.

I unhid franky1's post exactly because I was sure it would prove the point being discussed here, and he did not disappoint:
Perfect example. "If you want privacy, it's clearly because you are trying to get away with a crime." Of course. There is no other reason to want privacy than if you are trying to hide a crime. That's why everyone walks through airports naked. Why would you need clothes unless you are trying to smuggle something across borders? That's why all emails ever sent are publicly published to a central database that anyone can read. Why would you need email privacy unless you are trying to commit a crime? That's why franky1 posts under his real name and address and not a pseudonym, right? Why do you need privacy, franky1? What are you trying to hide?

taint is not a word invented to find criminal activity

its original meaning in regards to bitcoin was the bitcoin transparent accounting to prove all coins originated from a block mined coin reward.

it has only in recent years become re-defined as the fear and scare tactics of 'anti fungible'

bitcoin does not ask or reveal any info that breaks fungibility.

EG
imagine you received funds from bitpay.
bitcoin does not reveal if those funds are
a. employee wage(income tax implications)
b. merchant funds from sales(corporation tax sales tax implications)
c. customer refund from a product return (no tax implications)

so bitcoin itself does not harm peopls usage of value not tag what peoples use is.
pretending bitcoin reveals KYC and criminal acts is the lie.. the scare tactics people use to promote middle man services and altnet requirements to off board regular users into.

what you find is that its the businesses themselves that categorise things. not bitcoin

and it does not matter what you do with bitcoin to change that.
by brutalising bitcoin as a whole to become like monero. businesses just stop using monero/bad bitcoin.

take things like coinbase, they dont accept it as they deem any funds from monero as a high risk
and yes they also deem ANY funds coming from a mixer as high risk

those mixers are trying desperately to try to survive and pretend they are not a risk
some (like wasabi) are trying to pretend they offer a clean service by blaklisting criminal acts.. but this will fail because no matter how 'clean' they are.. they themselves are still a mixer no matter who their customer is, which is still a suspicion rated level that other services will rate them at.(they cant escape being a risk by being a mixer. because they ARE a mixer)

there is a big difference between a mixer and a exchange. even when at basic level their business is to swap currency. because the PURPOSE of the swap is different
exchanges swap currency for allowing gateways between currencies..
mixers swap currencies to try to evade investigations of sources of funding and links to crime.(laundering)

mixers will always be mixers and always come with a suspicion rating by other services. they cant escape this no matter what they try

some mixers try to vary their coin collation and coin redistribution process to try to not show the pattern, and thus try to hide from appearing as a mixer.
again this wont work, because when users deposit their mixed coins into exchanges, exchanges can question the users and customers if they dont want their coins confiscated/forfeited, would need to explain AND PROVE the origins of funds.

here is the thing idiots dont think about or dont mention when they play the distraction games of fear and scare stories pretending even innocent people need to use mixers, or need to vote for bitcoin to break its accounting system to hide coin origins


by not being able to prove origins of funds came from legit transactions. then innocent people get treated as accessories to a crime by facilitating and being part of money laundering.
by having their legit coin transactions swapped out and handed to a criminal and the criminal giving the legit person the criminal related coins makes the innocent person now guilty.

..
the only reason idiots are trying so hard to promote everyone should hide their transactions and break bitcoin accounting rules is out of pure selfish greed and malicious intent by the shady people that want to get away with a crime and allow innocent people to be thrown into the fire.

mixers DO NOT HELP preserve privacy nor create fungibility.
mixers cause exchanges to highlight people as suspicious purely for using mixers.
it gets people noticed and put onto watch lists.
and due to not being able to prove honest good legit transaction value sources. all coins then become suspicious

you cannot win against the regulations by creating a community where by if everyone is treated as suspicious then regulators give up.
that utopian dream will never come true. instead the risk bar is risen where it then becomes even harder for normal people to just use bitcoin

however innocent users can protect themselves by not getting involved in shady propositions that malicious people advertise. dont allow malicious people to ruin bitcoin in the short term gain of their selfish whims. while destroying bitcoins utility for the long term.. instead stay clear of malicious things and enjoy bitcoin as it was intended, open, free transparent good money that has rules that wont allow counterfeitting double spending or injecting random new units outside of the rules. and enjoy using bitcoin without needing to process a transaction or lock a value into a group/partnership through middle men

no currency is fungible, its a myth. people just have become used to the rules of a currency by learning their limits and functions that people learn how to treat different allocations of money in certain ways that its no longer a headache or a task to use money.

EG people dont bother using a $100 bank note to buy a $2 can of pepsi. because they know that the retailer will question it and object to accepting it
people get used to only gettng $500 out of an ATM due to limits of bank policy
people getting funds from their investment portfolio and their employer know how to treat them differently on their tax filings. so much so that they forget that these different treatments are proof that fiat is not fungible
people know if they are handed money from drug dealers they become implicated in proceeds of crime so they to try to do things to hide their involvement

yep even if you have $10k from legit sources. taking it across the border, you can have that money confiscated and forfeited. if you put that $10k into escrow for a mortgage deposit. that can trigger stamp duty taxes and have other KYC stuff done where they check your credit rating and speak to your employers about your income, etc.

no currency is fungible. and if funds are even semi linked to a criminal act. its then the innocent person that has to prove their innocence if they are to have any hope of getting it returned. no matter what the currency is.

these silly scare tactics of pretending bitcoin is broke and people need to use mixers, or bitcoin needs to actually become broken to protect people is wrong and the opposite of fact.

bitcoin should be used by the masses that want to use it. it should not be a testing ground to offboard people into middle men services or altnets for the greedy and malicious groups to syphon and steal from the innocent

if malicious people that want to do shady crap want to continue their lifestyle. so be it. but go play with your own middlemen services and altnets. and stop trying to drag everyone down to your level using fear and scare stories that bitcoin is attacking innocent people. bitcoin is not

Indeed, you have long been one of the most consistent and well-spoken advocates on this forum for the principle of privacy.

My argument was directed not at you personally, but at some widespread and pernicious wrong thinking that I know you have so oft opposed.  It is too bad that many people just don’t or won’t get it.  In the big picture, since last week, I have been discovering and rediscovering just how broken everything is—the subject of a new project which forced me temporarily to set aside something I’ve been working on for zero-knowledge proof privacy.


That is an interesting point.  I didn’t think of it that way.


The evidence indicates as much.  Indeed, if privacy and fungibility are considered valuable, it looks to me like nopara73 and Wasabi are doing something tantamount to an exit scam:  They build up a good reputation, and they are now using it to slip in support for Mike Hearn’s old agenda.

This is one of the oldest debates in Bitcoin.  Most newer users do not realize it.  I will soon place it in its proper context.

I am fairly certain that most of the people behind Wasabi don't believe many of the things they are saying:

Just to address this point: So do I. You are well aware that I have argued long and hard against nonsensical statements such as that anyone who has the slightest interest in maintaining some financial privacy must be a criminal, terrorist, money launderer, or what have you.

However, given that nopara73 has consistently and repeatedly failed to answer basic questions as to how he thinks blacklisting and censorship is somehow beneficial to fungibility, has consistently and repeatedly demonstrated that he believes in taint and taint analysis, and is building a product specifically designed to cater only to those good little citizens with "nothing to hide", an answer to a basic question using his own preferred terminology might be more forthcoming.

Orwellian “Fungibility”

Quote from: nopara73 on August 07, 2022, 09:46:24 AM

Of course I am more than happy to hear thoughts on this topic, but I hope I demonstrated that my fungibility claims aren't pulled out of my ass, in fact they are the result of years of research on the topic, so I'd appreciate not calling me a liar, because of them.

It will profit you not to make breathtakingly audacious claims in public, and then get huffy and play the victim about people calling you a liar.

This is an exercise in classic Orwellian doublethink:

• Divide the set of all bitcoins into two distinguishable subsets, “bitcoins accepted by Wasabi CJ” and “bitcoins rejected by Wasabi CJ”, based on vague, arbitrary, centrally decreed secret criteria derived from blockchain spying (“analysis”).  This is a new problem on the input side of a Wasabi mix.  By citing your own 2021 essay, you divert people’s attention with (anyway unsound) arguments on the output side.
• Declare that Wasabi solves Bitcoin’s fungibility problem, because on the output side of a Wasabi mix, coins within the minuscule anonymity set of one Wasabi mix are indistinguishable from each other (see below!).  Perhaps you should better say that it is more or less weakly difficult overall to discriminate between coins in the “bitcoins accepted by Wasabi CJ” subset.  (Your argument, quoted below, is poorly stated; I am sorry to fix it for you.)

Accordingly, I propose a new marketing slogan for Wasabi:

Quote from: nopara73 on August 07, 2022, 09:46:24 AM

Learn more on this here: https://nopara73.medium.com/privacy-fungibility-anonymity-451d029355f7

I hope that you are not mining these discussions for ideas to twist to your audience on Medium, even as you tell people here who have proficiency in the subject to “learn more” from your marketing fluff article that you wrote before Wasabi hopped into bed with blockchain analysis.

Anyway, let’s take a look.  The key quote, the only part that is really relevant here, is this:

All formatting is in the original:

Quote from: nullius on December 05, 2017, 11:36:54 PM

Quote from: no0dlepunk on December 05, 2017, 09:45:26 PM

I guess they could identify you only once you cashed out. Other than that, your identity is safe (unless you have verified your identify in an online wallet, of course);

WRONG.  For but one of a hundred other ways your identities could be linked, even if you mix with CoinJoin, check out this pretty picture from a research paper I referenced in my earlier post on this thread:

Stop giving dangerously bad advice!

I doubt that blockchain analysis companies ever fully disclose their current capabilities to the public.  Never mind state-level threats, such as the NSA’s mass-surveillance program against Bitcoiners.  The academic literature has years-old attacks for unwinding CoinJoins in realistic scenarios.

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on August 07, 2022, 01:44:30 PM

Quote from: nopara73 on August 07, 2022, 09:46:24 AM

is it fair to say that Wasabi is making bitcoins fungible?

Maybe you are making some bitcoins fungible, but you are not making Bitcoin fungible. If anything, you are actively working against Bitcoin fungibility by enforcing taint and directly funding blockchain analysis.

Well said.  It is merely Orwellian doublethink—or perhaps, a marketing sleight-of-hand to pull the wool over the eyes of nontechnical users who do not think in such precise terms.

---

On dirty language:

Quote from: o_e_l_e_o on August 07, 2022, 01:44:30 PM

Quote from: nopara73 on August 07, 2022, 09:46:24 AM

That's exactly what Wasabi Wallet coinjoins are doing.

For carefully selected outputs which are already treated as fungible by your blockchain analysis partners. To paraphrase someone from Twitter: What good is a washing machine which only washes clean clothes?

I strongly disagree with that use of terminology.  I intended to address that in some drafts that didn’t get done because my time was eaten up by some drama last week.  I hadn’t seen that at the time; I found it shortly after I had fixed something in the Bitcoin Wiki that really horrified me (another WIP):

Quote from: n0nce on July 30, 2022, 08:32:06 PM

Quote from: nullius on July 29, 2022, 02:18:13 PM

But the problem cannot be fixed, if people can say that one coin is not like another.

Thanks for your elaborate reply, nullius!

So you are convinced that it has to be solved on a technical level. I mean; I'm not against having better on-chain privacy, such as in Monero - effectively removing the very ability to distinguish UTXOs, however I'm not sure like you that it is needed.
In fiat world, people accept bank notes without checking their history through its serial number and they aren't checking them for the anecdotal traces of cocaine (could also check for blood, etc.) - every fiat bank note is not the same, but is universally treated as such, around the world. Whenever they aren't, people get very upset, too, however not so in Bitcoin. I don't really understand why.

I'm looking forward to your project / proposal and willing to help if I can!

Thanks.  Pending whatever other topics I create on these subjects, I should note in brief two things:

Fiat cash is no longer so private—not “untraceable”.  The automated scanning and logging of serial numbers has been sort of privacy-lore passed about in privacy circles for some time; and I have seen Snowden mention it as a major problem nowadays.  But I did not know of any specific, citable information about this.  Thus, I spent some hours researching systems that are available on the market today, and presumably in common use.  This will be the subject of a new thread.

You have mentioned Monero a few times.  Thus although I don’t want to diverge too much into a topic I intend to address in other threads, I want to make it clear for the record that I do not consider Monero adequate.

My own analogy:  Any sort of mixer scheme (including Monero mixins) is like stabbing yourself with a rusty fork, and then putting on a bandage.  Such schemes leak information onto the blockchain, and try to generate noise covering up the information that is leaked.  The true transaction graph is still there, hidden in the noise.  This information can sometimes be sussed out with probabilistic attacks, or used for confirmation attacks, or cross-correlated with other information—and it is a rule in security, attacks only improve.

Ultimately, I only deem adequate a technology that leaks no information at all.  Instead of stabbing yourself and bandaging the wound, don’t stab yourself.

Digicash (1996–98) had perfect unlinkability—statistical hiding.  However, it was unavoidably centralized.  The blind bearer note system that I almost built a few years ago would have similar properties (with quite different cryptography).  I have remarked before that Satoshi was caught on the horns of a dilemma between privacy and decentralization.

This is both perfectly unlinkable, decentralized—and now, fully trustless [paper now linked above]:



That is not k-anonymity.  Rather, statistical zero knowledge provides what Jameson Lopp (2014) properly called “infinite anonymity”.  To understand it requires an entirely different mindset.  Few people get it; even in the Zcash community, I am frustrated by a widespread lack of comprehension about what zero knowledge really means in practice.  There are no “anonymity sets” partioning zero-knowledge shielded coins within a shielded value pool.  The concept does not even apply.  And within the shielded pool, a public transaction graph does not exist.

(N.b., I am hereby discussing a privacy technology in itself.  What I have just said applies to transactions that occur fully within a zero-knowledge shielded value pool.  The well-known attacks on the transparent value pool, and on people who have careless opsec at the boundary between pools, are not relevant.  In particular, attempting to use a privacy coin as a Bitcoin pseudo-mixer is a well-known footgun; that has nothing to do with the technology.)

Some people get it.  I was pleased to learn that Snowden secretly participated in the creation of Zcash, under a pseudonym.  In 2021, Snowden declared that “Bitcoin is really failing comprehensively on the privacy angle,” and he called for Bitcoin to be made “private by design”; he made similar remarks in March and in June of 2022.  Although I don’t agree with him about everything, Snowden understands the privacy issue; thus, I am unsurprised that in 2016, he was secretly onboard with the same privacy technology as I have been wanting in Bitcoin since 2013.

Like Snowden, I myself have said that “Bitcoin has a fatal flaw...  an append-only global public ledger [is] an idea which frankly horrified me.”  I now modify what I said there in 2020 about “my proposed solution”.  The solution ultimately needs to be on L1, but I clearly understand the state of zero-knowledge proof technology.  In 2013, applying NIZK proofs to a blockchain was a research idea; and Turing-complete zk-SNARKs were first invented.  In 2016, the first fielded implementation was bleeding-edge new technology.  In 2017–early 2018, I myself suffered some severe problems as an early adopter.  By late 2018, it was basically usable, albeit with some significant remaining problems—worst of all, the trusted setup.  In early 2020, I knew that it was still not yet sufficiently mature for Bitcoin.  Only in 2022, after nine years of R&D and a fully-fielded implementation of refinements of the 2019 research breakthrough that got rid of the trusted setup, I am ready to declare that the technology is mature for widespread general adoption.

Right, so as a result, you felt the need to encourage blacklisting in a project that isn't censorship resistant in order to avoid blacklisting in the one that is censorship resistant?  I think we need a clearer explanation of how that's supposed to make sense. 

Maybe you are making some bitcoins fungible, but you are not making Bitcoin fungible. If anything, you are actively working against Bitcoin fungibility by enforcing taint and directly funding blockchain analysis.

For carefully selected outputs which are already treated as fungible by your blockchain analysis partners. To paraphrase someone from Twitter: What good is a washing machine which only washes clean clothes?

Because profits are more important than philosophies.

yet again it must be said
certain people are trying to create a problem. trying to tell everyone that bitcoin is not fit for purpose and that normal people have to use a service/altnet as a solution to the dreamt up problem instigated by the selfish people in the first place.. and then say bitcoin as a whole is broke unless bitcoin as a whole changes to satisfy the problem they dreamt up.

put simply. by wasabi being a mixer makes other businesses treat wasabi as a suspicious service by default. and wasabi is now trying to fight back by saying it will make its own black list to keep criminals out of its service in the "hope" to reduce its own suspicion level with other services.
sorry but other services will still deem it suspicious even if it did only work with 'legit/clean' customers, because other services will still by regulatory policy need and want to identify source of funds and identity of fundee's

and yes i know the ploy. due to the lack of customer use of wasabi when blacklisting criminals. then to keep their business/service active/viable it needs an injection of fresh users.. otherwise wasabi dies.
much like an altnet dies unless it can sway people into using it
yep wasabi's 'rounds' of mixing have become less and more delayed and so it needs more customers to try to remain viable as a business/service.
so it and idiots with selfish motives, pretends bitcoin is broke to then sway clean users to then use such mixer by pretending legit people NEED to use it.
yep emphasis: their agenda is to try to make their service sound like its 'needed' by clean/legit people.. when reality is its not needed.  
these selfish people are only promoting it because they are selfishly not getting to mix their own coins as often so they want to push naive people towards the service so that the selfish people can get what they want. mixed coins from clean people. (similar selfish game with LN too. get naive people into LN so selfish people can syphon fee's off them in routing games)

anyway
fiat money is not fungible and fungibility is not a pre-requisite of "good money"
take the many many confiscation laws, the counterfeit laws, tax laws, income laws. policies of banks that questions their customers utility of funds. etc etc.

so pretending bitcoin fails as money due to not being fungible is wrong on so many levels

bitcoin in fact is GREAT money due to its accountability where people can trace their coin they own back to the original coin reward block it was mined into existence.
this tracking allows people to know that no random coin was just added. counterfeited or bugged into existence.
this accounting show the coins creation was done by a certain level of workload/effort, which helps define its underlying value of the coin.
its the very accountability and transparency of bitcoin that makes it better money than fiat in many many ways.

no matter what ploy these idiots want to employ to break bitcoins accounting/archiving feature, for their selfish whims. actual regulations will find a way to still require users to prove who they are and where/how they acquired their value. and infact will cause regulators to up the pressure on it if people are made to use even more invisible money currencies, thus defeating the privacy promise their scheme started off with.

yep, reality check: a well regulated exchange that actually follows regulation, if it were to accept liquid and monero would have tougher KYC requirements, not less

emphasis:
it then if bitcoin was a privacy coin, actually becomes more of a headache for people. not just by being watched/suspected by default just for using a privacy coin. but then when questioned, having  to prove their usage was all legit and clean. (something they cannot then do easily because they cant just let the exchange follow the taint back, thus force exchanges to have to question the user)
which is now even harder to achieve easily. thus now 2 headaches deep for regular clean legit users to have to perform
and so suspicions are raised due to the lack of easy accounting of their clean funds

if you really think that making everything invisible is going to result in regulators just quitting their jobs and leaving people alone. you lot are really delusional to think you can work around regulators in the hope the regulators back down.
 wake up and grasp reality outside your selfish whims and realise how the real world works outside your dreams and hopes of getting maliciously, unethically rich whilst hoping not to get noticed by the tax man.

emphasis:
making a currency harder to prove, causes such currency to be treated as a tool that regulators do not want to have businesses associated with due to the higher risks of criminal use. its why places like coinbase does not accept liquid or monero and also flags users that use mixers.

yep coinsbase is sister company to Liquid sidechain, but it does not use or accept customer use of its sister company product for the very reason of it going against its regulatory duties as a money service business.

it doesnt matter that other coins like monero/liquid has some special code 'for privacy'. by just having the special code makes money services businesses that follow regulations just avoid using those crypto's OR treat users that do use them as a higher level of suspicion. and thus causes users to be put onto watch lists. thus defeating the privacy ploy the selfish people tried to promote the need for the changes..

do you get it yet

so here is an option
instead you the certain known group of people trying endlessly to say bitcoin is broke and normal people should use other altnets or services and then attempt to break bitcoin to then fit these other altnets/services.
about about you silly group just go play with yourselves on your favoured altnets.

yep the silly mind games of "bitcoin should not be used by normal peoples daily lives" whilst then promoting that it should be bloated up with locks and mixer spam is absolutely stupid game to play.
sorry but bitcoin should reduce the mixer spam and instead just let normal users use bitcoin for normal use

stop trying to break bitcoin. and just go play with your own altnets if you want to mix your 'clean funds' go on. go play around over on your altnet. have fun over there. its your altnet. so go play with it.

stop trying to break bitcoin by pretending its already broke. just to fulfil your selfish silly agenda's

as for you silly group of known people
do you realise that the influencers you adore so much, the ones that you idolise that are offering you these privacy altnets and sidechains and privacy services.. are paid/sponsored by the same corporations that do the chain analysis and have the regulatory exchanges that are the ones that share information and ask users about KYC.

yep you are sheep in a wolf valley being told by wolves to run away from shepherds that have secured land, when you should be running away from the wolves that are barking at you to be afraid of something thats not as harmful as the entities telling you to be afraid.
they are telling you to hate and say that secured open farmland is bad. telling you to stay in wolf value and trying to tell you to invite more victims into wolf valley as the only way to save yourself from being bit.

by creating a meaningless problem that was not a problem the DCG corporation can then set up another business/service to get users to buy into.
and you silly lil group of fangirls fell right into it and your loyalty is making them money while trying to cause headaches for normal users that just want to use bitcoin for what it is/was.

so wake up to realise you are being played. or move over to your favoured altnet/service and go play with your friendly influencers.

You’re not looking at the issue holistically. Fungibility includes all Bitcoins in existence, not just the ones your service lets trough. It’s possible to separate between coinjoined and non-conjoined coins. Coinjoins alone dont solve the issue. By introducing Blacklists you’re already starting to take part in the issue by starting to separate between coins yourself. Accepting all coins equally is what is necessary to make a contribution to fungibility. Bitcoin is already fungible, it is services introducing the nonsense and separation. If this childishness doesn’t stop then it might be necessary to make it impossible to separate between coins on a protocol level, which im not entirely a fan of. Humans just can’t handle this responsibility apparently. For Bitcoin to succeed all coins need to be treated equally, i don’t see how it’s a smart business decision to weaken the foundation it’s built on.

First of all, despite our differences of opinion, I really appreciate your reply! It did clear up a few things for me.

Interesting. I think we've heard the argument before ('without us, and without blacklist, there will be no privacy in Bitcoin'), but I still don't get how it's possible to push something through that someone's not philosophically aligned with. However, I guess it's still good to know and I appreciate the honesty on this. Also regarding censorship resistance and rough company structure (i.e. how closely Wasabi and zkSNACKs are tied together).

Two Wasabi-coinjoined coins might be indistinguishable from each other, but are they indistinguishable from non-Wasabi-coinjoined coins? Because if they're not, Wasabi added one more way to distinguish Bitcoin UTXOs.

The fungibility = privacy? question was picked up by nullius earlier and explained rather well, I believe. It does make sense on a theoretical level (for me most simple to understand privacy / anonymity => fungibility, e.g. like how in Monero coins are fungible, because that follows from privacy). I'm just not sold on Wasabi = fungibility, though. Especially since the blacklisting 'idea' (?) - maybe here's a good place to ask whether it will be implemented at all, since a bunch of time has passed and as far as I can tell, it's not there yet.
It is pretty illogical to want to create a fungibility-enhancing tool, but at the same time discriminating between inputs.

I think the problem is that what you're trying to do would need to be done on protocol layer.
In my opinion, there are 2 options:
[1] Everything remains as it is, and we ignore the fact that Bitcoin is not fungible - we mix it to get privacy and deny any notion of taint: just like it is done with fiat paper money. Those bills are non-fungible, but everyone acts as if they were, so in practice, they are.
[2] We implement privacy measures at protocol layer, which automatically give us fungibility, like in Monero.

I don't think you can do option 2 'as a service', because there will always be users who don't use Wasabi, hence their funds will be distinguishable both from other non-Wasabi-users' funds, and also distinguishable from Wasabi-users' funds. Taint can and will also still be enforced, no matter how many times you pass non-encrypted Bitcoin UTXOs through Wasabi.
Further, new users may even be denied usage of Wasabi, since you opt for 'full option 2 (but as a service)' and do not also commit to option 1 as well (accepting any and all funds). I just do not see how this is going to be Bitcoin's ultimate fungibility and privacy solution.

I believe the lying accusations stem from the discrepancy between your 'philosophical alignment' and 'actual actions' which you confirmed; I know that people sometimes (have to?) do things like that, but it can easily come across as a hypocrisy / lie - I think that's easy to understand.

Hi guys, I glanced through this thread. Let me clarify a few things.

On the CEO of zkSNACKs. I did start Wasabi and I did co-found zkSNACKs, the company responsible for the bulk of the development on Wasabi, however I was never the CEO. zkSNACKs had two co-CEOs since its inception until this year when Max took over. That's not to say they are to be blamed for the blacklisting plans, but I am the one who pushed the idea through. It however doesn't mean that I am "advocating for it," quite the contrary, I am not philosophically aligned with it.

On conflating the company with the software project. IMO most of the times it's ok to say things like "CEO of Wasabi" as the separation between the company and the project most of the times isn't relevant. It becomes important to separate the two things when censorship resistance is in question. Wasabi is censorship resistant, zkSNACKs isn't.

On fungibility. I guess the debate here comes down to the question: is it fair to say that Wasabi is making bitcoins fungible? AFAIK it is: Fungibility, sometimes called interchangeability or indistinguishability is a property of good money. Two instances of a currency are fungible - interchangeable - with each other if there are no meaningful differences between them: they have no marks, nor history. That's exactly what Wasabi Wallet coinjoins are doing. Two coinjoined coins are indistinguishable from each other. It doesn't matter which coinjoined coin you have. That's fungibility between two instances of a currency. 

On the question if we're working on fungibility or privacy. Going with our knowledge on fungibility, how does privacy come into the picture at all? And let's throw anonymity into the mix, too, since we're at it, shall we? Privacy is your ability to selectively reveal yourself to the world. Anonymity is a mathematical tool which we can utilize to build privacy for the individual, like a privacy Bitcoin wallet. And adoption of a private Bitcoin wallet or a comprehensive Bitcoin privacy technology leads to the fungibility of the money itself. Learn more on this here: https://nopara73.medium.com/privacy-fungibility-anonymity-451d029355f7

Of course I am more than happy to hear thoughts on this topic, but I hope I demonstrated that my fungibility claims aren't pulled out of my ass, in fact they are the result of years of research on the topic, so I'd appreciate not calling me a liar, because of them.

I believe we should try to get back on-topic everyone.

For me, it's still open whether there is a 'Wasabi CEO' (in my understanding, Wasabi is not a company; only zkSNACKs is) and whether the project was 'taken' from nopara73 and he's actually in the 'no blacklisting' fraction of the (company-internal) debate, as alluded to by some, e.g. here.

This question of mine was partly solved by nullius' reply, but I think it only holds true for protocol-level changes. What do you think?

As in: fungibility=privacy holds true if you have protocol-level privacy/fungibility.
For instance, I can get mixed - or for the sake of argument, mined funds with absolutely no history.. These are pseudonymous at least, since there is [1] no link to my identity (mining pool needs no KYC) and [2] no link to other transactions.
However, they are not fungible since this mining reward is different from my last block's mining reward (size, date). Therefore they are not actually private. Right?

If we build some technology on top of Bitcoin (be it different upper layers or mixers), can't privacy and fungibility only be ensured 'within' that system?
For example: in Lightning, on a protocol-level it doesn't matter in which channel you 'receive' or 'spend' funds, as your trading partner on the other end of the network will not actually get UTXOs from you, but it will get a channel state update with one of its peers. The network doesn't know where the money is going due to onion routing (of the actual payment), so I believe a Lightning transfer can be called fungible and private.
Similarly, if you stay within a system like Wasabi, with its own blacklist, as long as you only work with people who also use Wasabi and auto-mix all their funds there, your UTXO will be fungible within this system. Maybe it's their vision that everyone is going to use Wasabi and ignore everything happening outside of it. Then in that case we could say they achieved their goal of 'solving Bitcoin fungibility and privacy' - right?
Because without this huge assumption, they are actually creating a way of discerning Wasabi from non-Wasabi funds, increasing non-fungibility overall.

So if you build a 'privacy tool' on top of Bitcoin, it can never fully 'solve fungibility' as long as not everyone is using it, which brings us back to protocol-level changes..