Topic: 'Wasabigeddon' article discussion (it supposedly solves fungibility) - page 2. (Read 961 times)

while some people want to divert conversation to "it has to be 'found criminal activity' to then have suspicion" nonsense

people can play all the silly fantasy mind games of wishful desires of not being tracked because they done a good job hiding the source. but they are still being ignorant and naive that its the hiding that infact gets them noticed

people can play all the silly fantasy mind games of redefining the meaning of words, or quote a non lawyer influencer that shares their mindset, to fit their personal need.

but reality is money services businesses have regulatory rules they have to follow that ensure they police themselves and their customers to ensure that they are not facilitating certain activities that could lead the service to get into trouble

i find it funny how instead of quoting the AML policy MSB's follow. people quote their middleman adoring influencer they follow as their "proof" of their confirmation bias

REALITY is NOT
service has to witness a drug deal happening infront of their office window
service has to witness their customer admit to a crime in a conversation with the service

REALITY is
signs of money laundering are:
using accounts with fake ID's
using multiple accounts
moving amounts just beneath the regulated thresholds repeatedly in small timescales
using mixers to hide the source of funds
using certain services that are not illegal themselves but tools that are known to facilitate services criminals use

EG donations to the "freedom convoy" were random donations from the population. yet guess what?(rhetorical).. lots of people and services got in trouble for handling those funds even when the source of funds were 'clean'
even now. those funds have been passed through several recipients (which some naively deem as causing funds to now be 'fungibly clean' of any crime) yet there are court orders still requesting those funds to be handed to the courts no matter whom currently is holding those funds. yep thats reality. those funds whether fiat or crypto are being treated differently than the bank note in my back pocket

bitcoins transparent accounting to prove coins originated from its ruled block creation, is actually the feature that makes bitcoin good money becasue its easy to audit and see no randomly added coin has occured.

the ability to simply pay a destination without a middleman is another feature that makes bitcoin great.

however certain people want to break all that and tell people not to use bitcoin for normal day-to-day activity, but instead use all these silly middlemen services of delay/risk, without understanding the consequence of their adverts of their favoured altnet/service they want everyone else to use

mixing will award you a suspicion rating. and chain analysis companies will highlight users of mixer services as users worthy of potential watchlists. thus defeating the point of using said service advertised as hiding you away from being watched(aka offering privacy)

much like this very topic where wasaibi is getting hit by blacklists which then makes wasabi have to deal with its own blacklists to lessen its own risk

get it yet
get reality?
or will certain people ignore reality and instead try quoting some influencer that shares their mindset(confirmation bias) that dreams up scenarios and uses vague examples of the 17th century court case as their reasoning for their roadmap of breaking bitcoin to fit their silly middleman service offering everyone should use

It appears that almost everybody in the noösphere believes that all mixing is money laundering, regardless of the proportionn of dirty money that is actually laundered through mixers. It makes a good conspiracy theory piece [I could never understand those guys, honestly - even cypherpunks = the NSA to them].

now back to the topic about the "fungibility" stuff
(dont derail this into human defense protection social drama, stay ontopic about BITCOIN function)
a certain influencer pretends fungibility is based on a 17th century scottish case.. as the excuse to want to brutalise bitcoin and push people into using services and altnets because they want to pretend bitcoin is not fit for purpose for general people, by pushing fears that general people sould not use bitcoin as-is and instead enter into silly services/altnets as a 'solution'

sorry but bitcoin does not need to be broken to facilitate some roadmap of offramping users away from just holding their own coin and just doing onchain transactions to their desired destination, without the desires of certain people that want everyone to use some membership, service,altnet middleman(which actually goes against bitcoins purpose)

the problem is that 17th century court case is not the modern day reality of modern day law/policy.

take the donations for that "freedom convoy"
it got confiscated and even though it changed many hands there is still a court order wanting those funds
yep reality of modern day

yep those funds came from random donators(not criminals) and was held by random services(not criminals) it changed hands and different accounts/users held keys. yet the courts still wanted the fiat and bitcoin.
(research: aid abet, accessory)

..
the reality is when bitcoin was treated as a asset(product) where services were treated as merchants and not money service businesses. bitcoin was not concerned with the whims of 'currency' laws
but due to attaining recognition as "currency" the currency laws started applying. which is the bullet that shot people in the foot for wanting the "currency" recognition rather than continuing as an asset of the early days

bitcoin will not change "currency" laws. and pretending that bitcoin is now broke/not fit as money wont undo that.

You failed so miserable at your silly game of trying to pigeonhole others (especially me) into a group, you drastically edited to cover up this post as I was replying to it, to cover up something really embarrassing:


You were the one who started talking about merit here:


Offhand, together with a larger context, I responded to that in my reply to n0nce.  The only two people in this entire thread who have mentioned merit are you, who brought it up, and me, in response to what you said; and you will note that I am not a part of Foxpup’s merit thingie (lol).  Now, you are fixated on merit.

When you claim that you “give zero crap amount merit”, thou doest protest too much, methinks.

Anyway, I think you are clearly not engaging in this discussion in good faith.  I previously disagreed with others who were giving you the troll treatment in this thread, and I never categorically kicked you out of my self-moderated threads; but you have done a good job here of proving me wrong about that.  Please don’t be surprised if you get a lack of response from me in the future.

---

Now, returning to the topic...

i dont even like the guy, never have. and i was calling him out as fake way before you cried
i noticed him as a panellist alongside nick szabo when faktoshi first made his appearence and i called him out on his ballshit

as for your topic you linked where you FAILED at comparing me to him
he was saying that full nodes have no job.. much like YOU and your buddies think fullnodes solve no purpose by saying its fine to prune. and use other networks and not monitor the blockchain..

i have always said that fullnodes do have a purpose. and should also remain as the true fullnode descriptor which includes archiving(unlike your lame group) but where people should not ramp up lots of sybil's just to get fake node count (thats what you cant comprehend!) where lots of sybils just cause propagation delays for the actual user nodes that have actual wallets and funds they want to use inside their fullnode

now go sit back in your cave

as for the talk about merits
i give zero crap amount merit.
i happily throw merit out in the 50's because i find it meaningless to the point of no value so giving out 50 means jack

but i see the group of you lot have your own lil 'foxpop gang' which is a big sign you do care about it

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EDIT: (re included above the social drama poke that they intended to poke me into to then cry that i meandered into a social drama game (which they triggered first).. )

note to nullius
i was not even talking about you. i simply said the PEOPLE that merited n0nce
i was talking about the cult that are fangirling blockstream products and other services that want to make bitcoin stall, slowdown and give people headaches

it was not even about the merit.. it was highlighting the PEOPLE that merited in the topic post#1 are the same crowd.
heck you are not even in that list at time of this posting. yet you are now on the defense..

seriously chill with the social drama game of protecting people and concentrate on protecting the network and user experience.

they couldnt rebut the realities of real life situations where using mixers and crap services actually does the opposite of being private and under the radar. they couldnt even understand that fiat is not as open and fungible as they pretend it to then pretend bitcoin needs to destroy accounting policy to pretend it then meets some fiat comparison. so they cry the social drama games as their final attack... boring, not new, not original

look at the crew defending each other to try to flip the script pretending they dont have a roadmap, group or plan to try to pretend i am part of a group

boring social drama deception and meander. but they love that game 'play the victim to hide their attack'

meanwhile im not the one advertising crap that breaks bitcoin and makes user experience more delayed, costly and irritating.

goodluck with your fake promises of all the crap services you offer.

this topic is dead because its just a subtle advert for a service that pretends to be one thing but does the complete opposite.. and that was my original point

seriously chill with the social drama game of protecting people and concentrate on protecting the network and user experience

There is no need to justify yourself like that.  Don’t let franky1 put you on the defensive with his reality-inverting mindgame.  To promote his agenda, he is essentially trying to make it politically incorrect to cite or discuss Adam Back on the Bitcoin Forum.  LOL.

His accusation of a “group mindset” in following “influencers”, replete with a jealous remark about merits, is especially ridiculous in any discussion where I am involved—and where I am the one who brought up Dr. Back, and linked to his relevant 2014 conference talk.  I am an independent loose cannon, and I am assuredly the most unpopular person here.  There is a whole thread devoted to smear-attacking me; it is titled with eloquent professionalism by a real pillar of the community, “nullius is a cunt”.  I am merit-boycotted by numerous users, including some merit sources.  I am immune to groupthink; I say what I mean, not what is popular.  Some people appreciate that, but others do not.

Given that franky1 is a n00b, he would not recall the era when Dr. Back first announced on Cypherpunks the Hashcash system that Satoshi cited in footnote 6 of the Bitcoin Whitepaper.  I remember Cypherpunks from first-hand experience.  Better to understand Bitcoin, whence it came, why it exists, and what legacy Wasabi is effectually repudiating, I recommend this 2016 article by Jameson Lopp, a professional Cypherpunk:

https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2016/04/09/bitcoin-and-the-rise-of-the-cypherpunks/

Lopp therein focuses on privacy.  I generally agree with his conclusions in that article.

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I am far behind on this thread—only for the reason that some replies here raised such important issues, my responses grew beyond the proper scope of a reply here.  They spawned drafts for the OPs in at least two new threads.  One of them actually gave franky1 some credit for raising a good point (that he promptly ruined), and constructively criticized n0nce’s approach in another thread—well, if franky1 is accuses me of groupthink for citing Adam Back, I should edit that, and ban franky1 from my self-moderated topics.  To be continued...

I do have Franky on ignore and considered moving this thread since he just cannot stay on-topic, but I would like to emphasize (as if it wasn't obvious) that contrary to his opinion (potentially he's projecting something here..) I am not a 'follower' of Adam Back or believing what I believe because he says so; in fact, I was made aware of the talk I linked to, only the other day. (see below)
My views on the topic were set before that (all provable through Bitcointalk posts), and I just thought he explained it well in spoken form. That's also exactly what I've written above.

Quote for 'proof':

And you are using Faketoshi as the source of yours.  You hate freedom.  You hate privacy.  You hate the majority of Bitcoin developers.  But I'm glad about that.  Because if you approved of any of it, then we must have done something badly wrong.  You're a living, breathing litmus test.  If you hate it, then fantastic, we're clearly on the right track. 

ha. couldnt have predicted it any better. you are using a blockstream ceo as your source of your mindset.
i am not shocked at all

my point is that people think that fiat is open and free where everyone is treated equally and every bank note, digital bank account balance is all treated equally. because its 'common money' which they think bitcoin needs to become
my example of taxes is not the sole example. its just the example even idiots can see as being a example that not all money is treated the same. where people need to act and react to payments differently depending on what or how they are using money.

but hey, yea if you only want to listen to the same known group of this topics favourite godlike influencer. you go right ahead
funny how the same people show how obvious who their influencers are. and what roadmap they want to follow.

just wondering:
have you ever tried to have an independent thought outside the group mindset?
(you follow and merit the exact same group with the altnet mantra, privacy mantra, defi mantra, pruned node mantra)

I appreciate the sentiment but if you are going to go after every wallet / service in BTC that is making false claims you are going to have to look into cloning yourself to get it done.   

I *know* privacy is a hot button issue for you and I understand why you are doing this. But, I think it would be better to push one of the joinmarket implementations then spending time pointing out the many flaws of Wasabi and what they are doing. Keeping the knowledge of what they are doing alive and up front is good.

More of the fix the problem not the blame theory.

-Dave

Franky's understanding of fungibility is totally broken. Whether and which taxes I have to pay as a customer and / or a business, is an accounting topic; I don't look at the difference between paper notes to determine which tax I have to pay. Neither does their history have an influence over what taxes I have to pay.
I can't fathom how anyone can honestly believe that the fact you have to pay taxes on certain fiat transfers means it's not fungible.

I'm not fully done watching Adam Back's talk about fungibility, but he's explained it quite well in the beginning in case anyone needs a reminder.

As I've said before, why waste time, effort, and money on trying to mitigate the flaws of a bad design when there already exist coinjoin implementations which do not have these flaws at all (e.g. JoinMarket, which does not have a centralized coordinator).

I appreciate your point, but I won't. If Wasabi change their branding from a "Privacy Wallet" to "OFAC Compliant Blacklisting Wallet" or something similar, then sure. But as long as Wasabi keep lying to the community and advertising themselves as something they aren't, then I will continue to call them out. If people want to continue to use Wasabi despite all this, then that's fine. The beauty of bitcoin is that anyone can use it in any way they want to. But they at least deserve to make an informed choice, and if we all stopped complaining then the likelihood is that no one would ever know about Wasabi's censorship until it affected them personally.

https://money.cnn.com/2013/02/28/news/economy/illegal-income-tax/index.html

Old but still relevant to this.
Makes you wonder how much work by the government is really going into tracing crypo for 'getting criminals' vs 'getting out (tax) cut from transactions'
Sales tax, income tax, and so on. Yes, not paying taxes is a crime, but that's not the point I'm making here.

As for this Wasabi mess. Like many other things, some people will still use them because they don't care. And if that works for them fine.
Some people will stop using them. And that's fine. Others never knew wasabi existed and will continue no to know that it exists. And that's fine too.

There have been and still are ways to bury / mix coins depending on what services are available where you are depending on the amounts and time you want to put into it.
Also, there are different things different people want to do with coins, and you know what that's fine too.

Wasabi made, in what a lot of think is a crap decision, and are now using crap reasons to justify it.
Time will tell if it works for them or not.

Going back to what I said when n0nce posted the 24 questions thread:


If you really want the coordinator code is out there and open source. Set one up and put your money where your mouth is as start running a better funded one.

If not, lets discuss other ways of doing this and stop complaining about one that for whatever reason does not want to anymore.

Sorry if this comes off a bit testy.

-Dave

They can, which outside source actually checks the legitimacy of procedures? None, anything can be considered suspicious and anyone can file an SAR for whatever they consider suspicious. There’s no punishment for false flags. And in case they falsely confiscate your funds, good luck proving it and going up against an army of lawyers, for sums that are not even worth this much effort.

// Edit: if you have a problem with people questioning the actual results and effectiveness of bs procedures and regulations, then idk how to help you. It has nothing to do with an agenda that i question how these things are actually handled. If regulations treat everyone as a potential criminal , demand further restrictions of financial freedom and produce no crime reducing results, then i dont see how they shouldnt be contested.

So people under mass surveillance are private when they just go along with it, even tho each of their steps is tracked, archived and can be questioned at any time?


True.

There will always be services which do not respect privacy in the slightest. Centralized exchanges are the obvious one. All custodial wallets or web wallets are another example. However, these services do not pretend to respect your privacy, and they certainly do not market themselves as privacy enhancing. This is the difference with Wasabi. For Wasabi to market themselves as literally the only solution for bitcoin fungibility and the only wallet which is capable of providing privacy, while actively cooperating with blockchain analysis, is at best utterly dishonest and more likely actively malicious.

That's different though. A business which refuses higher bills would quite happily accept that money if you first split your €500 in to 10x €50 bills, whereas (presumably) a business refusing a tainted output would still refuse that same output if you split it in to 10 smaller outputs first. Similarly, a business can refuse cash in the same way a business can refuse bitcoin altogether and I'm not going to complain about fungibility. In these cases the business is discriminating against the money itself, not making certain parts of that money non fungible.

first of all regulated exchanges cant and dont just confiscate coins for silly reasons
maybe try to read some stuff before just listening to the buddy group with an agenda

when you get a suspicious flag on your exchange/service account thats not a reason to confiscate.
when that level is raised to a need to file a suspicious activity report with an authority, thats not a reason to confiscate
when the authorities do their own investigations due to receipt of an SAR thats not a reason to confiscate
a business might suspend access to the market order features and only offer you an option of 'withdrawal and close account' but they wont confiscate funds at this point
if any exchange has a policy that does confiscate at any point above.. dont use them, they are thieves


when the authority finds evidence from other sources that links a possible crime to the service customer that meets the court requirement of a court claim. THEN the authority makes a court order with the court to hand to the service, which then forces the service to comply and confiscate value and hand it to the authority.


reality is, REAL privacy guys know what the laws actually are. and know how to move around them. they are not fearing the court system, what they actually just want is to not even get to that level by staying so far under the radar that no trigger is pulled at any of the first suspicion stages,(where their name is tossed around and shared in the first place.)

EG they are ok with telling a business they signed upto willingly their name(else avoid such service/use another) but dont want that business passing/selling that info around, sharing that info with entities the privacy guy doesnt know/didnt authorise

EG people dont mind doing face to face exchanges where the recipient sees their face, they just dont want that person then talking behind their back identifying you with others.

and back to the point
using services which WILL get you noticed by a whole crowd of entities defeats the point of using a service that pretends it helps preserve privacy.

you will be questioned if seen using a mixer. even if you dont end up in court. your info will be shared if using a mixer even if you dont end up in court.

EG
just buying $7 of gum with a $10, and getting $3 change doesnt normally get a second thought. most cashiers wont check the bank note is counterfeit or not
but handing over a $10 bank note and asking for 10x $1, will make the cashier question the purpose and want to check the $10 bank note is not counterfeit

in short:
dont use silly conspiracy anti-gov rhetoric you heard from a buddy as a silly reason to try to make bitcoin sound broken, unfit for use and wanting to destroy bitcoins security just to promote some silly service that pretends to offer privacy, but is infact the very service that will get you noticed more and have your ties to the service listed more, and shared between entities more that gather information of such suspicious tools/services/techniques.
...
instead stick with reality and realise what info YOU are sending out and simply make better decisions to avoid getting noticed by not being so foolish

oh and yea. there are some analytic services that monitor forum usernames for people that are heavy 'privacy' guys and announce they want to hide, which red flags them as possible people to get more interested in and look at their post history for any chatter that seems immoral/unethical/illegal to then assign them a suspicious activity rating against their forum username which is then sold onto other services that monitor their exchange customer usernames to spot a linkage.
so yea be careful
its much like those who attend anti-gov protests end up having their names added to a watchlist.. not because they are criminals but because they announce they are anti-gov.
yep protesting you want privacy is exactly what ends up getting you put on a watchlist

That’s something else. Proving it to a tax authority is standard procedure, you can document everything for that matter. Only taxes and death are certain, i personally wouldn’t play around there just to save some bucks, not worth the headache. A mixer is not a crime and not what would get you in jail or make documentation impossible. I wouldn’t even use these tools for any criminal activity or to try to launder money, they’re not even suited for this and real criminals will realise that the fiat system is much better suited for this.

Giving some private companies a pass to demand proof without any evidence, is a whole different ballgame tho. Now essentially customer support employees, algorithms and some surveillance companies have been given the power to freeze/ steal peoples funds with complete arbitrariness. And they can now hide their actions by just taking AML as an excuse, it will be barely possible to contest this for a regular person. This is completely backwards and no one can tell me that this is smh justified and not a problem.

When a business receives counterfeited bills, its recommended that they inform the police immediately. But a business cant just claim that your legit bills are suspicious and then keep them. Theres no real process that violates peoples rights there, but with coin taint its completely arbitrary and a process thats completely detached from the justice system.

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The irony is that real laundering happens inside the same institutions that „just follow regulations“, so in reality laws are imposed again that restrict financial freedom on people who are not even doing the laundering and real criminals can act like theyre fighting crimes and hide behind this. And then its also giving people a false sense of security and the impression that something is done against it.

Heres just one of countless examples.
But lets keep repeating that its the average joe that should make his whole life transparent to anyone to combat „crime“, regulations are there franky but anyone with a right mind would question and contest them when theyre complete bs, no matter if you run a business or not. Otherwise we end up in a clownshow where everyone starts enforcing useless bs on others, because of „regulations“ and no real problems are solved anymore.   

I have franky1 on ignore, but I have read some of his arguments while logged out and it seems to me that he has some valid points, but I am not going to go into commenting on his walls of text.

It seems to me that in this whole debate, many of you commenting here are like the fish in the water, pretty smart fish, but don't realize that there is a whole world outside the water.


In reality this is not true in 100% of the cases nor in all countries. Especially in tax crimes. If you are the one who cannot prove that your funds are of lawful origin you can end up in jail. It is not the prosecution that has to prove that your funds are of illicit origin. While not exactly what is being discussed here, look at Latvia's NFT artist who faces up to 12 years in jail, despite Latvia's lack of clear regulation.

Even if I was pretty sure I was going to win, I wouldn't want to find myself in front of a judge or jury having to explain large sums of money that have no clear origin due to the moves I have made for my right to privacy. Even less so if you're risking jail time.

I know people who went to trial being sure they were going to win and lost.

Seriously guys, don't gamble having to go to court for your right to privacy with large amounts of money.

You won't see me in court for that reason (and I hope for no other).

From reading the btctalk threads around here, I saw that there was a "zkSNACKs" CEO and a "Wasabi" CEO, obviously a company cannot have two CEOs so I reasoned that they must have become separate entities at some point (one heavily investing into the other).


Now even I am confused. Who was the person who replied to your Open Letter?

it seems its the same group of people meriting the topic creator, are the same group that want to tell billions of unbanked people that bitcoin is not fit for their daily normal use as-is, and the same group want to create fear for everyone else to avoid just using bitcoin as-is, whilst then advertising some other silly lock/service/altnet/membership that takes peoples individual control away by having to rely on some service/lock/altnet/partnership to allow them to spend value after wasting more time to set up this silly advertised service/altnet membership

anyways,
fiat(money) is not fungible
getting fiat from a relative on random occasion in small amount= gift= no tax
getting fiat from a relative after death in large amount= inheritance= inheritance tax
getting fiat from a employer = income tax
getting fiat from customer for a product = sales tax
getting fiat from an investment = capital gains tax
keeping alot of fiat after bills = wealth tax
keeping fiat in a family/corporate trust = capital gains tax
use fiat to buy property/shares = stamp duty
businesses that keep fiat after costs = corporation tax
have a low income or a basic personal account = low ATM withdrawal amount
have a high income or a business account = service charges and subscription fees
using debit/credit card fiat = 'service charges' (sometimes customer pays sometimes merchant pays)
(the list goes on)

yep every day peoples 'money' is treated differently depending on who handled it and how it was passed.

fiat has just been around so long that people dont think about all the differences each allotment is treated depended on how it was received. going to be spent
so in short fiat is not fungible. people just dont think about its treatment

and yes banks do question utility of peoples spending or receipt of fiat
and yes if you tried to buy a house with a suitcase of cash. they will question it
as would trying to pay a court fine in pennies or bank notes with odours of drugs

so dont pretend fiat is fungible to then pretend 'fungibility' is then the good excuse to want to break bitcoins 'taint' (tracking back to its source creation) by bastardising bitcoin by pretending 'taint' is about criminal checks/anti-privacy that need to then remove taint.

the taint actually solves an incredibly needed accounting policy of money. which is about trusting that all coins can be tracked back to its source creation coin reward so that no new coin can be introduced outside of the mining/coin creation process.

coinjoins are not needed. they make the experience of bitcoin delayed/slower due to the time it takes to 'mix' and ends up giving said users a bad 'suspicion rating' just for using it.(defeating the 'privacy' / anti-kyc stuff it pretends to solve when then depositing into exchanges)

if people want privacy i have no issue with those people using such service/locks/altnets. just dont try pandering your silly schemes onto regular people that dont want to have to have more headaches just so suspicious people can get the clean coin at regular peoples loss

so you privacy guys, you lot should go play with altnets and convert your coin to msat/lbtc in some confidential network and mix your crap over there.
instead of wanting to break bitcoin audit rules and spam the network with mix tx spam while telling everyone else to avoid using bitcoin