Bitcoin Forum

so i was thinking about this idea the other day... the forum is fun and all, but now with the feds flying in to do god knows what, it might be a good idea if the forum was duplicated as a TOR hidden service with fully pseudo-anonymous moderators. all PMs should be required to be PGP encrypted, since I believe PMs are the property of the sender+receiver and no-one else has the right to read them. i'm sure there are many other privacy increasing features that could be added as well, which would give power back to the people and to the forum. we shouldn't ever be at the mercy of any external authority, no matter what. just a thought guys, what do you think?

What do you have to hide?

Bitcoin is competition for:

VISA
Mastercard
Banks
Paypal
Moneybookers
SWIFT
Western Union
and a pleathora of other payment systems/solutions.

There are some really psykopathic people working at those companies who will refuse to adapt and will instead hate.


 

I think it's an interesting idea but you really overestimate the ability of people who use the internet, the majority of users don't even know search engines exist, about 90% of questions on all IT and technology related forums on the internet could be answered if they spent a few seconds searched for the question before posting, let alone how to use Tor.

Secondly the majority of Bitcoin users seem to be Hypocrites, the majority use Microsoft or Apple (companies famed for a walled garden approach to software) operating systems yet use Bitcoins so the rich elite have less power and control over the worlds money? That's something I will never understand.

spoken like a true statist... what was nefario doing wrong?? yet the evil fed bastards went after him anyway

in a world of corrupt goons, we are all criminals just by breathing the air...

You do know nefario shut it down, no outside agency threaten, or tried to shut him down. So get your facts right.

There is no evidence whatsoever that anyone "went after" Nefario.  From the conversations with Nefario which have been posted so far, it appears that his decision to shut down was precipitated by a meeting with his lawyer where he finally realised that all the nonsense he'd been sprouting about his service having some kind of magical legal immunity because ...Bitcoins... was total bullshit.  He's not some kind of martyr who's being persecuted, he's just someone who was arrogant enough to launch his service without first gathering factual information about the risks involved.  Now that he finally has that information, he's decided those risks aren't acceptable to him.

Hiding on TOR wont stop "the feds" from investigating people who are committing criminal acts.  If the government wants you, they will get you. TOR isn't foolproof.

But they will have a hard time shutting the server down. Look at the silkroad :)

Doesnt silk road have a forum ?

Publishing through TOR might not be enough to prevent hardcore investigation succeeding but it might be enough to stop you getting put on "a list". Problem is, using TOR probably gets you put on "a list" anyway.

Some kind of anonymous gateway might be fairly cool but the problem is anonymity is a double edged sword. Just ask (name escapes me), an old anonymous email service that got shutdown because of abuse (I want to say anonnet.fi but that's incorrect)

There are hundreds, probably thousands if you count the foreign language ones like the Chinese 'dissidents' of forums that have a .onion address.


Tormail, they are back now the Russian host they use to use closed down not Tormail itself.

I think it's a good idea. This forum is a target too easy for whomever may decide to do a crackdown on coiners (which I expect soon or later).
Regarding noobs, if they learned to open a browser, they can even learn to launch Tor Browser. It is time they do.
A major drawback is that the .onion network is slow as hell, and there is little hope that it can improve much.

If more people ran exit nodes or even internal relays Tor would be a hell of a lot faster, but it's the same as Bit torrent, people just take and leech off the community and never give anything back.

Becoming a hidden service would just give the site a bad rep.
I think this site benefits the bitcoin community through residing on the open web.
The wealth of information (read opinion) on here is immense and too much to lose if we intend B$ to become more widespread.

I don't agree If anyone be concern about his security I think he can use VPN L2TP because TOR is very slow although it more securer than VPN but for bitcoin i think it would be enough

You do know running an exit node is legally draining and can put you in jail, I don't blame people who don't want that responsibility.

Seems rather pointless, it will just help perpetuate the propaganda that bitcoins are only used for illegal good and will be open to even more spammers/scammers than this forum already is.

Tor hidden service would be great, but don't forget that central server is still an issue.
I mentioned this before in other thread - Look at Osiris serverless portal. Decentralized P2P solution.

The forum doesn't need to be hidden that would kill off a lot of the community and make people not want to use bitcointalk and probably go to another forum.

I think it would be good.

I tried it, works nicely and it is a great concept. Its only problem is like the blockchain: you have to download a local copy of a forum from the peers, and that is a slow task the first time or if you do it after a while.

They are already hating and will never adapt so it won't make much of a difference if it's on tor or not.

Everyone has access to tor....

when this happens, my friend... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=90148   ;D

I think there is room for a more widespread service (A forum like this) on the TOR network. The issue is that we are not looking to do illegal things here. If anything we are trying to be the face of Bitcoin and Bitcoin discussion here. If you are doing illegal things, just stop. There are other places for that.

The speed thing really is an issue as well. This forum seems really slow at times already (It's not just me right?). I would really rather not have it be TOR slow. And although I do think more people need to host nodes if they are going to utilize the network, I also know that not everyone is in control of their internet. You have a lot of people using their parents or siblings or spouses internet and I really can't ask them to host something that could in any way become an issue for another person.

I also want to point out that it doesn't always have to be about doing something wrong. I don't want anyone spying on me for any reason at all. I don't need people knowing my buying or spending habits, be it with Bitcoin or cash. I use a card for spending though and I do realize that all of the spending I do on that is logged somewhere. Bitcoin is and will always be a target for this sort of spying though. There are reasons it was made the way it was. It's not about making a currency that can be used for illegal actions. It's about privacy. Something that I believe should be a natural right. I understand that people do illegal things and that Bitcoin gives people the privacy they need in order to complete transactions over the internet. I don't condemn such things, I don't like that they are giving Bitcoin a bad name, but I understand that they would be doing it another way if they didn't have Bitcoin. It's that public image that we need to work on.

I don't think it will become illegal though. If that was able to happen then they would also be able to make trading game currency illegal as well. It's just silly.

So sure, you can go make a TOR forum that mimics this one, but this forum needs to stay here, needs to be fast, and needs to not be doing illegal things. Bitcoin needs a user friendly forum environment that people can utilize. It needs a clean face.

Tor hidden services are incredibly slow, and there's no point for a legal site to be on Tor.

The bitcointalk forums are an important part of the public face of bitcoin, and thus need to remain easily accessible. If you hide them inside TOR it will help to keep bitcoin a small geeky pastime, and prevent more mainstream adoption.

Hmm, but that could be done on a voluntary basis. Let's say you wanna receive PM's encrypted. What you can do is post a link to your public key in your signature, then ask people to send you PM's only GPG/PGP encrypted and maybe signed. That way those who want encryption and signatures can do it. Those who don't want to do it, they just don't participate in this. If you like you can start a separate topic like "using PGP/GPG for PMs. Post if you want to participate" then people can post who are interested to PM with encryption and/or signatures using public key cryptography and then it's settled. What do you think about it and everyone else what do you think about this?

Using Tor is like using curtains on your windows. You don't necessarily hide something illegal but the reason you use curtains is to maintain your privacy. Same goes for Tor.

I don't think it would be the worst idea in the world. There is free tor hosting out there but they would probably want paid tor hosting or to host it themselves. Bitcoin might become illegal some day. You never know.

Only if it could be a mirror of this site, so those who do use TOR often can use the onion link, and the regulars can use the regular link.

I agree though, if your doing illegal stuff, go to a different site, I believe in keeping Bitcoin in a positive light, rather than have it associated with TOR and illegal stuff everytime an article is posted about Bitcoin or Tor or those illegal sites.

SIDE NOT; Im a newbie here, but the site seems to run quickly for me!

Yep. That's the main reason to consider this option imho. If they forbid private property of gold 80 years ago, just figure what they could pull out now. At least we should have a backup plan ready to go underground in case things go south.

The fact that you don't see the irony in that sentence scares me. It's this very sentiment that is the reason that we need more legal services on Tor. Tor has already gotten a bad name due to the use of illegal websites, providing legal services as .onion sites would allow a more legitimate internet service to grow in the .onion universe.

As for if this site "needs" to be a .onion, I don't think it "needs" to be. Tor Browser allows you to browse both .onion and non-.onion sites so if you're worried about security, navigate here through Tor. There's no reason we NEED a .onion address.

i'm divided on this one.

both options have their advantages.
the future of btc is uncertain, since we have no idea how governments will act when btc reaches critical size.
I think it would be wise to divise a backup plan (including a move into the darknet/undernet) in case of need.
However, for the time being, i think the "open net" is still the way to go.

How would a forum work on that software?
I dont think you can do PHP or anything similar with that.
Maybe nice for static pages but anything dynamic would be impossible i guess.
Or am i wrong there?

anon.penet.fi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anon.penet.fi)? They shut down in 1996 after the Cult of $cientology alleged that someone had used them to email their "secrets."

That's the one (and the correct reason). Slightly different risk but basically the same problem overall.

While this is still up, I probably won't use the TOR site. TOR is way too slow to browse the internet with.

I think so too, although there would be some argument about a definition of critical mass. I've heard it defined as about one sixth of the populace (or economy) before, but of course Bitcoin will achieved amazing success even if only penetrating about one per cent of the world's economy.

And as has already been posted, it's possible to browse Bitcointalk using Tor.