Bitcoin Forum

I'm not sure if Snowden particularly knows what he's talking about in this case really. I mean, the 51% attack is hardly something most don't know about.

http://cointelegraph.com/news/115133/edward-snowden-on-bitcoin-bitcoin-by-itself-is-flawed (http://cointelegraph.com/news/115133/edward-snowden-on-bitcoin-bitcoin-by-itself-is-flawed)

“Obviously, Bitcoin by itself is flawed. The protocol has a lot of weaknesses and transaction sides and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth.”

'Despite his concern for the digital currency, Snowden believes the concept of tokenization and proof of work could be implemented to create “some very interesting things,” which “people can basically pay for access other than direct transfers of currency that originated with an association to their true name.”

Bitcoin's associations to name/identity is due to the square-peg-round-hole problem of many developed countries now placing their structures/legislation onto Bitcoin and the purchase trading of it, not any inherent flaw in Bitcoin itself.

If people will give identity to these exchanges/circle etc. to play with the ball, then what does anyone expect? Kind of disappointed with Snowden now really. I mean anyone can throw a sound bite out there like: “some very interesting things,”

What does that even mean? It's like me saying in the dawning age of home computers that they'll be able to do some 'very interesting things' one day. Anyone could have said it. I expected more from Snowden to be honest.

He is obv. no Bitcoin expert.

I would have expected him to use some of his copious spare time to actually research the topic if he was giving an ietf interview.
'Course the interviewer may have played loose with the quotes. I couldn't find audio or video anywhere....

well he's got lots of time on hands now really hasn't he to do some research before making any further statements on Bitcoin, people do tend to listen to this fella.

even though you are right, but, what would you say if what he said "bitcoin's flaw" was proven?
now, what is your evidence that what he just said is no legitimacy?

Well, he did say he likes the concept.
Maybe if he get's into it a bit more he will change his mind or even come up with "interesting things" to do, now that he is unemployed and stuff ::)

As someone who works in the same field as Snowden used to, I am very confident that he is wrong.

Since he has been open to revealing classified information, there is no need for him to be guarded about revealing any Bitcoin flaws.

I used to kind of think he may have been involved with some of the early BTC development. After reading that I changed my mind. Unless, he is trying to play dumb to fool us.

Exactly. I don't really think he's much of an expert in anything really but just got thrown out there because he had the balls to share the information he had access to (which I respect him massively for btw). I'm surprised he's not more of a fan than bitcoin to be fair. It's one thing he could benefit massively from.

You do realize how many millions of dollars it requires to perform a 51% percent attack, no? It's barely feasible. And even if it does occur, it's still going to have to deal with the chance that the other side/group/chain may pull together that extra 1/2/3 % or whatever to keep a particular chain of consensus.

Look at the Bitcoin XT deal. It needs to hit 75% before anyone will really get anywhere. A 51% attack in no way implies that the attack will succeed.

The evidence that what Snowden says has (virtually) no legitimacy is that he displays deep ignorance about the Bitcoin protocol in other things he throws out there, namely that there is an identity issue with Bitcoin, when there's only an identity issue because people keep using their identity to get Bitcoin.

Create some other token - like he says - and then we can apparently do lots of things. Erm. No. That would be the Bitcoin blockchain potential already that he's just mentioned.

Like others have pointed out, he should have done his research. Really he should have.

I will say one thing though... I do find the Obama commissioning a supercomputer to be worrying, I have to admit.

i don't wanna war with you, dude.
at the red words, as the people left their XT node wallet due to the blockchain matter, people would start using the online wallet.
did you realise that the XT is used to centralise the power of bitcoin and get it to regulate? unless we would not be in struggle with the excessive blockchain size, otherwise, 75% attacks would be just a piece of cake.

I agree and think this is a key point.  He is clearly no bitcoin expert, anyone resorting to so on and so forth is tacitly admitting ignorance.

Going along with Elwar's point, it is what he DIDN"T say that is so key.  If he'd said something like the NSA developed bitcoin and can crack it easily that would be cause for alarm. 

He's right, a 51% attack is a risk, but it's hardly anything we don't already know about.

Sorry, but Snowden is talking bollocks. See this great response (http://bitcoinanswered.com/22/what-is-a-51-percent-attack) by Andreas Antonopoulos.

WOW! I didn't know that Andreas has the talent for stand up comedy. Great view! Thx!

edit: and it's true what he says. People often laugh when they hear the truth :D

"This would actually require government, that can do IT" wahahahahahahahahah great just great ....

Nice answer indeed, but:

1. Bitcoin actually faces the risk of 51% attack, but if and only if it'll become too expensive to mine and the miners will shut down. Then the diff can go very low. However, that means the death of bitcoin and I don't expect that to actually happen.
2. Snowden is now a trade mark. Whatever bollocks he tells, some will simply believe him, and this is not a good advert for Bitcoin.

I think we all know it's flawed. Everything is.

Snowden is almost certainly a "sheep-dipped" CIA agent, so I wouldn't listen to a word he says without recognising that it's possible propaganda.

Tell us more. :)

Tech support for a PC store?

Snowden is apparently the best Bitcoin expert known in the world.  :-\

he just want to drive attention to some of his future proposal, every flaw in bitcoin can be fixed easily in  the future, they are not a major flaw that make bitcoin insecure or unusable
also he talk about a lot of weakness but he mentioned only the 51% attack, and this attack is not a real weakness because it isn't really attainable without great loss

i think he is one of those that lost the early adopter train and he is butthurt

I think the other weakness he was referring to was the ease with which 'personas' (pseudonyms/bitcoin addresses) can be linked together and to a persons real identity. He's got a point there too.

Just listen to Ron Paul, he's been telling everyone his whole career what's going on. Snowden ruined his life for nothing.

Okay, perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned the XT thing as that's a whole different topic and there are plenty of threads about that. My point was simply that a 51% attack is a huge endeavor in the first place and no small thing.

Elwar, as a defense intellignce guy, how do you greet the claims the Snowden isn't a genuine whistleblower? Is it really credible that a defense intelligence contractor was attending key-swapping parties with high-ups in the Tor Project on Hawaii, immediately prior to his escape to Hong Kong? Communicating via email with these people using his "esnowden" LavaBit account? Would a Booz Allen Hamilton employee not attract attention to themselves behaving like that?

I still cannot figure out why Snowden is portrayed as the one to out all the NSA secrets.  I mean yes he had the actual documents that detailed the NSA programs, but the knowledge of these programs was somewhat out already.

Watch the movie "Enemy of the State" with Will Smith from 1998.  It shows how the NSA can and will use anything and everything to spy/track people.  Phones, email, cameras, etc.  And this was almost 20 years ago.  I watched it recently and was blown away once I realized it came 15 years before snowdens leaks.

Hadn't heard about anything about that but defense contractors do all sorts of things outside of work that everyone else does. As long as you're not giving out classified information or doing drugs/breaking laws you can live your life.

snowden is right but as share holders view because bears effect the markets very negatively. so its not good for normal people daily use. if price move 15 to 30 usd daily up and down everyday it would be much more inflation than normal currency

What, everyday things like going to key-signing parties with significant members of the Tor Project? Arranged by email?

That guy is just an idiot, plain and simple

What about the fact that any given billionaire could single handedly buy up enough btc to essentially control the market forever?  (at least at the current price being under $260)

If someone wanted to buy a few million btc they hypothetically could.  That combined with all of the coins being "lost" (including all the ones from mt gox) and the ones owned by "satoshi" could equal a large chunk of the btc in existance, and if enough are bought up/taken out of circulation I think that could be a major issue too.

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, Mosaic was the first browser ... anyone still using Mosaic? Crypto is rapidly evolving, but bitcoin isn't - too many people have become heavily invested in bitcoin as it stands and change is not wanted unless it clearly impacts the price ... this means bitcoin will continue to stagnate. There are many interesting alternatives out there ... do the math.

Then everyone could take said billionaire's billions, and I'm pretty sure the last few coin owners would charge tens or hundreds of millions each, and abandon BTC and start anew if it clear that the whole thing had been cornered.

Enemy of the State is a fiction film, not a documentary. Might as well use The Interview as an example of what's going on in North Korea. I think it was more of a conspiracy theory before the Snowden revelations (and sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be true). The USG was denying it collected such info right up until he leaked the info.

yes, I know it was a work of fiction, but my point is that it was 100% correct in the ways it depicted the phone tapping, email monitoring, cell phone gps tracking, etc that the NSA is capable of doing, and does to their surveillance targets (and the general public whenever they want).  The writers weren't just guessing as to what the NSA was capable of, the knowledge was out there, just no one had the actual documents to prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Now the documetns are out there (a small fraction of them?), so the gvt can no longer deny what it is doing.

In the "Making of..." bonus DVD feature, it's stated that the Enemy of the State production team employed actual NSA technical consultants to get all the surveillance capabilities correct. I can't remember whether the film was one of so, so many that was directly funded by the CIA, but even if it isn't officially attributed that way (as so many Hollywood films are), it's heavily suspected of being such a production (i.e. CIA propa-tainment).

Check out the "The CIA and Hollywood" documentaries here: https://vimeo.com/tomsecker

I agree, it seemed almost too accurate to not have direct nsa input.  And the more I research about the CIA, the more I wonder how certain things make way into movies.

I'd have to say yeah, its definitely a form of propaganda.  Like they can put all the NSA stuff into that movie, and so when people hear about those spying capabilities being abused they associate it with a work of fiction, and it doesn't exactly register as somehting they need to be worried about.  I think they have a way of foreshadowing things like that, so it subconsciously is known to people, and doesn't really shock or surprise most people.

I think they must have a lot of influence with how the military is portrayed in movies as well, not to mention the heavy military propaganda you see in any sporting event, especially football games.

I didn't know Tor was illegal. I meet up with members of the Bitcoin project and there has been some illegal activity using bitcoins.

Hawaii probably has a small nerd community and there are a lot of military folks there in the shitty part of Hawaii (from what I heard) where he worked. So I'm sure the social circles are pretty small.

Offtopic: Has someone thought about Snowden beeing an US spy, released to gain the enemies trust with these documents?

No, Tor is not illegal and I didn't say that it was. I wasn't talking about Tor itself, I was talking about this small circle of Hawaiins that you refer to.

Is it really credible that Snowden was moving in high circles with all these types, and wasn't himself subject to close scrutiny? The kind of scrutiny that makes defecting to Russia a delicate manoeuvre?

Use the source:

transcript: https://gist.github.com/mnot/382aca0b23b6bf082116#bitcoin
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NvsUXBCeVA

Snowden is basically avoiding an answer on the question, which was

If you read the whole transcript or watch the whole video up to this point you will see that Snowdens main points are not money, but larger in scale. If you have an Internet where the is no connection to your person you dont have to worry about a specific service like bitcoin beeing anonymous.

If you take the specific point that you can pay for things without allowing a correlation to your person "bitcoin or things like bitcoin" already allow that, regardless of the correlation that your IP address might allow.

These days you never know, but you know what they say, "Once CIA, always CIA".
Some don't know this but he worked for the cia as a computer systems admin.
 

BUT, I don't think the us gvt would willingly let these classified documents out just so he could get access to russia.  His leaks have greatly hurt the rapidly growing spy grid that they are building.  It brought to light too many of the programs they have going on.    I think there are MUCH more discreet ways they can operate.

Straight out of high school, apparently.

No, he just needs to learn a bit more about Bitcoin. He's a smart guy, but every smart guy needs to read for a bit before he takes this or that side in a conversation.
We have yet to see how this fork works out and then the halving. If Bitcoin keeps standing strong 12 months from now he'll change his opinion.

You are possibly right. I still think it's a good tactic, though.

well, that guy is spot on.  I guess "predictive programming" is what I was getting at, and it's been around a LOT longer than just the last 15-20 years.

Amazing that hollywood references to the NSA go back to before the agency was even publically know about! And apparently that is the same for the CIA/MI6, they appeared in novels and movies before being publically acknowledged...

Kind of makes you wonder what really happened to tom clancy, apparently his books were too spot on, and someone didn't like it...

Tom Secker has emotional/ego problems. That affects people's perception of him (well, mine at least), but it doesn't appear to affect his analytical abilities; he's frequently very astute. Check out his other work if that series interests you, the guy he co-presents CIA and Hollywood with (Pearse Redmond) is also one of the best spycraft journalists (and doesn't make a public display of his character flaws).


"No Such Agency" is one of their little in-jokes.

[/quote]

Nobody's talking about it? Who does he mean by nobody? I think plenty of people are still talking about it but sure its still pretty underground right now.

Indeed, no-ones talking, although he's happy to give it some air-time. Surely a genuine non-event requires zero discussion at all, eh Ed?  ;)

he does seem to be pretty astute with his analysis, nothing over the top like some "alternative" analysts can be.

Once you are awoken to this kind of stuff it's hard NOT to notice it in a lot of movies.  One example is Iron Man 3.  I saw it a while back and then of course isis starts coming out with their highly edited and almost hollywood style HD video releases.  I immediately thought back to the "Mandarin" in iron man 3, who really was nothign more than a boogey-man actor who was used to put out videos to scare the public into submission.  It just lined up too perfecly with whats currently going on

I'm surprised there's still someone scaring people with the risk of a 51% attack.
I wish someone could calculate the probability of such an event. What's the likeliness of a 51% to occur tomorrow? What's the likeliness of this attack to be successful? I don't deny the risk. It is real, but it's a very small risk.

Yeah, many people working on this "bitcoin flaws" to adress them in best way

Here's my take.

You're the government. You've been recording as much telephone data as you can since the 1980's (when analogue telephone exchanges were phased out). You've been running analysis on the telephone data for years: auto-dictation, behavioural patterns, social connections, voice recognition etc. You can't make use of all of it. Because that would involve admitting to what you've been up to. But you want to use it. So, how do you announce it to the citizenry?

To be honest, it seems like their way of doing business is flat out deny deny deny anything and everything (just like when Clapper lied directly to congress about the NSA spying)
http://www.hasjamesclapperbeenindictedyet.com/

Then after many years (even 50 years in the case of the mk ultra/lsd human experiments) you declassify the documents in the least noticible way, and say well here it is!

I think it is possible hes still CIA/intelligence, but it just seems like these people are too egotistical to go this far in terms of hurting their public image as "leaders".

This off topic is becoming more interesting than the original one...

yup, the more you dig into this intelligence stuff, the more you realize how strange (but real) it is.  Amazingly, this story just coming out is about AT&T's "extreme willingness" to help out the NSA:

https://www.rt.com/news/312567-nsa-spy-un-internet/

The line from enemy of the state says it all "the gvt has been in bed with the telecommunications industry for the last 40 years".  That was from 1998, so this isn't exactly new info, its just being 100% confirmed and widely reported now.

Well, I brought up this idea of Snowden beeing a covert op for a reason. I mean, look how happy the Russians were to get their hands on this load of "secret" information. The US could sit back, relax and watch the Russians take the bait.

yeah, I guess stranger things have happened.  Recognize anyone from this picture?

This is Vladimir Putin in his days with the KGB, posing as a photographer...

https://i.imgur.com/cAdSfza.jpg

Yeah, and this is the other guy:

http://utmbs8iu6w2vs3oz2ez0dj16.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/ronald-reagan-cowboy.jpg