Bitcoin Forum

It seems mum is the word. How they will react when they get a court order or executive order of any kind is anybody's guess. It's been made clear in court precedent that digital currencies with monetary value are subject to AML and other laws when developed or distributed on US territory. The Bitcoind software development, as it stands, may be compelled to comply through software patches or ceasing activities.

Although #bitcoin-dev supposedly is a open and transparent channel of the Bitcoind project, people were threatened for discussing a pertinent topic regarding development. Very suspicious.

[13:23] <agent8423> when the US government needs Bitcoin to comply with antimoney laundering laws will you guys comply in your development?
[13:24] <@jgarzik> their choice, and it helps full nodes
[13:24] <BlueMatt> jgarzik: uhhh...no its not
[13:24] <kjj_> ugh.
[13:24] <kjj_> agent8423: can't you leave that shit on the forums where it belongs?
[13:24] <@jgarzik> agent8423: offtopic for #bitcoin-dev
[13:24] <agent8423> but youre developers for Bitcoin? who am i supposed to ask?
[13:25] <gmaxwell> agent8423: uh. You're confused. There isn't anything like that we could do; nor are there any laws someone should rationally expect to be applicable there. Go ask coal mining equiment makers about their conformance with 'antimoney laundering laws'. :)
[13:25] == ThomasV_ [~ThomasV@200.180.97.84.rev.sfr.net] has joined #bitcoin-dev
[13:25] <BlueMatt> jgarzik: its fine if an individual has a need for it and does it, and if its mentioned as an option, but it will no doubt be mentioned as heres how ALL users should get started, which is horrible ux and makes it all seem as poor as it is
[13:25] <Luke-Jr> I would appreciate if anyone can provide code reviews of new coinbase-creation code, especially the base58 parsing: https://bitcointalk.org/?topic=78192.msg1267851#msg1267851
[13:25] <kjj_> agent8423: it has been asked and answered a million times on the forums.  the government can ask us to change math, but we still can't do it
[13:25] <Luke-Jr> (the "code" link has the full diff)
[13:25] <MC1984> BlueMatt is right
[13:25] == denisx [~denis@91-65-138-255-dynip.superkabel.de] has joined #bitcoin-dev
[13:26] <agent8423> kjj_: you can release software that complies. you may have to fork the chain but you will have to.
[13:26] <Luke-Jr> agent8423: Bitcoin is just cash. AML laws are for financial instutition
[13:26] <agent8423> we live in a nation of laws
[13:26] <MC1984> wary of hacky this becoming de facto standard procedure
[13:26] <@jgarzik> Luke-Jr: bitcoins are digital messages, not cash :)
[13:26] <kjj_> agent8423: math is math.  congress can't change math.
[13:27] <Luke-Jr> jgarzik: I'm simplifying :p
[13:27] <agent8423> schumer doesn't think so
[13:27] == mode/#bitcoin-dev [+o BlueMatt] by ChanServ
[13:27] <gmaxwell> agent8423: in any case, your question isn't concrete enough to form a meaningful answer.
[13:27] <@BlueMatt> next person to mention aml gets kicked

It doesn't matter. Any AML crap that goes into the Satoshi client will get stripped out in other forks.

Troll much?

First, it wasn't an honest question, since you know the answer very well, or at least you should since it has already been answered it in a good fraction of the 94 threads you've started since you un-banning.  Second, it really is off topic in that channel.  Third, no one was threatened with anything more than enforcement of the channel policy.


For those of you not sure how bitcoin works, you "spend" bitcoins by giving the proof to an equation.  The equation will keep working no matter what congress says or does.

Worst case, everyone starts using TOR.

Are you absolutely sure the dev team couldn't change the Bitcoin network drastically through an "urgent" protocol update that happens to be immediately accepted by most miners?

That won't matter if the rules aren't disclosed and the vast majority of all Bitcoin users accept the update. Your coins would then be subject to their jurisdiction.

What, like in secret?  Like all of the congressmen, all of the senators and the President all get together in the middle of the night, pass a law, sign it in blood, and then send out the gestapo to round up all of the devs and pool operators?

Sure, I guess that could happen.  But if it does, Satoshi will ride up on his unicorn to save the day.

And for the record, when everyone thinks you're crazy, it isn't proof of some big conspiracy.  We might have all just realized on our own that you are crazy.

The Federal Reserve Act of 1913 was passed in a similar fashion.

Is that a joke?

Bitcoin is basic maths. Making laws to change how Bitcoins work is like making laws to change how gravity work.

Ok, so in your fantasy, the gestapo has rounded up all of the devs and pool operators, and tells them that they need to secretly change the protocol or their dogs will be killed.  What then?  What possible change do you imagine they could actually do?  Be specific.

You know, if you'd put like 10% of your forum trolling effort into learning how the system really works, you be so paranoid about it.

Hidden fees, tracking capabilities, confiscation capabilities, inflation capabilities, backdoors, etc.

Of course these would eventually be discovered; however, by then it would be too late. It would tear the currency to oblivion and small sects.

You seem to be trying to do that already, so what are you worried about?

FWIW, I don't have a dog.

Once again, Atlas asks a question and ignores any answers given.


Claiming "mum's the word" is a blatant misrepresentation of what was said.  Gmaxwell gave a perfectly valid answer.  He ignored the answer because it doesn't fit into his conspiracy theories about the dev team.  He's trying to turn a non-issue into a controversy: it's distracting and a waste of everyone's time.

I think Atlas should be banned again.

I like people trolling, but can you please switch on your brain before trolling.
It becomes so boring otherwise....

Anything you are proposing here is bound to draw from an existing balance on some addres. For that to happen, you need the cooperation of the person controlling that address (i.e. the private key) and you need the cooperation of the whole network to confirm that manipulated transaction. How can you imagine such a thing goes unnoticed?

For the former, there are sneakier ways of manipulation.

As for the latter, it can be done through apathy in most of the mining community along with the dev team assuring any skeptics that it's all "conspiracy theories".

+1


-1

Very few people can read code completely after release.

If only there was some tool (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls) that would highlight changes and provide annotation and discussion...

Guns and bullets run on basic chemistry and physics.

Do you suppose that a legislature might make laws (which might be commonly, if imperfectly) enforced regarding the possession and use of guns and bullets?

Do you suppose that a person who manufactured and sold guns or ammunition might at some point find it helpful to be aware of those laws?

Note to the feebleminded: I have a lot of guns and bullets. Molon labe. I believe the Second Amendment protects an individual RKBA. I am not arguing that guns should be more regulated. This post is not about gun control.

This post is pointing out that governments attempt to, and with varying degrees of success, regulate items and processes which operate on basic physical or mathematical laws or processes which are themselves beyond the legislature's reach.

If that observation is insufficient, you might consider whether or not governments have attempted to regulate the growing and processing of certain plants, or of relatively simple chemical reactions/transformations that can be applied to ordinary chemical compounds. Those attempts have obviously been less than wholly successful; but they have certainly had a significant impact on people interested in those plants and those chemicals, to the extent that many people who would like to use those things do not, and others incur significant costs adapting their operations to the the risk of (imperfect) intervention.

Andresen will always use Github. The releases on sourceforge will always reflect the code.

?

The good thing with git is that you don't have to read the complete code. You can just look at the changes in the code.

Try this (linux):
- open the terminal
- copy this lines:

git clone https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin.git

cd bitcoin

gitk &

(If this does not work maybe you need to install "git" and "gitk" first)

My former statement was sarcasm. People are fallible. People can be bought.

Ok, now I get it...  :)

+1

Sure, but they don't run on pure math.
You've just got it the wrong way up.
You can use math to describe physics, but that doesn't make math into physics or chemistry.

Man, are you thick.
 :o

Okay, I submit. I trust everyone. The devs will never lie. The devs will be perfect. (!)

We are trying to tell you that it doesn't matter if they lie or not, if they are perfect or not.  The system was set up in a way that it doesn't matter, no one has to trust anyone.

To do what you are thinking would require a magic wand, not a government.  And even if one day all of the devs and pool operators woke up as their own evil twins, someone else would just fork the project and the chain at some point prior to the switch, and your life would go on as before.

Well, like mobodick said.

How can you make laws on calculations? Bitcoin is just a big formula where people make inputs to create outputs. Yeah, you can try to control all the inputs(people and hardware), but you cannot control the formula.

And right now, it's pretty impossible to control the software, since the software is open-source. Any form of control is detected automatically. You can try to control the people inputting in the software, but again, with a decentralized system, it's like a game of cat and mouse where there's 1 cat for every billion mouses.

Maths laws are above human laws, plain and simple.

Who says you have to control everybody? All you need is a good enough majority under control and the face of the currency is yours.

Well, if that's your goal, good luck. You really think the USA control the majority of the world? You really think US government is big enough to try and control the majority of Bitcoin users? I knew americans were full of themselves, but not that much.

Breaking news, 90% of the world doesn't really give a crap what US government think and want to do. And that 90% will use Bitcoin anyway.

Of course power always slips away but people can break things. People can break Bitcoin regardless of power.

Yeah, but people will have decided so, not some obscure politician at the far east-wing of Romney.

Then Bitcoin is just shit and there is nothing you can do, oh well.

I very much doubt the US government would this go this route because it simply would not work. What they can do, which in fact can even be argued is the case under current laws, is treat Bitcoin as a foreign asset and require every US person holding more than 10000 USD worth of Bitcoin in the blockchain to report their holdings to the IRS. This argument is based on the fact that the majority of the Bitcoin nodes and mining hashpower is out side of the United States.

i haven't read most of the replies, but staying on topic of the OP's post.

your leather wallet you have in your pocket. it has no laws governing how you spend your cash.. the same applies to bitcoin clients.

AML laws would only affect bitinstant and other FIAT to bitcoin businesses.. as they are the start and end points of the money train between the controlled fiat and the uncontrolled bitcoin. so you will see alot of laws being directed at the gates into and out of bitcoin.

Looks more like you were annoying the piss out of them about AML and they had enough. Did you happen to copy the half hour beforehand where you were probably bugging the hell out of them? If my kids continuously ask me the same question to which there is an answer to if they just look around or use their brains to think back 5 minutes or are too lazy to use a search function on google then they are liable to get smacked down too.

No.

http://bitcoinstats.com/irc/bitcoin-dev/logs/2012/10/12#l4616462

As has been already clearly explained, AML applies to financial services companies and has nothing to do with the bitoin dev team.

Who is to say the devs aren't providing a financial service? Does not being incorporated exempt somebody from AML regulations when they provide financial services? The answer is likely no.

Software developers at investment banks aren't providing "financial services" even though the bank does.

Are you suggesting the Devs are running an organization that manages money?

in the original irc conversation it's weird how BlueMatt doesn't appear to have ops but then does all of a sudden as he threatens to kick people.

Freenode recommends ops "hide" without the +o flag until they need to use it.

If you take the time to look at actual AML requirements (http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/publications/guide/Guide8A/nseft-eng.asp#s3-6), you will find it is non-trivial to implement them in the Bitcoin protocol. Bitcoin is essentially a sophisticted public transaction record. To include the required sender information would violate any privacy legislation in place. Governments are likely reluctant to crack down of Bitcoin for two reasons:

• they don't want to give it legitimacy in the eyes of the general public.
• They can't really criminalize it without criminalizing accounting software that does essentially the same thing.

If we assume the Bitcoin is a currency, and all nodes must (or even want to) register as Money Service Businesses: the Bitcoin protocol still can't comply with the Guidelines as written. Nodes would somehow need the capacity to do the following:

• Report transactions comming from outside of Canada totalling over $10,000 CAD from the same entity within a 24 hour period.
• The above should be simple since all nodes would be required to include originator information in all outgoing transactions. This incudes (http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/publications/guide/Guide6/6C-eng.asp#s6-2): "name, address and principal business or occupation, (and) date of birth (or) the incorporation number and place of incorporation."
  
• Even if the block-chain can handle the bloat, the nodes in each jurisdiction will have different reporting rules. If the originator, winning miner, and recipient are all in the same country, no reporting may be necessary. In Canada, Government departments are exempt from reporting rules.
• If the originator is on the list of terrorists or terrorist organizations, many nodes may be forced to not relay the transaction to other nodes.
  
• If the transaction is over $100,000, you have to check if the transaction involves a Politically Exposed Foreign Person (http://www.fintrac-canafe.gc.ca/publications/guide/Guide6/6C-eng.asp#s7). This will also vary by jurisdiction. Manual intervention is also required within 14 days. AML-complaint nodes may refuse to relay such large transactions to avoid the extra work that can not be automated.
  

The above list involves bloating the block-chain, removing pseudonymity, subscribing to at least two databases, and balkanizing the network. In short, it would be impossible for the developers to slip this one by the vast majority of bitcoin users. In no small part because these changes would require careful user configuration to work correctly for their jusridiction.

I think you still didn't understand bitcoin, bitcoin in essence is just a protocol backed by the full faith and credit of Mathematics, which is the only thing can have eternal faith and credit.

(only the protocol part, the real effect of being a valuable assets are social phenomenon)

(While the difficulty of certain mathematical questions is not proved yet, or may eventually to be proved NOT hard enough. Even if they are proved to be hard enough, it doesn't mean physical computing power could not reach that difficulty level, but that is out for another discussion. We are talking about current reality vs. mathematical questions behind bitcoin).

And you choose which protocol you yourself believe in (let's say if the developers forced by gov to change the client software, that essentially means from that moment on, some users/miners changed their protocol, you do not have to participate, not only that, even you discover it a little late, you can still roll back to the old block chain to the point where the old protocol is used by all , from there, only verify and accept newer block chains using the old protocol.

Essentially, gov forced world to generate two block-chains, and each chain grows on its own.

There will still be the "Good old bit coin network still alive" from that moment, then which one will be THE bitcoin are subject to social behaviors.



[/quote]

Who says you have to control everybody? All you need is a good enough majority under control and the face of the currency is yours.
[/quote]

It is a lot simpler. Treat Bitcoin as if it were cash and impose the requirements on the sender and recipient of the transaction in their respective jurisdictions.

It looks as if you're getting the same response here as in the IRC channel, albeit much more drawn out.

Aren't the AML laws in place already? And they effect everyone? You can't accept cash for gold in any significant amount and not be required to report your business to the MAN. You know, for taxes and all that jazz.

If a government feels threatened by bitcoin, the DEV team(s) would simply be an easy starting point if they comply. If big brother starts leaning on them, I expect they'll step down. The math does not need to change, there would need to be more information contained about sender and receiver. Let's drop this, they can do their own damn figuring on how. Implementation would be a nightmare, and a fork would likely result, govcoin.

That being said, there are other attack vectors than code changes. Why bother with that fuss and bad PR of attacking open source software development when they can pass a law in relative secrecy banning the transacting of fiat with bitcoin related business, to stop the funding of terrorism.

Edit: Double-posted response, sorry.

Atlas, you're a complete idiot.

By your reckoning, every open source project on the internet could be full of "back doors" and "hidden agendas". Guess what, they haven't been. Where are the sob stories from users who installed the latest distribution, and through some elaborate "secret" method, had their banking credentials stolen and misused? Oh that's right, there AREN'T ANY.

Here's another one for you - reality in your mind is simply your perception when your senses deliver the electrical impulses to your brain. They are perpetually "late", due to physics of our universe. Therefore, someone with an agenda could be shaping your reality every second to present you with a "fake" one. (If you even begin to believe that, or try to use it in a rebuttal to me - consider getting some professional help.)

While your noodle is baking on that one, perhaps let the adults focus on their tasks while you beat your pots in the kitchen?

Okay, I am new here, and I'm just a girl who once saw a guy code once, that's the limit of my expertise, but the idea that you could have government secretly take the project over and secretly push a bunch of outrageous changes seems preposterous.

Especially since some of the devs are likely not even in US.

Inflation and confiscation would both be protocol changes, so it would takes months to implement. Don't you remember the shitstorm over P2SH, a feature that everyone agreed was important but only disagreed on technical details? No way are 51% of miners updating to a new patch overnight.

Client-based tricks might work on people who auto-update the Satoshi client straight from the dev team and always leave it running, but they're a minority of the total network. Personally I only use the Satoshi client for my long-term storage and rarely start it up. Even with my Satoshi client I don't update directly from github, but instead use the Ubuntu PPA.

I hate to admit it, but I'd probably inadvertantly read your condemnation of the new patch on this forum before I even ran it. So, ummm... thanks for being so loud?

Guys, look at the date. This thread is 3 months old. Don't feed the troll and don't necro shitty threads please.

This thread was dead for 3 months guys.

Edit: derp, got beaten to the punch

That is a such a philosophical oriented comments, what do you mean here, could you elaborate a little bit?