Bitcoin Forum

http://www.cbsnews.com/2718-504943_162-1111.html

Is this about LulzSec or Bitcoins?

interesting.

did you see the poll directly below the video?


but it's fascinating that they should choose to conflate Rep. Weiner's weiner with Schumer's silk road crusade.

oh.  i meant inflate, of course...

was supposed to cover bitcoins, haven't had time to watch the whole vid though, inept people keeping wringing my phone at work

Bitcoin stuff starts at ~7min in

It's live, that is why :P

Kevin Pollak seemed unimpressed :p, yet it was still fun seeing someone like him sitting down and listening to the idea.

jgarzik did a great job with the interview.

Wow it was a VERY positive piece on bitcoin.  

Jeff explained why it wasn't untraceable or ideal for money laundering, and how effort was being made to register the exchanges as proper money transfer exchanges that would comply with anti-money laundering laws and know your client laws.

I really can't even do justice to how clearly and thoroughly he refuted many of the negative points that have been made in the media recently.  We need more interviews like this one.

He basically called people using silk road and donating bitcoins to LulzSec a bunch of stupid kids who don't understand how traceable all of their activity (including bitcoins) are to the proper authorities.

do you get phone juice out?  :D

still wringing, no juice yet ;)

when is this video going to be up?  i can't see it

 ;D ;D

Me either.

CBS WHY U NO SHOW BITCOIN???

someone put a copy  up

(屮ﾟДﾟ)屮

It only takes a sec to fill out a comment form for their website inside 'contact us' i did it. Maybe if alot do they will put it back up, or maybe they were told to take it down...

WTF, Jeff?

You're upset about this?  This is great for the future of bitcoin.  Being associated with illegal drug trade in the media is bad news, and it will be much much much worse if it gets associated with something like child pornography.

Getting the exchanges regulated and open ensures stability of exchange and increases confidence in the currency.

I'll repeat that Jeff did an incredible job with the interview and I hope he continues to do even bigger shows in the coming weeks.

I was a live event sorry guys, maybe someone will post it on youtube

He did a terrible job if they think that bitcoin is from a company.

I don't think he gave that impression at all.  He was clear that it was open source and controlled by the users, secured by computing power.  He was introduced as a "bitcoin developer"

Bitcoin Money has it here:

http://www.bitcoinmoney.com/post/6305669012/cbs-whatstrending-bitcoin

and CBS video here:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20069780-10391715.html

a regulated exchange that allows the full range of investment options will get the finance world interested.  then hold on to your pants for the price rise.

That is masterful PR. Making the fear-mongers look silly is brilliant. Any viewer with half a brain will still get a hint of the great potential.

Not masterful at all. It wasn't just PR spin. Garzik actually believes what he says. Although he was well-spoken, this is fundamentally the wrong position to be taking with the media.  Here's why.

Cash is slowly going away and social utopians everywhere are talking about the nirvana of a global cashless society. Well, that all sounds great until people wake up one day and realize that what they have sacrificed in the transition to a cashless utopia is any thread of financial privacy that remained with paper cash. The phrase 'resist digital money unless anonymous' really means don't give up paper cash if the future is even more traceable and intrusive.

Therefore, stressing bitcoin's traceability and that bitcoin is not anonymous becomes the worst of both worlds -- cashless and traceable! No one is fooling the authorities by saying bitcoin is fully traceable and some people know safe bitcoin practices. Press interviews like this one retard the 'separation of money and State' cause and reinforce the harmful notion that money can and should be used for identity tracking. Those are bitcoin's positive key differentiators.

I ran out of time before I could even write what a bad idea MSB regulation is for bitcoin....but last week I posted my other PR thoughts (Jews as money launderers, etc., etc.) here: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8940.msg164099#msg164099

You might think that, but people don't bloody care! They will "buy into" bitcoin by hearing of 1) finite supply 2) "instant" transactions 3) tiny fees. The rest is just gravy.

Agreed. It's exactly the right message.

Thanks Jgarzik!

I support Jon Matonis wholeheartedly.

Society needs to have this debate about financial privacy before they sign their childrens future away to 100% govt. surveillance of your every move.

Have the debate Jeff. What are you afraid of?

+1 DATA COMMANDER

Two years ago I would have agreed, but now we don't need the debate. What we need is for Bitcoin to succeed and we have a technological solution to this social problem.

Bitcoin has pretty strong privacy for the average person or business.

But with enough sampling nodes and the ability to observe Internet traffic, you can figure out who is sending what bitcoins.  So that sort of thing is within the reach of governments.  Even your average cracker running a sniffer can see that bitcoin-like bursts of traffic are being generated on the local network.

I would tell an individual or business owner that bitcoins are private and extremely secure.  I would not tell a dissident in an oppressive regime to use bitcoins without many, many additional layers of protection.


mtgox and other exchanges are actively working to be legal in as many countries as possible.  That is a huge step forward for bitcoin.

You're not going to see business uptake if the bitcoin legal status is murky at best.  Most businesses that might want to accept bitcoins today already pay taxes and comply with various national, regional and local laws.

So, I'll say it again:  bitcoin is not the vehicle for your ideological cause.  It is an ideology-neutral currency.  Either you like the current technological implementation, or you don't.

I agree that legal exchanges within a given jurisdiction are a positive, especially since there are still technical issues with implementing a viable decentralized p2p exchange structure. However, money service businesses and Know-Your-Customer rules vary among jurisdictions globally and in many cases they are less restrictive than the MSB regulations in the US. Also, it is jumping the gun to classify a 'crypto math puzzle' as a financial instrument and to suggest regulatory oversight. IMHO, the permitted US-based bitcoin exchanges will eventually become a single point-of-failure. Exchangers in other jurisdictions will mitigate that regardless of KYC rules.


I fail to see how maintaining the same features as a $100 bill is an ideological cause. Are you now opposed to people using $100 bills? I have no problems with the technological implementation because it can provide those features when structured correctly and safely.

"Ideology-neutral" just means that Bitcoin's existence can support any number of ideologies that are at odds with the incumbent ideologies. That in itself makes it a threat to the incumbents. Therefore like all disruptive technologies, if Bitcoin succeeds it will do so in spite of the incumbents' best efforts to stop it, and not as a result of placating or cooperating with them, although some people will work that angle, and doing so may have some desirable short-term PR effect.

If Bitcoin doesn't ultimately succeed on its own merits, then in the end we're no worse off that if it hadn't existed... which is to say, we're still fucked.

See, I'm not shy about showing my ideology, and yes, Bitcoin is one of its vehicles.

A good monetary system does not rat out its users to the flavour-of-the-day despots in government, that's what crap money does. We already have crap money.

A "bitcoin" with strong anonymity is a technological improvement not an ideological enhancement. The market will decide.

+1, truly well done, jeff.

Couldn't help to notice your suppressed smiles / grin when telling the "half-truths". Takes some balls to do this, also towards the community here, which I hope understands what you're doing. Congrats.

True. And the way for police to investigate / monitor by looking at ip traffic is not as simple as Jeff tried to make it look to the journalists. How are they going to detect a payment to - say - silkroad, let alone after the fact? Am I missing something?

Also: when time comes we can move to btcfn (bitcoin over freenet)

It is naive to think governments will miss the obvious -- that bitcoins are a cross-border currency/commodity of considerable value.

people saying "doing math and writing code isn't illegal, man!" are delusional. 

Chemistry and gardening aren't illegal either, and yet thousands of meth labs and grow houses are busted every year.  Bitcoin *can* be made illegal and governmentS can stop the flow of fiat currency.

The US already did this with online gambling.

Bitcoin is not invincible... yet.

You know what? There is a simpler way: create a new wallet, fill it with money, encrypt it, sell and send the whole wallet to someone via email.
Done.

Do it via multiple jurisdictions and the trace is easily lost.

i think garzik did a fantastic job.

he deflected those things which needed to be, avoided mining almost completely (even by inference), and did a fine job of walking the line between politics and geekdom.

hey look - my first concern is the success of Bitcoin.  ideology comes second - at the moment.  and the plain facts are that we are going - at some point - to need votes; whether in congress or in a general public election.  we need to lay the groundwork for that.  we need Bitcoin to be non-threatening to as many people as possible.

if the ideology you subscribe to sees certain benefits in Bitcoin, that's fine.  i see those too.  but the benefits Bitcoin offers will not go away, simply because we don't push them on people who don't care and wouldn't understand them even if they did care.

those benefits will always be there, waiting for us.

"it's like PayPal but it's free, payments can't be reversed, and it's a million times faster to get your dough."

on the other hand, you could spend a few hours with everyone you know explaining about cross-border transfers and capital gains arcana.  and what you'd get in return would be "Silk Road, Silk Road, Silk Road."

yes... garzik did just fine.

It's naive to think that disingenuous, 'bitcoin-is-traceable' media interviews will result in congressional votes. What votes does bitcoin need anyway?

What votes does bitcoin need anyway?
[/quote]

Only a vote of confidence from the free market.

http://www.cbsnews.com/2718-504943_162-1111.html

ITS BLANK FOR ME

i have Adblock plus disabled for that page, and nothing showsup, just a white rectangle box

no, it isn't naive.  it comes from (what i hope is) a certain understanding of how the political process works.  by which i do not mean the process of voting, or of elections; but rather the process of how memes are propagated and become the norm.

start here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overton_window

the free market, and capitalism, are wonderful things - but like it or not we exist in the political structure of the world as it is.

It was a live broadcast.  Here is a link to the story and vid: http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504943_162-20069780-10391715.html?tag=strip

Those that propose regulation of BitCoin aught to become thoroughly familiar with the tragedy that befell the operators of e-gold (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-gold) and Liberty Dollars (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_dollars).

For years people closely familiar with e-gold warned and pressured the operators to become ex-patriots and take themselves out of easy reach to U.S. authorities (Brazil is a familiar country with no extradition treaty - that is MLAT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_legal_assistance_treaty) - with the U.S.) Instead, the U.S. e-gold operators sought a legally binding opinion whether they were considered a Money Service Business (MSB) by the U.S. Treasury. If they were, they intended to register in Florida. They were formally told they were not. The reason, apparently, was that the U.S. based company did no exchanges for national monies but rather only held or traded in gold. Of course, this opinion became non-binding as soon as the political winds changed. The e-gold people were indicted, personally bankrupted, e-gold's reserves mainly confiscated and the company left in ruin.

The operators of Liberty Dollar tried to introduce a specie-based (silver) alternative to U.S. dollars. As you can read, the U.S. maintains that it has the exclusive franchise to any money (or in this case, tokens) circulating within its borders which can be used for value exchange.

Further, governments (especially the U.S.) have longstanding regulations enabling them to seize anything they consider of value pretty much whenever they like.

In a letter dated August 12, 2005 and written by Sean M. Thornton, chief counsel for the department's Office of Foreign Assets Control he stated that the government's authority to interfere with the ownership of gold, silver, and mining shares arises from the Trading With the Enemy Act, which became law in 1917 during World War I and applies during declared wars, and from 1977's International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which can be applied without declared wars.

While the Trading With the Enemy Act authorizes the government to interfere with the ownership of gold and silver particularly, it also applies to all forms of currency and all securities. So the Treasury official stressed that it could be applied not just to shares of gold and silver mining companies but to the shares of all companies in which there is a foreign ownership interest. Further, there is no requirement in the law that the targets of the government's interference must have some connection to the declared enemies of the United States, or, really, some connection to foreign ownership. Anything that can be construed as a financial instrument, no matter how innocently it has been used, is subject to seizure under the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.

Most Americans may be surprised to learn that the Trading With the Enemy Act and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act could expropriate them instantly and far more broadly without any of the due process extended to parties in eminent domain cases. All that is needed is a presidential proclamation of an emergency of some kind -- and of course Americans lately have been living in a state of perpetual emergency.

Are these the people you wish to invite into the BitCoin economy?

Please search the forums for endless discussion on this.

good post.  the illusion of common law runs strong, but they can do whatever the hell they want.

Bitcoin has "significant foreign circulation".

There's a patch (I think it will be pulled in) that allows import/export of keys from/to a wallet, making what you suggested even nicer (also makes bitbills easier to redeem)

I fail to see how that's simpler (from a user perspective) than btcfn would be. Start freenet, start bitcoin, use as normal.

I am not  read the thread  from a to z, but idea to send whole encrypted wallet.dat,  with needed sum, by the mail,  is so f*king great !

The whole concept of selling a wallet is simpler: you can send it via snail mail, USB stick or via morse code. It becomes independent of the medium and is quite intuitive. AND: no transaction costs

Imagine, it could even happen that at some point you sell wallets of 0.1 bc like they were discrete units.

"It costs 20 Bc"
"Ok, I'll send you 4 x 5 Bc wallets"

Untraceable and no transaction fees..

Spot on, although there are transacvtion fees for sending bitcoin via the bitcoin-network, you can also send thousands (conceivably millions) of dollars/pounds/euro/whatever worth of bitcoin literally for free, and completely untraceable.

People can stop correcting all those ignorant media articles talking about free transaction costs and anonymity, both remain literally true.

Is barter trade/exchange illegal in the United States?  Better leave those silverware ornaments in the cupboard - don't exchange them for someone's bicycle!!

If you exchange something of intrinsic value for something else of intrinsic value - is that not barter trade?

Does uniquely identifiable Bitcoin (digital goods) give the private key holder - the intellectual property right (intellectual property right value = fluctuating intrinsic value determined by market forces) to a world wide, efficient accounting network system - based on cryptocragphic key pairs, and backed by a secure network of thousands of computers (number and secureness determined by free market trading/exchange/barter forces), dedicated to this task?

Could you embed a wallet file into a piece of paper? Some sort of QR barcode or RFID thing?

I guess you could put an encrypted wallet on a public server (or bittorrent) and distribute a printed password on a paper.

The issue is that as soon as you exchange that piece of paper the recipient must scan the password, decrypt the file, validate the contents and change the password so that nobody can just pick up the bill and decrypt the same wallet.

This means that your bill would become worthless after use (or somehow supports changing passwords)

I don't see what problem this would solve.

Step 1- create wallet.  Ok, no problem here.

Step 2- fill wallet with money.  Oops, how are you going to do this without it being traceable?  Any money you send into this wallet from yours is going in as a transaction and recorded forever.

Step 3- Send/mail wallet.  Ok, no problem, although if you are going to mail the wallet it'd be just as easy to mail cash, so why bother with bitcoins at all?

You gotta fix step 2 in order to make it work.  And if you can fix step 2 (add money to wallet without leaving any transaction evidence), you could just add money directly to the seller's wallet, rendering steps 1 and 3 unnecessary.

http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=3716.0
http://bitcoin.modernjob.info/print.html

Fantastic post. The regulators that Garzik invites into bed with us are an organized criminal gang with a flag on the wall.  They are ruthless and evil and will hurt us.  They will never play by any rules.  To court them is disaster.  One must fight them when one can and run from them when one can't.

Sending the wallet file does not send the money to the recipient.  At best he now has an equal access to the money - he must trust that the sender deleted the wallet file.  Unless he perpetually trusts the sender not to spend that money, he must execute a transfer to a wallet of his own creation, over the bitcoin network.

How is this different from the sender sending that directly?  Unless we're talking about a local sniffer on the sender's side, in which case use an anonomyzing network or cryptographic proxy.

Step 2 is true in the sense that money needs to come from somewhere, true. But if people start selling and mailing wallets, you cut a link and the simple fact that someone put some money onto a an account and there are no visible transactions does not mean he is still the owner anymore. It also appears dead while it might still be used (for instance using many atomic 1 BC wallets).

What I just want to say is that plausibly the transactions are not traceable as before. One could buy drugs by sending around a couple of wallets and the money would suddently appear somewhere else. And the person could always say his wallet was somehow stolen when he was using bitcoin in an internet café in some weird country.

Step 3 - Mail the wallet: first of all less transaction fees, secondly less traces around. Mailing cash takes ages.. and if the customs open it it might seem weird. You could send many encrypted CD's, one will eventually reach the addressee. And if some bad guys are intercepting the mail? Well, you can still get your money back as you still have access to the wallet too.

Believe me, it has some advantages....

True, it's just like a "normal" transaction.