Bitcoin Forum

“This issue has been discussed for several years,” he said. “I think that the very-rough consensus is that old coins should be destroyed before they are stolen to prevent disastrous monetary inflation. People joined Bitcoin with the understanding that coins would be permanently lost at some low rate, leading to long-term monetary deflation. Allowing lost coins to be recovered violates this assumption, and is a systemic security issue.”

https://news.bitcoin.com/theymos-bitcoins-satoshi-destroyed/



In my view, the moment Bitcoin devs or anyone start dictating what to do with bitcoin of others, censorship resistance of bitcoin will be lost. Satoshi would be proud for sure.

So you agree with thymos or not? Should the coins be destroyed or not?

Worst idea ever.

theymos actually is proposing ALL lost coins to be destroyed after a certain amount of time to prevent anyone from getting hold of those bitcoins at the future and dump them for dollars. I'm not entirely sure if this would be a good move, however. (edit: leaning to "no" after reading some of the replies below.)

if they're going to do it. make the second soft-fork to trigger in 10 years or even 15 or 20. five years are not long enough to make sure that everyone is protected (IMO).

Perhaps you should go to the source of that article itself, the reddit comment that Theymos posted: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4isxjr/petition_to_protect_satoshis_coins/d30we6f. Instead of taking the obviously biased article as truth, you should read the comment and the context to see what Theymos was actually proposing. The point of the proposal is that it prevents thieves from stealing those 1 Million Bitcoin and all of the other lost coins and actually screwing with Bitcoin. Imagine if someone got their hands on Satoshi's coins; whoever got those could dump them all and drop the price, or, he just made several hundred million dollars for little to no effort. Whoever got those coins would have immense power over Bitcoin's economics.

If Satoshi wants his coins so badly, then he can move them himself before they are destroyed. However, based upon the current trend of those coins not moving, destroying them in the proposed manner would not have any effect on the economy whatsoever as they are essentially acting as burned coins.

What?
Course he want's them.
They are his.
Leave them alone.

That right if he wants them he can move them to prevent their destruction.It is better to destroy them than those coins falling in wrong hands.Since these coins are not in circulation,their disappearance would not make any difference

They are not in circulation, they are in storage.
You wants Satoshi to moving them or loose them?

I also said that they are not in circulation.
I dont want Satoshi to loose them but since Satoshi identity is not known we dont know if he is still alive or not.If he is alive and wants his coins, he can move them

it seems you don't quite understand what theymos are proposing. he's talking about destroying all old coins that doesn't get moved after 5 years. if satoshi and other bitcoin owners move their coins before that time, their bitcoins won't be destroyed.
of course there are pros and cons of this. if satoshi move those coins, then those old coins will not be considered lost anymore. on the other hand, we'll know for sure that those coins won't be a problem if they get destroyed.

This would destroy bitcoin in a heartbeat. Lots of people buy BTC as a store of value and then put the keys in a safe - the Winklevii are an example, and there are loads with smaller savings too.

Who is to say whether coins are "lost" or merely stored. Putting arbitrary rules in such as "if you don't move them we'll destroy them" destroys the premise of bitcoin, which is that it is a safe store of value.

After all, what is the difference between a bank snatching your money in a bail in and self-appointed devs destroying your coins "to prevent inflation" in theymos' words?

This is the first time I strongly have to disagree with Theymos. This is a centralized monetary intervention that would destroy trust in Bitcoin as a whole, because people will feel that their Bitcoin might be some day arbitrarily destroyed at developers' choosing. Long-term savings will become an unbearable risk.

Also the assumption is decidedly wrong: There is no inflation if Satoshi spends his coins, because the coins have already been generated. Everyone knows that they exist - they are already priced in. If Satoshi is an idiot and buys fiat with them, there might be a price drop in Bitcoin's fiat valuation. But this doesn't matter at all, if Bitcoin establishes itself as a fully working currency - meaning all prices will be quoted in BTC without conversion.

Interventionism is a disease that leads to greater problems than the ones it is designed to solve.

ya.ya.yo!

This is like Paypal coming out and saying 'If you don't move your funds around we will just take them from you. If this is what Bitcoin is coming to be a part of then Bitcoin has lost its vision and only caters to those who are afraid of someone dumping them.

If you are so insecure about Bitcoin that you fear coins being dumped then it might be time for you to move to a different currency or come to the terms that it is a possibility and move on.

Well said, A bad step to take. I Disagree with the step you are thinking to take in future @ Theymos.

let's also note i think this would be a safety to the future "Craig Wrights's"
if your gonna come out as satoshi, DO IT IN NEXT 5ish YEARS
shit or get off the pot type thing ;D

Yes. It becomes a problem of would you rather give some people 1 million free bitcoin with little to no effort or have one guy lose the Bitcoin he hasn't touched (nor does he indicate that he will ever touch them) in over 15 years (by that point).

The difference between this and PayPal is that PayPal will just take the funds and pocket them. Theymos' proposal makes it impossible for anyone to use those funds.

Also, as a side note, Theymos' proposal is pretty much impossible. It relies upon knowing that something will happen in the future at an exact moment, and this cannot be known both because such technology doesn't suddenly become cheap and usable like so overnight, and because such advancements cannot be known to happen on a certain date beforehand.

Theymos was providing an example of a way to deal with QC's cracking bitcoin addresses in the future.
It is assumed that by the time we reach that point, we will all have already converted to QC resistant cryptography.
Theymos was trying to troubleshoot how we will deal with the people/addresses that do not convert to QC resistant addresses.

This is not final and there may be better ideas in the future.

This is not an attack on Satoshi or etc, but on dead coins that QC will take from their owners one day.
Otherwise we would be allowing a single entity (potentially more) to hack and control all dead coins.

So, if Craig Wright is Satoshi, you believe he should be punished for creating bitcoin by having his coins destroyed, so that he has nothing to show for what is practically the tech innovation of the century - and if any innocent by-stander has longstanding coins, they should lose their money too, right?

Sheesh. Something has gone dreadfully wrong with the bitcoin community if it is now acceptable to arbitrarily destroy people's savings.

I read that thread on reddit - the most disturbing thing was where he said "This issue has been discussed for several years." They've been encouraging the public to see bitcoin as a store of value for years while simultaneously deciding that they should arbitrarily cancel people's coins to make themselves richer.

Wow, just wow.

Silly idea - Satoshi's coins are only about 5% of the eventual total and 6.5% of the current total. If Satoshi held 90% of the coins, there would be a systemic risk if he dumped them but 6.5% is fairly trivial. The impact would be comparable to Carl Icahn selling his Apple - a brief price dip as the markets absorb it followed by a return to normal market capitalization based on the aggregate value of the enterprise.

Some of the "all coins will eventually be lost" crowd might even appreciate another million or so to be put into circulation.

So some early adopter decided to buy coins in 2011, and store them - and five years later, their coins are destroyed but they are supposed to be happy because their savings have evaporated instead of being appropriated?

It's like stealing someone's money, and then setting fire to it and saying, "See? I'm not going to use your money, I'm just destroying your savings, that makes me a good guy".

Note that he suggested a soft fork that activates after 5 years to make old coins unspendable, when/if it becomes clear that ecdsa is no longer secure enough in the long run.  So Satoshi and everyone else have plenty of time to save their coins.  When practical quantum computers arrive these old coins are not secure and everyone can take them.  Probably they will be taken before the soft fork activates.

You can disagree with his opinion, but his suggestion is certainly not as evil as the article make it sound.  Also the quote in the headline of the news article is not something he wrote.

Another thing to note - there may be players bigger than Satoshi in the Bitcoin space. Some investor may have quietly acquired 40% of the float. With the ability to create new pseudo-anonymous addresses at will there would be no easy way to find who who is the richest Bitcoiner.

Personally, I'm against the idea that Satoshi's coins should be destroyed, maybe a majority of them should but the genesis block should be left as a sort of symbolic thing. The wallet should be left alone aside from that, unless Satoshi really is prepared to reveal himself and send out a signed message to everyone so that we know he's still around.

The question becomes, though, how would we destroy his coins, based on where we are now? Unless there's a fork or something to invalidate those coins, I can't see a way that we could accomplish such a task.

BTW, if you still have old Franc notes from 2001.  They are worthless now, because you can't exchange them into Euro anymore.  It is estimated that the "destroyed" Francs would have been worth about half a billion Euro.

well the first 50 ever mined are kinda locked as a symbol (i believe these coins hold the famous satoshi "bailout" message)
this is thought to be a bug. noones knows if this was intentional of not

In fiat world, if you forget about an account, and haven't touched it in a while, you can still retrieve it. Money in "lost accounts" is yours by law no matter how many years you have waited to claim it. Ditto with bonds - it doesn't matter how many years ago you put the certificate in a drawer, if you produce it half a century later, you can redeem it.

Given that bitcoin has been classed by govts as an asset, the same laws will apply. If Blockstream cancel satoshi's coins, he should sue and take them for all they are worth.

I think it began as a bug since the transaction wasn't entered into the UTXO set. It has since become symbolic to not put it into the UTXO set.

That's what I say too. That satoshi character aught to know how unsafe it is to leave so much money on the blockchain without transacting with it, he should be protected from himself by someone wise, like Thermos.
Plus we'll never have to worry about him dumping a million BTC on the market again, a single individual shouldn't have that kind of power.
P.S. is there any way we could distribute those coin? Maybe hold a raffle?

ahh ok cool ;)

and in your opinion was it intentional?   for sure hey? prob to lock in the bailout message for everyone to remember for all of BTC's eternity? ;)

I think it was partially intentional to say that there was no premine and that Bitcoin wasn't a scam to benefit satoshi. The bailout message would still be in the blockchain anyways even if the output was spent.

o ok well that invalidates my question then, haha thx! ;) as ya it wouldn't matter if it was intentional as you stated ;p the message is THERE.

When/If QC becomes a reality (this is a big When/If) and

After QC becomes a viable threat to Bitcoin and

After we have already forked to replace the QC vulnerable algorithms in Bitcoin with QC safe algorithms

Then and only then, maybe, we should consider possibly blacklisting older coins that are not covered by the QC safe replacement algorithms

Moving the coins from one QC vulnerable address to another QC vulnerable address just to keep them from getting blacklisted makes no sense.

This only makes sense after we have transitioned to new QC safe algorithms as a way to encourage (force) people to move their coins to the new algorithms.

At the rate QC is progressing those of us alive right now really don't have to worry about this.  Perhaps our grandchildren or maybe our children.

I'm keen on the raffle idea. :)

Yes, this is exactly what Theymos proposed. When/If QC becomes a reality and After it is known to break ECDSA and After an immediate soft fork to add an OP_CODE for using a QC safe algorithm, then there is a planned soft fork for a future date immediate prior to the date where attackers would have a feasible chance of breaking ECDSA and stealing Bitcoin.

Quit your complaining. Let the coins be. As soon as a single satoshi moves from any of those origin addresses then prices will hit rock bottom within minutes and we can all wine about this later.

I stuck some pin money in NEM at its earliest stages. As an original stakeholder you were obliged to reaffirm your stake pre launch otherwise you wouldn't receive any coins. This was shouted far and wide for months on end and the deadline was extended multiple times.

Despite that you have people surfacing a year and a bit later screaming about not knowing anything about this. I wonder how much screaming there'd be if this was implemented. I'm pretty amazed at how little attention a lot of people pay to these things.

A million otherwise wasted coins that I can has. To hodl. And call my own.
Only let's do this now, preemptively, & not wait until it's too late, like we did with that blogsize thing.

Since this whole hypothetical is years in the future I choose to get a bottle and wine about it now.

So we are planning to cut off his legs because he has become a potential liability! Interesting, but I do not like a idea of stripping people down because you feel they may be a issue later with the coins.
I get the issue, dislike the solution.

Exactly. Why ass with his coins? While they do impose an inherent security risk, doesn't it fly in the spirit of bitcoin to essentially "regulate" someone's wallet? And how would it be clear if, when the coins moved, it can be attributed to a thief and not simply the owner of the coins?

Better to let sleeping dogs lie. Might give those coins an incentive to move if we keep talking about them.

Some banks charge a dormancy fee: if you are account is inactive (no deposits or withdrawals in the past 12 months), then the account is considered dormant and charged a fee every month; until it's all gone.

Some banks send your money to the central bank after 10 years.

5 years is actually a long time for someone who's watching his own bitcoins; however that would be a bummer if you get knocked out into a coma and wake up 6 years later to find your stash destroyed.

I never said any such thing. bitcoin.com again proves that it is absolutely worthless by completely fabricating that quote.

Aka: OP, take a break.

Theymos,

1) It is not about being accurate it is about getting clicks.  In that respect the article is a success.

2) My understanding of your thinking here, is this correct:

Ideally, the coins would be destroyed just moments before they would be stolen so that no one would lose coins who wouldn't lose them due to theft anyway. Since we can't exactly predict the future, there may be some cases like that, but it should be extremely rare.

If no one loses any coins, then that'd be a massive success. The goal of the policy would not be to destroy coins, but to prevent lost and insecure coins from being stolen.


Pretty much.

I'm talking about the hypothetical situation of advancements in quantum computing making ECDSA insecure. I am not proposing that any code be written or changes be made today, and probably not for several years. When the deletion policy is put in place, the grace period should be as long as possible -- I mentioned 5 years from the initiation of the policy as an arbitrary example.


Agreed, though as a minor technical nitpick, note that you can actually roll out both changes at once (with the expiration change set to only take effect after a several-year grace period), and both the crypto upgrade and the expiration are softforks.


From my perspective, the motivation for doing this would be to prevent thieves from stealing a ton of almost-certainly-lost bitcoins. It would be very bad for the overall Bitcoin economy if the ~5% of bitcoins that are "permanently lost" come back into circulation, especially when the new owners would be unethical thieves.


I think that QC could get to a worrying state for Bitcoin in as soon as 10 years, though perhaps it will take much longer. According to several standards bodies, Bitcoin's 256-bit elliptic curve is only considered secure up to 2030, in part due to QC.

It's possible QCs are closer than people have been led to believe.

Usually the military/R&D have certain technological advances about 40 years
ahead of any public disclosure. The question is when will it be used in a manner
in which others will know that there is a fully operational one out there somewhere.

When the public learns that "blank" exists, it is usually because it has already been replaced.

Satoshi has the right of his coins if he is still alive if he's no longer on the scene or not alive then they should burn them but as long as he wants them no point burning them.

This doesn't make sense!  If bitcoins security is so bad that we have to worry about other peoples coins getting stolen and crashing the price, then maybe we should be talking about bitcoin's security issues instead of figuring out what to do with other people's property.  Wow!  Unbelievable!  There are so many other alternatives to destroying other people'c coin to preserve the value of our own coin....just entertaining that thought is so very telling.  Maybe we should all just take a vote on whether or not to take all the coin in the ledger and distribute them equally among the community....Majority rule?  Just fork the whole thing and start over with equal shares!  That's the fair thing to do!  Right?

I don't think any QC will ever allow someone to crack the private key of a bitcoin address with "little to no effort" as I anticipate that QCs will be very expensive to build and use (via electric costs). I also believe that there will not ever be any "personal" uses for QCs which will increase the friction associated with trying to do something malicious with a QC

The same can be said about satoshi. In the event that satoshi were to give the coins to his heirs upon his death, then the same can be said about his heirs.


This is not necessarily true. It is possible that satoshi did something along the lines of the below in order to protect his coins:

• Create an n-time-lock transaction(s) that is only valid far in the future that happens to be after some time after his coins would be set to be "destroyed"
• After creating the above transaction(s), destroying the original private keys
• The transaction(s) would spend his coins to previously unused addresses
• If satoshi were to become aware that the private keys to the above were compromised, then satoshi could draft transactions that depend on the above transactions to newly created addresses whose private keys he know is not compromised, and broadcast both sets of transactions as soon as the transaction(s) in step 1 become valid.
• This would greatly reduce the chances of successfully stealing his bitcoin in the event that his private keys were to become compromised via having physical access to them (eg having access to whatever the private keys are stored on)

Another possibility is that satoshi is dead, and he left his coins to his heirs, however his will (or trust document) read something along the lines of "the coins shall remain unspent until x time and thereafter shall remain unspent with the exception of giving 5% of my coins each year to each of Johnny and Sally Grandchildren". In the world of estates and trusts the will and/or trust documents are generally followed to the "t" as deviating in any way from the will/trust documents will open up the administrator of the estate/trustee to potential liability.

A third possibility is probably the simplest in that it is possible that satoshi is in jail and will not be able to access his private keys until a long time in the future.


I am not sure this is necessarily true. I think that setting the precedent of blacklisting any coins, regardless of the reasons will open up the possibility that coins belonging to a "criminal" and/or someone who is unpopular will be blacklisted in the future, which will reduce the confidence in bitcoin.

this sounds like a good idea at first but has some bad points in it too. i think the biggest one is that we shouldn't be able to decide about other's bitcoins satoshi included.

and it also rises a question for me:
what if "I" want to hold bitcoin for more than that time frame. like placing some in a cold storage and keeping it for 10 years. will that be subjected to the proposed rule of lost coins?

There seems to be a pros and cons to this move (if ever went through). The good thing would be the avoidance of future inflation (in case someone will be able to get their hands on them) but on the other side, it's still Satoshi's property and by doing so, it's like a centralized move instead. On the other hand I do like Theymos OP_LAMPORT soft fork proposal since it makes it more secure than now.

In theory, you can keep your coins in cold storage for 10 years, AFTER
you move those coins to a QC resistant address. Anyone who stored their
coins away with the idea that encryption and Bitcoin would be the same for
the next 100 years is ignorant to the reality of encryption and Bitcoin.

If you or anyone due to ignorance, or purposefully decides not to move
their coins in time, those coins will either be taken by the QC or be destroyed
to prevent the QC from taking them.

Of course, this is all speculative. We may just move to QC resistant addresses,
but let the QC take all old coins (not purposely destroy coins, let them lay).

No, Satoshi is the owner of this currency and we cant destroy his coins

Exactly.

The Holy Stash is the ultimate dog food feast; if Bitcoin is to serve as a radically deflationary store of value, it will do so primarily for its Creator.

We can't change the social contract to screw Satoshi without destroying Bitcoin for everyone.   8)

can anyone give a quick explanation or a link to help me understand what exactly is QC and QC resistant address that i keep hearing about this subject?

Wouldn't it be impossible to remove someone else's coins from there wallet?

If you really want to save Bitcoin, Theymos should be destroyed.

If some random sysop can destroy Bitcoin, it never deserved to exist.   ::)

Thats a no no no no no no no no no no move. Whats the point of Bitcoin when someone can destroy some coins which are sitting in some dude wallet since 5 years ago? Like the above reply I agree bitcoin shouldn't have existed at all if some dude can just go and destroy someone else's bitcoin. Security is 0 this way. No no no no this should not happen.

Et tu, Brute?

Solid point. :)

those coins are effectively useless if the key is lost if satoshi is dead or any other combination

the simple fact that those coins are still there, somehow prove it

How does the fact he hasn't cashed out yet lead you to inevitably conclude that he won't or can't or is dead? Those coins are all conceivably the personal property of one (or a few) living men. This economy is built on blind faith.

Theymos forgot one important thing: IF someone could hack these coins, Bitcoin would be worthless, not because of the inflation, but because somebody was able to hack it.

edit: "Theymos is this you?"

why cashing now, when there was a better opportunity at 1200? no sense, at worst he could still cash out when the price will skyrocket above 1200

but remeber that this si true for anyone else mining tons of coins back then, you think that only satoshi has a fortune out there?

i remember artfroz having more than 50% of the network, because he was the first to do gpu mining back then

being the first with gpu is not much different than being the first with cpu

I don't remember this. Link?

his personal situation may have changed, his outlook on the future of bitcoin may have changed (he may be unhappy on how the block size debate is panning out, among other things), the price of bitcoin may be higher by the time he wishes to cash out, the total supply of bitcoin would be higher now then previously, the liquidity of the bitcoin markets may be higher when he cashes out then what it was previously

Satoshi's Holy Hoard isn't useless.  To the contrary, it exemplifies Bitcoin's utility as a successful, radically deflationary store of value with a strictly enforced/upheld social contract.

It also serves as a canary in case of a successful exploit, because that prize is first in line to be stolen.

As a bug finding bounty they are the ultimate incentive, and so their continued security and value demonstrate Bitcoin's bespoke resiliency and longevity.

When Satoshi's coins are priceless, perhaps He will use them to fund a long term space colonization program, including life extension and nanotech....

I think that only satoshi could decide what he want to do with his bitcoin.
Maybe he want move them in a specific way and in a certain time....

I'll thank you to read the entire thread before replying.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/ArtForz, apaprently he had only 25% of the network, still huge, equal to 1800 coins per day, now multiply this even for 1 month only and it's already 54k coins

Saying that Satoshi doesn't hold the private keys to access his coins is an assumption that shouldn't be made unless the hypothetical scenario of Quantum computing threatening bitcoin's cryptography become plausible.
If that's the case, I'm pretty sure that the majority of people would agree with what theymos says and seek to protect bitcoin. It's sad that people are misinterpreting what theymos said, if QC started posing a thread every party holding bitcoin would seek to save his coins.

That is a pretty bad idea. So he's basically saying that anyone with old coins can expect them gone in a couple of years?

It's basically preventing bitcoin from working as a savings system.

Inflation is not a problem with bitcoin. Even with 1 million bitcoins pumped into the system that only represents less than 5% of the entire bitcoin supply - which is less inflation yearly than most of the countries on earth.

Hindsight is 20/20. When the price was $1000, people thought it would keep going up. Some excited people thought it would be $10,000 within five years. Which might still happen, who knows? But if devs start arbitrarily destroying people's coins, there will be a rush to sell before your coins are destroyed as well, and bitcoin's price will  plummet to nothing.

This comment really isn't much different than the "Bill Gates 640K" debacle:This comment certainly doesn't have history on its side:I'm sure plenty of people always have and always will misuse public/employer property, but we will only know about the ones who get caught.

QC = Quantum Computing or Quantum Computer

Hypothetically if QC ever becomes a threat to the current signature algorithm used by Bitcoin (elliptical curve) then a different signature algorithm could be phased in to hypothetically create new addresses types that would be more resistant to being hacked by QC, hence "QC resistant addresses".  Everyone would then be encourage to move their coins from their current addresses (type 1xxxx and 3xxxxx) to these hypothetically created new addresses and then their coins would be safe from being hacked by a QC.

Current generation of QC can do only very menial things like factor a two digit number.  In other words QC is barely in its infancy.  It is extremely difficult to do and will take years if not decades to create a machines capable of cracking elliptical curve signatures.

Just google "bitcoin quantum computing" either here on this forum or on the internet in general.  There are dozens of thread on this subject here on this forum.

Why should we be able to decide what to do with satoshis coins?
Its not our property. In fact, as we're spearking, its not anyone's property as we don't even know Satoshi is a person, a collective, the FBI or even me. No one should be able to decide.

It would be better solution to move the Satoshi's coins to a designated address, where anybody understands who is the actual owner.


This would mean that once Satoshi Nakamoto actually moves the coins, all the market participants would be aware of the fact.

This could serve as an important alert mechanism, to make sure once Bitcoin is faced with a serious threat, a Satoshi moving the coins
would make the  alarm bells set off and issue a powerful signal to the network.

This is especially important given that in the latest Bitcoin Core release, the old alert mechanism is removed.

I think that these coins and everyone's coins should be left as they are, if people want to store them away for 20 years then they should have that choice.

With all the drama raging, everyone already at each other's throats, why would someone bring up quantum computers breaking Bitcoin and start talking about destroying Satoshi's coins?
Help me out with this :-\

So true. When I heard about IBMs cloud quantum computer I freaked out, thinking the public would finally have a way to brute force into standard bitcoin wallets. Then I actually found out what 5 qubits worth of qc is worth towards that end (not too much) and realized q computing has a veeeery long way to go before it poses that type of threat.

Now DWave might figure something out given more time.. We will see.

I have been here a pretty long time and if you stick around you will discover the following to be absolutely true:

    Bitcoin == Drama

It was true when I joined, it has been true the entire time I have been involved.

That is what makes it fun.

For some reason there is hostility developing towards Satoshi. Which is incredible because without him, there would be no cryptocurrency.

Makes you wonder what would happen if Christ returned - I expect he'd be lynched and crucified in a jiffy by all his loyal supporters.

Maybe theymos was actually using reverse psychology to make a hidden point. That could be he is ridiculing those who say there might be a potential but unproven back door in Bitcoin, by pointing out that such unproven FUD would justify stealing Satoshi's coins in advance to prevent the hacker from causing havoc.

Perhaps he is slyly trying to refute my hypothesizing about a back door in Bitcoin (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1459846.msg14766475#msg14766475) (but my technical argument was not about a quantum computing attack).

People need to calm down. It seems like the article is fabricate and that the quote is a lie.

It does seem like the ecosystem is slowly transforming to 'DramaLand'.

Indeed. What's to prevent this from happening from someone else's coins?

---

---

Updated post.

And they would take his gold coins to ensure nobody else will steal them.

Satoshi's coins are already destroyed.  When Satoshi got sick and was hospitalized his mom got rid of his computers, she never liked them.  Satoshi is OK now but he doesn't have any of the private keys.

Well this is not looking good if they just broke the  ECDSA-protected bitcoin addresses then everything is done. Many people will lose their faith in bitcoin . So i think this is not the good idea of destroying the bitcoins of Satoshi also i don't understand what kind of threat we will face from Bitcoins of Satoshi ? He is the owner at least we should allow him to use his coins ?

Well i see no use to get those coins destroyed when those coins could be used to sponsor a program that saves people,like doctors without borders that is doing an amazing work and always need support,soo i dont see the why would this coins being destroyed an option,would be better it changes hands and support something .

Can confirm; came for the liberation technology, stayed for the endless popcorn.

https://i.imgur.com/XVOa18u.gif

destroying anyones Bitcoins poses much more of a threat than someone dumping Satoshis coins (how, and where, would anyone be able to do that, huh?)

Maybe Satoshi is in jail in some fucked-up country? Maybe if he gets out in 10 years, he wants his digital stash?

I do see the security issue; the question is how that could be fixed without destroying coins.

It should work like this: coins that have been moved are more secure...those that dont have been moved are less secure...but they are not destroyed. It should be up to everyone to decide whether to move their coins to new, better protected addresses or not.  :)

I for one, don't want to see Theymos lose any of his coins.  Those coins are likely to be stolen any minute.  Theymos doesn't handle his keys respectfully enough and some bad guy is likely to just get in there and take his coins.  For his own protection, we should all just take Theymos' coins from him and put them somewhere 'safe'.  Or, we could just destroy his coins so they can't be stolen.  Either way, Theymos needs and deserves this protection.

My view is if he WAS Japanese...Satoshi..the Earthquake in Japan wiped out a lot of folk in the coastal cities (not sure of timeline) my guess...but whole communities of 30k plus gone.

Would be a bummer if there is a Tulip Trust of BTC that becomes available in 20/20 and say Craig Wright was part of the group (again imho) that setup such...say that consisted

of that Dave K guy (who passed) and Hal Finney (who passed) ...if he is the last guy to have access to that ..he seems pretty pissed and could flush it all and BTC with it.

(Satoshi or part of the group there of ..in full Anarchist Mode....sheesh .....Wikipedia from then on would list the Tulip Panic and Bitcoin Panic on the same frigging page

forever into the future as a cautionary tale if that was to happen)

shudder....scared myself :(

But to topic.....naw should not be destroyed is probably 1) lost 2) lost due to Satoshi passing (at least on very early early keys when worth little) 3) Satoshi is the "Green Hornet" and does not need the $$$$ :)

A better idea would be to do a fork if you want to retrieve some coins which is what most would not agree on. The coins could get stolen if quantum computing becomes a reality nevertheless. If someone does gain access to majority of the coins, they can do anything with it and manipulate the market. However, I doubt that Bitcoin would be the first to get cracked if quantum computing becomes a reality.

I think there is a problem: the first keys of the first year or something, are not safe from QC attacks because they were signed in a different way. QC attacks are not a problem in addresses created after 2012 or something like that. I don't know the details but I know the QC attack only applies for old addresses that never reused addresses. Of course we should look for a way to make all addresses ever QC resistant and not have to resort to destroying coins which is like the last step one should take. In fact, I argue that maybe it's better that those coins stay where they are and if they get hacked and stolen then so be it, bad luck for the owner, he should have put some attention and he had a decade to do so. Of course, if the owner died, then the coins will eventually get hacked no matter what.

Even if this "story" was true, i.e. it actually happened, the coins would not be destroyed. You didn't even read the article nor previous posts.

Wrong. The algorithm used can always be changed.

Sure, but how many years would that take? Considering the blitzkrieg speed of scaling?

Is it possible to do that tho, to already existing addresses? Then why is theymos even considering to delete the coins instead of changing the algorithm? that's stupid. If changing the algorithm solves the problem, I dont understand why theymos said it would be a good idea to destroy the coins. I don't think theymos would say this out of nowhere, so there must be an explanation. In any case, I don't think there will ever be a consensus reached to destroy coins, most people dont like the idea and would rather see the coins hacked than destroyed.

Is there any way to know when a coin was generated in block chain? if so then should make it so oldest coins if ever were to be moved more miner fee would be taken from it.
Like when you punch hole a dollar bill, still has value for that enables the central bank to print new ones.
Point is if you have the coins from old blocks of the chain value decreases, since transaction fee increases.
However I'm not sure if coins in block chain could be time stamped.? huuuh?

There were a lot of "good reasons" publicized behind stealing the property of the other during history. Whatever good were or not those reasons, I still call it stealing.

I'm sure that plenty of people has various "alarms" that'll "ring" if any coin is moved away from Satoshi's wallets. The ones fearing a dump, will dump. The rest will continue buying, holding or spending their BTC as usual. The price will be affected only for short term. So the price is not a good reason. It's a greedy reason.
Others fear those wallets will be hacked. Hmm.. the consensus was that Bitcoin is safe from hacking.

So, back to the subject. There are no valid reasons to steal (and dispose) somebody else's property. None at all.

It is actually sad that this needs saying - and in the bitcoin community of all places.

I might have missed something here.  How would already existing coins somehoe result in a large inflation?
There have been around for ages, they are a known quanitity, they have nothing to do with inflation.

Also how are they going to get stolen, is he saying that a persistent thief can crack a bitcoin wallet?

OP_LAMPORT seems the only acceptable way to protect satoshi's coins while the other solution is very dangerous and devs could use it to destroy someone's else bitcoin.

Yeah...no.  This goes against everything that bitcoin is about to dictate what will happen with certain bitcoins.  This is a decentralized situation and should remain so by people minding their own business with their own bitcoins.

This is one thing that Theymos will have to respectfully disagree about. I can't support any activity that allows control over another persons coins. To me, this is antithetical to the unassailable ownership of bitcoin.

Let's just stay out of each others cool-aid.  ;)

All that can be done with them is to be dropped to the market. Since the amount is huge, the price will plummet for a (short?) while.


The wallet cannot be cracked. But the computer that held the private keys may get on wrong hands and the private keys used to.. make a random person rich.


Nicely said :)

When this topic first came up I assumed it was a prank or vicious smear against Theymos or something. I won't comment on it for the most part, except to offer a personal preference and a few related thoughts:

1. I thought it entirely reasonable that I might accumulate (HODL) bitcoin for the rest of my life, eventually passing on at least some portion of it to my children (the rest going to charity). I might reasonably live another 40 years or more. And I don't see why my children should need to touch the bitcoin they inherit either - the private keys could be passed on to future generations. Thus, my expectation all along has been that I might not move my bitcoin for decades. Bitcoin passed from generation to generation could remain untouched for a century or more.

2. Every time I make a bitcoin transaction between my own accounts I'm taking a risk, in one form or another, of exposing my private keys (and passwords). Right now my main holding of bitcoin is in a wallet from which I've never done a withdrawal, and have no plans to do so. Thus, so long as the private key was not compromised when I set it up (and I'd likely know that by now), it will remain safe so long as I don't make any transactions (or otherwise lose my private key). I'd really prefer to keep my risk to a minimum by NOT being forced to move my bitcoin on some periodic basis.

3. I really dislike the idea that a bitcoin investor has to keep up to speed with changes in the protocol or risk losing their investment. It shouldn't be a requirement that we have to check in and read up on version changes or whatnot on some periodic basis, just to keep our coins safe. Granted it is a good practice to keep up to speed with things so we can be aware of changes in how we use bitcoin, but our coins themselves should be safe so long as they are just sitting there.

As far as I know, the algorithm checks the age of the coin itself. (Correct me if I'm wrong here). This is where mixers are very useful. Oldies are mixed with freshly minted coins to avoid those high transaction fees.

Make it 6 digit :P

In 2001, Shor's algorithm was demonstrated by a group at IBM, who factored 15 into 3 × 5, using an NMR implementation of a quantum computer with 7 qubits.[4] After IBM's implementation, two independent groups, one at the University of Science and Technology of China, and the other one at the University of Queensland, have implemented Shor's algorithm using photonic qubits, emphasizing that multi-qubit entanglement was observed when running the Shor's algorithm circuits.[5][6] In 2012, the factorization of 15 was repeated.[7] Also in 2012, the factorization of 21 was achieved, setting the record for the largest number factored with a quantum computer.[8] In April 2012, the factorization of 143 was achieved, although this used adiabatic quantum computation rather than Shor's algorithm.[9] In November 2014, it was discovered that this 2012 adiabatic quantum computation had also factored larger numbers, the largest being 56153.[10][11] Since April 2016, the largest integer factored on a quantum device is 200099, using D-Wave 2X quantum processor [1].

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

Theymos just thinks he knows better about a lot of shit and he doesn't care that the larger community can't see his vision.  His 'right' is very right and if you don't like it you are going to be deleted.  Hitler was the last guy who believed his way was so correct. 

I agree with most of what you are saying, but you do not address the reason why we
are even talking about this issue of moving coins to the new system.

What would be the solution for you (and others like you), within your context and desires
stated above, if the current cryptography associated with our privatekey(s) are known to
be very vulnerable to brute force and theft by an advanced QC in 5-25 years?

Can't it be assumed that at some point in the future we will all need to switch to stronger
privatekey cryptography? Are you and others assuming that our current encryption type
will be equally as strong from generation to generation, passing those HODLed privatekey(s)?




... And there goes the thread, "A wild Hitler appears!".

If you're directly responding to the quote in the title, theymos has never said that. This is a false quote.

Correction: You think that theymos thinks that.

Read my previous post before responding.

Would it be correct to say that Theymos is talking about a much bigger leap into altcoinland than eg. raising blocksize would be?

My personal opinion is that those are Satoshi's coin. Only he has the rights to determine its disposal.

I was. Thank you for the correction. I forgot I was at bitcointalk for a moment.  :D

I wouldn't be surprised if the other part is AI related (pattern-recognition related). AI is damn good at spotting patterns that we miss. And with prime numbers starting to have patterns pop-out*, it means that if the underlying order can be understood, then their appearance can be predicted and thus prime-based encryption is done even without QCs.

* http://www.nature.com/news/peculiar-pattern-found-in-random-prime-numbers-1.19550

One of Bitcoins fundamental features is censorship resistance. Interfering with or "destroying" anyone's bitcoins is the same as steeling them.   

Ok, let's burn the Satoshi Coins! :D

That's a fair point. I'm a little bit skeptical about QC and whether a future, actual QC can indeed identify private keys efficiently. But I could be wrong. If I'm wrong then you're right, we'd need to conduct a wholesale migration of bitcoin funds to new QC-safe algorithms.

So in that case I agree we need to migrate and anyone who doesn't would likely lose their bitcoin. But I would urge that such a migration observe certain principles - that a maximum amount of warning time be employed, with widespread advertising within the bitcoin ecosystem and clear instructions that are as simple as possible on what needs to be done. And if possible, I'd support having a process by which someone who manages to miss all the advertising (I can think of many valid reasons why this might happen) can still migrate their bitcoin or otherwise be recompensed after appropriate review.

(The transition from old Piggycoin to New Piggycoin in the altcoin world is a case in point. As I recall, millions of new coins were unclaimed after 12 months, despite it being a young currency that you'd expect holders to pay close attention to. As cryptocurrency matures this problem could grow more severe.)

Once again, I agree with your statements.
The only issue that really exists and seems to be what people are upset about is,
what happens to the old coins that never move to the new protected addresses?
Do we lock/void them, destroy/burn them, re-insert them for re-mining,
re-distribute them for charity, or other ?

I think, unfortunately, the only thing we can do, is do nothing, since anything other
than nothing would be seen as against the original vision/intention/purpose of Bitcoin.
I don't know much about Piggycoin or its transition, but the issue here is, when someone
doesn't claim and move their coins, they are effectively allowing the theoretical future
advanced QC to take them and transfer them to its own controlled protected address.

Whatever our future decision is, it potentially will be a lose/lose situation. It may be best
in the long run to not do anything with the "dead" coins and let the QC take them, IMO.

I think the big picture here is that the security of the project may be compromised by technological advances in the future.  By extrapolating the threats of those technological advances, we may be able to shunt the consequences of more advanced technology and insure bitcoin's security keeps pace with the industry.  Advances in technology are not the only threat; advances in mathematics and analytics also pose a threat to the network's security.  

The way we approach the matter will determine the projects success.  We must ask ourselves: what is the goal of setting up this "trustless" system?  Is it a wealth grab, or is it a system by which  we might foster and force social and political change?

My only point here is that bitcoin is worth more than our personal stakes in the project....measuring it's value against some "supposed" store of wealth is naive.  The value of bitcoin is in the fact that it is a trustless, decentralized, mechanism that allows the network to interact without third party interference.  Once we break that mechanism by interfering as a third party, whether by consensus or some other means, then it loses it's reputation for having the ability to bring about larger social changes.  We have to remember this: sometimes the "whole" is the third party that is interfering!  

We shouldn't even be thinking about touching anybody else's stake in the project because that breaks the intention of the chain!

Importing fake /r/btc stories about "zomg thermos gonna sensor ship satoshi's coinz" shows how bored we drama addicts are now the Civil War is over.   :D

Bitcoin Judas using the absurd rumor for click bait also demonstrates he's desperate for traffic, as his interest in his rump forum evaporates (in the manner of XT) like a dream in the morning.

I bet (but not on casino.bitcoin.com) Ver is glad the Fake Satoshi story distracted everyone from his self-publicized inability (https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4h3agw/roger_ver_tries_to_intentionally_spend/) to understand you can't spend unconfirmed outputs (duh!).

This is somehow worst. Who gives the right to destroy people's money. Even he mined almost 1million amount of bitcoin, you don't have the right to destroy it though just to comply with your perspectives. For the soft fork solution I am more into securing the address "OP_LAMPORT" . I think if we use this method all users will benefit into it.

You're right, Jean Pierre clearly needs to lrn 2 punctuate right.
Below are a few examples of better quotation marks usage, with a bonus informal inline citation:

"I think that the very-rough [sic] consensus is that old coins should be destroyed before they are stolen to prevent disastrous monetary inflation."--Theymos, https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4isxjr/petition_to_protect_satoshis_coins/d30we6f

From this we can reasonably infer no more than theymos' understanding of the situation, i.e. he thinks "that there is a "very-rough [sic] consensus ... that old coins should be destroyed before they are stolen."
Assuming that he himself is a part of that "very-rough [sic] consensus," or that the "old coins should be destroyed before they are stolen" belong to Satoshi would be no more than that -- an assumption.

That's what you meant, right?

You forgot that Bitcoin.com - "related people" love this forum, theymos and Core. ::)

I meant what I said; he has never stated the following:"Bitcoins Belonging to Satoshi Should Be Destroyed”.

He added an update on reddit and stated that there was no clear way to identify for sure which coins are satoshi's.

In other words, "Bitcoins Belonging to Satoshi Should Be Destroyed” is incorrect. What theymos actually did say in the topic titled "Petition to Protect [and by "protect" OP means "destroy" lol -ed.] Satoshi's Coins" was that ALL old coins, not just Satoshis', "should be destroyed before they are stolen to prevent disastrous monetary inflation."
Thanks for clearing that up :)

Unfortunately I'll have to disagree with theymos too. Nobody can guarantee that these coins are lost, nor hacked and I don't think people joined Bitcoin back then (or join Bitcoin now) because eventually some coins will be lost and all other will have a bigger value...

Did you read the thread?

Answer:  Obviously not.

Did you spam your signature campaign?

Answer:  Of course.

I was just about to post the same thing and you've beat me to it. That post has zero relevance to the whole thread, maybe a bit to OP but that is it.

Indeed. This is not what theymos said.

It is clear that Bitcoin.com tried to undermine theymos with this, knowing that the idea would get a backlash from the community as soon as people see the quote: "Bitcoins Belonging to Satoshi Should Be Destroyed”

One more question:

Are you really a Hero member (actually been here long enough to be a Hero)?

No, I bought this account so I could spam the forum.

what a nonsense is that from Theymos? This is a completely ridiculous idea that no one will ever support.

So, if a person spent tens of thousands to millions of dollars to buy miners and mined for a while, then got in a bar fight and killed a man, then went to prison for 20 years, when he gets out his investment is gone?

Same if he goes into a coma for 30 years then wakes up.

Same if he is in a plane/ship crash and washes up on a unmapped tropical island for 15 years.

What about the astronaut on the moon or mars for 10 years.

Lots of other scenarios.

^^It's the antithesis frickin' opposite of what bitcoin is meant to be. Remember catchy blurbs like "secured by math, not [corruptible] people"?
Change that to "secured by maths, except for when theymos decides to help out. Then your money's gone."


To be clear, you feel that our Rogerian Enemy's choice to single out Satoshi was an underhanded attempt to undermine theymos.
Had they only not lied, but said "Theymos proposes to destroy ALL the coins mined prior to 2012, not just Satoshi's," bitcoin community would have applauded the idea?

In the original quote I believe what Theymos actually said was the bitcoins ought to be raffled off. I don't have the link handy.



@Adam You mean the raffle?

+1

Better yet:  What about coin trapped in a time lock (CLTV)?  Or trust?  What about "smart contracts" and escrow? There's just too many reasons why this line of reasoning is absurd. However, it doesn't mitigate the fact that there may be a serious concern about the advancement in technology and the futuristic security of the block chain ledger. All these things will need to be discussed sooner or later.... Having a dialogue about these issues now is very astute and demonstrates an aforethought.  The remedy is a whole different creature altogether, but it's best to leave no rock unrolled. Right?

Yes, this concept can have several seats. While I initially responded on this because it touched a wtf?! place in my heart, it's become clear now that this was an intentional misquote, and the T-Man himself has expressed in this very thread that he did not intend to be construed as he had. This is bitcoin.com click bait, we can move on

We all wouldn't even be here if Satoshi didn't make Bitcoins. He made the best currency, in my opinion, in the world. Doesn't he deserve a reward for doing that?

Theymos is known to be pro censorship when the end results suits his interest.

there's that, and also the fact that it would basically prove bitcoin as a failed experiment.
The network was able to "destroy" someone's ( and not just anyone's ) coins without the PK? O_o?
i think there's simply no way any significant hashing power would back this most ridiculous fork proposal, the idea is just a crazy though. when / where is this quote from anyway?

The story must be true because it's been Roger VERified.   :D

https://news.bitcoin.com/theymos-bitcoins-satoshi-destroyed

How do coins that are never spent factored into this? I mean, those addresses that do not have public keys yet, because the coins have not been spent and that particular address has not been reused?

Isn't it that bitcoins are protected by at least 2 layers of encryption: The public / private keys, and a hash which results in the bitcoin address?

I can understand coins that are in an address (such as a vanity address or a public donation address) that is reused (spent change goes back to it or people send coins to it constantly).

Any address that exists has a public key and as a result, a private key.
The current system is safe and the ability to crack a private key with no spends is almost impossible.
But with an advanced QC, which is what is the purpose of this discussion, it can crack it.
Coins that are never spent do not matter with an advanced QC situation.

Currently, the more txs that are sent out from a single address, reduces that address' "protection".
But with the speculative QC, the private key cryptography we use now is not enough.
In theory, the advanced QC will be able to brake all codes and all encryption world wide in short time.

Private keys would be cakewalk for this theoretical system.
It is important to remember, that all codes/encryption will be broken over time.
What we have to do, is change to a stronger encryption before we get compromised.

Destroying other people's coins is nonsense. How it it supposed to be done anyway? new miner rules? Brue force them and then destroy them?

ask Craig Wright for them!    ;D ;D ;D

He isn't destroying anything, he is just saying that the coins should be destroyed. But you are completely correct, no one has the right to destroy someone else's money. BTW I think all of Donald Trump's money should be destroyed. :)

Theymos is right on this.

Let's see how many of you are crying when some bad ass hacker comes along, gains access and dumps 1,000,000 BTC on the market.

It will be welcome to December 2011 all over again

But Hey

I firmly believe in global purification through nuclear annihilation anyway.


~BCX~


https://i.imgflip.com/144m2v.jpg

It's a profound decision for Bitcoin, does the public fear of "dumpage" bestow the right to the Core to delete/nullify the ownership of the obstinate/absent individual key holder via a soft fork? pre or post quantum?

The Bitcoin client's built-in solo miner paid directly to a public key, not an address. So there's over a million BTC in the form of unspent 50-BTC block rewards which are vulnerable to a break in ECDSA. This is the main concern.

Unspent addresses are OK, at least until quantum computers get so fast that they can break keys within the few minutes between when you spend from such an address to when it gets confirmed. Contrary to what someone said earlier, SHA-256 and RIPEMD-160 are OK. QC halves the number of bits of security for symmetric crypto. SHA-256 has 128 bits of security under QC, etc.  Whereas all asymmetric crypto used today is totally broken (ie. the complexity of breaking a key is polynomial w.r.t the key's length under QC, though it still might take some time).

Theymos is wrong!

Let's see how many of you are crying when Satoshi Nakamoto comes along and dumps 1 Mio Bitcoins on the market.

This risk was always present and when asked about Bitcoin security, people tend to post a picture of the sun. You here stuff, like "Laws of Thermodynamics forbid Bitcoin to be hacked" or "Bitcoin is protected by the power of Math" etc pp.

If somebody was able to hack Bitcoin now, we are finished with it. Too many people will lose their money and trust.

ok saying in the future this security concern is legit...could they not 'tweak' the code and put satoshi's coin in a side vault (chain?) I don't code and have it accessed in that manner..ie the private key pops the lid and protocol of such is proved...if so......it would NOT be an instant transaction because of this 'hacking" issue...but again its been flagged as accessed..and the coin may not be able to be dumped completely ASAP ...but would be pretty straight forwad...flag'd in such a manner

sorta a 'side wallet/chain for the founders coins' due to the security concerns you raise above (all sitting on the web wallet)

again i don't code assuming i have this right ?



again

I understand the potential security concerns but I don't think it really matters at this time. As people are unable to figure out who Satoshi is, there will be no links to finding ip addresses or whatever to hack into his private stash. Hacking private keys is also not viable at the moment, so there really is nothing to be afraid about.

Also, this is assuming that all his coins are linked to the same private key. Wouldn't it make more sense if there are hundreds of keys for testing purposes? Hacking 1 million coins in one go is very unlikely.

I think it is very unwise to set a fate for unused coins. What if I wamt to store some coins for 10 years? Do I have to start moving them every now and then exposing them to outside threats? Not wise Imo.

Once hacking of private keys is possible, and coins need to be moved to more secure private keys, than it would be a different story.

good point...we should be able to see such coming down the pike a bit before such actions of 'saving' the accounts from hacks need to be considered....

My fear is that 'Craig Wright' WHILE HE IS NOT Satoshi he may have been in a group of such. Say like Dave K. (forget last name) who passed and Hal Finey ....who also passed.

If they DID set up such a Tulip Fund as Craig Wright says that he can get access to in 2020....well hell he seems pretty bitter he could sell them all and FLUSH

btc prices down to under to sub 10 bucks maybe (with the panic)....(REMEMBER: he did NOT out himself..he was pushed into the limelight..just saying)

That would be interesting in a "the titanic can not sink' kinda argument on the whole question of Satoshi's coins...ie hack not needed if one is the  pissed off last man standing

of the Satoshi 'Group' as it were.... decides to 'act' in such a manner anyway....ie I'll show you guys...he could even do it anonymously no way to tell if another member of such

a group or the 'real' Satoshi did something like this for 'giggles' anyway ....one way to stay anonymous kill the golden goose...Satoshi if he is still alive...has other wallets unknown to

us all I'd think....take $$$ out from now till 2020 .....flush the hoards folk know about..kill the project..sit back $$$ made before the crash on coins cashed out.....your autonomy and

unknown identity  is secure ...and no fuss no muss everyone stops caring ...would be like a moot point if btc was just paycoin in value in such an apocalypse

and you still have more $$$ then you could ever spend. (damn this is one scary crypto movie) :(

 .

(damn scared myself I did) :(

I think this is a strategy to destroy a currency system that is already running (bitcoin). And it is most likely not going to happen, because the bitcoin has become better currency from other currencies. I think the steps taken will not work and is not guaranteed its success

If core developers has the power to destroy bitcoins then i consider bitcoin not safe, what if in the future they decide to destroy most of the coins that we might have on our wallets, this idea is not good and it's not what bitcoin was developed for.

The whole article is and especially this quote.

No. That's not what he proposed either.

They don't have this kind of 'power' at all. It comes down to the community and industry.

According to him, coins prior to Bitcoin-Qt version 0.5 are affected. Did he propose to selectively destroy some coins, but not others?
This is like pulling teeth :(


Didn't you say that 99% of the people here "don't even understand what Big O notation is" (inb4 paraphrase, not an exact quote)? How are these simpletons gonna understand what the devs are proposing? And what of the people who are simply hodling their BTC & not sodling it, like, you know, Satoshi? How do they even have a say in this?

It was originally a thread on the bitcoin subreddit that theymos wrote himself. Nobody forced him to write it either, he was just saying what he really thought and genuinely didn't see a problem with what he was saying:

Here is the original comment:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/4isxjr/petition_to_protect_satoshis_coins/d30we6f


It is wrong on so many levels it is unbelievable. People joined bitcoin knowing there would be a maximum number of coins - not that Satoshi's coins would be permanently lost and that "allowing them to be recovered" would "violate" the principle of the maximum number of coins.

Nope.

I've said that and I stand by it.

1) If you think that in the case of such a proposal that everyone would be quiet, and that there wouldn't be 20 threads about it in this section, then there's something wrong with your perception of the community.
2) They have a say by refusing to adopt the next version and/or switching to other implementations.
As an example, my node would never be upgraded to a version that tries to 'destroy other peoples' coins.

See what I mean about pulling teeth?
1. Sure there will be 20 threads, there are 20 threads on just about everything, "Why do banks hate bitcoin," "Why do people hate bitcoin," "Why should we use bitcoin," Why should people use bitcoin," etc., etc. How would these 20 threads change anything? Would starting 20 "Death is unfair!!1!" threads make death disappear?
Sometimes I just don't understand how people around here think :(

2. How would it matter if Satoshi (or any person simply hodling BTC) refuses to "upgraded to a version that tries to 'destroy other peoples' coins"? A detailed explanation plz.

Nope, you have no point here.

So staying quiet and not talking about it solves the problem? Good to know.

Very detailed explanation: The effect is that same as when people refused to upgrade to "Bitcoin Stupidity" (aka Bitcoin Classic). ;)

---

---

Update:
I may or may not have used that, however there's a reason why I've used this 'example' for this specific user.

I'm almost certain you were one of the people tossing around the altcoin argument against XT and Classic, in which case this completely valid example is awfully hypocritical.  However, as much as I disagreed with the censorship during the big block debate, and as much as I disagreed with segwit as a soft fork vs a hard fork to fix the issue (regardless of whether such hard fork involved segwit, big block, or both), I absolutely agree with Theymos that this needs discussed.  I also disagree with the general politicizing of speech that is happening here, as I don't believe his comments indicate the intentions being insinuated.  Finally, while hiscomment actually sounded accurate to me at first, as I continue to lurk in this thread, I am reminded of discussions about this years ago, and IIRC (which is 50% likely), before the "value" of Bitcoin clouded judgment of hodlers, I think the very rough consensus was that when the encryption is broken (in 100 years with plenty of time to switch encryption measures before any losses [sarcasm]forget Moore's law, which obviously has to break since math =/= infinite[/sarcasm]), recovery of lost/forgotten coins wouldn't be a big deal.  Assuming my recollection is correct, kudos to those in this thread who have maintained that vision, and shame on the "Chicken Little" crowd.  To be clear, I wouldn't put myself or Theymos in either of those groups.

what the hell, you come back to bitcointalk after being away for a while just to see this topic on top of discussion section.

then you read a little bit of it and realize it was just a drama and click bait :D

i missed bitcoin drama

See what I mean about pulling teeth?
Did I suggest being quiet would solve anything? Not to my knowledge. Pointed out that starting 20 threads will prove as effective as wishing Core into the cornfield, yes. Suggesting that staying quiet solves anything? Hell no.

I remember now. I said that would be as effective as starting 20 threads protesting death. Please don't misinterpret that as me suggesting we could achieve immortality by staying quiet. Because that's not what I'm saying at all.

I asked for a detailed explanation. You gave me a nonsensical one. Like pulling teeth :(

Let me extrapolate that for you:
1) Core devs make evil update
2) Users and miners don't update to evil version
3) Nothing changes because users and miners are still running old version

What detail is missing?

Maybe you are suggesting only "Satoshi" doesn't upgrade and everyone else is evil?  In that case, "Satoshi" not upgrading wouldn't help because the design is centered around consensus and we would have consensus that evil is the correct version.

Maybe you don't realize that all full nodes have to validate blocks.  If all users run full nodes and don't upgrade to evil version but all miners do upgrade, then not only will propagation of the evil blocks be hindered, but there will further be no users accepting/buying coins from miners and no miners mining fees from user transactions.  In this scenario, any incentive for the miners to upgrade becomes nullified and they switch back to the version users are running.  Of course, the users could decide to upgrade before the miners decide to downgrade, however at that point, the users no have longer not upgraded.

Except for all the idiots that jump in with their idiot opinions about what they think this thread might be about based solely on the title this has been a pretty interesting thread.

For those too lazy to go back and find out what we are really talking about, here is a summary:


Now my opinion.  Yes I have one too.

Assuming that most of the 21M coins have been mined by the time this happens and assuming there are about 1M highly vulnerable coins in the blockchain then don't worry about it at all.  In other words just let those 1M coins, the most highly vulnerable coins, the easy pickings, be stolen by the people with the QC.  The worst case scenario is that the brilliant people who have access to the most advanced technology are also the stupidest people or are a nefarious actor and they dump the entire 1M coins on the open market.  Two things will happen:

1) The price will go into the toilet for a while, those that don't panic will get to buy up a bunch of cheap coins and make a fortune when the price recovers, those that panic will lose everything.  In other words business as usual in Bitcoin land.

2) We will know this has happened so everyone that has their coins on the remaining vulnerable addresses will immediately move their coins to the new QC safe addresses - problem solved.

This may well be the least controversial approach, especially if there are several competing QC implementations owned by different parties and if these coins cannot be "stolen" all at once but rather "re-mined" over a period of time.

Yes, I agree.  This is the best approach but alas it is too simple, there is no real controversy, and you can't get clicks and sell ad space on your blog with the title "Bitcoin:  working just fine, no need to change it"

I think Theymos is worried that Wright and his fund may have access to some early coins and wants to give core the power to remove them if it proves to be the case. This is just a wild guess, time will see how this plays out.

No blacklisting coins, no reversing transactions or were no better than paypal.

The detail you are missing is it's irrelevant if Satoshi upgrades his node or not. What difference would it make if he does or he doesn't? He may hold most of the coins, but he doesn't hold most of the hashpower or even most of the nodes :(

Let me try a different tack:
Imagine yourself as a pastel-colored pony, living in Equestria, where Bit coins are used as money. Bear with me, I'm just making you imagine this stuff to stress that the scenario is purely hypothetical (Bit coins¹ actually are the currency of Equestria, but that's purely coincidental).

1. Be Princes Luna, hold the lion's share of Bit coins, win a free vacation from the government, at Club Fed be sent to Moon by your sister, Celestia.
2. A Royal Edict is announced: Royal Guard will destroy all Bit coins minted prior to 2011-11-21, when Bitcoin-Qt version 0.5.0 was released, because those old coins  "should be destroyed before they are stolen to prevent disastrous monetary inflation." (yeah, Celestia does sound a bit like theymos, but again, pure coincidence).

3. You, Luna, wat do?
Clearly all your coins will be gone, clearly you are the one who will suffer most from this (because it's mostly YOUR coins that will be destroyed).
Clearly other ponies can only profit from this, because even Ponka knows that having fewer total Bit coins in Equestria means that her share will be worth more (that sort of simplistic "reduced supply increases demand" mentality is pretty common in Equestria, a stunted misapplication of some  Ponyville school of economics ideas, but i digress...). So it's in Ponka's (and Rara's and every other pone's) rational self-interest to upgrade to Friendship Core 0.13.

You're losing all your coins, Luna, now wat?

---

TL;DR: You hold all the "early" bitcoins. The rest of bitcoiners (miners, exchanges, devs, people running nodes) do not. Devs decide to destroy early coins. This advantages *EVERYONE BUT YOU*.
wat do?

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1.
    http://img14.deviantart.net/8dbd/i/2013/076/5/7/ten_bit_coin___royal_equestrian_mint_by_tidalkraken-d5ydcl1.jpg

Stop posting your opinion when you've clearly no content from this thread. This is not about Wright and Theymos has built up his argument and position properly.

You either move your coins towards QC safe algorithms or you do nothing. If the person does not want to do that, then that is their problem, not ours.

This is a nice summary. Everyone who reads it should gain a little more insight as to why theymos has such a opinion. There's definitely not going to be general consensus right away, and BurtW's view is a example of that.

Lol, I'm liking how "Bitcoin is immune to human whim and corruption, secured by immutable laws of the universe, by maths and sciences!"*
You clearly didn't read my hypothetical, in which I obliquely alluded to Satoshi doing time @ Club Fed.

*Unless theymos decides to destroy your coins, in which case your money's GONE baby! SFYL :(

I've already posted that I disagree with the suggestion that old coins be destroyed upthread.  Additionally, you are suffering from a common misperception that one person owns all of the old coins.  A number of people were mining since nearly the beginning.  Of those, a percentage are known dead.  Of the coins that haven't moved, there may very well be more owned by dead people than living people (whether or not satoshi is one of those people is irrelevant).  While said dead people may have made plans while alive to provide access to said coins, in cases where they did not, those coins will either remain at those addresses forever (unlikely unless we wipe ourselves out since technology never stops improving) or be taken by bad actors (not the end of the world, but what Theymos is worrying about).  Moreover, very early adopters have admitted to losing/selling/destroying storage media that had wallets with large numbers of bitcoin on them because they weren't valuable enough to worry about at the time.  Those coins will also either remain at those addresses forever or be taken by bad actors.  There is no way to truly fix this unless the encryption is so badly broken that the coins are already stolen, so either a bad actor gets the coins, or nobody does.  I believe the original vision of bitcoin would most likely indicate that the bad actor gets the coins, however, you need to understand that they likely don't move until we're dead and that Satoshi and/or other dead people don't get them either way.  Also, based on your partial quotes to both my and Lauda's most recent posts, it is pretty evident that you are either incompetent (can't read and comprehend the entire posts) or trolling.  The latter seems more likely, so this will be my last response to you in this thread.

I too believe that this is not the case, and we can't really know for sure either.

Exactly. The people that were quick to jump to conclusions here have not done their share of research and thinking. Theymos makes a fair point here.

I don't think that giving a grace period for them to move coins out of addresses with weak encryption and then 'locking' them or something is unreasonable. I'd rather have my coins be lost than some bad actor acquiring them and just dumping them for fiat.

That's what it is.

I completely understand the sentiment, however, the problem here is similar to that of the problem with colored coins.  It sets a precedent that threatens fungibility.  If you bury a fortune of cash in coffee cans and someone else digs it up, you can't expect the issuing government to void the bills.  The bitcoin development team and miners should absolutely be doing less than a government when it comes to controlling what users (including bad actors) do with the tokens.  Providing a way to protect said tokens against new threats is a must to keep the project alive, but preventing the use of tokens that weren't protected using that provision is a huge no-no.

ETA:  Another good analogy:  Say you have whatever treasure locked in a safe that you own.  If it turns out that locking mechanism used in that safe is vulnerable to lock-picking and the manufacturer opts to provide a new locking mechanism, that doesn't mean the manufacturer should take any other steps such as:
1) Go to the location of your safe and weld it shut because you haven't installed the new mechanism
2) Go to the location of your safe, pick the lock, remove the contents, and destroy them
3) Go to the location of your safe, pick the lock, remove the contents, and re-distribute them to other consumers who have changed their locking mechanisms

ETA2:  Due to the pseudonymous nature of bitcoin and the way encryption and private keys work, it is not possible for the safe manufacturer in my second analogy to do the following:
X1) Go to the location of your safe, break it open, remove the contents and store them until you contact them (because they have no way for you to prove who you are)
X2) Go to the location of your safe and replace the locking mechanism (because the new mechanism takes a new key, which you would not possess, moreover, if they could pick the old lock in order to take this step, a bad actor already would have done so an your treasure would be gone)

The analogy would only fit if the user either was dead or had no access to their own coins anymore. However, I absolutely understand both your and theymos'es view on this matter. The similar goes with HF's, it would set up a precedent that we do not want in the system. You make a very valid point as I disagree giving the development team and/or miners more "power" than they already have. It would however be quite unfortunate to see (e.g.) satoshi's coins being moved and directly dumped in the future due to weak encryption (but it is what it is).

I do not agree.  But I respect his opinion.

You clearly need some help with reading/English comprehension, so I've added some text effects to make it easier for you.
From the boldface text, it should be clear to you that the scenario is hypothetical. I also do not care if it's only Satoshi or dozens of people who will lose their coins, because destroying people's coins, coins which are not your coins, and therefore not yours to destroy, is bad, m'kay?

I don't want you guessing whether those people are dead or not, you greedy pig. The coins are theirs to do with as they please, even if that happens to be nothing.

>There is no way to truly fix this unless the encryption is so badly broken that the coins are already stolen.
Then Bitcoin is already broken.

If we find out tomorrow that the encryption for all coins mined prior to 2016 is broken, will you destroy those coins too? If you want to be safe, fork Bitcoin to a safe chain, one which destroys the coins which you think will become "unsafe" in the future, when the quantum computer cometh, or the Son of God returns to h4xx0r your blogchain. Or cash out into USD.
Jeez ::)

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TL;DR: I do not want theymos confiscating or destroying people's money, even if it's for the common good. Because you know who does that?

If Satoshi does not want those coins used, he has already destroyed the private key. They will not be used. Ever. By anyone.  If Satoshi wants those coins to use, who are we to tell him otherwise? 

Why des everyone assume that as soon as quantum crooks get their thieving paws (which exist in all states prior to t=0) on pre-2012 coins, that they'll immediately dump them, with mindnumbing slippage, on the market? What will they do with that much fiat? how will they possibly launder such a sum?
Why wouldn't they keep it in BTC, because Bitcoin is a superior way of storing your wealth, as it has been scientifically proven on numerous occasions in this very forum? Don't they know that their bitcoins are protected from human meddling by the immutable and eternal laws of the universe*?

*Protected from everyone but theymos, that is.

I do think that is unreasonable. If people don't want to move their old coins, that's their choice.


I respect your choice to do as you wish with your coins. Stay the hell away from my coins.

You people are nuts. It's a problem if he doesn't sell them. It's a problem if he never moves them. Make up your mind or mind your own ducking business.

So all these conditions can take many years, so why now publish this opinion and give media who just oversimplify things reason for next FUD against Bitcoin. Better to be quiet and share the opinion after some conditions happened already, unless theymos have reason to make the Bitcoin price lower, thats it.

What do you mean by 'destroyed the private key'? That does not prevent the "Quantum problem" at all.

What do you think is going to happen? They're going to transfer the coins to another address and wait? I doubt that.

Stop trolling. Theymos can't have an effect in this case (i.e. can't destroy anyone's coins).

And you would want to keep coins in unsafe encryption because of what exactly? "It's their choice" is not really an argument when the action is very irrational.

What do YOU think is going to happen, transfer the coins to an exchange, sell them for pennies on the dollar, and have to explain to the jackboots where their millions came from? Have you never dealt with legacy finance and its intrusive regulations before?
Why are the h4xx70rs any more likely to dump their BTC, when it's *exactly what Bitcoin is good for* -- storing wealth beyond the reach of statist pigs?

Either theymos is trolling himself (proposing something that can't be done), or he can. You stop trolling.

If I wanted someone to decide which of my actions are rational and which are not, I'd stay under nanny state's skirts.

Do you honestly think that Theymos can implement coin blacklisting by himself?

Implementing a workable coin blacklisting scheme would take consensus.  Big word, look it up.

Agreed. I think it would set a dangerous precedent if core began locking or destroying old coins.

But I'm unsure how anyone could stop them considering their current level of power, authority, and code control.

~~

You are assuming that core will get the default predominate wallet in 20-50 years when this is an actual issue?  Really...

"Consensus" is a nebulous term. It could mean 51% of the core devs agreeing on something, or 100% of everyone involved in Bitcoin agreeing on something.
Big word, complex concept, and you don't even need to look it up, I'll give you a link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consensus_decision-making#Decision_rules


Why would theymos pick this point in time, "Bitcoin's Civil War," to bring it up? It's as if he's shorting or something ::)

A handful of core players control this forum, the bitcoin reddit, the alert keys, the github, and bitcoin.org. <<< this equals bitcoin consensus

I've told you what I think.

No and no.

It's obvious that you are unable to determine what is rational and what isn't.

Actually they don't control this forum.

Yeah I don't understand how people assume that theymos can press a button and destroy coins at will? are these people retarded or just new to Bitcoin? if there is not a big consensus such thing will never happen. Theymos has a strong voice in the community but thats all, he doesnt make it or break it, he just gave his opinion on the matter.

No, you did not, plz answer the question. Be concise.

Yes. Stop trolling.

Irrelevant. I don't want some kid from the internet making my decisions for me. If I wanted someone who knows better than me to do my thinking for me, I would have let NannyState do it, not some guy from the interweb :)

I'll tell you what happens if someone cracks old coins. They will move them one address at a time, bouncing it around for awhile. Anyone who is smart enough to crack old coins will be careful. They won't dump all 1 million. (For all we know, they can only crack one at a time, so they only have 50.)

oh no lauda is failing to grasp logic again..

even in another threat he is saying that

does he not realise how stupid he is becoming.. moving coins from one 256bit address to another 256bit address is meaningless in regards to security.. its purely like moving a $20 bank note from ur left pants pocket to your right pants pocket.. nothing more or less

also destroying satoshi's stash purely for "security weakness" reasons is totally obsurd.

i feel sorry for lauda. he really needs to stop talking to blockstreamers and start reading actual code and using logic to think for himself.

unless a new version of bitcoin was to offer 512bit or 1024bit encryption, then moving funds to the same 256bit encryption is meaningless.. or then destroying random peoples funds simple because they are hoarding is even worse.

i am starting to wonder what these blockstream lovers are drinking because there must be some mind numbing chemicals involved somewhere

are they soo stupid, or are they really trying hard to break bitcoins fungibility just to promote their incorporated sidechains

I totally agree on this one that are all a theory,why would destroy some else money they have earned it and they deserve it as long as they want it,if it is going to be destroyed then let those people knows it so they can decide what to do with it..

Frustation is the key i believe that match the sugestion gaved here,makes no sense,the creator just not be able to use his own coins ,people will panic some say others says it will be too many power at bad persons but isnt our choise.In the end this will be always the Nakamoto option and final.

ok heres a plan..

everyone in this topic that thinks that destroying bitcoins is a good thing.. should all destroy their own coins first!

if you cant take the shock of wanting to destroy your own coins, then dont suggest destroying others.

Yeah according to the news that satoshi Nakamoto has more than 1 million bitcoin in various wallet. wow that was enough to make bitcoin be dead or down to a very small price. let's hope he does not think to kill bitcoin

Lets PRAY that Satoshi is NOT Craig Wright (or the last living one of the group) and the 2020 Tulip Fund they supposedly setup is not REAL. He is a bitter , bitter man in 2020 he
very well could 'flush' bitcoin into oblivion..if as he says he can have access to such funds then..... if that was the case. (my odds are better hooking up with Natalie Portman...but still)

(scared myself) :(

BTC.  Thanks Theymos, I just love ya. Good question, wrong answer. My 1M coins should never be destroyed! They are mine, for giving the world open source blockchain and bitcoin. Thousands of new companies have been created and also boosting the economy of the fiat world. Innovation Economy! I have given a lot that I could have designed a different platform with a closed source and really profited in billions if not trillions, based on my research, as the light bulb lit when i found a discovery in 2006.  Being run by my crew completely, leaving you in the dark. I could have dictate my project selfishly. I will remember you when i finnish the bloody 2nd part to Bitcoin someday. What do you think is the reason I have never moved my Satoshi's?  As a word from the mastermind behind the project who is alive and reads and trolls the various comment sites when I am bored.  In 1989, my family lost a few million in the Lincoln Savings Keating bank thefts in El Toro, CA.  Don't be a charlie Keating 5! Federal Regulators who didn't do their job, just like recently again in 2008 and Altcoins (B). Bitcoin is built so people like you, can't touch my money in SAVINGS. What is the whole point of saving if you are stealing my money? Why even use Bitcoin? Stay on the current system. Not any different. I still have not come out fully yet and explained the reason why I had Bitcoin built.  Mr. Wright has done enough damage now! The keys/Satoshi's are in a new innovation near the blockchain, built because of the danger brought on by the newsweek show 2 years ago. They have been transfered,hidden from your view on the blockchain of the move  I am holding for the SUCCESS of BITCOIN in 15Years automating on a new invention built to "Cash Out".... If it fails because of fucked up reasons of others, then bitcoin was just a risky experiment and digital crptocoins does not work and really it can never work as CODE CAN ALWAYS BE HACKED BY SOMEONE!  Also we are seeing if consensus can work? So far good and bad points, but much work to be done. Same with Ethereum! Leave my code coins alone!

Am I the only one who thinks that the idea of destroying someone's money is frightening? Just imagine all the huge negative exposure Bitcoin would attract.

You are not only one. I see many agree with that and its topic we don't need to open at all, cause it will lead us in wrong way.

So there is two possibilities here:

1. To stay in that wallet locked forever?

2. Or to be stolen?

In both cases I think there is no reason for fear. In first case it can be considered like there will be 20 mil. coins not 21. In second one what can thief do? Spent it in some casino or open one? Cash it out? Someone will buy that coins and they will be in safe hands... Its a lot of money but someone will need to spent it I guess.

Few days ago I was reading here in some thread how many people are involved in bitcoins and how many of them are active. Someone said 2 - 3 million people and I don't remember how much active, around 30 %. So Theymos can share on equal parts. Almost everyone will get 1 btc.

That are the two end options, so the lesser 'evil' has to be chosen. However, people can just move their coins in time to a secure address.

He can manipulate the price easily with that huge 'stash' that could be acquired (at least for a while).

Theymos can't share anything besides his own coins.

seems lauda and theymos both want satoshi' stash to disapear.. lets all propose that we ask theymos and lauda to destroy their own coins first

How would that be any different from "legitimate" owners being able to manipulate the price? Help me understand.

No. Theymos wants satoshi's stash to disappear. Lauda just wants whatever theymos wants.

Exactly why would a longtime 'legitimate' owner want to get rid of all of their Bitcoin in a hurry?

Bullshit. I never said that I agree with the idea, I said that I understand all of the viewpoints. You would have known this had you read the whole thread.

---

---

Update: Trolling is not the right answer.
Update 2: Sigh.

And why would a hacker?
Because he wants pennies on the dollar for his loot?
Because he wants to get snared by KYC/AML regulations?
Because multimillion-dollar transactions happen all the time and never raise any flags?
Or is it because Bitcoin is useless as a store of value, especially for those who don't like intrusive government intervention, so selling it for pennies on the dollar makes total sense, as long as it's turned into actual folding money?

You're defending the soundness of "let's destroy early coins" idea purely as an intellectual exercise, to practice your sophistry chops?

No, he's doing it to spam threads with his sig campaign.

yep anyone with a sig campaign should never have a say in big things. after all if they are penny pinching by making a below minimal income from sig campaigns then they obviously have no large stash themselves. so to even suggest that they should burn someone elses million coins is more of a jealous attitude then a logical attitude.

until there is actually a QC protected algo, there is no point even talking about moving or destroying coins.so i see the only motivations theymos and lauda have are pure jealousy of those richer than themselves

I haven't read the full thread, but in case Theymos has not been active here (and I'm guessing not or the thread should have taken a totally different turn), let me share a few things he sent to me in a PM in response to a post I made on this thread:

^^ So the inaccuracy in the article is that theymos want to destroy everybody's old coins, not just Satoshi's?
That certainly sounds more reasonable :D

Wow!  See, I disagree here.  I think that logic should be the prevailing standard of consideration.  If an argument is valid and sound, then the opinion should be published for consideration.  However, if a person displays a tendency to rely upon faulty reasoning (for example: hasty generalizations, argumentum ad hominem, bandwagoning...et cetra), then the opinion should be ignored.

However, burning other peoples property to maintain the value of our own property should not be an option because it goes against the fundamental principles of the project.  The integrity of the block chain ledger should be preserved as originally intended.

Maaan, I get so tired of folks hating on post because there is a signature attached to the bottom of it. For those that this truly bothers (why someone else earning income is a bother is beyond me), simply press the "ignore " button on those "poor quality posts" that stick so deeply up your collective butts.

And consider a job as a meter maid or a tow truck driver. Noble professions, not knocking them, but you guys would be perfect for the work.

Thank you, Franky. That needed to be said. Although I think Theymos has been extremely misunderstood /misquoted in this. I must say, I agree with the concept (securing legacy coins via some protocol should the security paradigm change). But I never agree with fooling with other people's shit, which isn't the deal here once you get past the misquote.

There's no misquote here.


Nor here.

how can these coins be destroyed ? the only one who can do that is satoshi only. So it depends on what he wants not what we want to happen.
satoshi did not spend a single satoshi even when btc reached 1000$. why should we expect a big dump ? I think he do not want to hurt bitcoin

methods of doing it (but not good idea)
1. change the algo.. such as sha 3 Schnorr. then warn everyone that in 1 year sha 256 will not be recognised by pools. so shift funds to a sha3 address or lose it

2. prune certain blocks

3. blacklist transactions from inputs before block 105,000

Since it has been a while and we are kind of off track again, here is a summary of the actual proposal by Theymos (yes he did join this thread briefly - you can see his comments by searching the thread):


Now my opinion.  Yes I have one too.

Assuming that most of the 21M coins have been mined by the time this happens and assuming there are about 1M highly vulnerable coins in the blockchain then don't worry about it at all.  In other words just let those 1M coins, the most highly vulnerable coins, the easy pickings, be stolen by the people with the QC.  The worst case scenario is that the brilliant people who have access to the most advanced technology are also the stupidest people or are a nefarious actor and they dump the entire 1M coins on the open market.  Two things will happen:

1) The price will go into the toilet for a while, those that don't panic will get to buy up a bunch of cheap coins and make a fortune when the price recovers, those that panic will lose everything.  In other words business as usual in Bitcoin land.

2) We will know this has happened as soon as it happens so everyone that has their coins on the remaining vulnerable addresses will immediately move their coins to the new QC safe addresses - problem solved.

you do know (i think someone with your history should) that the satoshi stash is not stored on a single address..

so think of it this way.. would a QC owner use his system to attack an address with just 50btc.. and then once attacked move onto another address and repeat this thousands of times..

or

would a QC owner go after an exchanges large hoard or a mining pools hoard where usually hundreds/thousands of coins are all in one address..

to me satoshi's stash is not a QC system target. but exchanges/mining pools where large funds are linked to a single address. so even debating satoshi stash is just the same as debating any random addresses with 50btc or less..

so in my opinion if satoshi stash is a risk then that is as similar as saying any and all addresses holding 50btc or more in a single address is a threat. and then you have to ask.. where would these dumb asss numbskulls who want to destroy coins decide enough is enough

Poor idea, disables the ability to hold wealth for your own for generations.

Based on the fundamental assumptions of the discussion all active coins like those in exchanges and mining pools would have long since been moved to the new QC hardened system.  The basic assumption of the discussion is that we are talking about a time in which the only coins left on QC vulnerable addresses are the static/older coins - which would include Satoshi's coins assuming he/she/they have not moved them, all other unmoved coins, all "bitcoin eater" coins (no private key ever known), all lost coins (private key lost), etc.  I made the wild ass guess this would be "about one million coins" - could be more, could be less.

The assumption of the discussion is that a vast majority of all coins are circulating on the newer QC hard addresses BEFORE this blacklisting/pruning idea is ever seriously considered.

Satoshi earned those coins for his innovation.

full stop.

And... to even consider proposing destroying coins that have been held for a while, over time that would destroy all the coins...
But WTF is this? It is madness. My coins, my private keys and no one should dictate when they get destroyed, if I want to hold them for my kids or grandkids (being gay beside the point), then that's for me to do as I choose. Same to satoshi..

i think its fair to destroy them so the value stays forever. after all if satoshi needs the btc, he must have spent it.

I don't agree. Quite frankly some people are motivated by greed and worried about the price crash which would be temporary of dumping those on the open market because it harms their profits. He earned those coins, if he decides to spend them or share them out. Once you start doing stuff like this, bitcoins use as an indisputable* ledger goes, and so does my respect for it.

You two bozos did not even read the last few posts before dumping your steaming pile of opinion.  Back up one fucking page and read a few posts before you enter into a thread.

notice how I said 'some people' and not all? because most will think the idea is madness. And reading the thread shows that, but I read the article. People are entitled to their opinions of course, but I know it wont be implemented and if it were, id be worried. The guy who found his bitcoins he mined early on and bought an apartment with them is one example, to even suggest that they should be destroyed in any way to prevent theft is just madness, its like robbing or destroying gold out of someones vault cause someone might steal it.

If they were dumped on the open market and crashed the price, that would 1. be temporary and two. Just how things roll, the coins are owned by someone and that someone has a right to those coins. Be it 1 year or 50 years down the line. I made my investment in full knowledge the price could crash due to these coins. I was talking about it with my mate only today in fact.

All I know is no major mining pools would implement code that destroyed coins as it would harm bitcoins reputation as a whole and thus what they earn with their massive ASIC investment, this would never happen.

If anything like this did happen AND coconscious implemented it (no chance), once the media got ahold of it, bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general is done for.

Obviously my posts are just my opinion and a heated one at that, but that's all it is.

Next week on "news" dot bitcom dot com....

Theymos: “Kittens belonging to nuns should be flung into active volcanoes”

 ::)

Well, I tried.... did _no one_ see my post with Theymos' own response in it a few posts back? It's quite reasonable and I hope people eventually see his point (and stop reacting to the distorted article).  ???

Its nothing to do with the article, it is the idea of  censoring in ANY WAY the ledger and disabling coins in any way. If quantum computing became a reality, wed have much more to think about than brute forcing these private keys; what if it could undo all the work on the ledger? Either way, while he is entitled to his own opinion which I respect, I do not myself agree with this opinion and am opposed in ***ANY WAY*** doing anything of the sort. To implement anything like this at any time would destroy confidence in a "trustless" system. Id much rather someone stole them and dumped them on the open market which it would absorb in the end than the action of censoring/destroying those coins due to the implications. Could a government then pay off the developers to disable funds by an entity i.e WikiLeaks? The act of censorship like that would set a dangerous precedent.

The British threatened to storm the embassy with Julian Assange, but were forced to relent when they realized they were setting a dangerous precedent*

This is one of those cases, if they can be censored even for this reason, then that opens doors for future coins to be censored later. Think of the trust issues, and I really wouldn't like the media to even get ahold of the fact that someone prominent in the community suggested such an action, the implications of it are far higher than someone stealing and dumping the coins. I understand he said it wouldn't happen for many many years if it were to, but I still disagree whole heartedly with it.

The media would also twist this something silly.

BUT he has reasoning and logic which is valid to him, so what can I say? We can let network coconscious decide these things and the implications of what happens afterwards. The text above is just my opinion, his opinion is equally as valid, which is why many of us live in democracies. Network consensus has that decision.

ECSDA is the weakest link in the chain that is susceptible to quantum computer attacks. The other cryptographic components used in Bitcoin are more resistant to attack. This has been talked about for years. Please do try to keep up.

Oh, how I laughed.
You sir, deserve a cookie.

Bitcoin developers, community or anyone don't have the right to influence decision like this. Coins owned any individual should never be tinkered with.
Even if we had fast and easy way to determine which coins belong to Satoshi and destroy or quarantine it - we can't do that.

I agree, and remember all those coins won't be at a SINGLE address, even mining on your own node it uses a new address from your keypool for every block found. So a QC could brute-force one maybe after a long time, then it would have to do each and every one of the others too, unless he purposely moved them to a single address?

And agreed with above poster, someones coins should never be touched. For any reason. Someone steals them and dumps them on the open market I would rather, than a few people deciding whos coins they should and shouldn't destroy. I understand the addresses may be subjectable to QC attacks, so be it. I would rather a large theft and dump which the market could absorb and recover from when some time has elapsed, than bitcoin forever having a reputation of 'destroying' coins and the implications and precedent that sets.

And then not only must a QC get into one address, it must get into every single address that was generated while these early adopters mined.

Disclaimer: The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons, places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Scene: Office setting the day following a neighborhood barbecue hosted by S. Notamoto.


Themmos: Hey Notamoto, thanks for that great cookout last night, by all standards it was the best one we've had in the neighborhood for years.

Notamoto: Thanks Themmos! I really try to help out where I can. After all our neighborhood and community is very important to me. I have put my life into building my home and grounds, as well as the foundations for our great community, and want everyone to know how much I appreciate everyone's support.

Themmos: Yeah, that's great Notamoto. Hey, umm, I been meaning to tell you something.

Notamoto: Yes?

Themmos: Well, a couple of us happened to notice a few of the locks on your house were quite old and maybe a bit of a security risk.

Notamoto: Really?

Themmos: Yes, you see, we were hanging out by the front door as the party grew, and while you were out back cooking up some of those delicious seafood kebabs, we got to talking about the vintage style of your locks.

Notamoto: My locks?

Themmos: Yes, yes, your locks Notamoto. Charlie and Bob, they were saying they appeared to be an earlier design, a less secure design mind you.

Notamoto: I think my locks are just fine.

Themmos: No, no Notamoto, I assure you they are not. In fact they are quite insecure. You see after a few drinks we got to theorizing on how some ambitious criminal could somehow in the future come up with a way to circumvent your locks and steal all of your possessions.

Notamoto: I think my possessions are quite safe. After all they been that way for years.

Themmos: I realize that Notamoto, but you are not seeing the big picture. The way Charlie and I figure it sometime, perhaps in as little as 10 years, someone might come up with a way to break in to your house and steal everything you own.

Notamoto: Well as unlikely as that sounds, let's just play along with your fantasy for a minute. They steal all of my stuff, so how does that concern you?

Themmos: It concerns me and the rest of the neighborhood greatly Notamoto. You see we are still recovering from Carpet-les staging his home robbery a few years back. Property values are just now beginning to recover. We as your neighbors cannot allow that type of thing to happen again. After all, who would want to buy a home in a neighborhood so infested with crime?

Notamoto: I think you are overreacting and stretching things a bit here?

Themmos: Well, I hate to have it come down to this Natamoto, after all you were the first to build in the neighborhood and laid the foundations for such a great community for the rest of us to come in behind you and build upon, but not this is no longer just about you. It is about our right to have our property values remain stable, if not continue to rise.

Notamoto: Uhh..

Themmos: Ok, well what I been meaning to tell you, no use protesting as it is already in motion, Charlie and Bob are burning your house down as we speak.

Notamoto: WHAT!!!!????

Themmos: Yes, Natamoto, you see a house burns down, it is a sad tragedy, but long term no harm is done to the community, it is JUST a house fire. Buyers are not scarred off.

Notamoto: My house?

Themmos: But if someone were to break in and steal all your possessions, well now, I don't think the community could recover, at least not in the time-frame myself and others are comfortable with. I mean no one would pay top dollar to buy a house in a community with a burglary problem.

Notamoto: My life, my dreams, my passions?

Themmos: Yes, yes, I hate to be the one telling you this Notamoto, but don't think of yourself, think of the community. After all, you brought this on yourself, as you could have moved all your possessions and changed your locks long ago. You have had like 7 years man, what were you thinking.

Notamoto: I can't believe this, someone call the police, the fire department, uhhhh?

Themmos: Too late for any of that Notamoto, well I need to get back to work, nice chatting with you.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/16/Port_Washinton_Fire_Department_Fighting_House_Fire_September_2011.jpg

Next thing you know they'll start fiddling with the 21 million cap and making transactions reversible. :o

~~

Love it. That is so true. Luckily, i don't think the bitcoin core devs are that stupid, and if they ever did, miners and users could just fork the code.

Reuters - 2021:

"Bitcoin, a virtual currency known to use cryptography to protect users funds, has now officially been broken. Thousands of users lost over 15 billion USD in funds when a Quantum Computer broke the ECDSA scheme which is used for the public/private key pairs. Bitcoin core developers were unable to comment at the time of the hack".


Having every mainstream news saying bitcoin was broken and people are losing money is worse than a 2mn coin hack-and-dump (whether slow or fast dump).

Compared to the above scenario, being prepared to move coins to safe addresses, giving a long time to do so and then taking other measures like freezing pubkey coins, is not a bad alternative.

The media can react negatively to anything, and they usually do because doing so gets more viewers, so imagining how they might react to any scenario where their reaction isn't bought and paid for is about pointless.  Moreover, even if it was worth considering, comparing two potential reactions to two unreasonable solutions (destroy coins / never make another change to the current design ever again) doesn't justify anything when there are a reasonable solutions available.  More technically speaking, one change does not necessitate the other.  Adding a new encryption scheme that can and should be switched to does not break fungibility or set a bad precedent.  Burning or blacklisting coins at the block chain level that you don't have the keys for does break fungibility and set a bad precedent.

Wow.  This relatively benign topic is shedding light on some of the deeper aspects of the project.  It's bringing up questions about motivations, intentions, and governance that have never been explicitly expressed. 

It's been demonstrated throughout history that when communities grow, it becomes necessary to form some sort of representative governing body to keep the community in line with its social and political philosophies....but, that describes a "third party" which leads to a conundrum.

So, what do we do about anticipated security issues?  Well, that depends on the motivations of who we're asking, right?  If we take a vote using some sort of consensus protocol, then the majority wins even if they're obviously "bad actors!"  For example, if we took a vote on whether or not to redistribute bitcoin equally among the community, a vote FOR redistribution would probably prevail.

I believe that when these type of question arise, we need to fall back on the original intent of the system for answers.  We need to hold fast to the vision of a decentralized system in which the ledger cannot be changed unless the entire proof-of-work is redone (good luck with that!).  The integrity of the ledger is the spine of the system.  We have to accept the ledger as our preamble and work within that context....We shouldn't design solutions based on greed, power, or lust because that goes against the original train of thought that lead to the technology.  Will the block chain ledger maintain value if we manipulate the ledger without redoing the necessary proof-of-work required in the original protocol?  What's more important: the integrity of the ledger or the value of its component entries?

the integrity of the ledger == the value of its component entries

Smile

A box full of component watch parts != device to tell the time.

&&

A box full of component watch parts == broken watch!

I guess that did not come out the way I intended it.  Perhaps this is more accurate:

the value of the component entries = f(the integrity of the ledger)

^{block height btc sum}
 Σn (USD conversion rate) = Total Ledger Value in USD
_{n = first block btc sum}

However

Once that series is broken, so is the integrity of the summation.  So, if we regard the process by which the ledger is assembled (an interconnected series of economically irreversible transactions) then we could assume that the chain's integrity would be comparatively compromised by removing some links.  The integral virtue of the block chain is that it provides a "trustless" accounting system.  It was designed to be economically infeasible to alter the contents of the ledger.  So, by the "integrity of the ledger," I am referring to its immutability.  

It is absolutely evil. It proposes that the collective has a greater claim on one's bitcoin than the owner himself.

If there is a risk of early hashless-address bitcoin being stolen by advances in cryptanalysis, the only party that has a legitimate right to manage that risk is the owner of those bitcoins.

Fucking period.

I can hardly believe all y'all covetous crass craven cretins are even entertaining the notion. Or publicly admitting to such an offense.

That is by no means universal. 'Round these parts (CO, USA), if your bank account sits dormant long enough, agents of the state show up at your bank and confiscate its contents. They claim this is a legitimate power of the state. Or, The State.

This is only one of the many ways in which bitcoin _should_ distinguish itself from fiat.

The problem is you are responding to the bogus OP, while the rest of us are, more or less, dealing more accurately with theymos' position:


Maybe if I repost this a dozen more times people will stop reacting to the OP?

You mean they take away your money and you can't get it back? How long is "long enough"?

@ebliever: "the coins will be destroyed slightly before they would've been stolen if the owner fails to secure them." seems fine to you?
I'm betting your coins are going to be stolen soon anyways, mind if I destroy them now?

In context, people would have plenty of opportunity and warning - as much as can be arranged - to take action to update their coins. Destroying the non-updated coins would be a last-ditch effort before they became vulnerable to theft, only affecting coins that no one cared enough, or knew about, to update them. The choice here is between destroying coins or letting thieves have them, not a choice between letting an owner keep them or lose them. The original owner would be losing them one way or another at this point anyway.

People are being really dumb about this, because of the OP. I had a similar reaction at the outset, but I hope once people grasp the context they'll stop attacking a caricature. There are lots of things to be concerned about in the bitcoin ecosystem. Losing your coins because theymos or anyone else is plotting to destroy them is not one of them.

I don't want destroying coins to be an option, period. That's the antithesis of Bitcoin.
I don't care if someone decides that I didn't secure them well enough. They're mine. To do with as I chose, even ifthat happens to be nothing at all. Even if that means leaving them unsecured, dumping them for pennies on the dollar, or giving them to a wino to sell for hooch: not up to theymos to decide.

I also don't want anyone to kill me, even if they feel that "I'm gonna die soon anyway." In particular, I don't want that decision to be made by some kid I don't know from a hole in the wall.
I hope you understand.

You are asserting a false equivalency. We can indeed move those willing onto a new cryptographic underpinning without stealing the funds from those who would prefer not to move their coins.

Your assertion is absolutely FALSE. I am responding directly to theymos' evil proposition - that coins legitimately belonging to someone -- or with no way of knowing whether or not they legitimately belong to someone (which from an ethical standpoint is exactly the same thing) -- should be stolen and burned by the collective at some (unknowable) time before some nefarious actor manages to steal them for his/her own.

Why don't *you* read what *I* wrote, eh?

Did you somehow miss this little bit that theymos has re-asserted? Even though you yourself quoted it?


Nobody has a right (and the collective is just another nobody) to destroy coins they do not themselves own. Fucking period. The fact that they are subsequently destroyed does not magically render it 'not-theft'.

I can hardly believe all y'all covetous crass craven cretins are even entertaining the notion. Or publicly admitting to such an offense.

Yes. I forget the specifics, but I seem to recall it being somewhere in the 3-5 year range.

^^ This has been my sentiment too.  However, I took a different approach to expressing that opinion....I think that I like the above means of expression better.  I imagine a red-faced-finger-pointing soldier ready to slap the taste out of anybody's mouth who crosses him....I'm bandwagoning the sentiment!

I understand jbreher's philosophical position and agree.

I would also like to reiterate my pragmatic position.  The worst case scenario is that about 1M (yes I pulled that number out of my ass) coins get stolen by an entity who has access to and pays for a QC to break all the addresses.  Then this party dumps them all on the market hoping to sell them all before the price of BTC tanks due to everyone noticing the theft.  Of course the theft and dump would be noticed.  The price would crash.  Since they are trying to dump all those coins at once they will most likely get caught.

Those of us who do not panic will buy up coins at the bottom and ride them as they price recovers.

All the remaining QC vulnerable coins are moved to new QC hardened addresses by those that either sell them in the panic or move them for safety.

End result:

Culprits probably caught.
A bunch of people panic and lose a lot of money.
Another bunch of people take advantage of the buying opportunity and make a lot of profit.
The price recovers once the dust clears and all/most the coins are on QC resistant addresses.

And that is the worst case scenario if we simply implement the new QC resistant addresses when needed and drop this whole idea of destroying coins.

BurtW, you might want to consider the example of Vericoin. Vericoin had a market cap of around $6 million when Mintpal was hacked and 30% of all Vericoin was stolen. The devs orchestrated a rollback of the blockchain to cancel the theft. Despite this defeat of the thieves, the coin lost a tremendous percentage of its value in the ensuing uproar, and although it has recovered a bit since then it is nowhere near the $6M figure.

So your last bullet point, I think, is unlikely. After such a dramatic event the price would probably be permanently impaired, and be at a small fraction of its prior price for a good while. And that means there are a lot more losers than winners.

I still think people are failing to address the topic Theymos raised, and are instead substituting their own vision for the example he was giving. People keep talking about "their" coins and not having them stolen. But in the actual example, the only coins affected are those that have been for all practical purposes abandoned - and WILL be stolen. If you care about your coins, as each of you has demonstrated, you wouldn't be falling into the category of those at risk. By all means, this whole subject should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. But it's pollyanish to think that if such a situation arose that having a huge fraction of coins fall into the hands of thieves eager to dispose of them would be a neutral or transient event.

The irony here is that, concerned about the value of your coins, many of you are staking out a position that would destroy the value of those coins if such an event came to pass.

Another historical example that comes to mind is the Great Depression. A large fraction of banks failed in the U.S., with depositors losing all their money. In the aftermath of that disaster safeguards such as the FDIC were instituted, insuring the funds of individuals in bankrupt banks so that people no longer lost their savings when a bank went under.

Despite this extremely successful safeguard, for the rest of their lives huge numbers of people flat out refused to entrust banks with their savings. I was a financial planner for a bit back in the early 90's and heard many accounts of how older people who remembered that era were still, right up to the 90's, refusing to trust the banks or deal with them.

So the notion that a QC breach and subsequent theft of a million or millions of bitcoins would be a transient event strikes me as completely contrary to historical example on two counts. On the contrary I think it would deeply scar people's psyches, even if they rationally "knew" that the issue had been fixed with new algorithms, etc.

it is a bad idea. currently very many people who changed his life because bitcoin, I guess if it was to do, and because the price of bitcoin unstable, I think that thinking is very wrong. no matter what price and who made bitcoin, but if it really can make a lot of people's lives turn into to something better, then there is no reason to be destroyed bitcoin

Well in this case, theft of the contents of that wallet will probably lead to in the worst case, the death of btc. I'm not talking about releasing millions of BTCBTCBTC in the market I meant the trust over bitcoin's security. IMO that wallet's private key is long lost and in the case a theft would occur it would mean there's a loophole in the network.

Bull-fucking-shit. You ('you' being anyone or any group of people) have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not those coins are abandoned. You also have no way of knowing when or even if they will be stolen.

Again, in case you are still blind to the moral principle, the only person who has a legitimate claim on managing the risk is the owner of the coins themselves. Any lesser standard is simply theft.

Yes...It probably would effect the exchange rate.  However, if the controlling premises of the project were violated, then that would damage it more.  The vast majority of users moved to bitcoin because of the belief that no governing organization had the power to manipulate the ledger.  If it came to pass one day that ledger entries could be removed at any given time, then committing any type of resources to the security of the ledger would be meaningless.  The ledger should be locked down and only those that control the private key should have the power to manipulate the funds on the ledger....period.  If a hacker got my private keys, then they have the power to move my coin according to the rules.  If my private keys were somehow compromised, that's my problem....They're my keys, it's my coin, so it's my responsibility....not anybody else's.

To say it bluntly, the system would be broken and meaningless if any group (government <=> community<=> third party) had the power to erase entries on the ledger.  It was intended to be immutable and that is evidenced in the very first block with Satoshi's citation: "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks." That was placed there to signify the date of the first entry in a chain of immutable entries. Think about what that means. Nobody (even if it's EVERYBODY) should have the ability to prune the ledger for any reason at any time....forever. That would be an attack on the system!

Consequently, if the chain could be pruned at will, then that removes the huge potential of using the block chain to secure patents, record contracts, time lock funds, test reputation, validate identification....etc  It's not just a question of how many dollars one can exchange for their bitcoin on the market at any given time....it's much larger!  Contrary to popular belief, the block chain is far more valuable then it's measure in fiat!

Why instead of destroying those coins, why doesn't Satoshi distribute them in giveaways or for bitcoin related work ?
I maybe not the first person to come with this idea, but I think the destruction of a big portion of bitcoins will make it seem worthless to the general public eye as even its creator is not holding the coins he mined.
Don't forget the general people have a different view than ours in regard to cryptocurrency. Take this analogy as an example: consider a man from the amazon who has no idea about paper money and he sees someone burning a $100 banknote, what would he think ? he would think it is not worth more than the wood he burns to worm himself, that's how those who don't understand Satoshi's view will think when they hear he burned the coins he mined.
Just my thought, nothing else, no intent to make any statement on the intelligence of those who didn't embrace cryptocurrency.

A noob's question : is it possible for collective to destroy someone's bitcoin kept in a safe wallet? if yes,isn't it makes bitcoin totally unreliable

I think the bitcoins are destroyed in case of 2 scenarios:

A- You lose all access to a wallet that contains bitcoins like lost private keys, password, or anything that make sit impossible to recover the bitcoins from it
B- You send the bitcoins to a non existing wallet address, those bitcoins will stay in limbo forever and will never be recovered.

Now my turn to a question, in the case B, would it possible that the non existing wallet address comes to existance and receives the bitcoins ? like say I sent 1 BTC to an address that did not exist in 2012 and thought it lost, but in 2018 that address is generated by a wallet, will it receive the 1 BTC I sent back in 2012 ?

Short answer no.  To find the long answer search for "Bitcoin address collision" and read the thousands of threads on that subject.

We dont know if satoshi is even alive. You are talking as if satoshi is even a single guy, or if it was a single guy, that he is still in control of his keys (that he didn't lose his keys) or if he is held hostage, or if like I said before, if he is even alive at all...
We don't know who controls those coins anymore, but sure, we should not destroy them. If they get hacked, then so be it.

If you have a mic, it needs to be dropped.

Answer no, it is not possible to destroy someone else's Bitcoins.  Of course if you decide to you can destroy your own Bitcoins.

This thread is asking the question "are there any circumstances in which this capability to collectively destroy Bitcoins should be implemented?"

My (and many others) answer:  No, there is never a situation in which this capability should be implemented and even if someone tried to implement it the implementation would fail to be accepted by a majority so, no it should not be implemented and it will never be implemented.

Your question:


Is exactly on point.  See my next post.

Bitcoins of satoshi should stay where they are for few reasons that could be key in a future.
Edit: yet i still dont understand how would they erase them lol, thermos-delirium.

AM i missing something?

How could someone destroy someone's coins in the first place?

I wouldn't let Theymos, or any other person (Barack Obama included) to destroy my coins if i were Satoshi, Or if i were me (which is the case at the moment).

Thank you for bringing this up.  This is the perfect example of exactly what I am talking about and the perfect example of why not to ever destroy coins or roll back transactions.

The reason Vericoin never recovered is that you can never trust a coin that rolls back transactions - it is the loss of trust that killed the long term acceptance of the coin, not the theft.

Theft of coins:  the person who lost the coins lost, sure.  The person who stole the coins gains, sure.  The market reacts to the dump of coins.  Then, the market rebounds back to its original value because faith in the coin itself it not lost.  The exchange where the coins were stolen hopefully goes out of business since people lost all faith in its ability to keep their coins safe.

OR

Roll back transaction:  the person who lost the coins gets them back, sure.  The person who stole the coins gets nothing, sure.  The market reacts to the loss of faith in the coin.  The market never recovers and (almost) everyone has a loss.

Not true, sure there are the signature spammers who come in here and dump their shit.  But ignoring them the rest of the people know exactly what this is about.  They disagree with Theymos on philosophical or practical grounds.

Not true.  Our concern for the long term viability of Bitcoin is exactly why we take our position.

0) I care most about eternal life; as such I don't see where the topic of old Bitcoin private keys matters much.

1) Within this pre-eternal lifetime, I do care some about my Bitcoins; are they vulnerable?  Can one imagine a quantum computer (or anything else) that could crack my private keys?  If so then when (the sooner, the better) should we develop a system that can resist it?  It seems to me it will take an active step to migrate to it.  After some point the current private keys shouldn't be honored anymore.  Anyone that misses the cutoff effectively lose their Bitcoins.

Off topic crap aside, No, you are wrong.  It is not possible to do what you suggest here:
without changing/breaking what Bitcoin is and what it stands for.  Doing what you suggest would permanently harm Bitcoin.

This part can easily be done and will definitely be done (eventually):

Every time you post shit like this into a thread without reading it yes, you miss a lot.  Go back and actually read the thread and then you will not miss anything.

Why would it break btc to go to sha 512 or such? Not sure if thats possible but im pretty sure it would be necessary after a while.

Changing the cypto is not the issue.

I take issue with this part of his statement:
THAT is the part I disagree with and would break/change/kill Bitcoin.

I think its logical that sha256 will become vulnerable eventually but i also tought its logical that bitcoin should and will evolve to avoid this.

By that same logic, Satoshi's 1M coins should be destroyed right now. Don't you see how faulty your logic is? This "future situation" already exists. At any moment, his private keys could be stolen, or he could decide to dump all his coins. They are his coins. He should be the only one to decide what to do with them. That is a core principle that Bitcoin was founded upon.

Point of information:  it is not the hashing algorithms that are QC vulnerable it is the ECCDSA that is vulnerable.  If/when QC becomes a reality we will have no trouble convincing a majority to move to a new DSA.  Deciding exactly which new DSA to move to may be an issue but after a lot of the standard drama that accompanies all decisions in Bitcoin, I believe a new DSA will be picked and we will move to it.  The hashing algorithms used can and will also be replaced/upgraded as needed (just not due to QC).

I think those coins should stay as they are,i doubt satoshi would/could spend them all.
If bitcoin ever goes POS then they would be an insurance against governments that will try to achieve 51% of the network.

Why would thieves be any more eager to dispose of those coins than the rightful owners? Because storing your wealth in BTC is unreasonable? Because BTC is not fungible? Because someone might come along and decide that the coins are stolen, and should be destroyed? 
If some or all of the coins were moved, how would you even know if it's due to theft (and not the rightful owners moving them)?

I don't really know what to say about this sentence. It has a good point.
But I still feel like it shouldn't be done still. It is too early. I feel like Satoshi will move them one day.

Thanks. I'm sure I've got an ancient, already-dented SM58 around here somewhere...

That stuff clogging the windscreen? Yeah, that's vomit :D

Nope.

As I understood it, in the scenario Theymos outlined, QC technology has reached a point where it is apparent the existing bitcoin protocol WILL be compromised. So a hard fork is developed that will be QC-resistant. Everyone is asked to take action (moving coins in some fashion) into the new QC-resistant haven. Those who do not are leaving their coins where they will become vulnerable to theft using the new QC technology.

So the claim that "You have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not those coins are abandoned" is not accurate. Clearly they _are_ abandoned at this point, by the failure to take action to keep or safeguard the coins. You can't dump cash on a busy street, drive away, and still claim ownership in any meaningful sense.

By rejecting Theymos' suggestion, all you will be achieving is leaving some fraction of all bitcoins available for the first people with the QC technology to sweep up all the loose coins at will. You won't be saving them from evil devs. You will just be losing them to thieves. And then everyone else with bitcoin suffers as the market collapses from the shock of such stupidity in allowing this to happen.

Unless you've run a for-hire sound co, you have no idea how bad it can actually get.

Those coins belong to the owner. They do not belong to you and they do not belong to the collective. It is solely the owner's prerogative to manage the risk of theft. Your initiative to steal them is no more justified than the other thief you postulate.

Thank you for exposing yourself as totally bereft of any moral principles.

Incidentally, BurtW has already fully explained the real risk to overall network value, which is that people will not trust a network that has demonstrated the will to render private keys meaningless.

eta: apostrophe, spelling

Worse. I crewed :(

I'm sensitive to accusations of lacking moral principle, so let me take one more stab at this. Let's say I'm the Grand Overlord of Bitcoin, with unilateral power to act, and I'm faced with this situation.

If I do nothing, the abandoned coins are stolen. But abandoned coins have no worth to their owner anyway, so the owner is not losing anything. The thieves gain, and all law-abiding bitcoin owners suffer from dilution of the market with the stolen coins and the loss of confidence in bitcoin. Outcome: failure of moral principle, as law-abiding people suffer, while lawbreakers gain.

If I do act to destroy the abandoned coins after trying to get everyone to move coins to the QC-resistant haven, the original owners lose them. But they had no value to the owners anyway, or they would have acted to retain the coins. By destroying the coins I prevent thieves from gaining, and safeguard the value of the coins held by all law-abiding bitcoin owners. Outcome: Moral principle against theft is upheld, as thieves are thwarted and law-abiding people have the value of their bitcoin maintained.

Obviously, this all hinges on the degree to which efforts are made to reach everyone and get them to take the necessary action. It would be a failure of moral principle to do less than the utmost in reaching out to everyone and accommodating them as well as possible in assisting them with acting to safeguard their coins. For this, the elements of time, maximum communication/broadcasting through all available venues, and clarity of the warning would be critical.

In this scenario, the coins have been abandoned. I think this sums up our conflict. I agree perfectly well with you that if (legitimate) ownership can be established, the coins should be left alone and that ownership absolutely should be respected.

If other people's property can be destroyed based on public consensus and fear-mongering, what is the purpose of having a de-centralised system?

Unless Theymos thinks there is a conspiracy behind Satoshi's cache of coins which is a potential Bitcoin kill switch ...

That does not justify you stealing them before the other party can steal them.


Up until the very instant they are stolen, the owner has potential value. The exact instant some other actor might steal them is literally un-knowable. Ergo, at the instant you (either a single Bitcoin Overlord or the collective) steal them, it was at a point in time that the coins had potential value to the rightful owner.


I'm with with you so far....


...nope. Lost me. Wait - not 'lost me' - you are wrong. There is no dilution - those coins already existed. Their potential value may at any time up until the theft may be converted to actual value by the rightful owner.


The loss of confidence due to the ability to crack an obsolete format key pales in significance to the loss of confidence in bitcoin due to the manifest will for the collective to change the rules to invalidate keys.


Bullshit. It is never moral to steal, even though the objective be to prevent some other from stealing.


The law abiding suffer no loss. That other thief may gain, sure. But what of the rightful owner? Again, you have no means of determining exactly when that other thief will act. The management of the risk of such theft is solely the prerogative of the rightful coin owner.


Necessary yet insufficient.

Fails as a hypothetical right there. What you're describing is the job of central banks. Bitcoin's defining quality is *not* having such an entity.

Both assumptions are unreasonable, making this hypothetical irrelevant. If we could show, with 100% certainty, that "coins have no worth to their owner anyway," there'd be no point to any of this. Starting with faulty premises has a very high chance of resulting in false conclusions.

I see your point, jbreher. But I cannot agree with it. It would make me the accomplice of thieves, their enabler, and an actor with malicious intent against all other bitcoin owners. That is where my moral principle leaves me. It is interesting that the same motives (concern for ownership rights) can lead to such opposite conclusions.

No. Until it is conclusively shown that legitimate owner has zero interest in the coins, only he has the right to decide what's to be done with those coins.

Oh.  Where is ECDSA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithm used in Bitcoin?  If that can be changed without me giving up my current private keys and Bitcoin addresses then this whole topic is noise.
Found it; https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Elliptic_Curve_Digital_Signature_Algorithm.  So, yeah, this topic is useless; move on.

Actually, this discussion is all about whether or not you should have to give up your current addresses.  Any new algorithm would require new addresses and new private keys.  Your existing private key and address could not be ported (for lack of a better word), and the discussion technically revolves around whether or not you have the right to keep using the pair even after it could be vulnerable to attack.

ETA: Since Theymos' suggestion technically has to do with the age of the input, one could argue that you could pay the coins forward to yourself in order to decrease the age and continue using the old keys and addresses, but that argument would be petty and stupid considering the fact that the subsequent exposure of a signature to move coins would most likely increase your vulnerability.  This is also a problem with arguments like "if someone proves they own them, they should be able to keep them" because said proof would likely increase vulnerability.

ETA2:  To be clear, I would agree with BurtW and jbreher here, but the primary purpose of this post was to clarify what the argument is actually about in terms more familiar to your concerns.

ETA3:  Also, there is no reason the new outputs can't continue to accept old inputs, the misguided suggestion is that they shouldn't after a certain point in time.

No.  The private key and corresponding public key (a.k.a. your Bitcoin address) do not have to change at all.  Rather, if/when we change the DSA from ECDSA (which is QC vulnerable) to another DSA which is QC resistant then your wallet software will have to be changed to use the new DSA; that's all; nothing else.

If we don't change the DSA to one that is QC resistant then bad actors (with enough moxie) will be able to sign messages moving bitcoins they have no right to move.

Agreed.

If any coin is simply destroyed or vanish. I would simply sell all my coins as soon as possible, as they are not safe after all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

Failing to expend trivial effort to safeguard coins would, it seems to me, "conclusively show" that the legitimate owner had zero interest in the coins.

I was originally on the other side of the fence on this topic (as you can see from my first post in this thread!), and I've been second-guessing myself more than you might guess from my recent series of posts. So let me switch sides again (!) with this line of thought:

Those disagreeing with me recently have emphasized the paramount rights of an owner of bitcoins against any infringement, even if it means that other bitcoin owners might be harmed by their inaction. (In this case, coins being stolen and dumped.) Whereas I've played the role of a neutral arbiter who is trying to minimize loss across the board, across all owners.

This latter view is surely the dominant view regarding government today (socialist/nanny state), but it conflicts with the more individualistic libertarian (or even anarchist) viewpoint that my opponents set forth. In this latter view, you are choosing to take risks when you invest in bitcoin - and the risk of coins being hacked and dumped, harming your own investment, is demonstrably part of the cryptocurrency landscape today.

So from this perspective, which I agree with, the risk of losses from other people's insecure coins is part of the risk I assume when I buy into bitcoin. If this is the consensus of the bitcoin community (and I think it is), then I am much more agreeable that no action should be taken to destroy coins that could be lost due to a QC-event or similar loss of security.

It becomes more problematic if bitcoin goes mainstream and is adopted by large numbers of people lacking the ethos that you carry your own risks when using bitcoin and don't expect anyone to bail you out. In the context of broader society I could respect someone who holds on to the idea that the coins should be destroyed 'for the public good.' But it does fit more with my own libertarian philosophy to switch back to saying caveat emptor and agreeing to let the coins lie.

I just hope we don't have to put this to the test.

If it will help to prevent monetary inflation so why not? I am not really interested on bitcoins what belong to satoshi nakamoto, i am interested only on my own income.

So basically only reused adresses or those who sign messages with the address are in danger, right? This would mean no lighting network (or Blockchain.info thunder) anymore. Btw, does QC resistant DSA ever exist ? - all I know you can only keep increasing bits from 256 to 512 and higher so QC cannot catchup as it need increasing number of stable qbits which is the real challenge in QC - if you need reusing adresses, thats it.

You're easily convinced, it shows no such thing to me.
Bitcoin is meant to be a store of value, safeguarded by "immutable laws of the cosmos and maths." If my investment is only safe as long as I read bitcointalk on regular basis, that's not something I'm interested in.
A person may not be able to move his coin for extended periods of time, being throw in prison, for instance.

Thieves are no more likely to dump stolen coins on the market than are the legitimate owners. Less likely, actually, because such sums would need to be dumped via exchanges, which means banks, which means KYC/AML.
Moving the coins to a bunch of other addies is far simpler, and wouldn't look any different than same coins being moved by their legitimate owners.
So "kill the few so that many could live" vs "do nothing & many would die" is a false dichotomy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lattice-based_cryptography & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McEliece_cryptosystem

I hear what you're saying and I'm intrigued, because it implies my somewhat simplistic understanding of encryption technologies may be wrong here.  However, if it were so simple, then why would there even be a discussion about earlier coins being more vulnerable?  If any existing (or technically non-existing) private keys could be used to match up to existing bitcoin addresses using a different DSA, then the only addresses that would ever be vulnerable are addresses that have been used as outputs or signed against using the old DSA.  In that case, the majority of the coins being discussed here that were mined and never touched would be safe unless blocks were once generated including a signature for the address the reward was mined to and that was subsequently changed some time ago.  So, what gives?

Bitcoin doesnt really have inflation, and no one should have the powers to touch someones else coin whatever their name is.

Perhaps the quality of the private keys are in question.  If a private key is generated with good randomness then it shouldn't be vulnerable.  If a private key is generated with poor randomness then it is vulnerable.  If the Satoshi (or anyone else's for the matter) private keys are at risk then having them age out seems like overkill.  Let the lucky bad actors take them.  The owners of such can move them before they are stolen to an address derived from a superior private key.

If the quality of the private key isn't in question then what the heck are we talking about?  If I sign and distribute a bunch of messages using my private key then each of those messages give the bad actors more data to attack.  If I never sign and distribute even a single message then I am just depending on the quality & security/privacy of my private key.  The block reward comes into existence without any signatures.  Only outputs require signatures.  Move coins to a fresh address (one that has never been used to sign) and it is safe.

Destroying anyone's coins to eliminate the risk of them becoming active is wrong pure and simple.

Is someone worried that Satoshi or anyone else is at risk of being coerced?  Destroying their coins hardly seems the appropriate response.

The following is what Theymos stated the issue is centered around.
Early mined coins are more vulnerable since public keys were used then.
See the below quotes from earlier in this thread.

Oh.  What does it mean to be "paid directory to a public key, not an address"?  Let's compare https://blockchain.info/tx/0e3e2357e806b6cdb1f70b54c3a3a17b6714ee1f0e68bebb44a74b1efd512098 to https://blockchain.info/tx/4d32d3caa4fc7121e48c59e895ff50aa4a80763aea107e7fc82749885aac5e99 and try to see the difference.

Instead of destroying Satoshi's stash, how about if we create an address and move the vulnerable coins there for safekeeping?

My question in this debate is becoming:  Even if the Secp256k1 algorithm becomes exploitable by quantum computing, where does pruning the block chain by burning unsecured ledger entries fit into the consensus protocol? I think this is where the bigger leak in this argument can be demonstrated.

Thank you for your reconsideration.

For the record, the charge of im-/a-morality was meant more to shock people into reexamination of the issue. In general, I tend to accord people as intending to behave in a moral manner unless there is concrete evidence to the contrary.

But to seal the deal for others on the sidelines:

With today's technology, it is trivial for a thief to crack a door key and ignition key on many cars. Given enough immoral actors, and enough time, every such vulnerable car is a candidate for theft. We do not preemptively steal all such cars "for the common good". Because such is theft would be evil. Even if we were to subsequently crush any such vehicles that were "fixed" in this manner, it is still evil. And the fact that if we did not do so, leaving the theft to another who might subsequently sell the vehicle, would marginally reduce the value of all our other vehicles on the used market does not change the fact that preemptive confiscation is inherently evil.

Shouldn't we instead move the car(s) to a more secure location until the proper owner steps forward to claim?

This is the actual crux of this and any other argument that has the form "I think we should do X to enhance/change/fix Bitcoin"

This has been proposed thousands of times on this forum:  change the block reward, 21M cap is stupid; decrease the block time, 10 minutes is too long for me to wait; prune out the old coins, they might get stolen and dumped; and my all time favorite:  recycle the "lost" coins so we can mine them again and bring the total back up to 21M.

All of these hypothetical desires fail right out of the gate based on the fact that any fork of this nature creates a new coin and this new coin is no longer Bitcoin.

As long as there remains a small number of miners and nodes on the original protocol that side of the fork is Bitcoin - the other side of the fork is something else.

The root of this very question has been dissected many times in philosophical debates.  Here is one such debate that illustrates the reasoning: https://birajbahadurbista.wordpress.com/2013/12/10/concept-of-justice-in-platos-republica/

Perhaps you missed the 'with today's technology...'. Are you proposing that it would be valid to do so today? For that is the analogy.

But regardless, the answer is _no_. The prerogative -- and the responsibility -- belongs solely to the owner.

The owner had best get on with securing his stash before they are taken.  Does it take a quantum computer to take them?  Can a classical computer take them in a reasonable amount of time/effort?  Should I be making an effort to take them?  In the meantime, the market participants should take the risk into a account and discount the exchange rates.  Or are we saying they already have?  I doubt it.  If/when a Satoshi coin moves then the markets will react.  Until then the working assumption is they won't ever move.  Since the movement would likely wreck havoc then there is something to talk about.  If enough "voters" want to eliminate this risk then they can.  Don't sit on a pile and expect the rest of humanity to ignore it.  If nothing else the rest of humanity can abandon Bitcoin for something else without that particular risk.

If that is what they want I invite humanity to do just that.  Bitcoin will still be Bitcoin no matter what Nanny coin is developed for the "humanity" you speak of.

There is a security difference. See the following.

https://en.bitcoin.it/w/images/en/9/9b/PubKeyToAddr.png
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Technical_background_of_version_1_Bitcoin_addresses)



That has been proposed as well, but the problem is that ultimately you are locking those
coins indefinitely, which is the same as destroying or burning them.

The bottom line is, if users do not move their coins to a more secure cryptography in the future,
they risk losing them through theft from more advanced systems. Plain and simple.

If nothing else the rest of humanity can abandon Bitcoin for something else without that particular risk.

That /\ would actually be the result of this \/.

If enough "voters" want to eliminate this risk then they can.

LOL

Thank you sir. I concur, and your sentence structure is excellent. Also, as per you last post, I applaud you for making your motivations clear. If everyone on the board did this, the shill/disinformation paradigm would vanish overnight.

We can not protect these coins, and suffer the consequences as a whole, or we can take preventative measures, and mitigate the harm to a select few, obviously negligent actors at this point.

Would you starve due to the negligence of your brother? I am all for helping another in need, but when that need is self imposed, when does one limit their own exposure to another's poor situation?

First off, if I am keeping up, ebliever has changed his position from "Theymos is wrong" to "Theymos is right" and back to "Theymos is wrong" before you ever quoted this post from the middle position.

Secondly, taken out of context, "and then everyone else with bitcoin suffers as the market collapses from the shock of such stupidity in allowing this to happen" summarizes both arguments.  One argument is that allowing the coins to be stolen = bitcoin is worthless.  The other argument is that manipulating the coins even though not in possession of the keys = bitcoin is worthless.  The problem with both of these arguments is that they come from people worried about the value of their stash instead of being worried about the roots from and purpose for which bitcoin was created.  When considering those principles, the only way the coins should ever move is when a rightful owner or bad actor uses the keys to move them.

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

Why should "the many" suffer from the (in)actions of "the few"? 'Tis a very small amount of liberty to be traded to gain lots o' security. Clear thinking from Theymos once again.

Best to soft fork in the deletion of these coins owned by negligent owners than risk them returning to the market.

So, should we burn all those coin who's owners refuse to move their coin kept in an unencrypted hot wallet on an antiquated windows operating system because they're also not secure and could be stolen and dumped on the market?  Where does it end?  And, since when has it become fashionable to control other's stake in the project?  Are "we" becoming that "third party" the project was designed to eliminate?

You are far from the first person to suggest this, but this replaces decentralization with authority and pseudonymity with deferment to said authority.  While some might actually believe this is OK it doesn't change the fact that no one can definitively prove that they mined any given coins except by way of a signature from the private key of the address the coins were mined to.  Moving the coins doesn't protect them from a bad actor if the proof of ownership is a signature from the private key that can be compromised, and there is no other way to prove ownership.  However, otherwise destroying or rendering the coins inoperable does break fungibility and arguably causes more harm than the theft that can't otherwise be prevented.

Exactly. All bitcoins are vulnerable even today, just some more than others. Just look at the history of major bitcoin heists over the years. Sometimes the market takes a temporary tumble due to such heists. The responsibility to secure those bitcoins is solely the responsibility of said owner.

I'm going to apply JRR Tolkein's line about elves to myself and bow out of this thread: Go not to the elves for advice, for they will say both yes and no.  :-X

destroying somebodys coins would be the end of the btc. how could you trust this if your coins could just suddenly be burned!

maybe not the worst, but pretty close to it!

I agree completely first of all im not sure if all that btc vulneralities are real or just fud, and second thing i don't understand is why/how would theymos have the voice to do such thing, he has the "keys" of the forum but respecting to bitcoin all im seeing from him is a pursuit of own interests.

but, if everybody would be forced to move their coin in some period, would that be the answer? in "fiat world" goverments peridiocally force people to change their cash to new ones when they make changes to prevent people making fake money.

What you're saying is true, many countries issue new paper money and new coins with new designs and colors. The old replaced ones will lose their value by the end of the replacement process, this is done mainly to combat counterfeit and to force those who have stashed moeny in their homes to get it out as that money is taken of circulation causes many economic problems. All that is only possible because the currency is controlled by a single entity: the central bank, and nobody from the common people has a say in it. Here we are talking about a decentralised currency where everyone counts, can't you see the ongoing fight about the blocksize ? a consensus is needed to force a move to a new standard for Bitcoin and a debate is necessary before that can be accomplished.

Ok; so we can derive a Bitcoin address from the private key.  The same algorithm is used in both transactions, right?  We still don't see the relevant difference.

If an amount is paid to a public key then the public key is shown in the public blockchain for anyone to get/see/use.

A Bitcoin address is the double hashing of the public key.   So BitcoinAddress = hash(hash(PublicKey))

So if you pay to a Bitcoin address what is shown publicly in the blockchain is the Bitcoin address not the public key.

Now theoretically to crack a payment to a public key you would need to reverse only the ECDSA, PublicKey -> PrivateKey

But to crack a payment to a Bitcoin address you would need to reverse SHA and RIPEM and ECDSA

BitcoinAddress -> reverse hash -> reverse hash -> get PublicKey -> PrivateKey

So, you can see that since the hashing algorithms are not vulnerable to QC then payments made to Bitcoin addresses are basically not vulnerable to QC.

BUT

If you make a payment from a Bitcoin address to another Bitcoin address and have the change come back to the original address then the public key for the original address is now exposed.  So, just do not do that - always send the change back to a brand new address.

Modern deterministic wallets always send the change back to a new address.  The new blockchain.info wallet is a deterministic wallet and does this correctly.

However the very popular old blockchain.info wallet (and others like it) always sent the change back to the original address unless you explicitly told it not to so there are a lot of transactions that did expose the public key, those would also be vulnerable to QC attack.

we destroy satoshi coins..

then months later satoshi comes alive and asks where are my coins

what will u do..

it is satoshi wish to use that coin or not to use

if thieves could sell out million of coins so is the same risk with satoshi who if decided to sell those million coins is acting completely within his freedom

This is my understanding as well and is the reason why Theymos was originally talking about old non-moved coins.
A majority of the early mined coins are still sitting unmoved in publickeys.

Does anyone know when and in what version did they add bitcoin addresses to Bitcoin?

Plus all old blockchain.info wallet transaction as I stated above.

No,that won't be the end of BTC but the end of those coins only.Maybe the can have an impact on the older coins.Coins should be burned because logically no one knows who owns them and anybody can pull claims they do.I think theymos makes sense here.

You don't really know anything about how Bitcoin works do you.

How did you become a Hero member without leaning anything?

I was in a cranky mood and I am sorry I posted in such a foul mood.

No I don't.I'm just a random user fascinated by 1's and 0's.At times I'm good at solving the Ciphers and encrypting my porn links with SHA and MD5. 

I don't know maybe Shit Posting ?

I was about to answer Burt's question, but KenR already answered it. Something like that. I'm pretty sure I can find a Legendary member who has no clue too (excluding sold forum accounts.)

OK, I started it and I apologize.

So, can you explain what you meant by this?


That is true for all Bitcoins.

No, the only person who can claim them is the person with the private key.  Nobody else can claim them.

Maybe I was talking about the lost coins and they should be destroyed so thieves don't get hold of them later ?

If a thieve is capable of getting those coins then a thieve should be capable to get any coin, yet if they could then they wouldnt need to do it since bitcoin would be worth nothing.

It's amazing.  The diversity of thought, opinion, and factual knowledge on this subject truly sheds light on the direction this project has taken.  It seems that with such a diversely rich pool of adopters some novel thoughts would present themselves.  However, what I am interpreting here just reinforces why representative models of governance replace those models based on majority consensus....Is that where we're going here also?

Do we sacrifice the few for the benefit of the group, or do we hold fast for individual rights?  It's very interesting, but from which perspective was the project conceived? 

All those worries about coins getting stolen..this is all still pretty much science fiction, so all those people worrying about getting their coins stolen by some big evil quantum mechanism computer machine are simply out of their mind. No need to panic, specially if you don't go around making your keys public, so if you are that worried, make a new cold wallet that has never seen the internet and store all of your bitcoin there, I guess that would do it for the next 10000 years.


Such a change will require a lot of consensus.. so nothing worry about. If consensus is reached to not delete those bitcoins, the bitcoins will remain, if there is consensus, then they will get removed, but I don't think there will ever be consensus to do this, it's too controversial.

This sounds terribly stupid to me.
I dont see any reason to destroy them.

Those coins belong to satoshi.

In the short term, the coins would still be worth whatever they are worth now. So, at the very least, a thief will get 50+ BTC, then sell it on an exchange, then withdraw. Or send it to a bunch of sites like casinos and blow it all. He could easily get $20k USD. By the time we all figure out what happened, if a million coins move, then maybe the price will drop, but that's maybe a week or two, or even a month after the fact.

A smart cracker will not target any coins from within the first year. They'll go look for coins that were mined, maybe in 2010 or 2011 or some time after the pizza transaction. Or close to it.

If he's figured out a way to quickly crack unspent outputs, then he might have figured out how to crack re-used addresses with balances on them, since the public keys are known, and at least one transaction has been signed. It happened with some bad RNGs that were signed by Android wallets or something like that.

Much easier to target those exchanges with re-used wallet addresses, and those have more coins too. People will generally assume it was an inside job.

Doing this would destroy the core branch forever and the devs involved would find themselves quickly replaced

Turn on blockchain.info's advanced mode and see if you can find the difference...


Safekeeping by whom? There's too much moral hazard with that.


Destroying coins is a softfork. Everyone would automatically accept it.

In many cases, this is a huge problem. For example, China could right now freeze all the bitcoins of people who haven't been ID-verified by the Chinese authorities. (Since the vast majority of mining power is in China.) The defense against this is:

 1. Improve anonymity features so that specific coins can't be tied to specific people.
 2. Be prepared as a community to immediately hardfork to a different PoW if miners do anything like this. In fact, I think that a document should be written and signed by all of the major players which would specify exactly the lines that miners must not be allowed to cross, to avoid ambiguity/chaos if it actually happens.

But in the case of deleting insecure BTC, it seems possible to me, especially if quantum computers and coins being "un-lost" start looking more like a big looming threat and less like a theoretical discussion, that there could be sufficient support for the action that the risk of any substantial hardfork effort splitting Bitcoin would be low.

---

BTW, I recently wrote an article about quantum computing, for those unfamiliar: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Quantum_computing_and_Bitcoin

I'm quoting these out-of-order, apologies in advance.


I thought OP_RETURN was sufficient for creating provably-unspendable coin? If an early adopter wanted to, they could choose that option to nullify their coin, right? Perhaps it hasn't happened because if it did, it would vastly affect the price of coin today. Perhaps Satoshi or other early adopters who are holding their coin without any intention of actually spending it would rather see adoption by those with faith in a more-decentralized asset before the reality sets in and the coins are destroyed outright, thus drastically affecting price? Or perhaps, it's another ironic-and-now-embedded reference to the bailouts of 2008 as the genesis block so alludes, with each passing day a big middle-finger to the existing financial system that just as the large fiat bankers hold the keys to destroying the modern global financial system, so too does one entity now hold the keys to "destroying" the system that will eventually replace it.

I don't think anyone would propose that recovered gold from shipwrecks in the 1800s be destroyed instead of being allowed to re-enter the market. Perhaps with abandoned coins as a prize, significant advances in quantum computing would provide their own just rewards. This could be the intent of NOT making early coin provably-unspendable, though I would echo your concerns about how drastic of an effect on price this could potentially-be and would hope that these owners react accordingly. Worse still, it has always been a sort of unspoken yet lingering concern for all of us that Bitcoin is the work of a nation-state bent on usurping another by devaluing Bitcoin at a predefined time, in which case the owner nation-state would almost certainly not approve of having this early coin programmatically-locked.

We knew these risks and got involved anyway. We've known with a far more accurate estimation since SDL's blog posts in early 2013, and yet the price rose anyway, though it had fallen for a bit after the revelation.

I'm not sure that the existence of *insecure, unmoved coin* is a sufficient precedent for disqualifying coin outright. There is likely some coin that hasn't moved since before the addition of encrypted wallet.dat files that could similarly be argued to be "insecure" at some point in the future (though from the perspective of the network itself it is just as secure). Should those owners from 2009-2011 pre-wallet-encryption also eventually be forced to move their coin or lose it entirely?

I think we should wait and see. Perhaps we will see a solution arise without intervention.


This is just a nitpick, but I think it is important to distinguish between China -- the country and its people -- and the Chinese government. The pools being focused there can be somewhat distressing, but the people of China may yet embrace the "spirit of resistance" that Thomas Jefferson (https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/connections/thomas-jefferson/history4.html) once hoped all Americans would have towards their own government if it became tyrannical. So, too, may the Chinese possess a healthy distrust of their own government's adoption of tyranny for the sake of liberty. I do wish they understood that Bitcoin's fungibility is just as important as its role as a medium of exchange.

exchanges inflate Bitcoins by hundreds of millions

actual real Bitcoins r a drop in the ocean

Satoshi's stash is definitely a cause for concern. I believe that the uncertainty regarding those coins will ultimately prevent Bitcoin from achieving a mainstream status.
However I don't think it would be a good idea to just destroy them, even if the whole of the Bitcoin community were to agree to it. That would be like resorting to vigilante justice and if Bitcoin is to represent freedom then we would've failed right there.
So far I like Theymos' OP_CHECKSIG idea the best because it will pretty much force a reaction from Satoshi in case he wants to keep his coins. The drawback of course is that a lot people risk losing coins if they don't move them in time. But at least we'll know where we stand in regards to those coins.

I do agree with theymos that satoshi's stash should be burned in order for the value to retain. knowing there are issues to be solved, 1M btc can add up once stolen and may plummet its value if cashed out.
I think this is even the goal of those who are trying to find out who statoshi is.  :o

do you volunteer your own bitcoins as tribute to be destroyed first

Exactly. The leveraging on the exchanges are what affects the bitcoin price most. There are only like 15 million bitcoins in existence right now. Satoshi's 1 million is only 1/15. While the monthly volume on the exchanges will be several times way more than that.

You're basically destroying the idea of freedom to private ownership. Also you are treating bitcoin as a gift card that can expire at a time. This is not good for a currency.

So many "whens" and "ifs" and "what ifs"!

When and if such a time (or such tech) happens, we will have the ability to secure the blockchain against such vulnerabilities.  (The bad guys won't be the only ones with access to the new tech!!)  Then a mandatory fork in client software could be required to transact on it. 

The security of the individual wallet would remain in the individuals control and realm of responsibility.  If an individual wants to keep their paper wallets or wallet.dat files stored in a way they feel is secure without converting to the new "when and if" methods until such a time they deem proper to sweep those wallets into the re-born blockchain, then so be it. 

Ah, I see!;
vs.
The former is not hashed, the latter is.  The hashing makes it QC-resistant.  Leaving the unhashed coins laying around is just asking for trouble.  If the original owner(s) won't act to secure these then the community takes on the responsibility.  If the community doesn't act then I don't want to hear any complaints later.

Are my coins secured with hashes or not?  If they are not then I will act to move them.  How does one determine it?

I own 16V9UivwWtp6iGsaRnWycUjZJBcDDQRmV4 (amongst others).  Two transactions sent coins to it.  Both are secured with hashing.  So, I'm ok, right?  Or are only unspent coinbase coins at risk?  I don't happen to have any coinbase coins so I don't need to worry about my own, right?

Agree 100%. Down the road if brute forcing private keys becomes possible with quantum computing or other means, then countermeasures would have to be put in place to secure the blockchain. But I have a feeling that before this can/will happen, there will be a means to secure it against such attacks. I am willing to bet that 'quantum-proof' cryptography will be available and used around the same time quantum computing becomes more feasible for the masses.

Me.  I can totally be trusted; ask anyone that knows me.  Hmm, unless I am unduly coerced.  Hmm, what about a multi-sig?  Gosh, it would just be so much easier if Satoshi et al would secure their coins instead of burdening the community.

I don't think this makes sense at all. That's like saying because someone hasn't moved their coins 10 years down the road they should be removed/deleted. That's just stupid. If you leave a lot of money in your bank should they just 'get rid of it' if you don't use it for a period of time?

I have taken steps to pass ownership on when I am no longer able to control them myself.  I am going to improve my plan by directly the new owners to move my/their coins to re-secure them (we don't want anyone thinking they became orphaned).
If one's bank has potentially weak locks on their doors then shouldn't the owner move their funds to a more secure place?  If the owner doesn't then shouldn't the community act to thwart theft?
Only non-hashed signatures put the coins at risk.  All modern transactions secure signatures with hashes.  Only old enough transactions lack the hashing security.  Quantum resistant algorithms are an active area of study already, e.g. hashing.  Not using hashing to secure things now is dumb.

*If* one were to generate new coinbase coins now without securing them with hashing then essentially they are putting them up for grabs.  I propose we enhance Bitcoin;

After some point X, all subsequent coinbase transaction must be secured with hashing or they will be rejected.

This should be very easy to gain consensus for.  Someone would have to work to generate non-hashed coinbase coins now anyway.  If they want to throw new coinbase coins up for grabs then they should find another way to donate them rather than encouraging theft.

Destroy peoples coins...

LOL...


 ::)

confirming once again the strange views of theymos

So what happens when we have 21M bitcoin in total? and people wanting bitcoin and those who have just wont sell?
Is it going to be just for a few and not for all the people?

Everyone spends, usually the more you have the more you spend.

Someone will sell at the right price.  Also, Bitcoins can be divided into portions less than a whole.

Ask me in a hundred years. (Or ask anyone in a hundred years.) Literally a hundred years.

We have to protect bitcoin, not to destroy it.

Thwart theft by stealing? Yeah, that makes sense. Not.

Again, the only moral position is that personal property is sacrosanct. The community has no rightful claim upon those coins.

This is one thing that Theymos will have to respectfully disagree about. I can't support any activity that allows control over another persons coins. To me, this is antithetical to the unassailable ownership of bitcoin.

My preference would be to move the non-hashed coins for safekeeping; does come with two big problems;

1) who can be trusted?
2) how do we know when the rightful owner steps forward to claim?

The alternative is to make them unusable.  This is *not* taking them to be used; that truly would be stealing them.  Making them unusable protects the community.  Look, someone is going to steal them eventually.  If the original owner won't act to secure their own coins then the community would be remiss to leave them to be stolen and wreck havoc.

Anyone that believes letting them be stolen and used is the right thing to do is either naïve or doesn't care about the good of the community.  No, give plenty of warning; watch carefully for developments; be prepared to act *before* the coins are stolen.

For what it is worth, I will withdraw from Bitcoin if this isn't adopted in time.  I imagine many others will too.

So just because someone has not moved their coins for a few years, some other person is going to declare them lost?
Who the F%^& are they to make decisions about someone else's property.  I don't know if this idea is really attributable to Theymos.  But whoever's idea, it's coming from a warped sense of authority.  Bitcoin is encrypted to prevent unilateral decisions like this from people who think they know better.

1) Bitcoin is trustless - that is what makes it Bitcoin
2) Great point - so don't do it.

Even if it is not stealing by your definition, destroying someone else's property is still wrong.

Color me naïve then as I believe it is in the best long term interest of Bitcoin to just let the coins be stolen and placed back into circulation.  Everyone will know they were vulnerable, being stolen just proves that, having them stolen will wake everyone up and get them to move the rest of the vulnerable coins.  Short term buying opportunity on the dip.  Recovery, etc.  

Taking/Destroying/Stealing coins would lead to a mass exodus to a coin that does not do that.  Long term destruction of Bitcoin value, values and ideals.

It is almost guaranteed that this idea (destroying coins) will never be implemented so I would invite you to cash in now and leave.  Everyone else that wants this idea will also be disappointed.  Why wait?  If this is your idea for Bitcoin (destruction of other people's property) then please get out now while the getting is good.   And don't let the door hit you on the ass on your way out. (too snarky)

Even if id try i couldnt make any decent post in reply to yours, you are so close minded or simply just doing fud for a reason that pisses me off instantly, there is people that may keep their calm and answer nicely to you but not me. GO FUCK YOURSELVES with all the bullshit that only keeps spreading uncertainity without any sense. The worst is that people actually ends up believing you. Time ago i realised that cryptos are filled with people that are around exclusively for their own interest, the nicer and the more helpfull you try to seem the harder shit you are, good luck with the spread. Please dump n go.

there are gold coins sat in museums.. no one is sure when someone wil steal them and melt them down into bars. no one is sure who actually owns them. so lets fire them into space so they evaporate in the sun.

.. um no thanks.

the owner does not matter
the short term price drama of the shock that coins are stolen does not matter.
..
the guaranteed 21mill coin cap and fungibility DOES MATTER.

anyone else suggesting to destroy coins should destroy their own coins first and then go back and play with their fiat debt notes because all they care about is the short term fiat valuations.. not the long term stable currency that cant be destroyed.

to be honest if 99% of people move to d-wave prevention encryption. and d-wave "steals" 1% of coins and then moves them to d-wave prevention encryption to spend later.. its al good because atleast there are still 21 mill coins in circulation.

if d-wave themselves decide to destroy the coins they "steal" then thats another option..
but for the community to say coins in blocks 1-21000 should be destroyed simply because they are old.. is something that makes no sense at all

Firstly I don't think Satoshi will ever access his coins nor will it be hacked. After all he is the creator of bitcoin and he wants to bring good to the community. He has no vested interest in dumping the coins all at once and crashing the market. If he does sell his bitcoins, he'll sell it one by one. Not a million at once.

I don't think he'll get hacked either. Being the founder of bitcoin will surely mean that he has good security measures? Worst case scenario that 1 million coins are dumped... That's not a big deal either if you look at the leveraging going on inside exchanges.

The quote above absolutely SHOULD be true, and I hope it is, but what do you read into the quote below?It seems to start out cocky and almost imply that it doesn't matter what the early adopters / true believers think because the core developers have their own agenda, but then it ends looking like double-speak when also mentioning a hard fork.  Does this mean the only way to prevent a soft fork is with enough support for a hard fork against it?  Do you really think ideology will beat greed in that scenario?  Don't get me wrong, I understand that if the greedy side won, they would likely actually be shooting the collective in the foot and we'd technically all lose, but how much say does Theymos really have in Core development?  How true to the founding values of bitcoin is the current core development team?  This all makes me very nervous and reaffirms my belief that we need multiple implementations (even if XT and Classic had their flaws, at least they could theoretically keep development decentralized).  I actually ran XT even though I had a problem with many of Hearn's ideas long before it was created, but I understood that I could switch away after big blocks happened so that I wouldn't support the other more evil aspects of that particular implementation.    I've been running Unlimited since XT died, but more recently I've been considering switching back to Core even though I only support segwit as a hard fork with other fixes to prevent drastic soft forks.  Right now I'm thinking I shouldn't switch back after all...

ETA:  To be clear, I'm really looking for input here.  I've re-read that post many times.  My comments above are based on it sounding like:
"You can't stop the destruction of those coins, because we can force it with a soft fork and you can't get enough support to undo that with a risky hard fork"
However, other times, even though I would be against the potentially supportable hard fork, it sounds like a much more even keeled:
"We should prevent soft forks that would allow destroying coins, but even then there will probably be sufficient support for a risky hard fork to destroy them"

Hmm i think that if a coin is in a museum is because its worth more that way than in a goldbar. Eitherway i completly agree with you.

but a theif wont care about the real value.. even at pennies to the dollar.. its still more pennies then they had before..

again value is meaningless if you think about the big long term picture

Gold has some intrinsic value, gold coins have historic value well beyond that, and also, much of it in museums is made into art; it would be wasteful and very costly to send them into the sun.  Bitcoins have no intrinsic value; nothing is wasted and it would cost very little to render them useless.  Museums are spread out with a variety of security measures in place; non-hashed coinbase coins are all sitting in one place.
Hmm, this position literally encourages folks to strive to steal them.  Do we actually need to have them stolen to gain the benefits of waking everyone up?  You, I, and some others are already awake before they are stolen.  Can't we gain the benefits any other way?  If not (and I do respect your opinion/thoughts) then I do see your point.  Suppose we compromise and allow some to be stolen (eventually) and render the rest useless.

What you dont understand is that we are no one to render them, neither i understand whats the difference between the coins of satoshi or the prolly hundreds of thousands that are in physical coins, addresses which went thru printers and such.
If bitcoin were weak in some way it would evolve, it is not, not yet atleast, also its funny to see dudes fearing the 1m coins because of the wright dude claiming he is sato.

I sincerely hope the cap stands forever.

I sincerely wish Bitcoins were truly fungible but clearly they aren't (yet).  The growing toolset of taint analysis makes this obvious.  Mixing services help a ton but are at risk.  If Bitcoin is fungible then how do we know which are in Satoshi's stash?  No, fungibility is an illusion for now.
I see your point; I suggest a compromise; allow some to be stolen (for the good of the community) (eventually) and burn the rest.  We only touch non-hashed coinbase coins.
I stand down from my position; even if the non-hashed coinbase coins are all allowed to be stolen I will stick with Bitcoin.  I am prepared for a roller-coaster ride.

While I agree with you on the unquoted portion of this post to the extent that some strive to destroy the fungibility of bitcoin, I feel it is important to point out two things:
1) Just because there are some threats to fungibility doesn't mean that additional threats such as this should be considered acceptable.
2) We don't know which coins are in Satoshi's stash; anything beyond the genesis block could have been mined by anyone, and we don't know who mined which blocks beyond a few blocks where it was publicly announced by Satoshi that coins were being sent (for instance, the famous transaction to Hal Finney that was publicly announced does tell us that the block the coins came from was awarded to Satoshi's address and the address the coins were sent to went to was Hal Finney's, but we don't know who mined any other given early block unless someone has said something to indicate it was theirs).

I know you know better, but when suggesting we know which coins are Satoshi's, I can only assume you fell back to the poorly chosen and inaccurate title of this thread (and the article on which it was based).

Only non-hashed coinbase coins that haven't moved through to a hashed address are at risk.  There is some sense to it; the sense of the community to reduce the roller-coaster ride.  Large fluctuations in exchange rates scare some common people off from adopting Bitcoin.  If we actively choose to allow the non-hashed coinbase coins to be stolen and the resulting financial turmoil then ok but at least we are going in eyes open.  Ah, the Bitcoin community should press to get the at-risk coins stolen as soon as possible to get the turmoil behind us.  It is possible the earliest thieves might altruistically use some to pay themselves back and then burn the rest for the good of the rest of the community.

My apologies; I didn't know consecutive posts weren't allowed.  How is one suppose to know?

Edit:  I was pointed at https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.msg7955645#msg7955645.

Actually I think this statement shows that you finally "get" Bitcoin!  Maybe if someone had pointed this out a long time ago then we could have brought you around a lot sooner.

What makes Bitcoin different it that we basically put something of value right there and "encourage" bad actors to try and steal them.  This tests Bitcoin and is part of what gives it value.  Bitcoin is constantly under attack.  From external hackers and internal forces trying to "fix" it.  This has been going on 24/7 for years.  It is this constant attack on all fronts that makes it what it is and gives it value to those that appreciate exactly what it is.

Sorry, I meant to tell you to stop that multiple posting but forgot to mention it.

EDIT:  See, I just thought of something else and just used the edit button to add it to this post ;)  Also, you can go back and delete those posts that do not really add much to the conversation and/or delete some of posts but add the content to other posts you keep, thus reducing the number of consecutive posts.

Speaking of encouraging people to steal coins, I participated in a very interesting couple of threads a while back in which I was accused of encouraging people to steal coins.  Not only did I encourage them to steal the coins I posted an idea showing the fastest way to go about stealing them (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg13426232#msg13426232).  Someone has placed a "puzzle" in the blockchain to see how safe Bitcoins are.  What they did is summarized by Danny in this post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg13382914#msg13382914

I agree with his assessment of the transaction.

The transaction is here:

https://blockchain.info/tx/08389f34c98c606322740c0be6a7125d9860bb8d5cb182c02f98461e5fa6cd15

It shows that currently 51 bits is still pretty good security since nobody has take the 51 bit private key.

 Others in the thread were very desperate to assume that there was a sequence they could figure out and thus steal all the coins in the puzzle (about 32 coins). Some of the addresses have been solved and the BTC have been taken.  If you read through both of the threads there was the usual technical posts, the outrage posts, the morality discussion (is it wrong to take BTC that are vulnerable) and of course the f@#$ing signature spammers.  Interesting read if you skip over all the stupid signature spammers and it is a study in how the title of a thread affects the entire discussion (sound familiar?)

First thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1305887.0

Starts off badly due to the title of the thread and gets more technically interesting toward the third page where I am accused of encouraging people to try and steal the coins (I was).  Second thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.0

much more technically satisfying after a better thread title and everyone calmed down.

Check them out, they are worth a complete read.

QFT

coins in cold wallets should just stay in the cold wallet until the owner decides to move them.

The coins belong to the owner, nobody can tell the owner what to do with his coins except the owner.

Bitcoin is how money should be.

There will be no inflation, because we all know these coins can be spend.

So you think if someone leaves their car door unlocked too long that gives you the right to light the car on fire to prevent the car from being stolen? That's madness!

No, you don't burn anything. Those coins belong to their owners exclusively and it's their responsibility to keep them safe. Not yours, not the community's, not anyone else's.

bitcoins main basis of trust is that they cannot be easily stolen.. thats what makes bitcoin great.
if someone was to steal them (temporary drama of old insecure keys) and then moves them to a more secure private key system then the coins as a whole become more secure..

however. saying to destroy coins purely of fear of theft. is bad.. whats next:
destroy coinbase's coldstore purely incase hackers steal it.
destroy every silk road deposited coin incase it ends up in some government auction
destroy any address with more then 25btc. because that is a temptation to a d-wave business to try cracking the key to
destroy all keys because some people are spitting out their dummies that they are not millionaires after spending just $20 and hoping for massive returns

no no no no

keep the 21mill cap, even if governments steal silk road coins and auction them off for pennies to the dollar.. it means nothing long term.
keep the 21m cap. even if d-wave cracks a few private keys and sells the bitcoin off for pennies to the dollar.. it means nothing long term.

if all you care about is some temporary price crash drama due to theft.. then tweak your mindset from negative to positive and think about it..
a price crash is not a bad thing to scare people into selling quick and losing.. its a positive thing to buy coins dirt cheap and win when the drama passes.

Every time .gov ends up with BTC in their slimy pockets someone will always suggest "let's stick it to the man and blacklist those coins - that will show them".

Obviously I disagree with them every time this happens because blacklisting any coins or destroying any coins in any way will hurt Bitcoin in the long run.

I believe so strongly in maintaining and increasing the fungibility of Bitcoin I will fight against blacklisting even when Homeland Security takes my coins and still holds them in the Homeland Security and "Justice" Department federal asset slush fund here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1182005.msg12437626#msg12437626

https://blockchain.info/address/1Eu38i1DkRAPAJhSqbseVroJDpMRfJbAx3

u may know your maths but here is some fundementals of economy
intrinsic. that is a buzz word for the commodities market (meat, wheat, oil gold).. not the asset/currency market. though gold is both an asset and commodity. the buzzword intrinsic should be only used in the context of commodity. EG its the golds intrinsic commodity attributes that makes it a good asset.. but never its intrinsic asset value that makes it a good commodity

fungibility: has nothing to do with knowing who owns what..
eg donald trumps bank notes in his safety deposit box are no different then bill gates's,
eg a $10 in the cash register at starbucks has no different value then a $10 in mcdonalds..
fungibility is not about knowing who owns it or where it currently sits.
even a drug dealers $12,000 illicit stash that they cross the border with, is still the same as the $12,000 value that eventually is handed out to officers for christmas bonus/retirement funds

fungibility is about messing with/ treating one as good and one as bad.. EG accept this coin because X destroy that coin because Y.
moving funds due to hacks/thefts/bad management/mistakes/government seizure. does not affect fungibility.. because eventually they are put back into circulation. but destroying funds out of circulation without replacing an equal amount. is bad

50btc in satoshi's addresses has no fungible difference to 50btc in coinbase. or 50btc in my address... 50btc is 50btc... and thats how it should remain.

+1  Yeppers.

Good points....I haven't read the cited threads yet but that is on my todo list....they sound like enjoyable reads.

I just wanted to reinforce the concept behind this post with my own citation that illustrates the utility of encouraging the community to test the security of a platform's encryption....it has been an invaluable tool and is a method that has been used by cryptologists for many years.

http://www1.distributed.net/RC5

Ok then, the sooner the non-hashed coins are taken/won the happier I will be.  Perhaps it was/is the intent of the original owners to have this happen; we can't know.  Perhaps it was/is a deliberate reward designed to encourage folks to probe.  Mining is rewarded since it helps secure the network.  Probing non-hashed coins generates interest and can lead to a stronger Bitcoin.  The original owners have had plenty of time to move their coins through to hashed protected addresses; that they haven't is pretty strong evidence that they don't care to (or can't).

I really like Theymos.  Over the years I have had a few interactions with him and he has always treated me well and I find him to be and upstanding guy.

I have made many mistakes including some very large expensive ones, just take a look at my history, those mistakes are all there for anyone who knows how to Google.  Many times I have started out with one opinion in a thread or on a subject and after discussions and careful consideration I have changed my stance.  Several times I held my ground to my financial detriment.  That is the learning process.

Now, if we could only convince Theymos of the danger of this idea that would be a real coup :)

Until them I respectfully disagree with him on this topic.

I pride myself on having an open mind; which does not mean I switch positions trivially.  If something makes sense in plain speaking terms then that means a lot (many thanks to those with the patience to explain their viewpoints).  I do tend to express a position more strongly than I might actually feel about it in order to learn more (my apologies to those offended by such tactics) although sometimes my position truly will swing.  Precision and accuracy are highly valued during the process of debate.

I sincerely appreciate Theymos' position; if/when non-hashed protected coins are taken then the market reaction will probably be strongly negative.  But now it seems to me the reaction will likely be much the same if the proper original owners of long idle coins move them.

In the long term, e.g. decades and beyond, I believe Bitcoin will be a foundational technology despite (because of?) the roller-coaster ride it will likely take along the way.

Those coins sitting there is the nature of BTC, we all knew it when buying it....


Leave it be

I agree, wholeheartedly.

How can you support the idea that "coins not in circulation disappearing would not make any difference"?  Many bonds do not circulate but you sure as hell can bet that the people who loaned the money decades ago expect their principle and interest 20 years down the road.
 
Many people stored BTC into casascius coins, if you move your coins from those you destroy a valuable wallet.  I don't intend on moving my coins from my paper and brass wallets every five years, that is a waste of time and mining fees will add up.   So there are at least 24267 reasons to leave old address the fuck alone.   https://casascius.uberbills.com/

Didn't these come after the hashed addresses? If so they should be using hashes, not pubkeys.

I don't think he read\understood the whole thread.  You are correct the physical coins would not be affected under the proposal.

I have a great idea...Theymos should be destroyed! :P
If someone had my coins destroyed for any reason, I would try my best to seek and destroy them! >:(

Did you read the thread?  No.
Do you have any idea what is being discussed?  No.
Are you just another lazy ass signature campaign spammer with a purchased account?  Looks like it.

Sure I read the thread and I disagree with Theymos proposal. In my opinion, if Satoshi's coins became threatened by QC in the future and he does not move them, then they should be stolen. Whoever steals them to sell them will temporarily crash the market BUT it WILL rebound! (even if it takes a few years)

It will also be good thing as more bitcoins will be redistributed to the masses.

Now let's do a checklist of everything you said earlier.

Did you read the thread?  YES!
Do you have any idea what is being discussed?  YES!
Are you just another lazy ass signature campaign spammer with a purchased account?  Looks like it. NO!

As far as my account is concerned, you are dead wrong BurtW!
Do you have any idea what a signature campaigner is...Doesn't look like you do!

The site in my signature is a now defunct site...it is still online but has been abandoned for months.
There is certainly no campaign on BitcoinTalk for the promotion of such site.
Have you seen how often I have posted in the past couple of months...probably 1 post per week on average.

Stop making stupid assumptions BurtW...you look like an idiot. ::)