Bitcoin Forum

The United States Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to repeal rules designed to protect net neutrality.

“Priyabrata Dash, editor of Crypt Bytes Tech, wrote earlier this year that the biggest threat to cryptocurrency markets is the repeal of net neutrality.”

http://www.ibtimes.com/how-net-neutrality-vote-may-block-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-trading-2628175

How important is the U.S. for bitcoin? Will the U.S. devs working on bitcoin need to move or stop working on bitcoin?

wait,wait.. I was away for a few days and wasn't following the news recently. The FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality?

Ajit is a moron and even the creators of the internet and everything in common, have spoken against it. Everything from US, considering the bitcoin, might as well shift to EU.

Yep, it’s over for U.S. internet users. I don’t believe the U.S. is really very important to bitcoin at this point anyway. Bitcoin is more of an Asian thing now.

Why would it be the end? Have any US ISPs openly declared opposition against Bitcoin? The article itself says it's strictly hypothetical. Either way, I don't think they can make a debilitating decision on Bitcoin so easily. They would have to consider what their competitors are doing, as they would needlessly risk losing their customers to the other side. It does represent a threat, albeit a theoretical one.

I don't imagine Bitcoin would be anywhere near the top of their list, but I concede that things could get really bad really quickly.

If the net neutrality is over and the US internet service providers starts to ban/block cryptocurrency exchange platforms and online wallets,then other countries might follow the USA.
I was wondering about any way to create a decentralized cryptocurrency friendly internet provider business model.Some forum member was talking about such project in the Project development board.

2FA emails sent by a blockchain.info account I used were blocked by AOL/AIM not long ago, so that I couldn't receive them or confirm logging in to my blockchain account.

If any of you have a spare blockchain.info account try linking it to an email address on the AOL/AIM domain. It seemed to me that AOL/AIM blocks emails coming from the blockchain.info domain. Maybe someone doesn't like me, or my case was an isolated event. Either way, I wouldn't be surprised if my experiences represent future actions taken against bitcoin/crypto.

It is known that ISP's already engage in "throttling" of bandwidth for services like bittorrent. If Net Neutrality is repealed it may not be an exaggeration to assume circumstances will be much worse.

As far back as 5 years ago, politicians in the USA were saying america needed to adopt an "internet kill switch" and stronger censorship of internet content "similar to what china implements". If net neutrality is repealed that could be what we end up with.

Interesting premise. Do you think the US is important for Bitcoin?

I don't. I mean, yeah, Bitcoin (according to a lot of evidence) was probably created in the States, but do said States have control over it? No. An enthusiastic NO! That's what "decentralized" is all about.

But your question was more than that. You were getting at whether the net neutrality decision in the States would impact Bitcoin....still no! US site don't own Bitcoin. And the biggest among them (Coinbase) wouldn't be subjected to such persecution!

so you are basically saying the $1.2 billion dollar daily volume that comes from GDAX (Coinbase, mostly US users) is nothing.
and all the 3146 (27.53% rank #1) nodes are also nothing.

not to mention all these hypes about the futures market are coming from US right now!

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i actually believe that end of net neutrality will mean a exploding demand for bitcoin. it simply means people will value decentralization a lot more than before.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/15/ryan-hoover-on-fccs-blockchain-effect.html

In as much as this may seems like it might affect the crypto currency market, I don't see it as the one that would mean its end. The only thing that this would mean the end of bitcoin is if they are compelled by law that bitcoin is illegal and the moment that is not there, they would be contravening the provision of the law. Aside that most of this service providers are mainly for profit organisation and I don't see them stopping access to bitcoin related site when there is no law they are relying on to support their decision if one should say I won't, its an open market others will allow.

From the article a lot of internet providers AT&T specifically have been investing in the blockchain technology which is another plus for bitcoin. And finally, this is another wake up call to developers that are serious about making a change in the industry to create something of value for everyone rather than jokes all over the place.

I don’t think it’s nothing. I just don’t think the US is as important as say Japan or China is to bitcoin. I think if we had to lose a major country and it’s users the US would be the least problematic.

People can value decentralization all they want as long as their isp doesn’t attempt to control them then they can have it.

I was thinking the same as well but, what about Tor? Will they be able to block access to exchanges using Tor? I don’t think so. Will they be able to block Tor itself?

The netproviders in the US cheer over the decision of the FCC, but the resistance is immense. Many powerful companies such as Google, Twitter, Facebook, Mozilla have already announced resistance and there will be court complaints against FCC and network providers. The European Commission has already expressed its clear position on the continuation of net neutrality to avoid discrimination via twitter by Andrus Ansip. I guess the FCC's push is doomed to failure.

Though that’s a really stupid policy, and it will cause plenty of damage, I somehow doubt it could cause “the end of bitcoin in the USA”.  If nothing else, there are too many rich Americans who are too deeply invested in Bitcoin at this point.  I think the rules over there say that nothing will get completely trashed if that would upset too many rich people.  That’s in the U.S. Constitution, or something.  On the other hand, sometimes even that rule has been blatantly broken; is this 1933 all over again (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2552381.msg26015394#msg26015394)?

The Priyabrata Dash article (https://medium.com/crypt-bytes-tech/net-neutrality-its-impact-on-bitcoin-cyptocurrency-opinion-6c7b49cac759) cited by IBTimes.com says:


Yes.  Probably.  The little guys might get crushed.  Meanwhile, even more USAian users will be shepherded into the Coinbase playpen where their use of “Bit Coins” is supervised by a nanny.  So they don’t inadvertently hurt themselves, you know.  For their own good.  Toddlers sometimes swallow coins.  How could a doctor even find a “Bit Coin” on an X-ray?

But I doubt it will result in a total ban, whether de factor or ultimately de jure.  Unless, unless....  1933 U.S.A., meet 1984 Oceania in 2017!


They already have an “Internet kill switch”!  Politically undesirable sites can be mysteriously (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2485318.msg26336128#msg26336128) hit with such large and sophisticated DDoS that they get forced behind Cloudflare (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2485318.msg25449826#msg25449826); thus, they will become dependent on staying in Cloudflare’s good graces.  Oops!  Now, Cloudflare has the kill switch.

“If a private party does it, it’s not censorship.  Only governments can do censorship.”  Repeat that nonsense ten times like a good little libertarian.  The U.S. government can never, ever censor a website which does not otherwise break U.S. laws, due to the First Amendment of its Federal Constitution.  Huge, centralized private parties with quasi-governmental de facto censorship powers are a loophole in the First Amendment.

And if you want for ordinary people to actually be able to find you?  For the past 15 years or so, you have already needed the Holy Imprimatur of Google.  Another “private party”.  Get delisted by Google, and the only traffic you will get is mysteriously large and sophisticated DDoS.  Well, I guess that’s plenty enough traffic for one server, anyway.

Looking further:  Domain registrars.  Backbone providers.  “Last-mile” providers (your local ISP).  You are dependent on so any different “private parties” for your “free flow of information”.  They are all in substance public utilities, and should be regulated as public utilities.

The point of this FCC ruling is to go in the wrong direction.  “Net Neutrality” rules were regulating ISPs as if public utilities.  Those rules required ISPs to provide fair service on equal terms to all traffic, with none of the discretion of “private parties”.

Oh, yes—add this, too:


Did you read the article?  Among other things, it says that AT&T has been “AT&T has taken particular interest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies as a whole, patenting a number of technologies that would utilize the digital tokens in unique ways”.  Patents provide an awful lot of censorship and suppression power to private parties who, of course, can never “censor” or “suppress” anything because they are private parties exercising their Intellectual Property rights.

I’ll tell you what’s coming next:  SOPA/PIPA by the backdoor, implemented by “private parties”.  Remember how SOPA wanted to stick its fingers into the workings of the DNS?  Well, the registrars and registries will do that so the governent needn’t worry about it.  Not that they’d be prohibited from taking actions the U.S. government would enjoy seeing.  That’s their free choice!

Does the U.S. government dislike you?  Well, then, Cloudflare might decide to dislike you, too; and they’ll throw you to the DDoS jackals (none of which are intelligence agencies acting covertly—oh, no!).  Not that Cloudflare would ever take the U.S. government’s opinion into account, of course.

Do you have an awesome new technology which will make Bitcoin more decentralized, more robust and ”anti-fragile”, more private—more difficult to control?  Well, just wait till you see the thicket of interlocking, overbroad patents which will cover any and every possible new feature for anything deemed a “cryptocurrency”.  The U.S. governent will not be tyranically suppressing your invention.  Rather, AT&T will be exercising their Intellectual Property rights.  What are you, a pirate or something?

And if all that fails, the FCC has now ruled that ISPs can deliver services and sites they dislike at the rate of a 300 baud modem.  Or not deliver them at all.  Most observers miss the bidirectional benefits of such connections as having former Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai as Chairman of the FCC.  It’s practically a corporate merger between Verizon and the United States.  Here is Ajit Pai with Verizon executive Kathleen Grillo.  Now, if the government dislikes a site—well, who is to stop Ajit from telling Kathleen his opinions over lunch?


(For the dimmer bulbs in the peanut gallery:  That last was rhetoric.  Of course the working day-to-day connections will be much subtler.  Ajit and Kathleen are VIPs, who are too busy to compare notes on what websites and services should be blocked or throttled by Verizon, which can never, ever do “censorship” because it is a private party in the free market.)

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Mitigation ideas with various pros and cons, mostly applicable to everybody and not only Americans:

0. Use Tor.

1. Study up on how people in PRC China get onto Tor.  So, American tinpots want censorship mechanisms “‘similar to what china implements’”?  Tor is banned and blocked at the GFW.  People use it anyway.  Yes, Tor is currently U.S.-based; and I am almost certain that it’s organizationally compromised.  So, see (4) below.

2. Study the technical side of Internet censorship (https://censorbib.nymity.ch/), generally.

3. Get a satellite dish (https://blockstream.com/satellite/) to keep up with the blockchain.  But how will you hide it from the surveillance drones?  Also in the U.S.A., “land of the free”, you’ve got some small surveillance planes running over various cities—operated by “private parties”, some of them using their aerial observations for marketing purposes (tracking cars’ shopping habits, and the like).  I guess you’d better hide that dish.

4. Other backup communication options outside the scope of a bitcointalk.org thread.  Just pretend I’m talking about RFC 1149.  Maybe I am, in the worst case.

5. Preferably, make sure that nobody knows you have Bitcoin.  Otherwise, make sure that you have Bitcoin nobody knows about.  Observe the distinction.  One way or another, protect your privacy (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2527738.msg25852987#msg25852987).

6. If you live in the United States, perhaps you should consider moving.  The beauty of Bitcoin is that you can memorize a seed phrase carefully, destroy all media containing any recoverable Bitcoin keys, and then walk across the border with a king’s fortune locked inside your head.  The TSA will either physically molest you, or make a porno of you; but they won’t find your Bitcoin!  Should you be concerned about rubberhose cryptanalysis, see (5) above.  (5) is very important.

HTH.

In the unlikely scenario that they attempt to block Tor, users can just use a VPN.  They can't realistically ban personal VPNs because a lot of employees in major companies use a VPN for their work.  A VPN on its own is not regarded as suspicious.

This is all worst-case scenarios.  A lot of countries where Bitcoin is prominent (like China) have far less neutral Internet than the US does.  ISPs can screw with traffic now, but it'll take a lot of small steps for them to get anywhere.

They also have very little incentive to ban BTC.

A ban on the Internet users websites will only cause a small distrubance for Bitcoin. Most people that use Bitcoin know how to work around that stuff.

It is really time that the US realised that all these embargoes and bans hurt the US, and build the competition. The US is becoming a fairly minor player in world affairs, and it is obvious the the Deep State plans are to move major world influence away from the west, and towards China and Asia. They have virtually lost the Petro-Dollar, which is being replaced by the Petro-Yuan and the Petro-Ruble. Banking embargoes created a new Asian money transfer system, and a new "world" bank. ACH is probably dead now, but it was never really any use to those of us outside the US anyway.

US is important, are you kidding to say otherwise? if Bitcoin nodes are in US is because people are using US based servers to host them, they could move to other server companies. as Bitcoin price is rising they are becoming more irrelevant to the economy, they know it.
If you want to send a dish for network connectivity, don't bother, you could send the signals and they will bounce back when they hit the invisible iron dome above the earth (wait, when did digaran joined the idiots of flat earthers?). when you reach orbit, no body can jump you up there. because if they hit your dish, they'd risk hitting their own dishes with exploded parts of the satellite.

I suppose it's a test of free market principles.  If your current ISP decide to be dicks about it, you can switch to a slightly less dick-ish one.  The problem is, I suspect they're all going to push their luck to see what they can get away with.  It's likely they'll all find where that line in the sand is that most people will just about tolerate and all set the bar somewhere around there.  But that means the bar will still be lower than where it is now, so good luck with that if you're American.

I know the US doesn't really "do" other political parties, so essentially this is all the average US citizens' own dumb fault for hopping exclusively between the same two parties over and over when neither of them really give enough of a shit about this issue.  Only having two parties also enables easy lobbying, so those with the most money to make from legislation like this will be making large donations so that their voices are heard over that of the people.  Americans (and most other Western nations, my own included) really need to stop being deluded and pretending they still have anything remotely like Capitalism.  They have Corporatism.  The companies own you because they bought all the puppets you're allowed to vote for.



Bingo.  The lobbyists have already paid for it, so it's probably going to happen one way or another.  It's more a matter of "when" than "if".

why you linked between net neutrality and Bitcoin.
it is bigger than this now ISP can control internet and choose what you can visit and banned other.

may be will effect in bitcoin but not directly.

The real issue would be the US banning US banks (and by proxy any bank in the world that uses a US bank as an intermediary bank: which is pretty much every bank in the world) from dealing with bitcoin exchanges.   We'd be back to $100 a coin.   Which is fine by me, but I think a lot of people would suffer around here.

Sadly, it looks like almost every services and site would have to go and comply with the recent decision that the FCC came up with, thanks to Ajit Pai and associates. Bitcoin is no exception, and this by far has been the biggest threat to our brothers in the US who have bitcoin holdings. Major volumes of bitcoin trades are brought up by US exchanges, so that would also be a big blow for us who don't even live in the US. Too many negative effects I can already see up ahead.

You’re right, I hadn’t thought about that. There will be at least some effect on people outside the land of the free controlled and the home of the brave scared.

I wonder if the government is passing net neutrality as a way to coerce businesses into combatting this:

https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/893151/Bitcoin-price-latest-news-ISIS-terror-cryptocurrency

Net neutrality would affect bitcoins majorly
If the US government bans the US banks which accept bitcoins and other bitcoins transactions it would lead to huge loss for the bitcoin holders

I agree that net neutrality in the states is a big hit to BitCoin, especially if providers starts to block crypto exchanges. Not saying that this will happen but it is a possibility and should be taken into the risk management account when handling cyrpto currentcies.

Even though this might be gotten around with VPNs and the TOR network not everyone is "tech savy" enough to use these or know what they are. So a block of crypto exchanges would surely affect BitCoin negatively. US is still a big market for cryptos.

But isn't this what coins like Substratum is for?! Creating a decentralized internet where everything is open and it is impossible for the provides to stop access. If net neutrality hits hard could that be a solution?

I’m sure solutions will be developed, like Substratum, to work around the problem. The issue still remains the same because it’s easier to destroy something than it is to design and build it. Also, when you involve average people there is a learning curve issue as well. How many iterations of cryptocurrency are people going to be willing to learn?

It's just the liberals attacking trump. Read up on net neutrality. It actually increased censorship and the internet was doing fine before obama passed it a couple years ago.. it's nonsense thank god the bullshit law which linked the internet to 1930's law is gone. It will help Bitcoin we already see it

What?????
How can you actually say that?
Where are the nodes? Where are the big wallet owners? Where are the shops accepting bitcoins?
The country that has 3/5 of all bitcoin ATMs, that has one of the most reliable exchanger (with the top downloaded app in appstore) is ...not very important?

And you even mention China? What has China nowadays other than mining?
Since you said China, you think that the end of Net Neutrallity will bring an end to bitcoin in the US while China with its Great Firewall will not?

Honestly I'm so amazed of hearing this, especially from you I don't know from where to start.....

Yeah I don't understand how some can sayt hat US is not a big deal to the crypto community, it is a very big deal. Especially since Russia and China seem to be trying to control the crypto community pretty hrad. A "loss" of investors in the US would negatively impact crypto for sure!

The current publicity BitCoin is getting is great but together with steps like this to control this new space there will be less and less opportunities for regular people such as us to make big gains. I am sure Blockchain technology will live on but the freedom we ahve had might be coming to an end.

Oh, so you believe net neutrality will hurt bitcoin everywhere and not just in the USA. Yeah, I guess you’re right.

China control’s the internet because they like to control citizen beliefs. China doesn’t want any free thinkers.

The USA wants to control the internet because they like to control citizen money. The USA doesn’t want any terrorists. They do that by controlling the flow of money.

Wrongfully accused her, poor woman was trying to help me and my organization to jump a girl, any girl for the first time in my life (note, as the head of the organization, jumping priority is for me).
That one I agree totally, they want jumping beggars. I *heard that US soldiers and ISIS soldiers were force-jumping girls from different angles.
Yet I'm a virgin. US government doesn't want any terrorist, why do we have so many terrorists then? what US government wants makes no difference, what they do does, you can track Bitcoin transactions, can you track hundreds of billions in the hands of US government and see where they are spending them?

*disclaimer, don't tell Lauda that I watched porn. lol.

The link of the article states block-bitcoin-cryptocurrency-trading. And there is a huge difference between bitcoin trading and sending bitcoins through the internet? Trading is a commercial activity and the traders have to report their activity to the authorities in the US and pay taxes. But sending bitcoin through the internet is not a commercial activity and should be allowed in any case.

QuestionAuthority, please question the “authorities” who make such.  The whole “terrorist financing” bug-a-boo is a pretext, as is money laundering by drug (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1184641.msg26140103#msg26140103) dealers.  Compare the “Four Horsemen (https://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/classes/6.805/articles/crypto/cypherpunks/cyphernomicon/CP-FAQ) of the Infocalpyse”, in the context of arguments to ban strong crypto or require key escrow.

Surely, terrorists and drug dealers and other bad people do use money.  The smarter ones probably use strong crypto, too.  I suspect that most of them probably use this newfangled contraption called the “Internet”.  All of them also use automobiles, food, and air.

By definition, criminals break the law; and the powerful, organized ones are quite adept at so doing without ever getting caught.  I should think that professional money-launderers love AML/KYC/FinCEN stuff; such things make their services valuable to professional terrorists and drug dealers, and help lock out upstart competitors.  Ultimately, in this and every other way, when privacy is outlawed, only outlaws have privacy.

The American obsession with money-control is only about mass social control:  Control of everybody who isn’t a professional money-launderer, and lacks access to the services of one.  Not even people-control:  Cattle-control.  Like control of communications and transportation, total control of money is one critical part of an unlimited tyranny.  When every move you make, every word you say, every book you read, every interpersonal association you have, and every dollar you spend are all tapped, traced, tracked, and permanently databased (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2527738.msg25852987#msg25852987), then each individual is left with only two choices:  Either submit as part of the ovine herd, with a status lower than that of any slave in history; or go straight to the slaughterhouse.

Bitcoin is the money which nobody controls.  It is imperfect; in this context, the linkability of transactions is a serious problem.  But first and foremost, nobody controls it.  Nobody can enforce a requirement that you meet “KYC” requirements to open a “Bitcoin account”.  Nobody can freeze or seize your coins—not by peremptory order, in general; and not by any means whatsoever, if nobody knows you have those coins.  And nobody can stop you from protecting your privacy with whatever technical means may be available.  Bitcoin is cypherpunk money; and it’s in the initial stages of taking over the world.

Thank you, Satoshi Nakamoto.

(I have some replies in mind for earlier posts on this thread; perhaps another time.)

Net neutrality was just the left trying to get a revolt of the masses. The obama net neutrality laws used communication laws dating back to the 1930's. It will have no effect on anything. Google was against getting rid of it so that should tell you it's not bad to get rid of it.

Fingers crossed your ISP does everyone a favour and blocks your access to this site.  Maybe then you might notice an effect.  Trump is not your saviour.  He doesn't give two shits about you or any of the things you might care about.  He is using you and your phenomenal gullibility for his own personal gain.  You will either learn this the hard way, or you will spend your entire life being used by people who intentionally try to appeal to the lowest common denominator.  Your country is heading down a totalitarian path even though you somehow perceive it as greater freedom.  Guess what?  It's only greater freedom for the people who want to control you.  You're not getting anything beneficial out of this deal.  Stop pretending otherwise.

ah you follow the MSM good for you but look out for Russians. So u hope I'm censored cause u don't like what i say, that's been going on for years under net neutrality

I think it's still too early to see what the ISPs will do. I do think that they will take it slow at first then begin throttling sites, definitely if there's an incentive to do so. However, I don't feel it's the end of Bitcoin in the USA as there may be ways to get around it. i.e. Mesh Networks, and AT&T's AirGig

I am  not sure why would they do that? Why ban legitimate sites? Wouldn't it be cannibalizing their market share? People who cannot use the services they are interested in would surely change the provider and that would be the end of it.

So I am really not seeing it as a threat right now.

They'll ban nothing. They'll just make them much slower. The ones that don't pay for bandwidth will get a very small one.
It's like the BTC transactions: try to send with 5 sat/byte :)

And for larger sites it will be a logistic nightmare to relocate away from US for fair bandwidth.

A Bitcoin service on an US site not paying for big bandwidth may be hard to reach, slow to load. We'll see uglier and slower websites and the small pools will move to Asia, meaning bigger ping times.

QuestionAuthority, I think the issue is a standards setting country like the US having a few oligopolies of internet-providers working in lockstep in banning/limiting content in unison that would incredibly limit free access of information (and services around bitcoin?).

nullius, your post hits dead-on with what is happening in world's central bank-led financial system. Thank you (and will likely quote you from it).

(to you both, currently out of smerit - using this post as a marker to remember to comeback and credit you when replenished.)

...and then nothing happened. No legislation can kill bitcoin. Not even the combined might of the most populous countries on earth can stop cryptocurrency can stop bitcoin. Eventually, these people will embrace bitcoin.  :)

There’s still a possibility of repeal and the opposing legal action isn’t over yet. I wouldn’t expect them to do very much “rocking the boat” at this point.