Bitcoin Forum

I just read this thread about Mike Hearn's proposal on Bitcoin redlisting https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333824.0

As I understood it he is only proposing marking coins which are somehow involved into some illegal activities.
Many people seem to be angry about that.
Thinking somebody is going to destroy their baby.

I am not a fan of the whole redlisting idea, but different from others on this forum I think it's part of the "transparent" nature of bitcoin and a logical consequence of a real mainstream adoption of the currency.

It may never make its way into the bitcoin source/protocol.
Because from a technical perspective there is absolutely no need for it to be baked into it.
Anybody can track any bitcoin on its way through wallets. So it is easy for a third party (private company, government, organisations, ...) to mark a bitcoin as illegal money. This company now only needs to offer a nice api to this data.

My prediction is that there will be hundrets of bitcoin 'redlist' entities.

So when you are about to spent some bitcoins on anything in the future (a few years from now) these apis will be consulted to verify a bitcoins validity.

It is unstoppable.
Make your peace with it.
And hey if you have 'non redlisted' money its value will increase with every bitcoin put on a 'redlist'.

Red-listing is no good. It will be the first step in governmental control of Bitcoin. Resist it man.