Bitcoin Forum

This thread was created by me on the Romanian board (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5244302) and translated into English now for the international one.

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The so-called 'journey' in the middle of which I am right now began in late 2013. I won't get much into detail - long story short, I found out about Bitcoin's existence through news.

My perspective about Bitcoin has changed, unfortunately, negatively among these 7 years of experience. From the idea that Bitcoin could turn the economical and governmental systems of the world upside down, today I see it as nothing else but an obstacle the governments overcame long ago and for which they surely have a plan of attack so that it would never be a threat for them be it in the present or short and long term future.

If until 2016-2017 there were no laws regarding cryptocurrencies and the law could be easily interpreted so that nobody knew for sure what they should or should not do properly about owning, using and transactioning them, today we have laws that appear as if they are opposing more and more the fundamental ideas of cryptocurrencies - almost as if the intention behind these regulations was to destroy them while using this entire time the "cryptocurrencies are used in criminal activities" excuse.

This has changed, in my opinion, Bitcoin's destiny. If in 2015 I could peacefully conduct transactions anywhere with cryptocurrencies and ATMs did not have anonymity limits, today I feel taken over by the world governments' regulations that ruthlessly entered my personal, private life.

The so-called "support" of cryptocurrencies by the states has proven, in my opinion, to be exactly the opposite. To be more precise, "sustaining" them has led to the resistance in front of genius Satoshi Nakamoto's essential ideas he began with. Through some kind of sabotage, the state could argue that being against the regulations means implicitly sustaining illegal activities. A kind of "Let us seize your personal life and control even this attempt of freeing yourself from the chain of wage slavery (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery) and criminal banks or we consider you a terrorist".

Today we have all these surveillance measures. Some of them are partial surveillance, others are surveillance from start to end. While we are fighting the pandemic and the incredible influx of uncertain information, surveillance is taking over our privacy "step by step" as our president Klaus Iohannis says, privacy becoming therefore an idea, a definition from the past.

Taking all the above into account, putting all the information in a nucleus, I can only get to one conclusion: Bitcoin's future will either have an abrupt and sad ending or will represent our revolution against the system of modern enslavery and against the flux of authoritarian and imposing laws we are witnessing right now.

The existence of privacy-focused cryptocurrencies like Monero surely did provoke fear inside all the world's governments, but the volume of transactions does not appear to be a threat to them so far.. which calms them down. But if Bitcoin ever fails because of these governments and we'd all move to the privacy-focused Monero immediately, would Satoshi Nakamoto's vision still be achieved? Would we still be able to finish what he started more than a decade ago, trying to turn upside down the attempt of "those above us" to transform our privacy into a definition of the past?

To me, the future is now uncertain. I will never give up, but I am afraid a significant number of apparent supporters of Satoshi's vision would, leaving us with no more soldiers in our war. I am afraid that too many of the ones currently supporting cryptocurrencies are only doing it because they have the hope of getting rich one day and are capable of accepting any sacrifice as long as their hope would become reality.

But nobody realizes that the privacy we knew and our freedom are the wealth we've been taught to ignore for a lifetime.

Truth.

Unfortunately far too many people are in Bitcoin for the sole purpose of getting rich.

Only a small fraction of people actually transact daily in cryptocurrency, rather than using it for speculative purposes.

However, it doesn't really matter. Over time, the network will continue to develop and get stronger, and when the time comes when the traditional economy collapses, Bitcoin will be built-up and ready for the task of taking over.

So long as we can build Bitcoin to this point, no matter how, then it should still achieve its purpose when shit really hits the fan in the fiat world.

"The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks" <- this was inscribed by Satoshi in the Coinbase of the Genesis block. Sounds a lot like the world today... So we've got some work to do because I don't believe Bitcoin is ready to handle the load of mass adoption yet.

I give second chance for bitcoin where I lost my first chance when bitcoin touch higher price, maybe waiting when halving moment become our destination to know will bitcoin back to higher price or keep with going down. Many chance of bitcoin will be happen and just waiting two weeks later to know what will bitcoin do.

This paragraph in particular put a chill down my spine.  I've often had a feeling that the newer generations will wonder what this concept of "privacy" was, and why some people thought it was so important--and by that point, privacy will be simply an abstract idea and not something that exists anymore.

I never thought of bitcoin as being an enemy of the state, any state.  I never figured it would overthrow the banking system or any of that, so I haven't exactly become disillusioned with it as time has passed. 

Anyway you laid out your thoughts pretty well, OP. 

Yeah, so?  Bitcoin would be nowhere near as popular as it is if it didn't offer the possibility of making a profit.  That's a good thing.  If bitcoin were a stablecoin, pretty much nobody would be using it as long as they were still able to use cash, their smartphone, or a debit card.

I don't see anything wrong in that! The willingness of become rich is one of the major reasons for many people associating themselves with bitcoin. Probably a major percentage of the community. What's wrong in that? The people can't use bitcoin in daily transactions for a number of reasons like low acceptability and unclear regulations. Not everyone is fortune to live in countries like Japan or Germany.


Bitcoin is too small to be considered as a world currency. It simply doesn't have the capability of handle such volume. Things like LN, will definitely be helpful in that. But as of now, I see prepaid cards are a very good example of how we can slowly push the bitcoin for better adoption.

It's just a 11 year old kid. Give him time mature!

Privacy doesn't actually exist anymore for the majority of the population. Only an illusion. You only have to look at some of the revelations surrounding Snowden, the NSA, Cambridge Analytica, Five/Nine/Fourteen Eyes, etc. And these are only the things we know about, that have been leaked. You can guarantee there is far, far worse still hidden from the public. You can tweak your Facebook settings to hide certain content from other people and tell Google to stop tracking your location, it makes no difference. We know these companies collect all your data regardless of what you ask them to do. Every website you visit, every email you send, every piece of data you sync to the cloud, everywhere you go, everyone you meet, everything you say. They can turn on your cameras, your microphones, your GPS trackers.

The scariest part of it all is that people don't care. Not only do they not care that they are being monitored, they are usually more than happy to help out and pay for the privilege by buying technology such as smart TVs and Amazon Echoes which have been proven to be monitoring you. People are quite literally paying to bug their own house.

Privacy is no longer a right for most people. It is an inconvenience. They are happy to have Amazon monitor their conversations if it means they don't have to (God forbid!) press a single button to skip to the next song. They are happy to have Facebook track their location if it means they can share pictures of their Starbucks coffee. They are happy to have the bank keep a track of everything they buy if it means they can just tap a card and not think twice about it.

We are ever more living in a surveillance state. Surveillance breeds compliance. Meek, fearful, unthinking compliance. You'll never step out of line if you know you are constantly being watched. Anything that can break that cycle - Tor, end-to-end encryption, PGP, bitcoin - is only going to become more important as time goes on.

I can right now do a deal with someone anywhere on the planet and pay them in Bitcoin. No one can stop me. No one can take it away from the person I sent it to. They can then turn around and do the exact same thing with anyone of their choice. The core of Bitcoin's purpose is intact.

Where is gets sticky is when the government's turf is encroached on and fiat is the the government's creation. If enough people take the leap to abandon fiat and properly close the loop most things the average person panics about will be gone. Almost every single gripe and problem that comes up is the result of having one foot in the old system.

Whether we ever get there is another matter. No one said it would be easy or quick.

Satoshi did his job. It's every subsequent arrival's job to see it through if they can be arsed.

As for the getting rich thing, if it wasn't present we wouldn't be having this conversation. No one would be mining or would have mined and no one would have played beyond 2010/11.

I consider that I am one of the lucky ones who entered the world of Crypto and learned a lot from him. Indeed, I discovered that the real wealth from this field has gained me by obtaining privacy, decentralization and financial freedom that cannot be controlled by governments or banks.
In addition, I still dream of making a second fortune when bitcoin rises.

A lot of people underestimate the positive aspects of speculation. It attracts lots and lots of adopters. Some of them will lose their shirt in the market and go on to write Bitcoin off as a scam, but some -- or even most -- will stick around. It's an amazing technology.

I don't make a big distinction between speculators and "people who actually use Bitcoin as a currency." A lot of people take issue with the former group. I don't see them as a problem as long as the network retains a healthy degree of spending and usage -- as opposed to 100% of people hoarding.

It does matter imo as most of these people will be the ones to dump BTC and never come back again once they find out it does not get you rich in no time. I do understand, however, the important point you make -  these people, although in BTC/crypto temporarily, may bring in true believers and investors in Satoshi's vision (damn it, I have to remind myself of CSW's coin every time I mention "Satoshi's vision" now ::))

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Thanks for the kind words. :) I was probably too excited about the idea of Bitcoin giving us financial freedom back when I started and I went for this vision initially that it may turn everything upside down. I did not, however, take into account the fact that centralized cryptocurrencies exist so banks would use this to their own advantage, to create their own digital currency that'd obviously be much faster than Bitcoin - centralization is much more comfortable, but comes with a big cost.

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Well, my question is the following: will people still use Bitcoin if they never get rich out of it or just dump it and move on? I honestly thought that even banks working on digital currencies might push for a larger Bitcoin adoption, but a national digital currency will be easy to use compared to BTC. Besides this, there is a degree of so-called "safety" these currencies will provide, I mean you'd probably be able to recover it much easier than BTC..

Anyways, maybe I'm missing something out of the frame. I honestly wish BTC will someday become the majority's interest. I guess its mission is now divided in two paths: one going towards anti-crypto regulation and one starting from an increase in people's interest towards privacy.

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Couldn't agree more, unfortunately. Tor, Monero and other privacy-focused software and new tech will not only become more important as time goes but will also probably become a large target to our surveillance state.

I've only recently started going out of radar, although I am sure I cannot do it completely. I can not remove all the previous fingerprints, accounts I am now locked out of, pictures of me I (or anyone else) have uploaded anywhere on the Internet or on any chat and so on. They exist and they are going to probably be enough for them to recognize my behavior on the Internet - they surely are more advanced than we believe. I consider that even the way we write is a very easy way for them to recognize the link between few accounts.

What's sad is that we're looking at "sci-fi" movies and playing games such as Watch Dogs without even realizing that we're actually already entered that kind of world where some will prefer to continue living a good life under surveillance while others will want to get out of their cage and chase freedom, implicitly becoming a suspicious target.

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Agreed! On the other hand, the only thing that could probably happen to destroy the core of Bitcoin's purpose is the governments stating "Well, we have done some research and found out that a very large percentage out of crypto's volume is used in illicit activity. Hence, we have decided to officially ban the use of cryptocurrencies starting from <date>". It's probably the only way to really finish off Bitcoin right now that I can think of, besides extreme regulation and the majority of people losing their interest in it.

Oh man, I really hope we do get to the point where enough people abandon fiat and move on from it.

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This links with my point from a few paragraphs above in this reply. I probably did not express the last two paragraphs in the OP the right way - I meant to say that we're chasing fortune completely ignoring the fact that we are throwing our privacy away, which should've been the no. 1 thing we're looking for.. like people using centralized exchanges and willingly giving out all their personal information and documents chasing wealth - we're willingly giving information away for free to some entities without realizing how much this information actually costs.

The situation where you aren't allowed to withdraw from an exchange without KYC is literally paying an entity to give you back your money after you've earned them fees through your transactions. Sabotage, in other words.

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Thanks to everyone for the replies, I really appreciate it and it is a very interesting conversation indeed. :) I have merited you guys but I unfortunately ran out of merit for @squatter, if anyone could spare 1 merit and give it to him for me I'd really appreciate it! (later edit: I have now sent him the merit too, thanks to avikz!) :D

I sincerely want the same. I want to see people's increasing interest towards bitcoin for good. But lack of clear regulation is one of the major bottlenecks towards this achievement. With CBDC's implementation, I believe some additional clarity would be given from policy perspective. But i don't really expect a lot here!

CBDC will definitely be easier for the commoners to use and understand. But you have to remember that, CBDC will snatch the privacy rights from you. Probably, that might help towards crypto adoption to some extent.

Let's see what the future holds for us!

quote author=Arcas link=topic=5244308.msg54319148#msg54319148 date=1588099235]
I give second chance for bitcoin where I lost my first chance when bitcoin touch higher price, maybe waiting when halving moment become our destination to know will bitcoin back to higher price or keep with going down. Many chance of bitcoin will be happen and just waiting two weeks later to know what will bitcoin do.
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I also have not had a chance of a halving but this time, it won't elude me. I'm going to keep an eye on it for real. Come May, the halving is going to be here and the signs are already here for a bull. Price has almost touched $8,000, this is a bull run coming soon.

1. Bitcoin transactions are NOT private.
2. Bitcoin is not decentralized.
3. You can't have true freedom without privacy.

the biggest problem is people themselves. it was not government who forced them to like KYC and go to centralized places to acquire bitcoin such as Coinbase, Binance, Bitpay,... it was not the government who forced them to forget that bitcoin is a currency not an investment. ... they did that all by themselves.
my perspective about bitcoin has not changed at all but my perspective about "bitcoiners" has changed or maybe my eyes are open now.

There are many reasons why people participate in the cryptocurrency market, of which profit is one of the most important reasons. When Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency market are profitable we can attract investors, thereby developing blockchian technology. If someday investors invest in the cryptocurrency market disappear from the market, I am sure that the cryptocurrency market will collapse.

Bitcoin in its present form has no great future, because It is anonymous, and this is contrary to the interests of any state. Either Bitcoin will become more transparent and the community will take into account the interests of states, or Bitcoin will be awarded the reputation of an asset that is not supported by rich states and as a result, gradually interest in it will fade.

Even people who only want to get rich quick still contribute to the network. If they buy Bitcoin, they increase its price, and higher price means more hashpower for mining, and more hashpower means the network is harder to attack. So, without the "get rich quick" people the network won't be as secure as it is now. Also, traders provide liquidity, which makes the market healthier, and everything that is good for the price is good for the network. Also, the more people use Bitcoin and do transaction, the harder it is to spy on everyone.

You are right about our privacy and freedom being our wealth.Unfortunately,we have to giveaway our privacy and freedom in order to gain money and resources.That's how the civilization works.You have to "sell" your time and labor by working a 9 to 5 job.Social media corporations want to know your interests,beliefs and other personal data,so they could sell that info to the advertisers.
The future of Bitcoin is uncertain,so is the future of everything else.Government regulations are inevitable and whining about having strict regulations,KYC and having to pay taxes over crypto revenue is simply pointless.
In the future almost nobody will be completely anonymous,so privacy becomes an even more valuable asset.
 

You couldn't be more wrong here.

First of all, bitcoin is categorically not anonymous by default. It is possible to use bitcoin anonymously (or close to it), but there are many steps you have to take to be able to do so, and the majority of average users who try would trip up somewhere and de-anonymize themselves.

Secondly, bitcoin not being supported by governments is the precise reason that interest in it is growing, not fading. People are getting fed up of governments printing trillions of dollars (or equivalent) of monopoly money to bail out banks, airlines, tech giants, and other billion dollar industries, while the average citizens sees their wages stagnant, inflation run rampant, the cost of living increase, and becomes poorer.

So don't give it to them. It's entirely possible to live your life without social media accounts. In fact, research shows those who delete their social media accounts have better physical and mental health, better productivity, better sleep, and feel happier and less stressed.

Well said, there are so many people who are in cryptocurrency having a goal of being rich, well even me has that reason and I think all of you guys think the same way because one of the purpose why we are entering something or joining something is because we want to be benefited from it and that's how bitcoin gives to all of us.

We are also here to have more information about cryptocurrency, some only wants to have some transaction with others. We have been so long in bitcoin and we see how good is bitcoin now from it's very first time until now, many things happen and thing are going well.

IMO, these are huge statements. I love it.
Gave me the chill.
Hmm.
Privacy. Maybe we should create a survey on how they define it.
Looking at how many Facebook users, you will see they just don't care about it anymore.
Could have been better to stay with Twitter but they picked Instagram instead posting their photos for everybody to see.

No, they might not have the spare time to care about it anymore.
Popularity and being seen is the culprit.
They want likes, they want to be accepted by the mass or they just want some attention risking their own privacy without even having the thought.
It's scary and it is becoming the norm of society.
If this keeps up, it will become traditional and nobody will pay attention anymore.

I don't really care what type of person is present at present. More than likely they'll come and go or be converted into someone who recognises that it has elements worth fighting for.

As long as there's a hard core defending the base tenets it has the chance to be what many hope it will become.

Even so ultimately Bitcoin is what the collective decides it should be. It may not be what the early arrivals wanted, but it is the will of the users.

You're right, it's us blindly accepting the states stomping our face with their boot and accepting anything they request. I think the old bitcoiners are still on our direction towards decentralization and supporting what Bitcoin was supposed to be, but the newbies are constantly affected by the false ideas propagated among them and they do affect others too. In the end, it's few of them following the original path Bitcoin had and the rest going for the new, shitty direction.

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I agree that profit is an important factor of entering a market, but the idea is not using Bitcoin purely as an investment. On the other hand, as other members above said, they do bring in lots of newbies out of which at least a handful will become true believers. It's a double-edged sword.

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Well, if these people who only want to get rich quick help increase BTC's price and most likely make new miners pop up too, then don't you think they'll also help decrease it once they find out it's not as easy as they thought it would be to earn a fortune off BTC?

I don't think your last statement is a fact. The more people use Bitcoin, the better it actually is for those creating their own BTC reverse search & analysis tools. Do you think research on BTC's network is all done manually? It's probably going to be all about AI and automated links between addresses (see WalletExplorer). It's going to make their web expand even more. I guess it's like a survey - the more people you survey, the more accurate it gets.

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I'm more willing to benefit from it as in having more freedom than more wealth. It makes no sense to chase only wealth if they are stripping your freedom away.

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Thanks for the support! :D


I bet most would reply something not much different than "being alone, with nobody around". But they forget that their web cameras can see them at any time and their Echo are listening to them 24/7.

I think it already became traditional. Almost nobody's paying attention.

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I had this chat with someone close to me - they ran out of credit on their prepaid card and praised WhatsApp and Facebook for being free so I asked them, "have you ever wondered why they're free?" which put them to silence for a few moments.

Most people don't even realize these things and how they're willingly selling themselves just so they can have things "for free".

This post is great and long but it is worth to read. I am here in cryptocurrencies and I am here in bitcointalk because I am a beginner here and I wanted to earn from myself. I am learning here by reading this forum and I am learning and studying what I can study to help me in my adventure here in bitcointalk  I hope that I can earn good amount of money here hecause I want to use it for my future and I am sure that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will not fail me because now the status of bitcoin is getting better and it is rising to such great heights. I hope that I can eean more here so that I will have money that I can use for my studies and It will be a help for my family. I hope that I can earn more here because I want to help my family too. I hope that bitcoin will continue to spread because it is helping me and I rhink that bitcoin is heloing more people.

Hello everybody. I repeat, once said, that which is invented by man can be destroyed by him. Therefore, I am scared by the idea that as soon as Bitcoin reaches a new level of capitalization, it will be the main enemy of the government and the banking system and, accordingly, destroyed by them. Today, Bitcoin is a manipulative project subject to strong price fluctuations, which makes it possible to earn big money. In the next 10-20 years, I see the prospect of a huge price increase, because there will be a clearly limited number of these coins, which will put enough pressure on psychology. Trading on the exchange is a war of psychologists. Even the amount of gold is not limited by anything except the bowels of the earth. Although, it seems to me that the potential of bitcoin and cryptocurrency, in general, is far from limited to trading on the exchange. Of course, a certain opposition from the state slows down the development of the cryptocurrency industry, but I believe that the time will definitely come and cryptocurrency will be used in many areas of our lives.

It certainly does have a hard Core; banker-backed Blockstream. Good luck if you think that will result in giving many hope.

Okay. Unpopular opinion coming in. This bygone-era romanticism of being "True Bitcoiners" committed to privacy is as much bullshit in the long run as someone saying that they know how bitcoin will evolve and that there is only one way it should. To begin with, bitcoin never was supposed to be completely private. It was supposed to introduce a shake-up of the existing fiat system by being used as a decentralized, reliable currency for P2P trading. Merchants and business adopting it out of their own volition and people using it for payments over internet. "Commerce on the internet" as Satoshi mentioned in the opening line of his whitepaper.

All of these ideas of complete privacy with TOR nodes, Mixers, CoinJoin came along gradually. A very specific section of people want complete privacy and anonymity of their transactions and they can very well have it with the existing options available. Yet, this arrogance about being "True bitcoiners" is because some of you think that you somehow have a great vision of the way the world could be if nobody paid taxes and we did not need governments. Wake the fuck up!!!

Inequality and disparity in wealth distribution is not something that will be solved by completely anonymous transactions. It will be solved by more people having access to financial education, financial opportunities and an ability to do business unrestricted by borders. Bitcoin does that. There are other problems in the world like an inflationary reserve currency propped up by central banks taking care of vested interests. Or people having their wealth seized by rogue states. Bitcoin solves that too, IF you use it the way it is meant to be used. Not all of these problems are First-world, Western issues like flaunting "My rights" even in the face of dire global epidemics.

Our right to privacy as humans is a fundamental right and we all have to be aware of it but its an issue with implications and causes far beyond bitcoin. Bitcoin can solve it for you personally if you use it that way. Nobody stops you. So stop having this "holier-than-thou" attitude about bitcoin just because you think that newbies coming in through exchanges are diluting it. This is some other level bullshit. Infact, the more people come in and have a stake into bitcoin, the better it is for the ecosystem.

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The problem is not dilution of privacy. It has never been because privacy is, as the name suggests, a private issue. There is no particular "direction" that bitcoin will take without the active inputs of thought-leaders and people developing tools and businesses suitable to it. This is what has stopped. For example, the latest features going into bitcoin are not even discussed anymore. This oft-repeated, old old-school romanticism does not entitle anyone to tell others what bitcoin is or should be. It has to be adoption and usage first as a community. Concerns like privacy are in individual's own control.

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EDIT: Thanks for the cool discussion o_e_l_e_o and 20kevin20. Apart from adoption, ensuring that people care enough about privacy is also very important. As you guys say, we are losing the battle for eyeballs due to the business requirements of major exchanges like Binance and coinbase despite having options like Bisq. Insistence on privacy should become the norm rather than compromising with it. We definitely need a sub for privacy, security and online safety (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230782.0) so the good people of bitcointalk, especially the ever eager, KYC airdropping, bounty hunters and newbies can learn to ACTUALLY bitcoin. Any of you reading this, please, please go to this link and understand and express your support. Much thankful..

But that doesn't mean people like me can't lament the general lack of interest in privacy that is growing throughout the population, can't advocate for people to take their privacy more seriously, can't become exasperated at those willing to give up their privacy for the promise of some airdropped garbage.

Privacy is a private matter, sure, but how other people view and treat their privacy affects me too. Because the majority of people don't care about their privacy, they don't care when governments pass ever more draconian surveillance laws, or companies start coding back doors in to their products, or facial recognition technology starts monitoring people as they walk down the street. Because of this, I have to take ever more complicated steps, dedicate ever more time and effort, to protecting my own privacy. I get viewed with suspicion for doing these things. I get asked such ridiculous questions as "What are you trying to hide?".

Further, we are seeing the bitcoin ecosystem grow to more resemble the fiat one we are trying to escape. Privacy invading centralized exchanges are starting to "police" the space based on their own rules. With several major exchanges, you now can't deposit or withdraw coins to addresses associated with casinos or sportsbooks without having your accounts frozen and your coins seized. They even trace your coins through multiple transactions to see their history. This is antithetical to not giving third parties control over your money. As above, they get away with this kind of behavior because the majority are apathetic.

I'm not going to tell other people what bitcoin is or should be, but I'm also not going to stop advocating that people take their privacy seriously.

I've been around for more than four years. I also found out about BTC from the news and family because Silk Road was shut down and there have been ongoing investigations and stuff. I hope that one day the scalability issue gets solved (perhaps with off-chain transactions, I don't know), and it gets as easy to pay with Bitcoin for pretty much everything as with a debit card. But that's a long-term perspective. As for a short-term one, I hope Bitcoin becomes more stable and more recognized by the authorities as money and gets favorable regulations.
In my country, it's still the way you describe 2016-2017, so maybe that's why I still feel quite optimistic about it. But your text is inspiring and those concerns make a lot of sense.

(Each paragraph will be a response to your reply's paragraph)

Well, you see, that's exactly the point I was making: It was supposed to be a decentralized, reliable currency for peer-to-peer trading. It was not supposed to become a currency I could almost only access through third parties. While I do get your point that it wasn't supposed to be completely private, I can't let my intimacy be taken away this easily by the government like it was nothing. Take a look back at Bitcoin's creator and see how transparent he was about his identity. Spoiler alert: he wasn't. He wanted privacy and he has it.

Satoshi talked about using Bitcoin Core with Tor for more anonymity in some of his BTCTalk posts - I think I can recall that. But hey, there's the big problem I always see: linking the privacy-seekers to tax evasion. If I want to be private, it does not mean I do not pay taxes, that I am a criminal or an illicit activity supporter. This is a very wrong stereotype and the reason why I fear a Bitcoin ban or attacking it through exaggerated and anti-Bitcoin laws will succeed. Because most people have this false link in their mind between Bitcoin, privacy seekers and criminals.

Bitcoin will never be the perfect solution to fiat's problems. However, I can't ignore the fact that our authorities are starting to effectively stomp our heads with increasing surveillance measures. From laptops with hackable webcams we've reached the point where we buy 10 Alexas to put in every single room and bathroom we have that listens to us 24/7. From street surveillance cams we've reached the point where police departments want to use surveillance drones that follow you around to make sure you obey the law and even think about equipping these drones with pepper spray and fucking explosives and are working with surveillance companies willing to fly surveillance planes. We now have states considering mandatory constant tracking apps for your phone, the gov interrogating all your friends and hiring people to do contact tracing interrogation & investigation if you are found positive with COVID-19 (which is the perfect way to create a web of links between hundreds of millions of people) and so on. I can't support what they're doing just because I have to pay taxes. I never said I don't have to, but give me some air. Is this what I'm paying taxes for? Don't suffocate me with these surveillance-state like measures because it's starting to look Elysium-style.

I agree that more people coming in will help the ecosystem. But I'm trying to say that we may be just accepting too many invasive rules and laws. You may say I am against the law - yes! I am against the privacy-invasive law! I understand we need to have some regulations regarding BTC, but damn - back in 2017-2018 I wanted to join a stock trading website and I could without all the documents a KYC-enabled crypto exchange asked me for.

If adoption and usage of Bitcoin is important and privacy isn't, then Bitcoin is not for me anymore. I thought all three go together. If we have opposed thoughts and you say privacy isn't a concern for you while I say for me it is, the thing is that I am forced to let my privacy taken away while you are absolutely fine with it. I do not have a choice but to move to more inconvenient platforms that don't even have volume because otherwise I risk having my money abusively seized by an exchange obeying the laws you think are fine. And even then, you'd think I do not pay taxes because I wanted privacy. Do you think that's fair? I am not against the non-abusive laws. I am against forcefully taking my privacy away through the law.

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I can compare that with the vaccine situation we are into right now in my country: some people want to get their kids vaccinated, some don't. If mandatory vaccination law comes in, the people willing to get their kids vaccinated are going to be perfectly fine while the ones who don't will have to send their kids to take the injected substance by force. Moreover, if you do not want your kids to take the substance, you'd be sent to some centers regularly where they're going to literally brainwash you and program you to agree with the mandatory vaccination law. I mean literally - every time you leave that center saying "no", you're going to be punished. Not to mention that those not agreeing with the law may be called "terrorists". Why force me to take something just because you think it's fine? Why do I not have the right to say "no"? I am not against the vaccine. I am against forcefully taking my right to say "no" through the law.

But I have a question for you. What if, one day, you decide to take your privacy back? What if, one day, the state decides to experimentally inject their citizens with some never-tested-before substance and the pro-mandatory vaccine ones will want to have the right to say "no"? Well, that is a personal concern, isn't it..

@20kevin20: I have been in it since 2016 -- wrote about it in 2013 as a journalist actually, but personally was not moved by the concept, mainly because I had spent my time reading articles about them, rather than listen to or study the discussions about them, which I eventually did in 2016.

I always say it's a social experiment and I'm a voluntary participant. I'm not hardcore, probably never will be, but I like most the users who quietly use it, don't get upset over how others use it, I meet those quite regularly and I think, we're all okay if bitcoin fails -- though none of us thinks it will. I am somewhat dismissive over investors who don't actually own Bitcoin (I know a few!), they're absolutely not contributing to the network at all but hey, they contribute to the idea and the awareness of it I suppose I gotta give them that.

I don't really think we can predict anything about the future, except that Bitcoin will most likely end up in ways that would surprise most of us, and upset very few of us.


As much as I hate to admit it, but this is one of the hard corer segments of Bitcoin for sure. I don't believe they're all bad (hey I like a satellite network too, for example), but you know it's hard to shrug off the taint of corporate agenda.

Maybe it's more fair to say Bitcoin will be what the majority treat it as, which is different from what deciding it should be, which for me means a more purposeful deliberation rather than "I dunno, I'm holding I guess lol".

It won't be what the early guys wanted for sure though, but the essential outcome of the majority.

There was this thread (Repost: Request: Make this anonymous? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=7)) where satoshi talks about Tor.
There is also this thread on P2Pfoundation (http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-source) where satoshi talks briefly about the desire for great privacy.

I quietly use bitcoin in my daily life at least every other day, but the slow creep of privacy invasion has made things more difficult on a number of occasions. I had previously used a merchant to buy some expensive electronics with bitcoin, and was planning to do so again, except they use BitPay as their payment processor and BitPay introduced KYC for buyers buying goods of over $3000. Out of the question. I had previously used localbitcoin to buy and sell between bitcoin and fiat, but they also introduced KYC, so I had to move to an alternative P2P exchange. I'd love to be able to use a bitcoin debit card so I can pay with bitcoin everywhere, but doing gives the issuer of the card the ability to not only monitor every purchase you make, but also to shut your card down if you make a purchase they don't agree with. So much for "without the need for trusted third parties".

Previous year bitcoin value is too small and anyone ignored bitcoin but now most of the people wants to learn how to earn bitcoin and how to trade bitcoin. In the future i think that bitcoin value will be rised and will be most demand currnecy in the internet world

Is a good perspective OP, but i think the main problem is the nature of bitcoin, it works better as an inversion tool than a daily use normal coin. And this is because the volatility doesn't let us handle is as a normal coin. If on Monday we buy the products for our shop with bitcoin under $10k/btc and on Friday bitcoin drops to $8k, then at that moment we already lose 20%, our product are instant devaluated. I know it could go to the other way, but at the end is like flipling a coin and not everyone can take this risk.

I would never beat the bush whenever it comes to the question of why I got into cryptocurrencies in the first place. I heard about the huge gains just a normal human behavior I got interested and decided to learn about this technology. Once I got to know about the blockchain technology and how bitcoin plans on making transactions very secure and also private I tend to admire this technology more.

Now I am all in the support of several blockchian solutions that would help solve the major existing problems in the financial industry. It has been a long journey, got scammed but I learned my lessons haha.

The day will come where Bitcoin will de-couple from the fiat currencies and stand alone.  Remember; each Bitcoin is made up of 1x10^8 Satoshis.  The day will come when people will think in terms of Satoshis.

I get your point. I can see that people not educated about privacy leading to a general acceptance of the surveillance measures is allowing majority of the exchanges to get away with draconian measures. Kevin has also summed up the same sentiment quite well in his reply here:


I can understand this sentiment. When I said that bitcoin was not supposed to be completely private, what I meant is that its not bitcoin's job to ensure privacy as a feature. Addresses/ transactions have been traceable as always. What we have built AROUND it is the reason for dilution of privacy. Who built these ecosystems? Surely the erstwhile whales and bitcoiners have a role to play. These are the same people who talk about these issues but refuse to put the money where there mouth is. For trading, there is Bisq but to provide it with liquidity and usage is up to the users. If a Binance manages to garner much attention with trading shitcoins and becomes a "business leader", then that is just capitalism working.
Why can't a Bisq replicate the same form of success. Open source, built by HODLers and builders. ChipMixer has done that. Where are the others? There is BTCPay as an alternative to BitPay. They do not get the same attention because few people are educated about the need for privacy. We still have an ecosystem to ensure that people who want to treat bitcoin the way they want can actually do that. Privacy is one of the MANY goals of bitcoin. As people get educated more and more about privacy in general, they would be able to use bitcoin the way they want.

I get your point that Bitcoin advocacy should go hand in hand with privacy advocacy. I just get pissed when people take an elitist approach to it and bash newbies instead of showing them how they can use bitcoin and still keep their balls (KYC). Thanks Kevin and oeleo for making this a fruitful discussion. It also give an ideas why Theymos' has shown tacit support to Grin, a coin that incorporates MimbleWimble and has default privacy. Maybe, we should have a dedicated section for Privacy issues as a sub for quality discussion as well as resources for newbies here at the forum. Moderators, Can we Please, Please have that?? Make someone like @nullius a moderator for it. Have a few more people with real life experience living that life. (Where is Jameson Lopp when you need him)

BISQ is my go-to for trading at the moment, and I wish it had more users and more liquidity. It all comes down to convenience again. If you are willing to give up your privacy to Binance, then no one can pretend that Binance isn't incredibly more convenient than BISQ. With BISQ you have to download clients, browser for offers you like or wait for someone to accept your offer, pay security deposits, wait sometimes for hours for the other person to complete their side of the deal, if you are transacting with fiat then wait hours for the fiat payment method to process, etc. With Binanace you can deposit, trade, withdraw, and be done in 20 minutes (provided they don't freeze your account or demand a compliance review or some other nonsense). Unfortunately, as I spoke about in my first post in this thread, people are all too willing to give up their privacy in exchange for convenience, everything from having a Google Home record all their conversations to sending their documents to complete strangers across the internet.

I would agree with this, and it's something I've talked about on a couple of occasions before, most recently here - A board for Privacy, Security, and online Safety? (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230782.msg53974580#msg53974580) We see quite a lot of threads regarding general privacy and security dotted about the forum in various boards where they don't really fit. A dedicated board would not only help to organize these topics in one place, but it would be a good starting point for users to educate themselves further, as you say.

The main purpose of Bitcoin is to give freedom to the people, and by giving freedom to the people, it means that it is taking that ‘power to control everything’ away from the government and giving everyone the control over their own assets and money. That is something the government would never want to happen, they don't want to lose control over money, which is very important to them. They might allow us to be making use of Bitcoin now because it hasn't reached the level they have expected.

Most of us don't know what will happen when they release the Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC), I'm hoping it's all going to be for the better. Worst part of it all is that most people I see these days don't really have passion for Bitcoin, they are just in it for the money, they are always talking about bull runs and it's quite annoying. I can remember the earlier times when nobody really talks about bull runs and all this nonsense.

What exactly do you mean by privacy? anybody can check your wallet balance ones they know your address so what exactly makes it private?. Decentralized but yet you still make use of the centralized exchange. You participate in ICO, IEO etc. and you get token but the dev team can lock your token or makes it useless by changing the smart contract. Is that still decentralized?

If the world moves into a cashless society with Bitcoin becoming the main currency,

All payments will be traced, tracked, and recorded into an immutable ledger,

And Freedom on this planet will cease to exist.

Before many people see the bitcoin is just nothing if we are taking way back from the year of 2010 the bitcoin does not reach for over a dollar so there are a lot of people ignore the potential on but some of them still see the advantage of using the bitcoin even this is only new still many people support this kind of transaction and investment through out the years the market price and graph of the bitcoin makes a huge changes after a few months and years the bitcoin shows it's highly market price which is the year of 2016 and 2017 from the year of 2016 the halving comes on the market price of the coin which half the block of the bitcoin that causes a huge inflation of the market income with coins and it's continuously increasing up to the year of 2017 and by that there are a lot of people getting caught and encourage because they see the possible earnings they have but the journey is not easier as we expectt because after that year the price of the coin falls down many people makes hold on their coins and not risk to pull out and more their funds, some of them risk to get instead to lose more income. On that year I see the possible chance that the bitcoin will rise again and in this year or 2020 to 2021, there is a chance that the price of the coin reaches moreover into 10k dollars again. Today the number of users is continuously counting which is good because they are still rapidly supporting the use of the bitcoins and the crypto community.

everyone wants to improve their quality of life. Not everyone was able to be born or move to Germany, Japan or Switzerland. There is nothing wrong with people looking for and inventing new ways to make money

This is over reacting on freedom things since I don't see any danger on it not unless if you are trying to hide your illegalities since if this case your will really worried about the outcome of your transactions and everything but I don't see any correlative danger if you used it for regular matters for example buying essential goods in the market.

Periods dude, Periods.

I am talking about this little dot thing '.' that ends a sentence. You try and use it. Often. It makes your sentences shorter. That makes it easier to read and understand. Try using period.

You wrote 7 lines before using one.

When I operate with Cash in society, I have freedom and privacy. A cash payment system by default must offer privacy.

Just becomes guns can be used for criminal activities, doesn't mean all gun owners are bad guys.

The truth is, majority of people are into this space because of the investment option attached to it. To be honest, i got into cryptocurrency market years ago only knowing one thing, bitcoin is a coin that a person can invest in with the tendency for it to increase in value after some times. I didn't know about the vision and concept behind cryptocurrency but over time, i found my way around things and i understand better. I strongly believe with each day passing, this sector will be having more and more believers and it will be another way round to your conclusion

If people come and know Bitcoin only that if you buy it now then you can make big profits in the future, then it will only make a new bubble on the market, which was at high in 2017, when many people did not know anything about Bitcoin, except that it is growing fast.

Then don't reuse addresses and don't broadcast which addresses belong to you.

That's nothing to do with bitcoin. Bitcoin remains decentralized, and it is entirely possible to use bitcoin to its full extent without ever touching a centralized platform. If people want to use centralized exchanges to buy centralized scam coins, then that's on them.

Nonsense. If you decide that only criminals deserve privacy, then the only ones who will have any privacy will be criminals. If you think privacy isn't a big deal, please share your real name, email address, social media profiles, and passwords to all your accounts, so I can have good snoop around your life and post whatever I like publicly. No? Didn't think so. Why is that any different to letting anyone who wants snoop around your financial transactions?

Bitcoin may become a global currency, or it may be forgotten. There aren't many options.

After bitcoin reached all time high in 2017, and after that two years experienced a bearish market. Some people no longer believe that
bitcoin is the future. But not all people think so, at least I as a bitcoin believer still believe in the future of bitcoin. I don't care how many
years it takes for bitcoin to become a global currency, for sure I will wait patiently until bitcoin become a global currency. Because for me
bitcoin is the only currency that gives freedom. And I am sure bitcoin in the future will become a global currency, which will be legalized
by all countries in the world.

For lawmakers the world over, linking law and order with privacy has been in the vogue for a long time now. We as citizens are made to believe a Utopian picture where if every person is profiled and tracked from birth to death, there will be no crimes. Some people may actually believe this as an acceptable thing because they want to live in a "safe" society.

Whenever this thought crosses your mind, ask yourself, What is Democracy? What is Government? Who gives the government its legitimacy and the mandate to make laws??
Answer:Its We, The People.

Ask yourself, Why do we vote? Why do I pay taxes? What is the government's job?
Answer: The governments "job" is to ensure that law-enforcers and justice system should work, that administrators don't slack, that education and healthcare is available so society doesn't go into decay.

Ask yourself, How well do they do this? What do i see around me?
Answer: The "Government" goes hand-in-gloves with corporations. Corruption and kickbacks become the norm. People like Jeffrey Epstein and his cult exploit minors and women for years. When they get caught, these people commit "suicides" to cut off the trail.

Realize that "Government" remains benevolent and stays on its toes as long as there is a civil society and informed citizenry to judge it. If we accept to become a tagged and databased herd of cattle for "security", the "Government" will not waste time in snatching all other liberties and putting you to work while the select few reap the benefits and fall into a spiral of depravity. Every centralized empire in history is proof of this. When the rulers have absolute power, the corruption and depravity is absolute too.

It is a vigilante citizenry that keeps government power in check. Bitcoin is a powerful tool for any vigilante citizen to have a say in his financial independence and in making his financial choices. Do not guilt-trip yourself that "terrorists" use it or worse. Those depraved criminals existed much before bitcoin. Its the "job" of your damn government to trace their asses and hang them by their toes. Yet, they fail to do their jobs and use your guilt to come after the one thing that gives you power as a citizen. Identify the ruse. Do not accept invasion of your privacy in the name of law and safety. Our aim is to be Honest, Upright Law-Abiding Citizens not Fearful, cowering, submissive, stick-fearing Cattle.

The only things the authorities support are the things they can control and regulate.

We don't need our babysitter giving us a green light. We need sovereign money outside of their control or influence.

This means most of all built-in privacy. Because you will never have freedom without privacy.

People always say that online and instant payments help but not everyone is able to use this type of payment in their everyday lives. I think a good perspective for future bitcoins is that one way or another, it is inclusive. Inclusivity matters if bitcoins are going to take over the world someday, otherwise, we are depriving many people of the simple means to buy their necessities.

here are a lot of reasons why people participate in the cryptocurrency market, profit is one of the mainly significant reasons. at what time Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency sell are profitable than we seen many investors, by this means rising blockchian technology. If soon investors invest in the cryptocurrency bazaar dissolve from the market, I am absolutely that the cryptocurrency marketplace will collapse.

Hey Dude! BTC is fantastic but is hopelessly failing as a method of payment, try DASH against it!FogueteBitcoin Transaction Fees Are Up 800% in One
https://twitter.com/Crypton24964267/status/1262369454849175554
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