Bitcoin Forum

We know the the address of the Bitstamp robber. Is it feasible for future regulations to ban merchants from accepting coins from a specific address? This means also banning bitcoin mixers from doing the same.

Great idea! I'm heading to the gas station to inform them to no longer accept fiat script having the following serial numbers due to how said fiat coinage was used in the past:

<numbers forthcoming>

You are not the law.

Only if its self regulation.

Regulation from authorities is bad because once you
start down that path, who is going to regulate the regulators?
Then you're starting to lose fungibility.

Someone already built website that marks some coins as "bad", but to make it work all bitcoin merchants would have to follow its decision.
Not to mention it would undermine the core idea of bitcoin - it wouldn't be longer decentralised, that person/ organization which decide that some coins are "bad" would work like central bank.
Bitcoins should be treated similar to gold, there is no "bad" gold as long it's real, pure gold  8)

This idea is presented every time there is a well publicized theft.

This idea is shot down and ignored by knowledgeable people every time it is presented.

This is not the first time we've heard someone suggest this, and it won't be the last.

Tagging unspent outputs as "bad" and trying to associate any future transactions that make use of some portion of those outputs destroys fungiblity  and is impossible to enforce.

Lets imagine for a moment that the thief randomly chooses one of your addresses from the blockchain, and sends you 0.001 BTC.  Should we now consider all of your bitcoins to be tainted too and refuse to accept any bitcoins from you in the future?  How do you prevent the thief from creating his own mixer and mixing the bitcoins?

There are MANY reasons this is a bad idea.  If you want to read about more of them, take some time to search through old posts here at bitcoin talk.

Imagine receiving coins for a legit deal and later finding out they are tainted and can't be used. Now the con man has swindled 2 people, the person he stole the coins from before they became tainted and you.

OP, you mean for the better, but you haven't though about the other implications. A few has been brought up already. Another one is accountability. Any time some BTC are hacked or stolen, someone has to be held accountable for them and eat the loss, whether it's the exchanges or the depositors. You can't just "burn" the coins and call them useless.

seizure isn't the same as regulating non acceptance of coins.  not at all.

What evidence do you have the coins are actually stolen and not just stamp claiming it would be so?
Just because someone claims to have been "hacked" doesn't mean they automatically were.

Fungibility of coins is essential. There should be no blackmarking of specific coins. The money trail may be used to catch the robbers, though.

If that's the address of the thief, then he most likely will mix the coins at some point before spending them.

Banning certain mixers won't help as there are exchanges/services/sites, etc, that can help you to get rid of dirty coins and get clean coins or fiat in return.

No regulations please.

Neither r u...

maybe im missing some aspect here (very likely considering my tech knowledge depth of btc;), but in theory couldnt btc devs impliment an update for the blockchain to have a wallet lockout feature?

so say if bitstamp call up the btc wallet police and say: all my coins are being stolen and going to address x, then that address is blocked out from interacting with the bchain until such a time as the wallet holder can be caught? basically freezing assets as they do in the fiat world?

not talking about tagging the coins themselves directly (or looking to get into discussing the morals of the logisitc here; who would police the police etc), but interested in knowing if its technically possible to 'ban' a wallet per se.

?

Almost certainly.


No.  There is no way to force the thief to use the wallet created by the devs.  The thief could just create their own wallet software.


???

I don't think there is such a thing as a "BTC Wallet Police".


And if I get angry at you, can I call up "the bitcoin police" and lie and say "all my coins are stolen and have gone to your_addresses_here", and then they can freeze your funds without your permission? 


Not without the consensus of all the users, and you aren't going to get that.

the best theft solution is to have more protection
if you use good wallets like trezor or ledger wallet and you have your bitcoins safe you won't have to worry

The only theft solution is to increase the security of proccesses
and even that way you can't be 100% secure

All we know is what a human at Bitstamp told us.

Seriously who is going to implement the regulations to control and stop further transactions coming from the wallet? The whole community which so big has to agree and come to consensus with at least a majority accepting the idea. Even if this becomes a reality, it simply takes away accountability factor by the owner to take appropriate steps to secure and make every way possible to care for their fund.

Mostly certain...

Not talking about a wallet specifically created by the devs, but wondering if theres some kind of 'access function / channel' that all/any wallets use to utilize the blockchain (or could it be created)?
ie in theory therefore all/any wallet could be 'blocked out' and so essentially frozen (reminder: im asking about technical possibilities here, not asserting anything)

Correct, its a hypothetical (reminder: im asking about tech possibilities here, not asserting anything)!

Correct! Id then subsequently contact the (hypothetical) police, clear my name and my wallet then regain 'access' to the blockchain (reminder: im not asking about the rights and wrongs of such a hypothetical scenario and its logisitcs, just asking about technical possibilities)


Great! that seems to be the answer i was waiting for: yes its technically possible, but requires community consensus... right?

 

Correct.

Bitcoin is built on the consensus of the users.  If you can get 100% of the users to agree to some protocol change, then you can make the change.  The further you get from 100% the less possible it is to implement a change.

What if a guy comes up to you selling gold with blood all over it from the house he just robbed and family he murdered inside. Is that gold bad then?

I see nothing wrong with trying to track bitcoin thefts.

What if a guy comes up to you selling shiny gold that was carefully cleaned? Is that gold good or bad?

You aren't an alt of marcotheminer are you? This sounds like the kind of topic that he likes to start so he can make a lot of replies to a stupid question.

Technically yes it would be feasible to stop the bitcoin in the subject address (or any address for that matter) from ever spending their coins. It would however be a horrible idea and would harm the fungibility of bitcoin and would likely lead to it's eventual failure   

Thank you sir!

Well just think it like this. If Person A stole bitcoins, and everyone now knows Person A's face, then  Person A could mix and send his money to Person B , and approach the merchants.
I don't think the merchants will keep checking the relationship between A & B all the time.

Banning addresses is about as effective as requiring real world physical money transactions to be validated by the participants having a blade of grass, and should either of them do anything scammy, their blade of grass will be taken away!


(Yes, it very, very easy to acquire another blade of grass, that's the point.)

There should be no future regulations which change the Bitcoin protocol. Period.

Bitcoin isnt going to replace every form of payment at least yet, its good at what it does, it works differently then other payment types.

There is no reason why the community would ever agree to this. We do not even have proof that these bitcoin were even stolen, all we have is a claim by a company that people have for some reason trusted with millions of dollars worth of bitcoin

This would be a bit complicated, as he can easily change the sending address, or just send the coins to a few different casinos and exchanges then withdraw them to other accounts. It would take a lot for a program to back track every transaction to block the spending. I wish he would accidentially send 100 or so of those coins to my wallet tho. i would put them to good use. :) and even eb willing to pay Bitstamp back with interest on the investment :)