Bitcoin Forum

I was thinking you could hard-code in an array of "illegal" bitcoin addresses (those of the perpetrators) so that no client will invalidate Bitcoins originating from them. Also, you could hardcode in an address that starts with the amount of Bitcoins stolen, and give allinvain the private key. I'm sure it could be done though I don't know the technical specifics.

You could actually turn it into an entire component of the client where you hardcode in reversals of fradulent activity, based on democratic and fair judgements.

I'm sorry but this is an awful idea.  Who is going to use a client that allows the community to vote away the bitcoins in wallets?

The legal system does the same thing... and I think it is fair. I would use it.

then use the legal system.

what you propose opens the door for chargebacks.  then bitcoin would suck worse than paypal.

This is an extremely bad idea.  Who decides which coins are banned or redistributed to another address?  As a simple way to exploit this system, scammers could send some coins to another one of their addresses and claim they were hacked.

Yes, no chargebacks.  No democratic or "fair" processes or features are needed either.  It is up to the user to protect their wallet.  

Also with the new planned encryption features in the bitcoin wallet (and future security features I am sure), it will be safer for the average user.  

But still their responsibility in the end though...

1) Develop decentralized, pseudonymous, irreversible currency system.
2) Someone loses lots of said currency.
3) Turn developers into centralized arbitrators in an attempt to reverse one particular transaction.

Brilliant!

As much as I wold be happy to receive the coins back I highly doubt this idea will EVER be implemented. The only way I see this being possible is somehow in cases such as this the rate of bitcoin inflation gets sped up and the person who had his coins stolen is given a special mining client which has an artificially lower difficulty rating that expires after a set amount of coins have been minted. This would be something that the rest of the miners would have to agree upon somehow. Maybe like a bitcoin court or something like a voting system.

But then again like I said this is never going to happen.

I should note that existing coins should not be invalidated or redistributed.

Let's Joe Jr. loses his wallet on a school bus. He had all of his birthday money in there.  At least $900. So, he goes to the police and they search for his wallet but the money is nowhere to be found. In fact, it probably was already spent into the world beyond. So, a large group of people get together and decide to let the Federal Reserve print Joe 900 more dollars at the expense (devaluation) of everybody elses money, which quite a few had no say in or inherently disagree.

Is this really your idea of justice?

Yes, if they can also remove $900 from the perps.

They can't. If we could, we wouldn't be discussing changing the software. It would eliminate all need to print more Bitcoins.

Addendum, an address isn't a person.

Changing the software is part of "could", since it is feasible to change it and test it. I'm not entirely behind this idea but it is a suggestion.

No, you can't fully tie an address to an individual. Especially if the money is spent into the economy beyond.

It’s impossible to prove that allinvain has indeed lost his money and not just moved it himself.

You could invalidate addresses containing the fradulent funds, and generate Bitcoins from nothing into a new address, so for example block 5000_from_now puts 20k BTC into a particular address, and the private key for this address (the wallet) is given to allinvain. Mining creates BTC from nothing so you could use a similar mechanism.

So you want to (a) freeze the coins and (b) create a new block reward to replace them? You'll need 100% of the miners or (a) won't happen and (b) will fork the chain.

You could make the generation happen 6 months from now so everyone would have updated versions by then. Hypothetically I mean, I said I'm not necessarily behind this but just presenting it as an idea, maybe as a special exception since it is 0.3% of the entire economy stolen.

What are you supposed to do with people who have traded with the person who stole the coins?  Invalidate their coins while their products have already sold?  What if those coins were laundered?

How would anyone prove any particular address contains "fraudulent funds"?  

And what are "fraudulent funds" ?  How are they defined?

If I lost my USB stick with a wallet on it and someone found it.  Is that fraudulent? Or my stupidity for losing my wallet.  

If I lost my real physical wallet, I would never expect to get the fiat money back, why should BTC be different?

This is simply not going to happen.

If someone wants to transfer 25,000 coins, they can either do it themselves or pay a 1000 coin transfer fee and most miners will gladly process the transaction.

And if you start creating new block rewards for anyone who allegedly loses their coins, you will have a fork, because I know there are miners who won't stand for such silliness.

Not necessarily. There is always some uncertainty but one can indeed show strong proof. You need my wallet.dat file. I also have another wallet.dat file that shows me transferring 50 BTC to the main wallet file that got stolen. This would show proof of continuity. My control of the coins ends right when they were moved while I was sleeping to this address:

1KPTdMb6p7H3YCwsyFqrEmKGmsHqe1Q3jg

This address has some links to the computer underground - further proof that it was indeed not me moving them.

Well, guys, here we go: advocating centralized change and redistribution.  We're repeating history.

True, never going to happen..but one can argue that this would be like stealing marked bill from a bank. If the police eventually find the criminals and they trace the money to them what you're saying is that it should not be returned to the rightful owner? Is there any morality or legal justice to dealing with bitcoins or should we just treat it as the financial equivalent of the wild west? I see that a lot of you come from a libertarian/anarchistic world view, so I am thinking that in your opinions the only thing that would be just would be the application of vigilante justice, no? Would you all be ok with me stealing them back?

I don't think so, miners and investors, past, present, and future, will reject any clients that attempt to do this.  This is just feelings running high, the frontal lobe is taking a back seat for a few minutes.

Hahaha, thinking with the heart as opposed to the brain. The evil it creates...

If the police find the criminal(s) it is up to the criminal(s) to reimburse you, not the entire Bitcoin user base.

The road to hell and all that jazz...

Who will be the arbitrator of fraud and how long does it take before fraudulent is defined as immoral and then how do you go about determining if something is immoral.

Well in this case it's pretty obvious that it is fradulent and the money should not have been sent, and it could be a one time thing since it is 0.3% of all the currency.

The parent poster's idea should die in a fire. Seriously.

This is horrible.

Also, let me tell you gentlemen about democracy:

http://bradtaylor.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/spider-on-voting1.jpg

We have no proof that it was really stolen. For all we know, someone paid allinvain in cash, $500,000 cash, for those coins. And now he is trying to convince the community that he was stolen from in an effort to get us to do something like this.

Could you please provide me with the proof that it's fraudulent?

Not good enough. Not even close.

You may know whoever has the address. It could be your hired hand. Your brother. It might even be you.

There is no way to even be somewhat convinced that you have and had no influence over all relevant addresses. Even if I knew you personally, it might be a hard call. Thing is, I don't know you personally.

Sorry for your loss. I'd be pretty distraught to have had that much stolen from me. But no way am I supporting screwing other people (including myself) over because of your claims.

This was a misunderstanding. It was his home (work) computer.

The day something like this is done, while the intentions may be noble, is the day Bitcoin dies.

I used to think this as well, but I was reminded by someone that all this will cause is a fork in the chain. The Bitcoin purists will continue along just fine.

In fact, I will speculate that if such a fork does occur, soon the forked coins will be worthless and the forkers will be coming back to the original block chain in time.

Ha! Forkers!

Of course! I never said otherwise. Why are people even thinking this? Can't people read what I'm typing..

You're (probably unknowingly) spreading misinformation. I never put them on a work computer. It was my home PC. Sitting my damn house.

Can we let this die yet?

Really.

Those coins are not coming back, sorry.

The criminal must be treated as innocent until proven guily.

This scheme removes one of the raison d'etre for Bitcoin, and with all due sympathy to anyone who does get robbed (even me at some point in the future), I pledge here and now that I will never run a Bitcoin client that enforces a "blacklist" of addresses. Period.

Fixed that for you.

Perhaps you can explain to us, Grammar Nazi, what "Guily" is then.

My mistake.

Sorry, I'm just a grammar Nazi. You'll need to take that question up with the spelling Nazis.

Absolutely not.

If any sort of change happens and get's accepted that will give anyone any kind of powers over what they can do with Bitcoins other then those they have private keys for, I'll stop using Bitcoin that very second.

just for fun (i don't really believe it'll have any effect), i believe i have modified a customized version of the client i run on one of my desktops to shun all transactions that proceed from what allinvain has claimed is the theft from his address. once i check it later today, i'd be happy to consider sharing the shunning code, which is relatively simple.  as you perhaps know, i still advocate restarting the block chain even though i possess a large number of bitcoins in it, so this sort of disagreement among clients doesn't trouble me much, and it would be interesting to see shunning adopted more widely as an experiment.

LOL!  +einz.

QFT

yes, i believe that's one of many possible ways to help the technology.

Why not just have a central managing authority for bitcoin?? That'd solve all these problems!!

Oh wait but then it'd be as fucking stupid as regular fiat money, but not quite as stupid as the idea posted in this here thread!!

Those discussing means to "do something" about this theft should consider the size and scope of the can of worms they're opening. Setting aside the truth of this particular instance, what's to stop random person A from watching the block chain, looking for a particularly juicy chunk of BTC changing hands, and crying to the community that they were stolen from him?  Random person B, the rightful owner of the BTC, now finds his ability to spend them impugned.

The day people are trying to get this done, knowing full well their intentions are selfish faux bleeding heart, is the day Bitcoin has a stroke.

I am thinking about a variant of this proposal and would like to probe into its technical feasibility and democratic acceptance.

The client gets amended by a functionality. The "owner" of a bitcoin address / wallet can decide herself not to accept money from a specific bitcoin address X. To prevent circumvention by laundering this would mean that the owner also would not accept money from another bitcoin address B, in case there is a "trail" into the past which ends up at address X. It is similar to the statement: "I do not want to be paid by AlCapone and I do not want to be paid by JohnDoe unless JohnDoe is able to demonstrate to me that he has funds available in addition to what he might have received by AlCapone" (and of course additional variants in case there is more than one intermediate). Since blockexplorer is able to trace BTC streams, this can be detected.

1) Alice decides not to take coins directly or indirectly from Mallory. So Mallory passes his money to Bob, who passes some of his money to Carol, who passes some of her money to Eve, who passes some of her money to Oscar. Now Alice is telling Oscar that she is not willing to accept his bitcoins as a settlement of his debt, since, according to her analysis of the block chain, all of the money Oscar owns could be seen as originally coming from Mallory. (BTC have no identity, so a more thorough analysis may be necessary for this). So unless Oscar also did business with John, who never received any money from Mallory, Oscar will not be able to pay Alice using Bitcoins.

Of course, at first sight, this is to the disadvantage of Alice. But it is just with egression filtering in network security: It does not help the network doing this, but it helps the entire community. After a while, everybody knows that Alice / MtGox / etc. will not accept money which can be traced back to Mallory - and so nobody is doing business with Mallory any longer.

The important word is scalability: So long as only Alice reacts this way it is to her disadvantage. Assume, Mallory kidnapped someone and requests money to be sent to his bitcoin address. The story makes headline news and, say, 1 in 8 bitcoin users decide to blacklist Mallory. And many others might follow, since they realize that money they received from Mallory (probably via intermediaries) is not accepted in the community. So, in case there is a broad consensus by many individuals to blacklist Mallory, it would should work out to blacklist Mallory. Since this form of blacklisting is a decision of the individual, no centralized arbiter or court is necessary; the solidarity of the community is sufficient.

2) How would this be implemented? Of course, Oscar can transmit a transaction from his account to Alice's acount and this would become part of the block chain. So Alice HAS the money, even though it does not show up on her wallet until she is back from her business trip and goes online with her wallt on her desktop. But if Alice maintained a publically known blacklist of bitcoin addresses (either as part of her ecommerce web site where she posts that she is accepting BTC (with the exception of these 3 blacklisted addresses) or a signed blacklist which is public and certified as part of the block chain in just the same way as transactions are presently), then Oscar would have known about this blacklist. And Oscar would not have accepted money from Eve...and back the chain up to Mallory.

We thus would have a democratic majority against accepting Mallory's coins.

The necessary adaptations would be
a) An analyzer for the BTC stream from Oscar back to Mallory
b) Optionally: An extension for managing signed blacklists



 

   

+1 impossible. maybe scammed out of it or accident. or reality of course.

That was just my motivation.

I hate being locked in by the decision of others. So unless I am able to figure out every bit on my harddisc, I feel uncomfortable. This does not mean I have to do this every day, but I want to be able to do it NOW when I want to do it NOW.  ;)

Which means I need access to tools and not just source code I could, eventually, read, to build these tools, if I wanted.

Actually it isn't...

Just because someone got his wallet.dat file and used it without his permission, he still has THE wallet.dat file that has that address in it.

Produce it.

Good point.  Invalidates mine.

However, at least this would prove that allinvain did in fact own the 25,000 BTC at one time (which hasn't been proved, to my knowledge).  Of course it wouldn't prove he doesn't still own them, unless we can prove the address they were sent to couldn't possibly be his.  Of course that wouldn't prove it's not a conspiracy.

Damn it!

thats what i asked at the other forum post also.

can somebody make the calcs if it is feasible to have mined 25k btc from december 2010 as he said he started?
would he need many many suspicious gigahashes?

It is possible and it was possible since I got in very very early when the difficulty was much smaller. No gigahashes necessary, only kilohashes.

Let's calculate.

Blocks are averaged to be 1 Block every 10 minutes (or 6 blocks an hour).  This is controlled by difficulty.  So, as blocks are found more rapidly, the difficulty adjusts to bring us back to the average.  For the sake of argument, we'll say it's 6 / hour.

6 blocks / hour = 144 blocks / day
144 blocks / day * 50 BTC / block = 7,200 BTC / day
25,000 BTC / (7,200 / day) = 3.47 days to accumulate 25,000 BTC

However, the odds of finding every block for 3.5 days is pretty small, unless you're the only one mining.

So, let's say he only found 10% of the blocks (14 blocks / day).  That means 10x the length of time run, so 35 days.

Easily achievable from December 2010 - March 2011 (when things started getting crazy), even if he was only finding 3% of the blocks.