Bitcoin Forum

Should miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government?

are the any other situations where this is encouraged?

How about no.

No, this puts us on the slippery slope of reducing fungibility.

51% or hard fork maybe.  I'm sure it could be  done with the top three pools pretty easily.

That would be really funny but also a really bad idea.

Allowing such behavior would open a door to all kind of abuse. I think the goal here is not to fight the establishment but just showing them how irrelevant they are becoming in the modern days.

I conjecture that the OP is suggesting that miners use a rewritten form of mining software, that allows bitcoins from that address (you all know what I mean) to be spent without signing with the private key. Procedurally, I don't see this working. Firstly it's not so much miners, as mining pool operators, that would have to agree to this. Can't see them doing it. Secondly I don't think it's just the mining effort that would need to be on board with this. It would also be all those nodes that are validating transactions. That's even less likely to happen.

That's the 'how-to' side of things. The 'why-to' side of things, i.e. the ethics of it... no. Just no.

ETA: Steal Team 6. Nice  ;D

This is likely the worst idea I've ever seen on these forums, and this place is full of bad ideas.

I encourage this.
It will never, ever, ever happen.
But I at least think it should.

Let's say this happens. Bigger than the SR story would be the story that "a few million dollars has been stolen from the government."

Do you think that would help or hurt Bitcoin?

Do you think the average person is going to feel safe buying Bitcoins when not even the FBI could keep their Bitcoins safe?

Agreed.



Edit: To the people whining below that it can't be done and therefore anyone answering whether it should be done is an idiot... the question is whether it should be done. Nowhere in the OP does it ask if it can be done, or how difficult or unlikely it would be.

https://i.imgur.com/24EkmnG.jpg

of course but we should use big magnets like in breaking bad

Really?  You think miner should collude to wind the blockchain back to a week ago and then what? 

COULD miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government?

NO

People who voted "Yes," think about this a little more. If the Bitcoin community was going to pull such a stunt, it would have to save it for a cataclysmic situation. If the feds somehow seized half of all bitcoins in existence, then it might be time to have a careful debate about this...and probably still not do it. But for this little bit of money?

It would destroy Bitcoin's reputation as impartial, unimpeachable, immutable money. Not only would it turn governments against us, it would also show people that money they receive could be taken from them if they lose in the court of public opinion. It would be like a giant billboard saying BITCOIN: YOUR MONEY AT THE WHIMS OF THE MASSES.

And some people say there's a clean line we can draw in the case of the feds. How about legitimately seized bitcoins, from real criminals? How about those of the big banks? How about large companies like Apple and Walmart, that have close ties with the government just by virtue of their size? How about pirateat40's stash? Why not anyone with a Scammer tag on bitcointalk? Heck, why not annul the bitcoins of all taxpayers, since they feed the government by not resisting?

This is the most dangerous idea to come about in a long time. Please, please, please think this through.

Besides, letting the government get comfortable with Bitcoin and maybe get a sizeable stash will just help the cause. Government becoming a stakeholder in Bitcoin, particularly if the price rises a few more orders of magnitude as this case runs its course over several years, could be the best thing to ever happen to Bitcoin.

We have to decide once and for all, Is Bitcoin as good as gold? If it is, we have to take the bitter with the sweet. Consistency is a bedrock principal of sound money. Start getting cute with it and it'll all crumble to the ground.

I think it's all in cold storage by now. I saw some lame-o Forbes article about what the Feds have in mind for the confiscated BTC.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-bitcoin-seizure

I think the harder question would be, WHO would get the redirected funds?

Me?

You?

If this ever happens, Bitcoin dies that day.

Its really that simple, not sure why people think this could be done with no repercussions.

Bitcoin works because of its trustless nature, Satoshi himself made a big point about that. However if we allow the movement of funds without knowing the private key then Bitcoin becomes a trusted system, we now have to trust the miners not to move funds and now Bitcoin is the absolute opposite of what Satoshi intended.

So if this happens, the trustless foundation is no more and people will lose faith and the value of a Bitcoin will become less than a dollar.

Also I am sure if the miners do this the Bitcoin nodes will reject the block making a hardfork. I might be wrong about this though.

This would only manage to set a shady precedent and possibly lead to situations where it is decided that someone is "wrong" so we confiscate all their money

It isn't possible

There is nothing miners can do to send the bitcoins from that address to anywhere else without first getting EVERY single person using a bitcoin wallet to agree to run a modified wallet that allows the spending of bitcoins without a proper signature.  Nobody with bitcoins and half a brain is going to be dumb enough to run such software since it would put their own bitcoins at risk.

Miners don't have some special magical power that allows them to force nodes to accept invalid blocks into the blockchain no matter how many of them collude.

All of you who are talking about whether or not it *should* be done, need to realize that it can't be done.

Could you explain it two ways (in both detail and layman's terms)? I thought a 51% attack would be able to do this. If it can't, what can a 51% attack do?

Hmm probably not a great idea.

51% attack allows you to double spend your own coins (by rewriting the blockchain where you sent coins originally (to a merchant for example))

So last week you me 100 bitcoin, today you 51% attack and resend those 100 bitcoins from last week to another address. Now those 100 bitcoins I got from you last week are double spent / invalid and you got whatever product I sent you for free.

I think this is somewhat what happens. Also a 51% attack allows you to deny anyone else transactions, so you can stall the network.

That's the basics of it.  To rewind the blockchain to last week you would have to pick a point back then, fork the chain and the produce 1008 blocks of a longer length(more and bigger transactions, i.e. proof of work).

And then, once you have done that (with your "unimaginable powerful bitcoin cluster 1,000,000 x faster then the current bitcoin network) you would have to hack Silk Road, steal the private keys of the accounts about to be emptied and transfer them into another bitcoin address.

Tell you what, give me a Delorean, get me up to 88 miles an hour and I will fix it for you (it will be easier that way).

Neil

P.S., even then I would not fix it for you though just in-case you do get a time machine.  Dodgy people got caught out while doing dodgy stuff, I am not that upset about it.

The only thing miners can do is choose which transactions get confirmed.  This is true regardless of whether they are attempting to attack the network with overwhelming hash power (A.K.A. 51% attack) or are performing honest mining services.  The difference is that, with enough mining power, it is possible to do 2 things:

• Keep any other miners from solving any blocks
• Choose to unconfirm transactions that occurred in the past by re-mining past blocks (and all blocks after that) after removing the transactions

Note, that doing those two things still fits within the rules of what I said miners are capable of doing (choose which transactions get confirmed).

Now, if you have that power and you send a transaction, you can wait for the transaction to get however many confirmations the receiver demands.  Then you can unconfirm the transaction, and re-send to some other address the same bitcoins that you already sent. Then you can confirm the new transaction in place of the old (now unconfirmed) one.  You can repeat this process as many times as you want, re-spending your bitcoins over and over.

At no time can you create a signature spending someone else's bitcoins unless you have their private key.

Now, what you potentially could do would be to unconfirm the transaction that sent the bitcoins to the government.  Of course, all this would do would be to put the bitcoins back in DPR wallets (and since he's in custody and the government has his private keys, that wouldn't accomplish much).

I suppose you could then unconfirm all transactions that contain unspent outputs to the DPR wallets, essentially putting the bitcoins back in the wallets of the people who sent the bitcoins to DPR, but you'd risk rolling back other outputs as well since a transaction can have more than one output.

Is it still in their  :D

You've got most of your understanding pretty good, but the number and size of the transactions in the block don't matter.

You'd just have to go back 1008 blocks and start creating new blocks (you could even have only the coinbase transaction in each block), then you'd have to catch up with the rest of the network and produce one block more than them.  If you had exactly 51% it would take you on average about 50,000 blocks (348 days) to catch up with the rest of the network if you start with a 1008 block deficit, so somewhere around a year from now you'd roll back the entire year.

Wait so they will sell them at a very low price?!?

FBI can steal, seize, buy, use all the coins they want for whatever purpose they see fit!!!


Bitcoin is a currency, if miners start to politicize their hashing power, Bitcoin is no longer money, it becomes a coupon or a wager for hacktivism, political correctness. Not a bad idea, but you can no longer call it a currency.

It's the same as the way banks work now: We do not have any costumer confidentiality, and you funds can be seized without any notice or legal means to fight such a ruling.

So it could be nice if "we" could seize funds based on majority, but that would defy the purpose of Bitcoin.  

 

It IS possible. If 51% of the miners decided to reject blocks that spends coins from that address, then coins from that address won't confirm

No. The US government seizing a wallet is just fine. The guy who ran SR was stupid and his stupidity cost him those bitcoins. Thats life. Thats money.

Where's the I'm a potato choice?

No, not steal it.

It would be funny to see all the major pools refuse to include any transactions to/from that address though... make them wait days/weeks for a confirmation

The SR news is going to be an afterthought in the next few weeks. No point.

You are changing the topic.

The IT that is being discussed is miners "colluding to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government".

That is NOT possible.

The IT you have put forth:


Does not involve stealing from the wallet, it simply forces the wallet to continue to hold on to the funds indefinitely.

.gov might have 0.25% of all bitcoins at the moment. If they get control of the rest of the purported DPR bitcoins they might control 5% of all bitcoins. But so what?

- If they never do anything with those coins then that's equivalent to someone forgetting their password to their encrypted private key = lost bitcoins. The remaining bitcoins are worth more.

- If they wholesale liquidate their bitcoin holdings to fiat, well good riddance. Bitcoins out of control of .gov and back in general holdings/circulation.

- If they try to use their bitcoin holdings to "manipulate the market" to produce instability and promote reduced confidence, well sure they could do that. Might cause a lot of chaos for some time, but the very action of doing so gradually whittles away their holdings by way of miner transaction fees and/or exchange fees. Eventually, the coins go back into general holdings/circulation and out of their hands.

I can't see any scenario where this situation makes any difference in the long run.

I also don't see any evidence that .gov actually has exclusive control of the private key(s) that controls the 27,000 bitcoins. Think about it. Every report about this is consistent with them simply knowing the public address of the 27k coins, nothing more. I haven't seen any evidence to the contrary either in the news or in blockchain activity.

Do they actually have control of the private key(s)? Dunno. Does it make any difference in the long run? As per the above, I don't see how.

Remember that the structure and therefore dynamics of bitcoin is fundamentally different than unbacked, centrally controlled fiat currency. If a chunk of bitcoins is never ever circulated/transacted/exchanged, it is by definition economically irrelevant (save for the boost in value it gives other bitcoins). If it is circulated/transacted/exchanged, then it must eventually be diffused into general circulation simply by virtue of the fact that it can't be forged/debased, and there is a 21M bitcoin hard limit.

Don't worry, FBI will order a mass from BFL and set up their own mining pools to transact funds, the government is close to shutdown and they need some extra income :D

Possible or not, would you like to give back money to a person whose actions are considered a crime basically in all jurisdictions around the world? I would not..

If your reply is yes, what about future seizures that we will likely see (for different crimes)? Who will judge what must be returned? YOU? Will you tell us on the base of YOUR judgement what is a crime and what is not?

The day this happens is the day I quit bitcoin.

Glad to hear it's not really possible anyways.

Still in their what?  ???

How would miners obtain the ECDSA private key to this address then?

Please explain.

Excuse me if I disagree with you, but I don't think they simply gained access to the wallet where the 26,000 (or 27,000) bitcoins used to seat. That wallet was created on October 2nd, the same day SR was shut down. And it wouldn't be very smart to hold on the bitcoins in that wallet since they don't know who else got the private key for that. Most likely they created a wallet on their own (probably offline) and then moved all the bitcoins from the wallets they could grab from DPR (as shown by the big transactions pointing to that particular address right after its creation). Looking forward to knowing how did they manage to have access to those wallets in the first place and obtaining the private keys.. DPR himself provided them? The Agents found them somewhere, maybe in the form of paper wallets? Keylogger in his laptop?

Bitcoin should remain what it is now:
a decentralized, neutral and fair currency.
The network shouldn't try to play the judge in the world. People, organizations and governments are playing their own games.
The Bitcoin network should just keep his own rules. Who owns the private key, owns the coins. Simple.

It only takes one "traitor" to accept the transaction and with a big enough fee someone with a block mining capability will do it.

SInce the fund is >25kBTC a fee of 25 (one block reward) would probably be sufficient.

Blacklisting will not work that well obviously. Not only the feds will have to play by Satoshi's rules, we have too...

In the mean time, enjoy the new twitter for small donations service they have arranged for us, we all have to chip in in these times of hardships and defaults.

https://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX?offset=50&filter=0

I doubt most people who voted Yes meant the mining pool ops should steal the coins into their own pockets. Obviously few people would get behind that. The idea would of course be to make the funds immovable, effectively the exact same as stealing the funds and distributing them to every bitcoin holder in proportion to how many they now hold. The money goes permanently out of circulation and everyone's bitcoins become that much more valuable since they are that much more scarce.

Hence it is possible and it IS necessary to explain why it's a horrible idea.

Actually, more like everyone's Bitcoins become worthless at the whim of an oligarchy.  As soon as the Gang of Four or whoever decide they don't like you, *poof* your Bitcoins are gone.

Never mind that the whole "stealing from the FBI" idea is just insanely stupid for practical reasons so obvious they need not be outlined.

By the way, the feds did set up their own bitcoin address and moved the SR funds into there. They were apparently able to do that because they imaged the server and the coins were in hot wallet. They don't seem to have DPR's probably-gigantic cold wallet, and if he hid it well enough they never will.

Guess it depends on how eager DPR is to cut a deal.  Holding onto the proceeds of an illegal criminal enterprise, if they can prove it (which I don't know if they can) is the kind of thing that moves your sentence toward the maximum end of the sentencing range.  Considering that's life without parole in this case, he might have some incentive to deal.

Just think, when he's inside all the other convicts will know he has a secret stash worth millions.

Oh, dear.  :D

Our generations version of the Mystery of D.B. Cooper's hidden stash  8)

A better question to ask would be: is this even possible?

In theory, yes, for reasons explained previously in the thread.  I.e. over half the network rejecting the transaction, and/or hard forking back to before it happened.  In practice, it would be a ridiculous act and 51% of the network just isn't going to do that.

this thread so much dumb  ::)

Look who the OP is...

No wonder... :D

How about taking back what was stolen by the most powerful, most criminal entity on the planet?

OK it's a very bad idea taking that btc back, but make no mistake the FBI has stolen that btc, it isn't silk roads or DPR's btc, it isn't "illegal" btc, it isn't even US btc in many cases, it's simply the btc held in user accounts on that server and the FBI need to show it has been either used or obtained illegally. They're at least as bad as those they claim to be taking down in many cases, the rule of law must apply equally, not only apply as they alone see fit, to the victims of their theft.

this pretty more sums it up

The irony is delicious.

Came here to say this.

this sorta says we need a CC where this can not even be a possibility...if that's possible, implication, BTC current system is not the model yet that will win the race. A PPC version over time maybe a lot harder to hack as the coins will be far more distributed than mining.

using PPC would be safest since not even the Feds would bother seizing that crap

This is probably one of the dumbest ideas I've read on the forums.  All this would do is cause the US government to turn against the bitcoin community.

Cant we just make it unspendable?

Like making any transaction from that address not confirm.

Just completely take those Bitcoins out of circulation. This stops LEO from using that bitcoin in sting operations.

How about just letting this one go?  (Word to parents; be sure not to send your kids off into the world minus the handy lifelesson on selectively choosing your fights).

Problem is where does it all end? Next week it will be some other coins.

What? Ofcourse not! If that'd be possible, mining would become lucrative for stealing money, not making it.
Use your damn heads!

Nice thought, but NO.

I would rather see them squirm using legitimate means and beat them that way.  No monkey business.

Who was it that said "Don't annoy your enemies while they are making a mistake"?

Why???

Some small miner not participating would eventually confirm it, but I just think it'd be fun to make them wait days or weeks

Just thought, if they use the Bitcoin does that not help Bitcoin by being in circulation?  Once they cash them in they are just getting useless fiat.

Sure that helps, especially when they FBI-Style drop them on the market at once.

sorry, i did not even read all posts .
I think it is just funny.
At first, who said that money is still there?
It would be funny if after all huge work you will find empty wallet.
Money already somewhere else: in another wallet, or just converted to some that government can really use.
Really funny post.

Cant find more stupid thread here. Oh wait we have at least 3476 threads which says why it is wrong to blacklist any stolen bitcoin or such stuff.

All you will do is, prove bitcoin can not be trusted.

/thread

Its right here.

http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX

I think the coins should be stolen, but that it should be done using the good'ol method of simply stealing the private keys for that wallet. That may involve some more difficult work of actually hacking FBI's computers to find out where their keys are stored at. Miners and futzing with the blockchain should definitely be left out of it.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the seized BTC, not only from the SR wallets, but also from the 80 million dollar whopper that DPR had.  Would confiscated BTC be viewed as a forfeited property that could be resold, like a drug dealers car?  Or would BTC viewed as a contraband substance, like the drugs themselves?  If the former, then the Feds could dump a metric shit-ton of coins for sale, possibly crashing the market.  If the latter, then roughly 5% of all BTC in existence are permanently off-limits.  Good for us, this scenario, as BTC would get more rare. 

Another scenario - DPR goes to his grave never giving the password and the wallet.dat stays locked for eternity. 

fixed that for you.


The only value bitcoin will ever have long terms is in its utility as a currency and medium of exchange. It isn't physical like gold so if no one is using it for anything other than eating into available hard drive storage space it rapidly becomes useless and worthless.

You can be sure the key is stored offline.

Bitcoin is just a tool, and a damn good one.  

The minute you start using political means to single out addresses that don't agree with your ideology it becomes compromised.  
Take whatever action you want, but leave the protocol alone.  If it were changed to allow the masses to subjectively snipe an address I would immediately cash out.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/10/04/fbi-silk-road-bitcoin-seizure/

The FBI initially seized over 26,000 Bitcoins. I asked the FBI spokesperson what the plan is for those cryptocoins. “We will download the Bitcoin and store them,” she said. “We will hold them until the judicial process is over.”

Then what?

“This is kind of new to us,” she said. “We will probably just liquidate them.”

Please excuse me for posting again, but this is too funny:

“The FBI has not been able to get to Ulbricht’s personal Bitcoin yet,” wrote Hill. An FBI spokesperson said to Hill that the “$80m worth” that Ulbricht had “was held separately and is encrypted”. At current exchange rates, that represents slightly more than 5% of all bitcoins in circulation.

Even if the FBI is not able to transfer the money, merely having possession of the wallet file itself is enough to prevent the coins being spent. The Bureau is in a position equivalent to having seized a safe belonging to a suspect with no idea of the combination – and no hope of forcing it open any other way.

(http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/07/fbi-bitcoin-silk-road-ross-ulbricht)

Ok, that's right, if they have possession of the wallet, this will prevent anyone who has the private key to spend them...  ::)

I think you may be giving the FBI too much credit. They may just have downloaded Bitcoin-QT, didn't bother to password protect it, and stored the coins there. Or just opened a Blockchain.info wallet account. I somehow doubt they know or understand offline wallets and paper backups and such.
Then again, maybe I just have a very low opinion of the FBI.

If you want to completely destroy the credibility of bitcoin and all the progress it has made to be widely accepted then go ahead and try the 51% attack. Just let me know when you're doing it so i can sell....

stupid idea is stupid

I think you are still giving them too much credit. They took the encrypted harddrives and now they try to figure out what to hell is on them. Provided the NSA gave them some processing power to even open those. ;)

lol
money in a wallet, not chain
 lol
And also, good luck to get money back if it is already converted
lol

I'd support making it impossible for the coins to ever be spent from that address.

Uh... wait... are you saying that money is currently being stored in a bitcoin wallet, and not in a bitcoin blockchain?  :P

@OP:
That would be funny, wouldn't it?
The answer is still no.

It would need most of the community (not only the miners) to pull that off.
If someone manages to steal 1/4 of all Bitcoins (cracked the encryption) it might be time to do stuff like this.

most likely scenario: some sneaky fed agents will get access to this wallet and later they will tell the public those coins were accidently "erased"/destroyed etc.   ;)

Bitcoins are technically just stored in the blockchain ledger. Your wallet holds the private key(s) giving you the power to amend the ledger.

You really need to get a sense of perspective.

Police arrest drug dealer.
Film at 11.

If they haven't been moved yet, just get DPR to divulge the key to someone he trusts for the non-personal wallets.  

For his coins, if they were a brain wallet, they could just hold him until he remembers.

I support the big magnet approach.

I vote NO!

I assume the feds wont be able to access most wallets and those coins will no longer be in circulation.
That means all other bitcoins becomes worth more since we will have 2,8% less coins in circulation, making each coin worth 2,8% more. (21M - 0.6M coins)

The scenario of miners stealing those 600K coins results in:
a) the seized coins will be transfered to a few miners, not to everyone - not fair.
b) it will hurt the goodwill of the bitcoin community if the action of 51% succeeds, what prevents the miners from doing it again?

I believe in the NAP, & that means I will never initiate aggression against any of you nitwits...

But if I hear of some miners out there trying to start up a movement to conspire to steal coins, mark my words I will HUNT YOU DOWN AND KILL YOU ALL.

...Totally in defense.

You will have aggressed not only against my personal savings by trying to destroy the bitcoin network, but also the savings of every other bitcoiner alive, and ultimately humanity itself since bitcoin is what is going to help mankind survive the coming global turmoil.

So in my mind, conspiracy against the blockchain is literally WORSE than conspiracy to detonate a nuclear weapon.

Comprende? Don't even joke about this stuff.

What I meant is control of the money.

 

Let's see.  Stealing fund from the wallet owned by the US government. That would help boost the legitimacy and credibility of Bitcoin how? 

I think it would be hilarious if everyone banned those coins. Force the feds to launder the bitcoins in order to cash them out, that would be soooo frickin ironic.

Once the possibility of this is out I declare Bitcoins to be broken.

Let's say you ordered something absolutetly legal, from a webshop, then webshop gets shut down your Money sized because the Webshop also sold Drugs, the FBI stole our Money and they will use cheap Tricks to keep it

you say DPR is bad guy, the Government did way worse they constructed a Case that wouldn't have happened
if the FEDS wasn't involved,

HOW MANY FUCKING GUVERNMENT SHILLS ARE IN THIS THREAD ?

i' am pro Steal Team 6, let's create some havoc

Absolutely not. It is not the role of a Bitcoin miner to pass judgement on individual Bitcoin transactions and destroy Bitcoin in the process.
PS: I pledge the hash power under my control (two Avalons) against this insane scheme and ask other miners to do the same.

In my opinion, Bitcoins are a moral judgement. That aside, I agree that the mining network must remain neutral in how it processes transactions.  Interference would only undermine Bitcoin. On the other hand, I personally do not have to accept any coins originating from certain addresses. If other people want to show their displeasure over Silk Road or anything else, they can refuse to accept those coins also. If everyone refuses to accept them, then those coins become worthless to the government but priceless to those who cherish their personal sovereignty.

Has it occurred to anybody that maybe FBI is mining, and could process the transaction themselves? Hell, they may even be running a major pool for all we know.

Thank you to all the morons on this thread who are completely economically illiterate and just outed themselves as such... My "Ignore" list has been waiting for you for a long time.

If anyone is a government shill, it is anyone urging people to participate in an illegal criminal conspiracy that cannot possibly end well.  Agents provocateurs, anyone?  Not that it's going to happen, or that anyone here is actually a provateur, since the scheme is so transparently idiotic that nobody in a position to do it (the mining pools) would actually do it.  But anyone taking this seriously, rather than joking around about it, has clearly been consuming too many research chemicals from SR.

+1

The only ones that want the coins stolen is the little junkies that lost their drug money. Yeah, let's undermine the whole integrity of Bitcoin to please the butthurt druggies.

Mods please lock this dumb arse thread.

You guys are batshit.

These are still internet funbux, no matter how "srs bizns" we want to get about it. We are not "there" yet, nothing "depends" on Bitcoin.

If you compare a 51% attack unfavorably to the thermonuclear vaporizing of millions of my fellow humans, you are a sociopath and asshat of the highest magnitude.

Thanks for the info, wasn't aware of that detail. So the FBI has at least one guy that knows what he's doing wrt Bitcoin.

Ahahahaha, you're right, one at least!!!

Moreover, as you can see here (http://blockchain.info/address/1F1tAaz5x1HUXrCNLbtMDqcw6o5GNn4xqX?offset=200&filter=0), money is still flowing to that (probably cold) wallet. I am not referring to the small transactions, made just to send messages to the FBI. There are bigger transactions (253, 10, 15, etc BTC) still going on right now. They could be other BTC discovered by FBI or standing payouts from pools still going to the seized wallets.

How does the community simultaneously say "Bitcoin is easy to learn, everyone should use it!" and then act surprised when an FBI agent attached to a cybercrime unit figures out how to move coins to a new wallet?

You do realize that the abolity to spend, or not having that money in their posession, does not in any way affect their ability to actually prosecute him, right? It's not like they have to bring big stacks of cash into the court room to show it as evidence. They can just point to the public blockchain, and show all the transactions leading in and out of the address in question. Just because they themselves can't spend the money doesn't matter.

That being said, I'd much rather have that money be spent by someone else other than the FBI. Both because, as you said, I work in government, and I understand that it will be either wasted, or worse, used for bad things, AND because I don't believe what DPR was doing with Silk Road was inherently wrong, and thus the FBI effectively stole money that didn't belong to them (it didn't belong to DPR, either, since that money was merchant, customer, and anyone who wanted to use the SR tumbler money).

You're seriously advocating stealing millions of dollars from the FBI?  You realize you don't live inside a movie, right?

Ahahahaha, the best (and more meaningful) comment I have see here so far!

You do realize it could quite conceivably be done, right?

We shouldn't do it, because it would make Bitcoin look bad, but the way the FBI has literally put all their money in a single address like noobs, it could be quite easily done with the cooperation of major mining pools. Heck, even just the top 2 could probably at the very least make it take an extraordinarly long time to confirm.

Definitely.  I also hear it's possible to contract to hire someone to murder someone else.

How well does this kind of thing usually turn out when someone tries it in reality, though?

Gov owning BTCs is the worst thing we can imagine.
and block Gov "seized" BTCs using the miners is even worse. (for the image of bitcoin etc)

But we refuse accepting BTC from these address or stop using the exchanges who accept BTC from them in a white/clean protest, is it possible?

Stopping BTC from being spent sets an awful precedent.  Who decides if we can spend BTC in that situation?  This would be regulation on top of Bitcoin, something I thought most people here didn't want.

Yeah, white/black lists of coins are a terrible idea. This has come up quite a bit before. The consensus around here is that would drastically reduce the fungibility (one "coin" is the same/same-value as another) of coins which is a core property of an ideal money. Without it, bitcoin loses a key aspect of what makes it viable as a long-term money well-suited to the needs of global electronic exchange.

Don't worry, those aren't even the worst comments I've seen here recently.. they're quite mild I'd say!

Oh you've got to be kidding me.  25% of people think we should burn bitcoin to the ground.  What idiots.  If this ever got close to happening, say goodbye the value of bitcoin.  It would go from being a high quality, ground breaking currency to being "anarchist nerd credits", and the value would collapse.

Not only would this kill bitcoin, but it would set back the cryoto currency movement, perhaps beyond return.  You would be shitting all over Satoshi's vision.  You would have proved that crypto currency is just an impossible dream and decentralised money will always end up centralised.

What if during the organization of the "51% attack", they decide to move the money?

If someone is to "steal it" (I'd use the word "retrieve") it only should be those to whom the bitcoins belong. I wish them good luck because so far the news are that the FBI wants to "liquidate them". Not the nicest thing to do considering the fact that not all products were of illegal nature and of those products that were illegal in US some of them were legal elsewhere (e.g. prescription medication).

So I think unless you were personally affected by the confiscation of the SR wallet or you're working on the behalf of and with consent of the victims, you shouldn't be playing Robin Hood because it can only give other bitcoiners a bad reputation.

51% or hard fork is not needed at all.

Not really.  25% of the people who bothered to vote in a poll in the most moronic thread in Bitcoin history said that. 

The only "votes" that count in this are the votes of the mining pools, really.  And in this case, good.  The miners supporting this appear to be at about 0%.

"In other news, a group of hackers, against all mathematical odds, stole over $1 billion worth of the online digital currency "Bitcoin" from the US government, proving once and for all that the only way your money is safe is in a federal bank."

They were all later arrested and are now sitting in Guantanamo Bay.

Not to mention the bitcoins you stole would be worthless.  If this were actually possible, bitcoin would be dead.

ok, so just a question.

Lets say someone guessed the private key of the Silkroad BTC stash and cleaned it out. Is it theft?

How can that theft be proven in law today?

If someone were able to randomly guess/combine enough bits to create a h264 of the next blockbuster movie without access to the original film, is that copyright infringement?

If you're able to guess the combination to my safe and you take all my money is that theft?

What if you guess the password to my bank account?

If you guess my credit card number?

Did you read my post? The evidence is in the blockchain, not in the address balance. And you can't tamper with the blockchain.


So do car manufacturers, alcohol and beer brewers, pharmaceutical companies, cleaning product manufacturers, etc. What's your point?


I heard the person wasn't even real. But regardless, what does that have to do with whether the money owned by his customers is in the FBI's hands? And what does it have to do with his customers' money?


sure. But unlike stealing money, where the transaction is traceable, all you have to do to get Bitcoin out is steal the private key, and broadcast it from anywhere. Also, HAHAHAHAHA, when was the last time the FBI, or any government security agency, returned anything they seized? They themselves claimed that they will simply liquidate the money.


1, doubt it, as speech is not crime, and no one cares, and 2, again, I'm not advocating tampering with evidence. Do you seriously believe that if those bitcoins were moved elsewhere that DPR will go free due to a mistrial?  ::)


Since I don't know what you look like, and don't know whom to look out for, could you please stay away from every Bitcoin event instead?

How do you prove ownership of a bitcoin account number? ( insert wharrblgarbl about private key here )

It's not a tangible thing. There's no door to open, no physical goods to steal. It's intangible.

If you have the private key, you own the coins.

No need. Just find an example of a court case where seized money or things like cars and houses were presented in court as evidence of crime. I may be wrong, but that sounds ridiculous. At most, the prosecution might say, "We seized $10mil from suspect, which we suspected was drug money, and we have this other evidence to support that claim," but I don't think prosecutors have ever hauled millions of dollars into court to prove their point. Is stealing seized money from the FBI illegal? Of course! But I don't think they have a right to that money to begin with.


Luckily, my private conduct doesn't affect my job. If they do let me go for whatever reason (and I really hate my job here), it won't bother me. Though I suspect my department will collapse...  :P


Ironically, I think it's the other way around: things like government and FBI will become more and more irrelevant as Bitcoin and business becomes more and more anonymous, and government services beck,e easier to replace. The venture capitalist videos I've seen typically complain a lot about government and regulatory abuse, and can't wait to not have to interface with the fiat and regulatory system any more.

Why?  It's been reported that they used blockchain.info wallet.  Even if that's incorrect and it's simply a cold storage address how are they keeping the private key.  One place?  Maybe a few high level agents have it?  How much of a trip would it be if the coins get moved because someone lost the key or just decided they need a personal retirement fund.

This sounds like an oxymoron: stealing from a thief  ???


I have an idea for a new type of crypto-asset:

The protocol of this new asset should envisage in cases when coins get stolen / extorted by people doing business as ''governments'':

a) a mechanism for tainting the stolen coins (if you are a moral human being you wouldn't deal with such tainted coins, you wouldn't buy them, their market price would be lower), or even
b) a mechanism for making the stolen coins unspendable (thus screwing the thieves - a crime should not pay!), or even
c) a mechanism for making the stolen coins retrievable by the victim of the theft / extortion (in case the human that was attacked gets freed in some point in future).

The judgement system is not needed. In your client you would specify that if your name appears on Google with words like ''arrest, confiscation, etc.'' your coins get automatically tainted (unless you revoke it or something) or if you do not log into your client for more than 2 weeks then your co8ins get tainted or .... a mixture of user-specified conditions.



There are a lot of brainiacs in this forum. They can figure out the problems and find ways to mitigate them ;D

Sounds like a terrible idea. If coins aren't coins aren't coins, then what happens if I go to, I don't know, satoshidice, and get paid back with the goddamn tainted coins?

Why?



Coins are coins, except some of them are tainted (by the will of the person who was robbed). I wouldn't willingly accept a payment with tainted coins. I would pay more for non-tainted coins (to have a clean conscious).



It would take satoshidice's developers a few hours to build in their service an option for punters not to accept tainted coins. Some would accept tainted coins, some would not.

You must be new here, because a ton of them really wish that was the case. As soon as you try to start a business, or even just deal with bitcoin in any significant way, you run into a ton of regulatory questions and issues, to the point that some of these people are actually leaving USA or actively blocking US customers from their sites, just so they can avoid dealing with those issues. Yes, right now we are all forced to interface with fiat, and submit to KYC/AML and all the other crap, but I'm pretty sure everyone who supports bitcoin wishes that won't be the case eventually.

Do you think that bitcoin should always be used in conjunction with fiat, and that bitcoin should be subject to AML/KYC and other financial regulations too?


Yep, you're new here. Those lunatics have supported bitcoin the most from the start, and are still it's biggest supporters (hint-hint, those lunatics include people pretty high up and well known in bitcoin businesses)


Businesses do want their finances and often inner workings to be anonymous, and customers want to be anonymous. Businesses also don't want to be forced to collect every little bit of information about their customers if they don't want to. And no one likes having to pay fees, taxes, or submit to costly and unneccesary regulatory requirements.


No, I think I know everything because I have high level degrees in finance, economics, and business, and have a ton of experience working in business finance, as well as a bit of experience running my own business, and also because I haave experience with virtual currencies and bitcoin. You think you know everything because, despite just recently discovering bitcoin, being as rightcheous as you are, believe you know better.


Ok, you claimed this three times now. Please explain to me how those bitcoins sitting in FBI computers are "evidence," or how they can be used to help prosecute DPR? If you can't, stop calling them "evidence."


My job is to count numbers and balance spreadsheets, not to talk politics or be a representative of whatever. Seriously, no one gives a crap what I think. Also, like I said, if I do lose it (and I do the very minimum required of me here), it won't bother me. I don't actually need the job here any more, and only keep it for the extra income and cheap health insurance.

Something in me screams "YEAH, take them!"

...but it wouldn't be a smart move. Wouldn't hurt the US government, but it would hurt Bitcoin.

Hmm. Seems like if Bitcoin does become mainstream, this is more likely to become:

The protocol of this new asset should envisage in cases when coins are linked to illegal activities like drug dealing:

a) a mechanism for tainting the stolen coins (if you are a moral human being you wouldn't deal with such tainted coins, you wouldn't buy them, their market price would be lower), or even
b) a mechanism for making the stolen coins unspendable (thus screwing the drug dealers - a crime should not pay!), or even
c) a mechanism for making the stolen coins retrievable by law enforcement (to remove the proceeds of crime).

And if Bitcoin is to become maintream, they will be more and more marginalised, and pushed out of the picture by people with more 'normal' approaches.
Bitcoin can either:
a) be a super-secret crypto-anarchist tool for conducting illegal deals and sticking one to the man, or
b) be the future of money transfer around the world
It can't be both.

Sort of like the way we burn huge piles of currency if we find out they've been involved in illegal activities?  Perhaps we should start doing that, too.  Just test every piece of currency for drug residue, and if it tests positive, we should burn it, because that dirty money can't be trusted.

(Hint:  Virtually every piece of currency in the U.S. is "tainted" with drug residue.)

Yes.
I wan't suggesting this was a good idea, just what a logical extension would be :)
Money gets passed around, once it has passed from the 'tainted' source to someone else, it makes no sense to continue to consider it tainted.
It is just money. If money ceases to be fungible, it erodes its value as money.
How could you trust accepting money from anyone, if later it could be declared tainted and unspendable just because of something they had done with it before it came into your possession?

Not every activity labeled ''illegal'' is morally bad. There were times when owning gold in North America was illegal. While you certainly could call owning gold illegal, you wouldn't call it morally wrong, would you?

Another example: it is morally wrong for you to kill in cases other then self-defense, but it is legal for you to kill if you a dressed in green costume with a sign ''US military'' or a blue costume with a sign ''police''.

Yet another example: it is morally wrong for you to steal someone's bitcoins, but it is legal for you to steal them if you wear a cap with FBI letters on it.

I hope you are getting differences between morality and legality.

Thanks for explaining this to us Mr Dinosaur and welcome to the forum for delusional lunatics. I hope you can educate us more on how the world works.

Both can change over time.
What is morally right or wrong can differ from person to person, while what's legal cannot so much.
e.g. two people in the same state can have different opinions on if gay marriage is morally wrong, but they cannot on if it's legal (or they are just wrong xD).

I certainly could call it morally wrong.
It would just go against the current common sense and most other people would disagree with me.

What's important to notice is that "morally right" isn't the same for everyone. If you say "xy isn't morally right" it's expressing your opinion, not stating a fact.

I think you are missing the point.
I'm not saying what I think should be done.
What I'm saying is that if group A decides to taint a certain set of coins because of they believe is morally wrong, why shouldn't groups B, C and D do the same? And they will each have different things that they consider morally wrong.
Now coins will be seemingly randomly accepted or rejected based on some group's view of what the Nth previous holder had done with those coins.
It would render the entire system unusable. Money works because people trust that it will be accepted. If that trust is lost, money loses value.

And, btw, I'm pretty sure there are many many more people in the world would would consider dealing drugs to be morally wrong, as opposed to considering confiscating money found when arresting a drug dealer morally wrong.

Huh.. why do you think I'm 25, and have no experience? My profile used to say 18 about 6 months ago, and has never had my real age.


Yeah, that's not how things work. Sorry. I could be advocating legalizing drugs and prostitution, or advocating money laundering and tax evasion, but unless I'm actually involved in any way myself,  that's still just an opinion. The only thing they care about in my particular position is my job performance. I am not a representative or a face of the government in any way. That would be people two levels above me.


Hmm... nope. Nothing on there about evidence. All that page says is, "You done bad, so we'll take your stuff." It's at most a punishment or claim of the right to everything that was obtained as a result of the crime, and there's absolutely nothing there regarding forfeited items being evidence.
So, it's not evidence. It's stuff the government, and specifically the US government, now claims to own the right to, because they claim that the way the money was obtained was wrong. This despite the fact that the money did not belong to DRP himself, was in a global business with global customers, and belonging to people who either were not breaking the law, or were in countries where what they were buying was legal. US has an annoying knack for pretending that it's government laws apply to the entire world. How would you feel if you tried to buy some electronics from a business in China, and China seized your money, because, despite those electronics being legal in US, China declared them illegal for whatever reason, and decided the rest of the world, including you, should consider them to be illegal, too?
And even if that money were to disapear somehow, it still won't affect the trial, or any evidence, and will only make the FBI a bit poorer (and more pissed off).


What about people who claim to know the people who have been involved with bitcoin for a long time, and claim to know what kind of people they are, and what kind of interests or goals they have? And what if those people are actually fairly well known and established people in the community, who have, and are still, supporting bitcoin in a big way?


First, the people you claim are being "pushed out" are actually running some of the companies you listed (who may not be publicly making such claims, but have in private). Second, you forgot to mention SatoshiDice, Coinapult, and quite a few other businesses that actually helped launch bitcoin and get it to where it is now. Sure, they may seem like government-loving nice people, but trust me, they're not. Their non-radical public image is only maintained for the likes of you.



So... you have experience in physics and computers, you worked in air traffic control in some capacity, sued a bunch of spammers, and are making your wealth domain squatting? So... nothing regarding finance, economics, or business (well, a bit)? Mine is, I had a rather extensive education, if a bit of a crash course (over a few summers, 11am to 8pm daily) in physics and electro-mechanical engeneering, which I needed to help run my grandparent's MAGLEV company. I knew the subject well enough to be an English<>Russian translator at the 2000 International Maglev Conference in Lausanne, and to debate the topics with top researchers and professors there, to the point where people there simply assumed I had a doctorate in the stuff. I don't have any Comp Sci degrees, but I have been writing software since I was 13, was hired by McDonald's Corp in Baltimore as an IT manager and web/software developer, and as a business on the side, ran and managed a web and e-mail server for various web companies, including my family's MAGLEV thing, since 1997. I'm still running that MAGLEV business, which includes doing economic feasibility research all over the world, and establishing and maintaining contacts with various globally dispersed manufacturers, though I'm not really focusing on it as much as I should (I am building a proof-of-concept linear accelerator in my living room though). Oh, and I also have a bachelors in business finance, and a master's in global business and finance. And thanks to my stock, mutual fund, and bitcoin portfolio, and the small consulting and finance jobs I keep getting hired for, and all the trust I have built up over the years (I'm holding over $100,000 of other people's money in trust), I don't have to work at all, either. As I said, the only reason I'm still working where I am is for the cheap health insurance, and to give me some spending money so I can put off dipping into my investments. Actually, the only reason I worked here last year was as a favor to the department, because I was literally the only person left here who knew how to run things, and stayed on, despite earning half of what I could earn in the private sector, until I trained my replacement. Since then, they accused the guy I was training of being inadequate, without even consulting me, because some new person didn't like him or something (he was VERY good, actually), dumped a bunch of shit on me from someone else who was retiring and thus was not doing her job at all in her last month (never gave me the accounting info I needed, and shit rolled right up hill), and have cost me about $60k in lost investments. Frankly, there are two more finance people here who are hoping to quit, who are the only other people who know how to run the department, and I am just here waiting for them to leave, so I can leave at the same time, and have this entire department collapse.

Yes, that about nails it right there. How do you know all this about me?



I read the conventional media, if I am interested in what most normal people think. But historically lunatics may see the world in a clearer light than the mainstream. There is a fine line between genius and lunacy.

p.s. Here is an easy solution if you don't like the content of this forum or want to step out of your comfort zone: don't visit it or go and start your own forum.

No is the answer because of bad precident and bad principle of what this currency is supposed to achieve...

But on the flip side, help the fbi confiscate the 600,000 BTC using these tactics by forcing those coins into their wallet so that proper legal proceedings could take place would be a much more noble cause

So, what exactly are we supposed to do in this thread, then?

It says should miners collude, not could miners collude. The answer to the second question is obviously yes. If you randomly 'split' the thread, then what's this one for?

I would vote for a "No." If all miners agree to take the money without the standard, normal procedure, I think it will make Bitcoin reputation goes worse.

But I don't mind if a single entity or a single person steals the private key of that address though :P

This sub-forum is designated for:


If you wish to discuss ethics and morals, you can take that discussion to the Politics & Society sub-forum.

I suppose perhaps the entire thread could be moved to that forum, but there seems to be enough technical discussion in the thread to leave those parts here.

Well, it does chap my ass that the US government seized bitcoins from people around the world, many of whom were not engaging in illegal activity on their location. And even if they were, how is that America's problem?

BUT, a huge no to this questions. That would destroy everything bitcoin stands for. You can't have people simply undoing transactions because at that moment they don't agree with something. Think back in history about all the stupid shit mob mentality has resulted in.... so, that precedent should never be set. Maybe tomorrow "we'd" be robbing some rich dude's bitcoins because we're jealous little whiny bitches like most of society. No good.

All that said, if someone liberated those bitcoins I'd laugh, and I think a good 'ol fashioned smash and grab is a better idea. Find there they keep the private keys, and go get them, Oceans 11 style. Easier than doing a 51% attack and reversing god knows how many levels of transactions needed to get anywhere with that. Plus, a smash and grab would be both hilarious AND would not hurt the bitcoin infrastructure.

... Speaking of a Smash and Grab... how in the hell have they kept that from happening? The corruption in government is high, if someone on the inside jacked the private keys, and if they knew what they were doing it would be hard to trace. Way better than the typical embezzlement and such BS.

Edit: They probably saved them on a shared network drive. "SiezedCoins.dat.rar" Perhaps some Chinese 13 year old will obtain them?

Well if people insist on leaving their coins on an extremely illegal drug marketplace what else do they expect?

Right, in reality.

In principal, however, much of it is still out of the jurisdiction of the DEA and my ass is a little bit drier because of it. A little flaky, in fact.

Since the world is clearly not about common sense anymore, and one's family can sue the FAA and win because a private pilot family member flew into a storm and died.... then one can't say storing your money in an (Illegal in the US) global marketplace should result in automatic forfeiture of your funds, especially if you're not breaking any laws in your local area. Based on that precedent, perhaps a seller in India selling a Children's book printed in 1950 (Illegal in the US due to possible lead ink) to a buyer in Vietnam on eBay should have their paypal account locked since, because in the US, that is illegal by god.

I understand the reality of this situation. But I also understand hte principal. I don't like where this type of mentality can lead, and in an increasingly global marketplace it's going to get a lot more complicated.

EDIT: That Paypal example, strictly speaking, is more plausible because both eBay and PayPal are US companies and subject to US law. Silkroad nor bitcoin are US owned/based.

That I agree with

I believe the "should" question pertains to whether it is, pragmatically, a good idea to do this.  I think the answer to this is so obvious (fuck no) that there hardly needs to be a thread, but here it is, and here I am in it.  A general discussion of the differences between morality, ethics and legality is pretty off-topic for that.

Even this is a pretty speculative discussion, since none of the miners who would actually have to be involved to perpetrate this atrociously silly act are, so far as I can tell, remotely interested in doing something this dumb.

The fact that blocking transactions is even considered by some, is proof we need litecoin to stick around.

Now don't get me wrong. It would be absolutely horrible if litecoin overtook bitcoin for no apparent reason. I absolutely do not want this to happen, it would be a disaster for cryptocurrencies in general.

But blocking transactions is a very apparent reason for a take-over. The miners need to know and understand that they are not God's, they do not get to decide whom pays whom.

If miners - now or in the distant future - would ever pull of something like this, I will instantly quit bitcoin. Fiat is not an option anymore either though. That's why we need a back-up. A little sister that will keep bitcoin honest. Even if it does nothing but show the miners that their asic's could become worthless overnight if they misbehave.

+1
Right my thought.

And how does Litecoin protect against this problem?

How can we steal fund? Even if we want to there is no way.

So this is how stupid misinformation about bitcoin is spread?  Great, now people will think we can just erase transactions at will. *sigh*

If they did that, then they would be off on their own version of the blockchain and we would be on the 'real' one.  It wouldn't change ANYTHING for us.  They would just be removing their hash power from the real blockchain and mining blocks that don't effect our chain at all.  In effect they would be blowing millions of dollars worth of hashpower to mine worthless coins that no vendors can accept because they won't ever see the transactions.

Once they forked off, they would essentially be in a race with the real blockchain trying to make their branch longer than ours.  Everyone would notice the fork growing out there and the obvious drop in hashpower by the real pools and adjustments would be made to ignore their fork.  I would say that it would be completely impractical after about 6 confirmations on the main chain.

Completely impossible.

I hereby quit bitcointalk.

"We" can't, even if "we" wanted to.  But 51% of miners could, at least especially right after a transaction they wanted to nullify.  However, they have very good incentives not to do that.  It would basically amount to nuking their own assets.

If 51% of miners did something, their blockchain would then be the "real" one.  It would take active measures to abandon their chain in favor of another.  People would have to do something to abandon it.

Should miners collude to steal funds from wallet confiscated by US government?

i dont think so. NO.
this is a dangerous idea, stealing from government
the word "stealing" itself is illegal

I think 'no' is probably the right answer, but I strongly disagree with the idea that it would "destroy everything that Bitcoin stands for" if we prevented the feds from spending those coins. To me, Bitcoin "stands for" a system that is voluntary and based on consensus rather than coercion.  The ledger is whatever the network collectively agrees it is.   Here, we have witnessed a very large, unambiguous, and high-profile theft of bitcoins where the thieves have not yet made any attempt to launder the stolen coins.  So we still could make the stolen coins unspendable without harming innocent third-parties.  In this scenario, which will almost by definition be an extremely rare one, I don't see why the network couldn't collectively agree that the thieves should not be allowed to profit from their bad acts.  Now, that doesn't appear to be the consensus that has in fact been reached. Instead, the consensus appears to be that it's more important to keep "the rules" simple (i.e., the owner of the coins is whoever has the private key and the network isn't going to "look behind" transactions), keep the network "neutral", and not undermine confidence in the protocol by departing from "the rules" even in extreme cases.  And that's fine, and like I said, probably the right result in this case.  But again, the most important "rule" is consensus. And in an even more extreme case, e.g., the feds steal DPR's (probably-mythical) 600,000 coins, I could see the network coming to a different consensus -- and that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing.

Why are people still posting here. Why not just let this thread die?

They have something they want to say?

Please don't.  All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men leave bitcointalk.  Or something like that...



This.

Also, I have to say, I'm not crazy about how this poll question was worded.  Shouldn't the question be asked in a more neutral manner? E.g.:

Q: Should miners collude cooperate to steal by refusing to recognize the legitimacy of funds from wallet confiscated stolen by US government a violent, criminal gang calling itself the "US government"?

(And again, my vote is probably not.)

It's a good thread to populate your ignore list.

So you are adding yourself to his ignore list?  ;D

its a good question that everyone asks

the short answer is that you can't force the network to do something that 99.99% do not want to see happen EVER


i think we can all agree no one wants to see the network "collude to steal funds" ....

The government stole the user's fund. Stealing the funds will be very hard but not impossible. How ever the government stealing things is legal where ordinary people doing it is illegal.

Yes, the network is based on consensus. But if the consensus were to be that it's ok to freeze accounts in some cases, that will be the day I quit bitcoin and move 100% of my funds to Litecoin (or perhaps some newer, better alt.)

is so hard to understand that the consequences of this would be the death of bitcoin ?

We should really give "idiot of the year" badges to everybody who voted "Yes" and the topic author.

It would be so much easier to populate ignore lists later without wasting time for discussion.

After read on this thread my IQ dropped by a few points.

We could just add 1 or 2 bonus btc for each block reward ;)

Ditto.  Bad precedent.

Who's "we"?

Nevermind, obviously this a stupid idea that will erode the trust in the coin and in the community if executed.

What a Moronic Stupid Idea.

the sad thing is withing the next 140 years people like the OP will be the ones destroying bitcoin. If 51% of fools like him/her takes over it is done.

Almost everything governments do, would be illegal for ordinary people. What sets governments apart from other criminal orgs, is that they are the largest and most powerful. At the end of the day, SR was not breaking the laws of physics but the arbitrary laws set forth by the USG mafia. SR was only meeting a consumer demand, they were the good guys. FBI is working against consumers, SR was working for them (except for the hitman stuff). As long as drug addicts only hurt themselves it is no ones business (except maybe DMV or health insurers), but of course those paid by USG will disagree  ;).

Yeah, damn dat eeeebil gummint for prohibiting hiring people to murder your drug rivals.

Bullshit, I wrote

Which has to be one of the funniest quotes for a while.
Such a great guy... except for hiring hitmen.

Silk Road was DPR, you ninny.

Stop being so freakin logical.

..and selling illegal goods

arbitrarily illegal goods, and not illegal everywhere they were being sold to. USA is not the entire planet.

ok. since you need it spelled out in detail for you:

1.  go around and talk to everybody.
2.  tell them "we need to steal all these coins NOW".
3.  get them to agree.
4.  make sure you have 51% of all miners.
5.  attack.
6.  Mission Accomplished.

LOL. I _fully_ welcome half the hashpower to go try this. I'd love to have twice the mining income again.

Here is a hint: This won't work.  You cannot do this with "51%" of the mining hashpower, nor 90% or whatever. There is no amount of hashpower which is sufficient to accomplish the proposed steps.

it won't work?  darn...

No, you would actually have to convince the Bitcoin users to switch to a Bitcoin version not accepting those coins. If you manage to convince nearly all of them, it would work and screw up all that didn't follow. If you only manage to convince a lot (e.g. 60%) it would create chaos.

 ::)

You still wouldn't actually steal them.

Yep, no good can come from it really. Bitcoin is enough of a political statement on its own. No need to go pissing on the US government -- we know what happens when people do that...

 
 
Truly, a mind ahead of his time.