Bitcoin Forum

As a decentralized currency Bitcoin has proven itself to function well with the "If the majority feels a change should be made" then it can, and promptly like with the double spend bug a few years ago that required miners to adopt a new fork. This is an excellent advantage as it can be adaptable but not easily manipulated.

I believe we, the Community, Miners, and Dev's should use the power again, this time to remove the seized coins as they represent a huge threat. Investors all over the world are asking "when are these going to hit the market, and in what way?"

There is not a single advantage that any of us to gain by this situation and should be held to the same standards of a thief or hacker.



    The Fed's stole those coins.

They are enemies to our community, likely planning to dump onto the market to cause a flash crash. They could wait for a natural correction to happen, or other bad news to make the effect be
especially catastrophic.
 
Highly undesirable for the United States Government to be 1.5% shareholders.

It would be different if they purchased these coins or earned them. I wouldn't recommend us invalidating coins with impunity, whether it be US Government, China, North Korea, or even Bank Of America
but if the coins are stolen with no chance to be given back to the original owner, then why not?

We could also do this with Hackers who use massive botchains that generate 1 Million or more, or hacking online wallets. This has damaged many Exchanges and Businesses that had to shut down, could not pay
back the users, which left a scar on the Community. The kind that only heals slowly with time, and many of those burned; their families, friends, and associates will never come back to us.

Could you imagine the kind of positive PR that would create, to be able to pay back the victims of many of those incidents? People who's bitcoin's are now worth hundred's of thousands of dollars who thought they
were completely left out in the cold? The amount of risk and hesitation mitigated by the fact that large scale hacking operations would always be doomed to fail?

Major Companies get hacked all the time and tens of millions of credit cards/ financial data are stolen. These large scale operations make up the majority and are ran by a select few who possess high levels of skill and connections to other professionals, as most script kiddies with generic trojans are able to do more than spy on your cam and screw with your computer. Out of those tens of millions they are only able to profit at a very small fraction of what they have stolen, but with bitcoin companies and users, they get 100% of it, and it is gone. Just like that.

We could also create a system that blocks entities that put the network at risk for 50% + 1 attacks. The US Government (or the myriad of other entities who have both the money and will to make it happen) create's a warehouse of super computers that is rapidly dominating the network with the force to destroy it? Deny them access to the blockchain. Even that Gash.IO could for all we know be funded by a hostile operator with full intentions to bring down the blockchain. If it can be done so easily then what about next year when Bitcoin is a major force in the financial world and currencies/long ago established financial institutions become desperate? It's practically a certainty that they will strike.  Having a strong hashing power only protects us from hackers and small organizations - it will never be able to protect us from major Governments. They built two data storage facilities the size of A CITY in the desert just to spy on people. Imagine what they could do by with cutting edge ASIC technology and unlimited funding. Even 10 years from now and mainstream adoption it would be TRIVIAL for them to create this attack. They wouldn't even need to develop it, just physically assault some of the larger ASIC hashing farms and other attacks are possible. Mine to increase the difficulty then suddenly turn them off, targetting the most popular alt coins. Now a single transaction takes 3-5 hours to clear. Do this repeatedly so it becomes the norm and the currency is practically unusable.

I know 99% of users hate the ideas of regulation, centralization, and authoritarian movements such as this one but remember what is actually at stake here.

If they had dumped those coins during the Chinese panic it likely would of destroyed Bitcoin forever.

And they have EVERY reason to benefit by doing so. The only thing stopping the FED's is how they can't use those wallets until the trial is over.

You just don't get it.  Before you type anything on your keyboard again. Take a basic math course.

Is the community going to take back bitcoins every time it doesn't like someone? 

Never know, OP could be the FBI and trolling us.

Unfortunate as it is, DPR didn't secure the wallet well enough, and those BTC are now being used as evidence in the case against him.

If I had been in DPR's shoes, I would've had a sort of "Dead Man's Switch" setup in case of arrest/death. Like a box somewhere that would trigger an upload of the wallet.dat and password, if a private key didn't get entered into that machine every 24 hours, or something. Illicit activities involving millions of USD? Seems silly to not have a Plan B... and Plan C/D/E/F...

Ironically, the only exchange that might consider taking those coins is BTC-E; the only major exchange that doesn't really require dox on clients.

Even a million worthless Bitcoins are still worthless.

"Is the community going to take back bitcoins every time it doesn't like someone? "

There are only a couple of activities that would cause the entire community (we aren't just referring to bitcointalk here) A major hack resulting in funds being stolen, Government/bank interference, a centralized Minning pool carelessly (or aggressively hostile) takeover of the market.

It's not like you'd have to keep popularity with the Dev's otherwise they can blackmail you. I'm not suggesting the community give them that kind of power but I think that will be how a lot of people interpret it.



DPR did a lot of stupid things that he could of avoided. How the hell are there so many people who get rich overnight seem to forget even the basics of common sense?

I'm not worried about him getting his coins back but now we have to wonder what the US Government is going to use those coins for, and you know it's going to be soon.

Don't want the fbi having coins, don't do illegal things that can get your assests seized  ;)

Even if the FBI were to dump all the coins at once creating a quick crash  (I highly doubt they will do that)  that still wouldn't be enough reason for me to want to take their coins away.

1) You really have some insider information on FBI plans, don't you? (sarcasm)
2) We should seize bitcoins of every large wallet, because they are planning on dumping btc (sarcasm)

While I might or might not like what happened to DPR and might or might not like the FBI I think you are crazy if you think that people will keep believing in bitcoins if such decisions and actions are made by "the community".

Another issue is that "the majority" (as I understand it, a synonym for "the community") is not the best source for decision-making. Statistically speaking the majority tends to be average and while they may make good short term decisions, I don't think they will make good long-term decisions. I am not at the same time advising "a bitcoin goverment", but just ruling against making any decisions such as confiscating bitcoins by anyone.

The truth is not always as others present it or even as facts present it. Related movie: 12 Angry Men (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050083/)

Allowing FBI to have any more control than they already do is bad.

It is similar to owning too much of a network, and a good example is 51%+ threats to Bitcoin.

This doesn't just mean Bitcoin networks, all networks in general.

FBI has enough power, they should not be allowed to gain more resources/power with these seized Bitcoins.

I will be using a Bitcoin tracking device to make sure I never get Bitcoins that the FBI once had and I will be able to track every company/person that accepted them.

This is very easy and possible to do.

We as a community can reject these coins all on our own.

That's quite a good idea and it is your privilege to accept/deny anyone's coins. Good luck with doing that after coin mixing transactions. I also hope an organization that you support doesn't get it's coins "banned" in such a way.

As long as you don't mess with the network I don't care what anyone does on an individual basis, so I'm ok with your concept, but not necessarily support it.

I hope you do realize coin mixing won't stop reverse tractability at all.

We already know the BTC address with the coins, and we can see where they go after that etc.

No amount of coin changing will stop tractability.

Honestly, if the feds dump the coins back into the market, that is a good thing.  Proof positive that the US government is treating Bitcoins as an asset with an actual value, as opposed to imaginary internet games.

An easier way to "wash coins" is by exchanging bitcoin to an altcoin then back again. Especially a useless one such as Doge that won't be around long.

The tactic of screening (aka colored) to be more of a inconvenience than anything. The person wanting to trade with you will have to check their own coins and send the one's that don't fit your description - in which they will send to someone else thus not taking it out of circulation in the slightest.

It's like vaccinations. Either a whole society chooses to do it, or it don't really work.

I'm not supportive of the colored coin idea at all. It would be on the level of idiotic Government jurisdiction idea's (such as the war on drugs) that manages to cause a whole slew of problems without even slightly acknowledging the original issue in which it was created to fight.


This is the type of responses I'm used to hearing when arguing with "Fiscal Conservative Christians" in Texas who, failing to provide an intelligent response to my position, tells me to "Go learn History/Economics/Whatever first" in which I almost am certainly better studied in the subject than they are,  hence why I was able to present a position that had substance while they were limited to an emotional outburst.


I agree, it will also be a good thing when the original miners (such as Satoshi himself) finally use at least some of their coins, which will have the result of better distrubting the wealth to the masses allowing it to function much more like a currency than a commodity. But here is the difference;

Satoshi and the original miners have an invested interest (even if it where only based on greed) to do so in a constructive fashion, such as starting an ETF like TradeFortress had done.

While the Fed's (and their Masters) have every reason to bring down bitcoin, while their own financial gain by holding these coins are trivial. That is an important distinction to make. Even if the market isn't destroyed it could set us back by years. 

Fungibility. Don't mess with it.

No the opposite would have happened.

As the coins would have come from wallets known to be in their control. Everyone would know that they were dumping the coins to Cause a price crash.  

In fact whenever they choose to sell, it will just be a bargain for anyone that has money on an exchange and I think the move would retrace in less than a day.  

The solution to this problem is a technological one that makes such a coin seizure unlikely or infeasible in the first place, not banning coins. The Bitcoin community will just have to accept the 144,000 already taken as motivation to do better.

There are more attacks than just the 50%+1 attack. Orphaning blocks for instance. Commandeering major mining operations, a virus (like stutnex attacking nuclear facilities), DDOS (NSA has a lot of influence over the main DNS providers.), them figuring out the identity of Satoshi (What is the NSA's job again?) forcing Satoshi to give up his wallet then we'd have the DPR problem but on an even larger scale.


This would be more than "panic selling" where even the loyalist to bitcoin (such as myself) would have to logically realize that getting out of the market would be the smartest thing to do.

As it is right now Bitcoin could not survive ANY of these attacks and so we are relying on the charity of the very organizations whom want to see us go away.

That does not sound like a very good idea.



I'm not suggesting a "Colored Coin Solution" but to alter the block chain so the FBI's coins no longer exist. I'm not sure if this is even possible? But something to consider.

See my signature.  I and others who understand the importance of fungibility will never accept the alt coins created by your fork.  Go ahead and create your fork today.  What are you going to call your new alt?  NotMoney is a good name since any alt you create that is not fungible is not money.

You are suggesting a coin black list.  It is possible.  All you need to do is create a modified client and modified mining software that does what you want it to do:  ignore all transactions that contain any of the blacklisted coins (those coins currently contain in the two know FBI addresses),  and release it into the marketplace.  Those that believe in your idea will use your client, those of us that know it is stupid will not.  Once the coins move you will create a hard fork and your new alt blockchain will be born.  

Isn't Bitcoin that great because people cannot use if for political influence? Which would exactly be what you are proposing here?

Congrats to the OP on a thought provoking post. The purists' position should always be that bitcoins should be allowed to live and die on its own merits and if it happens, one of the other alt coins will take its place. Such is the way of the only free market left in the world. Personally I don't do drugs, aside from copious amounts of beer and I could give a flying fuck whether the FagBI thinks they're naughty. Wankers. Funny that they sue dpr but let big banks get away with much worse crimes. If the wallet in question was to be subjected to a random attack and those coins disappeared I wouldn't cry any tears.

This has been discussed ad nauseum but once again:

Once the trial and appeals are all done the FBI will auction off the coins, most likely in medium sized blocks of coins on the one of the various goverment auction web sites they have already created for exactly the purpose of auctioning off seized assets.  Go check out these web sites, you can often find boats, airplanes, jewelry, helicopters, etc for a pretty good price.  To them Bitcoin is just another asset to be auctioned off for USD that they can use to line their budgets.

Anyway, the coins will be sold to whoever bids the most for them.

Your proposal would harm the auction winners - not the government.

A random attack that steals the coins from the FBI and moves them someplace else is completely different from what is being proposed here, blacklisting those specific coins in the client and mining software.

In the hacker attack the coins move and are liberated from the FBI, in the blacklisting attempt an alt coin is created.

Certainly, but I'm not sure that you understand what the "50% +1" attack is, what it can accomplish, or what some of the alternative attacks are.


Blocks are orphaned all the time.  There is nothing wrong with this. It is a part of the netowrk working out a consensus.  Now if someone had more than 50% of the hashing power, they could choose which blocks are orphaned, and which are not.  This is part of the "50% +1" attack.


What would this allow you to do?  I suppose if you commandeered enough of them, you'd control more than 50% of the network hashing power, but that's just a "50% +1" attack.  I thought you were listing "other" attacks?


What would this virus do?  It might steal from individual wallets that aren't properly secured, but that's not an attack on the bitcoin network, it's just an attack on the wealth of individuals that don't properly secure their bitcoins.


I don't think bitcoin uses DNS.  There isn't a single server to DDOS against.  You'd have to find a way to DDOS every single node on the system to DDOS a decentralized peer-to-peer protocol such as bitcoin, wouldn't you?


I don't see a DPR "problem", and I don't see any "problem" with Satoshi's coins being spent.


Other than the "50% +1" attack, I don't see anything in your list that would cause me to panic and "get out of the market".  If someone did manage to acquire more than 50% of the total network hashing power, then they could prevent you from "getting out of the market", but refusing to confirm any of your transactions.


No thanks.  As far as I'm concerned, those are legitmate bitcoins.  There is no reason to "alter the block chain so the FBI's coins no longer exist".

What OP is proposing is exactly what BTC stands AGAINST. OP should think twice before typeing this kind of posts.

+1. Once you establish the precedent of making some coins more equal and others, bitcoin will be in bad shape.  It will become a slippery-slope of trying to decide who is worthy and who is unworthy.

Explain in details how the dump of BTC in the exchange markets will result in a better distribution of wealth to the masses.

By the way, BTC is neither a commodity or a currency. For someone which praise itself as "studied" you lack the fundamental understanding of what exactly is Bitcoin.


Yep, great comparison you did. Do you even know that Tradefortress was running an illegal enterprise and he lost peoples funds?

This is what we old timers call just another fantastic buying opportunity.

Apparently we aren't allowed to demonstrate agreement with an opinion or add emphasis to a fact with a simple "+1".  I've recently had my "+1" posts removed.  Therefore, I'm typing out this message to indicate that I believe the quoted information needs extra emphasis to avoid being unnoticed in the rest of the chatter in this discussion. I may (or may not) also have added bold or underline tags to the text in the quote above to further emphasize the parts that I think are important to understand or be aware of.

Yep, very loyal and smart. At the first opportunity, dump all coins and let the fools hold the bag. The hypocrisy coming from people like you is staggering. Let me guess...  You would cash out in USD, right?


Wait, I thought you were "studied"... So it turn out that you do not even know what are you talking about?

ROFL!

Thank you for the laugh.

"What OP is proposing is exactly what BTC stands AGAINST. OP should think twice before typeing this kind of post"

Disagree. Your two sentences are contradictory. Free markets and free speech should always prevail. If I knew that certain bitcoins were being used to fund a pedophile site (e.g. priests.com), I would certainly agree to extraordinary actions and fuck the consequences. OTOH the bitcoins infrastructure could easily be used as a foundation for a voting system. And if you or I disagreed with a certain decision, that is tough shit. Democracy cuts two ways.

How often do you check the serial numbers on your USD to make sure they have not been used for something you disagree with?

Yup and how often do you avoid the main issues raised and just respond with a platitude?

So why haven't you done it with fiat yet? Fiat is used to fund pedophile's why haven't you done something about it?

Er, because it's a philosophical question. Would you do something about it if you could, or would you just let it happen because it's a free market?

I think he is confused.  I think he was talk about FIG (Fortress Investment Group) with regard to their new fund (not an etf yet) and meant a vested interest vs an invested interest. 

Of course, he could have meant TradeFortress, but that wasn't an etf either and as you said, he stole funds.

I am not sure of the exact percentage so I guess you will have to go back through all my posts and figure it out.

My point which you failed to grasp was that you personally never worry about the serial numbers on goobermint issued fiat because it is fungible money.

The single largest threat to the survival of Bitcoin today is the overt and covert attacks on the fungibility of Bitcoin.  If Bitcoin is not fungible then it is not a form of money.  It becomes a collectible with all the problems inherent in a collectibles market:

The need for an authority or authorities to tell you the value of each Bitcoin based on criteria set by outside influences with their own political, economic and social engineering agendas.

The need for and infrastructure to check with this central authority, or worse yet multiple authorities, every single time you do a transaction - so you don't get stuck with less than desirable coins.  Or even worse, the need to check in with a very complex market to value the coins on a “sliding taint scale”, if presented with less than desirable coins, so you can accept them at a discounted value.

Fragmentation of the market for Bitcoins:  a white market for the coins deemed clean by the authority or authorities and a black market for the less desirable, listed coins.

The core developers could consciously or inadvertently either maintain or destroy the fungible property of Bitcoin.

Help:  implement BIP32 as soon as possible in all clients in order to allow all periodic payments to be done in a fungibility supportive way.
         also everyone should use CoinJoin as often as you can, hopefully on every transaction.

Hinder: anything in the clients that helps in the formation, propagation or checking of any kind, color or flavor of lists of Bitcoins.

Do you think you should do something?  If so, what exactly would you do about all the goobermint fiat currency that is used for things you personally do not agree with?  This is not a plattitute, it is a very deep philosophical question.  What exactly should be done about this horrible missuse of fiat currency?

Bitcoin was made in such way as to let people do transactions to their will. Let the FBI dump the coins, we would be going against our own principles otherwise.

They aren't dumb.  There is significant more power in the act of *retaining* control over such a large portion of total  Bitcoins.  They aren't going to waste it on some silly short term price crash dumping.  The real threat here is that the Government now controls a big portion of all Bitcoins.  That's pretty much the very OPPOSITE of what was intended with Bitcoin.

The goal should be to delete those coins from the system completely, and kick them back into the mining queue to be re-created into the network.  Absurd, I know, but I can't think of anyone who would be unhappy with the outcome of this idea.

I'd be unhappy with it and would probably stop using Bitcoin entirely if that were ever done for any reason.

All you blacklisting supporters suck. You and your ideas are going to destroy Bitcoin.

No, not because it's a free market. Because money isn't guilty. And blacklisting money won't help anything apart from creating troubles to Bitcoin users.
Help track down pedophiles, that's the best thing you can do.

So would I. +1

Then at the same time you can argue that DPR shouldnt have been able to have that many bitcoins  , or anyone for that matter. Inviduals could be just as dangerous as a group (like the fbi in this scenario).  Thinking a guy selling drugs and putting out hits on peoples lives is less of a threat holding that many bitcoins just seems silly to me.

There's always going to be potential threats like these.  I think it would go against the nature of bitcoin to say a certain person or group shouldn't be allowed to hold x amount of bitcoins though just because you personally don't trust them to do the right thing with those coins. Imagine a world of bitcoin where you can only get bitcoins if youre on an approved list and even then you can only own a certain amount, I don't like the idea of that.

With all that said, I'm still fairly confident that the FBI isn't going to do anything with these bitcoins that would severly hurt the market. Especially considering how bitcoin has moved away from just being a 'shady black market' type thing and has moved into real business's and job creation. Especially as America seems to be moving closer to allowing bitcoin to expand.  Just doesn't seem likely to me that at this current stage the FBI would do something that would at this point cause a lot of people to lose their jobs and entire industries/businesses to go under.  If bitcoin was still only being used to just buy drugs or launder money then I could see the FBI wanting to hurt it,  when you have real legitmate businesses and people involved in bitcoin now though it seems a lot less likely..... heck I wouldn't be suprised if theres multiple people in the FBI who have their own personal holdings in bitcoin.


edit: btw, why would you care if you own coins the fbi once had in their possession.  If you go to the ATM tomorrow and you receive cash that was once touched by police or the fbi do you really care ? It's still cash regardless of who it passed through at one point.  Weither the FBI use to hold it or not, it's still the same bitcoin.

This... money isn't guilty.  If you wen't to the ATM today and withdrew money and someone told you at some point that $20 bill was in the hands of a child molestor who used it to buy kiddie porn,  does that change the $20 bill at all ?  No of course not.  Regardless of whos hands it passes through a bitcoin is still a bitcoin.

It is not a big portion, it is less than 2% of the total of BTC supplied. Stop the FUD, please.


Yes, absurd and stupid. There is not such thing as "mining queue" and there is no system in place to delete the already created BTC.

What if you just destroyed the hard drive or the wallet or whatever the bitcoins are stored on?

There is a principle here: Bitcoin needs to be free of politics. Go against that principle and you will harm or even destroy Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is apolitical money, it cannot be taken away, be devalued through making more for the rich, or (with proper precautions) seized.

DPR should have secured his coins better. He should have used some Brainwallets. For his sake (if he ever gets out) I hope he still has some Bitcoins hidden somewhere, but I doubt it.

Think about this from the opposite point of view. If the FBI failed to protect their own Bitcoins and some shady organization found their key and stole their Bitcoins, would we care? I bet not. Nor should we.

There is only one time that Bitcoin should go against it's own principles. In the event of an existentialist threat. In the event of a hostile government/organization destroying the Bitcoin network, we might take drastic steps to save Bitcoin. Even then, some people will argue that it would be better to let it die and switch to an altcoin based upon different principles.

You should always be aware of the principles that you live by. For instance, I treat "Freedom" and "Life" as my highest principles. I give them equal value, since they require each other.

Bitcoin needs to follow it's own principles too.

In first place, BTC are not stored anywhere. What is stored in a wallet (file) and thus in a hard drive is the private-keys which allows someone sign and validate the transference of BTC from one public-key to another public-key. In other words, the only thing stored in a hard drive is a pre-defined password which allows any user to send BTC to whatever Bitcoin address they want. With that in mind, I stated that there is not a system embed in the Bitcoin protocol which allows an user to delete the BTC already supplied. Anyone can just delete a private key in their possession, but no one can command the protocol to delete the BTC supplied.

But by proxy, if the medium for which the password is stored is destroyed, and the password gives access to the btc, then access to the coin must also be destroyed. The protocol may still contain the supplied btc, but access to that btc is void if the private key is deleted. Meaning the protocol would just retain the bitcoin mined and do....what with it? Would it then be distributed among the miners?

Not being pushy or anything, just legitimately curious is all  :D

This is a bad idea.

Well, not exactly as you put. The interesting aspect of the protocol is that a loss of the private-key do not result in the destruction of any BTC. If the private-key is recovered the access is restored and the user can send the BTC to any public-key. There is no way to the protocol determine if a private key was lost or not. Therefore the BTC in any public-key will remain "untouched" as long the private-key is not used to validate a transference.

Ah ok, I see. So does that mean that a bitcoin is digitally indestructible? Like matter? If no one claims access to the key, then the btc will just be floating around in the nether for eternity?  ;D

Pretty much, yes. You are correct.

Yes, as long the protocol is working the BTC from lost private-keys will be forever unaltered entries in a ledger. However I think the entropy law would kick in at some point and literally destroy all the BTC computed in the ledger.

Have you read this thread?  Have you read my responses to this thread?  Read my signature.  Now, can you think of someone, anyone, that would be very unhappy if even one single coin was blacklisted?

Are Bitcoins indestructible?

Here is a pretty interesting thread discussing this on a few different levels:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=358010.0

max kiesier said he would buy $80 million worth of coin if the fbi were to sell them.

Cops and robbers. If you threaten to murder someone and you get caught you go to jail. Do the crime pay the time.

You seem to be suffering from a severe lack of imagination.

Horrible idea. Millions of coins would be sold due too not trusting the "most trusted system"... This would do more harm than good.

Yeah, go ahead and fork Bitcoin and freeze the FBI coins, I'll sell all my coins on the new fork and purchase actual Bitcoins with the proceeds.

I approve.

No. Let's not do that. Yeah, let's pretty much not do that at all.

Forking the blockchain just because the FBI possesses these BTC quite possibly is the worst thing I could think of, to attempt as the legislative landscape for mass adoption remains unclear. The amount of blowback that this would create would be utterly tremendous and would ultimately stifle bitcoin.

Its his fault he was so loose with his identity and storage solutions.

"This... money isn't guilty.  If you wen't to the ATM today and withdrew money and someone told you at some point that $20 bill was in the hands of a child molestor who used it to buy kiddie porn,  does that change the $20 bill at all ?  No of course not."

Yes but if I happened upon someone buying kiddie porn, I would happily kick the shit out of that person, and then tear up his money and force it down his throat. And I would walk away without feeling guilt or remorse. I would also wash my hands with a lot of lysol. :) I wonder if anyone prints out Bitnotes just for the purpose of snorting coke with them?

Shhhhhh.... I was not going to mention this little hole in their plan until they went to all the trouble of creating the anti-FBI-coin-client, getting miners on board, creating exchanges, coming up with a new snazzy name, pumping up the value a bit, etc.  

Now that they realize that every single person that holds coins before their fork can dump their coins at any time you may have just killed their idea and any chance we may have had of killing off their alt while making a small profit.

You let the cat out of the bag as far as all these "let's just fork the chain" threads go.

Darn.  ;)

On the upside maybe we will see less of these types of threads in the future.

Interesting thought but i think this would work counterproductive to bitcoin's core fundamentals...

Yeah, right!  And no one will even notice Holliday's plan because they won't read this before suggesting the same blacklist plan again and again and again, so the plan is safe!

I agree with the beating them up part.... I'd take the money though and use it for something nice for myself.  A reward for beating up a bad guy I guess you could say  :)

Clearly you have NO idea what Bitcoin is about.

Bitcoin is meant to DEPOWER these CORRUPT organizations/businesses/secret services, whatever you want to call them.

Many of us do not think government seizure is constitutional (or at least the way it is often done in practice).    But then the community seizing the coins goes not only against the core principles of Bitcoin but also against the ethics of being against seizure in the first place!  The community would be then doing it's own seizure.  

Bitcoin should be free of chargebacks, seizures and politics.  

You should also remember that not everybody approved of what DPR did (me included). But that is more onto the moral perspective.

Rather than blacklist, what about add a sieve for the FBI addresses, so that they can only spend the coins to EFF's donation address or some non-profit that has a track record of suing the U.S. government over its constant infringement of civil liberties?

1) No profit for government 2) No profit for insiders who buy them up cheap, off-market, without any competition 3) Government gets sued even more

They shot themselves in the foot by doing 324 (phonespell for FBI) and centralizing them to only 2 addresses, as opposed to a deterministic wallet of 100s of addresses. 2 are a piece of cake to drop a sieve on.

Another cute alt coin idea.  Remember they are going to auction them off - not spend them.  So anything you do to blacklist, color, taint, sort, mark these coins will only harm those individuals who buy the coins at auction - not the FBI/GOV.

Again, none of these cute alt ideas are going to happen because nobody is going to go to all the trouble of creating the alt clients and mining software to do it.

They are going to spend the BTC or give the private key to the entity that "wins the auction" that nobody legitimate will have the chance to bid on (explained in #2). Read.

Don't need alt clients, just miners to agree that tyrants and their cronies shouldn't win. All existing clients can attempt to spend the seized BTC, and then it'll never get included in a block* and sent back unless spent to the address of a non-profit to fight tyranny.

*Unless I guess they mine their own? Unclear.

while i personally would love to see the fbi lose all those coins without making any money i think sending dust transactions with rick astley lyrics embedding in them is a much more effective form of protesting an oppressive and unjust government.

LMFAO. No.

Op is fbi

Anyone will be able to bid on the BTC - even you.  They will be auctioned off at one of the government's existing auction web sites.

You will never get even a small percentage of miners to agree.  Let's look at what happens even if you get let's say 50% to agree to this stupid foolishness:

1) The 50% do not include any transaction that contains any of the coins from the two addresses, the other 50% do.
2) After the auction there are many transactions transferring all the coins from the two know FBI addresses to all the winners, 50% refuse the transactions, 50% still include them.
3) All the coins from the two FBI addresses are now gone, spread out to hundreds or thousands of new addresses.

So, if the filter is just on those two addresses all you have done is:

1) Doubled the confirmation time for the transactions right after the auction
2) Cut the income for all the miners that agree with you.

Once the coins are all transferred to the new addresses what are you going to do then?  As the coins mix with other coins what are you going to do then?

Even if you get 66% of miners to agree, you will only triple the confirmation time of the transfers to the auction winners.

Does the DEA just burn money when it seizes it in a raid? No, so shut up. If you don't want the government to seize your assets then don't do incredibly illegal things. Simple. If you get caught, then that's your own damn fault and I have no sympathy for you.
 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=155990

Date Registered: October 31, 2013, 04:58:00 PM

You participate in this forum less than 6 months ago and you are already trying to convince others that ONLY you know what Bitcoin software is about?

Nope, the Bitcoin software was never developed to meet your delusional expectations.

Hate to break it to you OP, but freedom and personal responsibility are double edged swords.

The fungibility of bitcoins must remain intact at any and all costs.

I completely agree with the sentiment behind this idea, but I don't think the idea of "coins forfeiture" is acceptable. It's an obvious slippery slope. It seems to go far beyond Bitcoin's ruleset, to the point that it violates fundamental principles behind the Bitcoin idea. I also question the premise... Couldn't they do the same thing you are proposing just by buying up coins the normal way? How are the seized SR coins any different from other coins the USG may have bought with USD?

Remember also that Bitcoin could fall, but that doesn't make much difference. Their battle is against an idea (cryptocurrencies), and ideas cannot be killed. If the USG are able to somehow crash Bitcoin with their coins (whether seized or purchased), then that should be the end of Bitcoin. Another cryptocurrency will take its place.

Why does everyone keep saying this?  If the GOV crashes the price then that is it - end of the line - pack up and go home.  

Bull.

If they buy up BTC and then sell them all at once to crash the price then they lose a ton of money.  Ok, so it is not their money so the do not care.  Fine, we can then buy BTC for the low price they have created.  That is a plus not a minus.

If they seize coins and do the same thing then they do not make as much as they could have from the sale of the seized coins and will have to answer to someone for that.  Even if they did it, the price goes down and, again, we get to buy cheap coins!

Both scenarios are just great buying opportunities.  Neither are the END OF BITCOIN^TM

The fbi didn't steal those coins. dpr broke the law and the fbi was entirely within it's right to take those coins. The law is very clear on this. They were drug profits and had to be surrendered. The US govt does a lot of shady and marginally legal things. This was not one of them.

Many people are confused about price. It's not possible for any adjustment in the USD exchange rate to destroy Bitcoin as long as people are willing to use it as a method of exchange. I wish Bitcoin would drop to $1 and stay there. That would make it really easy to buy something on overstock or with a gift card if it was a dollar. If I want something that costs $100 then I would need to buy 100 btc. Even if it crashed to .0001 1000 btc for a $1 I would just need to buy more btc to make my purchase. I would feel sorry for the people that invested millions in crazy big ASIC farms though. lol

I would suggest first viewing Andreas M. Antonopoulos' presentation to the L. A. Bitcoin meetup in its entirety. He explains why blacklists, whitelists etc as is being proposed in this thread will destroy Bitcoin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTPQKyAq-DM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTPQKyAq-DM)

This proposed fork together with "Coin Validation" belongs in the trash heap.

Edit: Will Zerocoin work for the large number of coins the US Government holds?

Small math mistake here.  The current price is about 0.001 BTC for $1.  0.0001 BTC for $1 is a ten fold price increase.  I think you meant a crash to 100 or 1000 BTC per dollar.  Which only makes a crash of that magnitude sound even better to me.  If BTC ever got that low I would be buying as many as I could afford.

Yeah, that's reversed. lol

My point was price is meaningless to the real value of Bitcoin.

Doing as the OP suggests would totally undermine and be the death of Bitcoin. Everyone would wonder "could i be next?". But then maybe killing BTC was the OP's hidden agenda.

Exactly, its the dumbest idea I've ever heard on this forum actually promoting a blockchain fork, it leads down a very destructive path indeed.

The bottom line for both this thread and the other thread here:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=413403.0

is that you are not really going to do anything, nobody is going to do anything, even if someone tried it really can't be done so why are you going on and on about it?

It's like if you fork it then they win, if you don't then they still win but less.

Don't be silly. It will totally undermine and be the death of their new alt-coin which they forked from Bitcoin.

I personally can't wait to sell my alt-coins in order to purchase more actual Bitcoins. Any ETA on this fork?

The lesson everyone should learn from this is not that we should fight fire with fire, but that you should be prepared to render fire impotent from the start.

Use M of N wallets stored in different physical locations. Share this information with someone you trust and should you ever be seized by some group, make sure the individual your shared this information with is able to transfer those coins to a new wallet which is out of your control, therefore the group will not be able to coerce the coins out of you.

Disclaimer: This post is strictly theoretical and is not concerned with individual actors or groups nor their actions in real life. I do not support any actions taken by any real life actors involved.

No it is more like: if someone creates a fork they are wasting their time and Bitcoin continues along unharmed.  If they do not waste their time and energy creating a fork then Bitcoin continues along unharmed.

^ /facepalm


"Guilt by association" is not a valid way to erase the legal sales that occurred on SR, from history. 100% of coins seized weren't "illegal" proceeds of "crime" and actual crime (with victims).

Until law-abiding buyers/sellers are returned what was seized from their portion of the SR wallets, the FBI is shady as fuck by appearing that it intends to permanently deny law-abiders our funds.

Agreed.  It is one thing to hard fork the block chain to protect the integrity of the network (as was the case in the August 2010 attack), but an entirely different and unacceptable thing to hard fork the block chain to confiscate coins.

If you were to do that bitcoin would just be monopoly money.

Is there an official act that transforms stolen property back to legit?

FTFY.

Huh?

Like when the govt auctions off seized property

Ahh... you mean legitimate in the eyes of the government. Well, there you go, you've answered your own question: government auctions.

Fixed more.

Eg. when they get money

Well for the government it's not stolen to begin with. The official act will be when the "original owner" is convicted and a judge will impose the seizure as part of a sentence. Legally I'm not sure they can do anything with it before that.

I am starting to wonder that myself.  It appears as though there is a coordinated multifaceted attack on Bitcoin and our community.  There are so many new members starting inciteful and controversial threads, one has to wonder, are these people just overly ignorant, or are they being paid to undermine our community.  I could list dozens of examples but here are the two that made me laugh the most.
One is titled "Central Banks could EASILY destroy Bitcoin (if they want)"
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408955.0
The OP starts by saying "I am LONG on BTC, but want to understand if this scenario would work".  I nearly fell off my chair laughing.
LONG on BTC?  are you serious!!?  What does that even mean?
He then proceeds to describe how a bank could buy all the Bitcoins at a high price, and sell them at a low price to destroy the market.
Well I tell you what 'michielnl', I will sell all my Bitcoins at 1000 USD each, and buy them back from the bank for 1 dollar.  Anytime you like!

The other thread is by new member 'mooncake' entitled '51% attack hypothesis - Prove me wrong'
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=408566.0
He starts buy suggesting someone could 'buy a big pool to do a 51% attack' not understanding that a pool is mined by a group of independent miners.  Here is his response when it is pointed out that he does not know what a pool is.
You are missing something alright!  Why would anyone want to start a thread on a subject they know nothing about?

I am not alone in noticing this either, another member 'SirWilliam' posted

While I generally agree this is a bad idea, here's how I could imagine building an altcoin which makes a copy of all current bitcoins except the seized FBI coins. The main reason I'm describing it is because I thought of a great name for it: Retcoin (a play on retcon -- which seems like the right concept here). Unfortunately, based on a quick startpage search it seems there may already be a Retcoin.

1. Build an altcoin in the usual way, by copying the Bitcoin code (or Litecoin code, it doesn't matter) and making the appropriate changes.
Hack the code to allow the genesis block to include as many transactions with no inputs as possible, and for it to be as big as possible.

2. For each transaction in the Bitcoin blockchain (at a certain block number, say the one right...now!) with unspent transaction outputs (edit: except the seized FBI coins), make a copy of the transaction erasing the inputs and erasing spent transaction outputs.

3. Put all those transactions into your genesis block.

4. Release.

I have no interest in doing this, but I'd be curious to see the reaction. Actually, I'm generally curious why no one has released an altcoin doing something similar so that owners of bitcoins are automatically owners of the new coins when the new altcoin is released. It seems easy enough to do. It's easy to imagine lots of variations on this -- such as only looking at transactions in the past year so as not to re-reward early Bitcoin adopters.

Why all this fud? They can't sell it for years until conviction. And even then it needs to be classified as property.

I'm stealing this.

Interesting idea.  Thanks!  Something to actually think about.

You'd lose the history of the blockchain that way, but maybe you could make a block explorer hack that linked the two chains.

This comes in second for the dumbest bitcoin idea I have ever heard, right behind "We need legislation to legitimize bitcoin."

fbi will sell thier coins on a dark pool , you won't see any price change.

The FBI will sell the coins in a public auction at the FBI public auction web site because that is what they do with all assets they seize.  To them Bitcoins are no different than jewelry, digital jewelry sure but just high priced collectibles no the less. 

Asserting this over and over again is nothing but /facepalm, unless you are the only person who knows those 2 private keys, and exactly how to set a new precedent for government auctions of intangible things. These BTC are NOT loaded on Cas coins; at most, they will be represented by bloody pieces of PAPER. Since when has the government ever auctioned an 8.5"x11" piece of copy paper? Or are you going to start minting US.gov physical BTC/Cas coin knockoffs? Your absolute certainty about everything must come from SOMEWHERE.

Why can't the winner submit the address they would like the BTC to go to?  I'm sure the FBI knows how to click send.  And why is there anything wrong with giving the user a piece of paper with the keys if they go that route?

Why do you think this is so complicated?  They auction off the BTC on their web site just like they do everything else, probably in blocks.  The winners pays them the amount of the winning bid, just like they always do.  The winner gives them the BTC address they want the BTC sent to.  They send the winning bidder the BTC they won in the auction.  I see no reason they would not do it that way because it is the way they do things.  They will not need to make it more complex than that.

BTC is not like "everything else" that is auctioned (tangible), so please stop pretending that a government auction of a private key(s) or sweep thereof wouldn't be precedent-setting.

this discussion is dumb your talking about stealing bitcoins from the fbi because you dont like them and are worried that they will crash crypto currency when they liquidate. The fbi confiscated it to use as evidence the end for the wallet will happen when the trial is over then the fbi will liquidate his assets and put the funds into a seized assets fund which will be put to use funding the local level police in anti drug programs. what is going to be important is that the fbi successfully does it the biggest problem is the coins are worth 5x what they were when seized. They should have liquidated them right away.

I think you meant legitimate in the eyes of the law. Yes, governments have the legal right to auction off seized property and they do it all the time. I don't see anything wrong with that.

Bitcoin should be neutral it's just money if the worst of the worst of the worst got the money stolen he/she should be able to spend it, now if that was cash they can go to jail but they don't "fork" the fiat currency in any case keep bitcoin neutral anyone can use it the good, the bad and the ugly.

What the heck are you talking about?  Why are you stuck on the private keys?  They can just send the BTC to all the addresses of all the new owners using standard Bitcoin transactions.  That is how they consolidated the BTC they recovered into the two addresses they control now!  Private key transfer makes no sense in this situation.

If you're just going to ignore approximately half of everything I say Burt, then you can be ignored 100%. Ta.

This may be the stupidest idea I have read on this forum so far.

And it completely goes against what bitcoin represents and strives for.

I agree, but think about this for a moment.  It's technically possible for a non-governmental international community to "seize" "property" from a government.  And not just any government, arguably the most powerful government in the world right now.  I agree that it would be a bad idea, but the fact that we can seriously have a discussion about this, and it's actually possible for a community to say, "Uh, no, you can't just take those", is truly remarkable, I think.

Indeed so, though we would have to sacrifice bitcoin to achieve this goal.  The moment that power is wielded we damage fungability AND become a central bank with an agenda.

In the end what's most interesting about this idea to me is thinking of a way to ensure it would be impossible for it to ever be implemented at all.

It IS remarkable that so much power resides in the community that is connected by the bitcoin network, but this idea is so antithetical to the foundation of bitcoin that I can almost begin to give credence to the paranoid background choir singing about anti-bitcoin sock puppets.  Almost.

Bitcoin is not a tool to promote a single political agenda.

Yes, thank you cAPSLOCK.

Bitcoin has to be transparent, even in hacking situations that hurts majority of users. Even whole countries (and their currencies) fall and rise, we just have to live with it.

I originally supported this idea, but think about it. If we actually do this, what will the world think about the fact that miners have the power to "steal" BTC? Even if it is for a good cause, it will cause people to distrust Bitcoin even more.

It is the only way of actual freedom and fairness.

Those who agree with the op should think about this...

I guarantee you there are bitcoin users who support the FBI and the us government in this case.  Whether they are right or wrong or in the majority or minority who are you to act on their behalf.

Real freedom may come at a great price.

One of the most astonishingly beautiful aspects of the bitcoin ideal is it resists the tyranny of ideas like the op.

If the FBI wished to set an example of integrity, they will use the profits from those coins to either lower their funding requirements to government and or increase their conviction and peacemaking rates - spoken like an adding machine, does not reflect feelings either way.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/16/the-feds-are-ready-to-sell-the-silk-road-bitcoin-kind-of/

“We have not yet determined exactly how the Bitcoins will be converted and liquidated,” said Manhattan U.S. Attorney Office spokesperson Jim Margolin.

There you have it, not even the government knows what the fuck it IS going to do with the seized, now legally forfeited by a judge, BTC.

Suck it, Mr. Absolute Certainty About Everything.

 :P

They could probably get all the rest of those coins on tax rules, commerce rules, fda, literally throw the book case at him. If I were in his shoes i would not have been in his shoes any more after that first knock on the door. Of course they probably had a tail on him if not an implant... half / kidding.

This blockchain fork could happen next day after FBI stole the coins from silkroad users. Now it won't happen, because doing it will mean discarding everything that happened after that and it will kill bitcoin.

Another brilliant idea after blacklisting addresses... No, no, and once again no.  :-\

I have a better one. Lets play judge and monitor how people spend their money and reverse the transactions we don't like.

Why don't all these people who want to blacklist coins, stop people from "hoarding" coins for long periods without moving them, inflation-coin, constant-reward-coin, bitcoin-isn't-fairly-distributed-coin, and the like actually write some code to do it and fork the blockchain?

Then once and for all we can put the respective question of who wants to use these alt-coins to bed.  

It is time for them to stop talking about it or do it.  I know there are plenty of people ready to sell the new-non-fungible alt-coin that result while keeping their bitcoins.

The irony is also that many people who talk about writing code and forking have no clue how to do it. Not to mention the huge community hate that suddenly erupts when something actually gets forked (remember dogecoin?)

Wait a minute, are you saying dogecoin is a blockchain fork of Bitcoin?  Does that mean I own some of these dogs?

As said earlier, it's not really a fork of the blockchain, it's a totally new blockchain with 1 block containing everything but the FBI's coins.

And as said earlier, it's easily one of the worst ideas ever typed into this message board.

If you want to "erase" the FBI coins from existence, you have to find all other stolen or scammed coins and erase them too, now and in the future.

All or nothing, bro. Equal treatment for all.

As long as a coin was generated properly within the rules that we all agreed on, who am I or who are you to decide if it should be excluded? That brings the value of all generated coins in to question.

And as has been pointed out, to make a totally new block chain with 1 block containing everything but the FBI's coins is a hard fork of bitcoin creating an alt-coin that happens to be based on a snapshot of the bitcoin blockchain at one point in time.  You can call it a new blockchain if you want, but then it is a new blockchain based on the bitcoin blockchain which is a hard fork.

By the way, I think this is a great idea.  More power to people who want to experiment and see where the experiments go.  That is what is great about open source, you don't have to sit around debating something, you just have to go and make the changes and put them out there and see who adopts it.  It is the perfect way to test ideas and let people vote with their money to see what they prefer.  And it will put an end to the endless debates (well, probably not) from people who want to remove fungibility from bitcoin, so PLEASE go for it!   (And go for the forks for ID-coin, inflation-coin, not-fairly-distributed-coin, use-a-'useful'-POW-function-coin, etc are great ideas too so we can see how they all flourish...or not).

Anyway, I am really excited to see it!  I'd still like to know when this will launch.  By the way, I'll be happy to sell my coins in this new alt-coin to those who believe that bitcoin should not be fungible once people are buying non-fungible-fork-coin.  

They didnt 'steal' the coins -_-

Just like you wouldnt say the feds stole cash they found in a drug dealer's house.

And let them do what they want with them.

Silk road was a marketplace, yes, it was used to sell/buy drugs also. But this doesn't make those who used to sell and buy other legit things criminals. They got their bitcoins stolen. FBI STOLE bitcoins. It was their job as law enforcement agency to investigate and catch the drug dealers, not to behave like gangsters and just grab the whole bunch of coins.

FBI didn't steal coins. They took ownership of coins of the one guy who willingly gave up his wallet, the other bitcoins were confiscated and are still there pending investigation.

Don't throw the word "steal" around without knowing facts.

In this case, the FBI only took bitcoins from Silk Road and from the individual(s) that were operating the marketplace.

It is not the fault of the FBI, that you chose to donate your bitcoins to Silk Road.

If you do not have the private key, then you do not have the bitcoins.  You donated your bitcoins to Silk Road when you sent them to a Silk Road bitcoin address.  You did so in exchange for a promise from Silk Road that they would: give you back the same amount of bitcoins when you request them, or would use them to make payment for something in their market if you ask them to.

The FBI did not steal your bitcoins, they confiscated the bitcoins that you foolishly donated to Silk Road.

Almost exactly the opposite of what you said is true:

The two addresses in question are the two addresses that are owned by and set up by the FBI.  As they found BTC they transferred them to these two addresses that they control.  I do not know exactly how they found/got the BTC to transfer them, but the fact remains that they control the two addresses:

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

about $24 million from the Silk Road web site/server.

https://blockchain.info/address/1FfmbHfnpaZjKFvyi1okTjJJusN455paPH

about $120 million from DPR himself.

They have permission from the courts to auction off the smaller amount - the amount they took from the silk road server.  The larger amount is tied up because DPR has claimed ownership of them.

How is that opposite? I said FBI legally (by court ruling) controls some part of the coins and the other part is still under instigation so they can't touch it...

I may have missunderstood what you said.  You said:


I assumed when you said "They took ownership of coins of the one guy who willingly gave up his wallet" you meant the larger amount given up by DPR and when you said "the other bitcoins were confiscated and are still there pending investigation" you meant the BTC confiscated from the silk road web site/server.  In that case you appear to say that the coins that were confiscated from the site/server can not be sold yet because they are "still there pending investigation".

The opposite is true.  The coins confiscated from the server have been cleared to be auctioned.  The BTC handed over by DPR cannot be auctioned off yet because he has a claim of ownership which has yet to be decided by the courts.

These aren't the coins held in escrow (or not yet withdrawn) for legal things you sold you're looking for... /waveshand

All bitcoins (along with anything else) were seized.  Those that someone has made a claim on, i.e. Ulbricht, are held pending investigation.  Those unclaimed are being auctioned.

It is the job of the escrow provider to protect your bitcoins.  If they didn't do that sufficiently well, then your complaint is with the escrow provider.  You should be more careful in the future who you trust to hold bitcoins in escrow for you.

It is not the job of the escrow provider to ensure that they are not guilty by association. It is the job of the government to not hold people guilty by association, and not block factual findings of innocence.

inb4 escrow.com is shut down and all innocent funds seized because of guilt by association.

It is the job of the individual to protect themselves from everyone. Bitcoin, as a tool, truly shines at this task, but it's up to the individual to take the appropriate steps.

Well wouldn't the FBI/Government flooding the coins back into the market, admit that they see value in the coin?

Not sure which steps can truly protect against the totalitarians' boot stamping on the face of the world, forever.


They see value in showing innocents that if we even dare to think any association with liberty is free, we are sorely mistaken.

I'm sorry to hear that.

In Russia, block forks you!!!!

Wait. You're saying if the FBI dumps those millions of Botcoins on the market, the value of Bitcoin will plummet? GREAT! That means I can buy more BTC with USD when it crashes, and work towards my goal of owning 10BTC by the end of 2014.

This could be a good thing

It would be bad PR for the bitcoin community to fork the chain and block the fbi coins from being used.

I'm sorry that you said that rather than listing some steps to legally protect against totalitarianism (perhaps because there are none, otherwise there would be no 'total' in the word).

The U.S. government has already made multiple statements declaring that bitcoin has value, I doubt the FBI has any concerns about that.

What would Satoshi do?



How would the fork for this purpose fit into his BTC vision?

(Let's send him a PM and ask for his opinion on the matter ;))

Satoshi would spend less time worrying about what the FBI will do with the bitcoins they seized, and spend more time developing the Bitcoin network.  Had the participants been more careful with their private keys the FBI would not have been able to seize the coins.

FIFY

This is trivial to accomplish, and morally[1] justified. The real question is how successful would a competition of MoralCoins be. I think it actually might even be possible to algorithmically program moral rules into the technology -- whereby there simply needs to be a near-consensus of client-provided factual input, and the algorithms handle the rest. This would alleviate the ubiquitous fears of slippery slopes and emotional mobs.

For example, nobody can deny that the coins were taken from DPR without his consent. Someone might try to "argue" (in MoralCoin's programmable logic language) that DPR was bound by a so-called Social Contract, but that will be invalid since a contract requires informed consent. And so on.

[1] Morality is universal. (And thus rational / logical.)

Bitcoin has already implemented your "algorithmically programed moral rules into the technology -- whereby there simply needs to be a near-consensus".

The current behavior is the initial state of the system.

If a "near-consensus" agrees on a new behavior of the system, then open-source developers modify the code, and people indicate their agreement with the near-consensus by upgrading their wallets.

What is clear is that there is nothing even close to a "near-consensus" for most of these silly ideas.

I was actually referring to actually programming morality / law into the protocol. Starting from core axioms (of non-aggression), with potential competition in certain parameters ("statutes of limitation", criteria for land ownership, etc). I.e. the decentralization and real codification of the entire legal system. So users wouldn't be voting on the morals of the situation (that would already be pre-coded), but simply on the facts of the case, which are not under dispute in this case.

Of course, users will be free to disagree with the axioms or parameters of a particular brand of MoralCoin, and it would be fascinating to see which brand of law/morality would succeed.

Sounds like a great idea for another alt coin:  "MoralCoin" or something like that...

HighHorseCoin or LameAssCoin both fit even better.

I have seen that many people appear to think forking Bitcoin to seize some coins the FBI hold is a good idea.  I think this is an interesting concept, however I am not sure if it is that much of a good idea.  However, if you think this is a sensible move which can succeed, I am giving you the opportunity to buy this altcoin now.  I will sell 10 of these coins for just 1 BTC.  I own over 10 BTC in the current chain and will therefore be granted 10 coins in the new anti-FBI altcoin.  I am happy to pre-sell these now, this could be an opportunity for you.

You will be able to multiply your money by 10x for free if the new chain succeeds.

Please bid at the following website
https://www.coingig.com/Shopping/10-Bitcoin-on-any-anti-FBI-fork---Guaranteed-Now---10x-your-money-9308

Many thanks

And when one country is at war with another and one seizes Bitcoin from a person in the other country.....everyone in one country will want to fork the other guy.

If Al Qaida gets coins should we folk them?   If Russia's version of the FBI seizes some the same way?

Do we have an annual voting system about which ones to fork and burn?

Don't think this is something that is possible to do.

It would be totally possible to create a fork of the Bitcoin chain to do this.  Trouble is, the people who suggest these thing over and over and over never get past the talking/posting about their ideas and on to the doing it stage.

I get the impression that a lot of people think talking about something is the same thing as doing it and that is just not true.

Just because you CAN do something doesn't mean it is a good idea. 

Hopefully most of the people smart enough to code a new coin with a fork of the blockchain are also smart enough to reason through why this would actually do far more damage to bitcoin than good if it were successful.

The continued seeming interest in the ideas of this thread depress me slightly.

It's depressing to me how many people in the bitcoin community seem to want regulation, want to cooperate with so-called authorities. Listening to some of the NY hearings yesterday was a downer.

Forking over the FBI-seized coins is probably not worth it, but there are many things that would be worth forking over (e.g., government approved miners with blacklists, forcing government identities to be associated to addresses, etc.). In an open source project like this, I think we can all negotiate from a stronger position if we are ready to fork. In terms of software, the only way people who support bitcoin (in its current form) could fork is by refusing to upgrade.

Maybe it's worthwhile to be prepared in case the liberatarian bitcoiners decide they need to split from the Quisling bitcoiners. Quisling bitcoin would probably be more popular and mainstream because it would be government approved and could be used to go after those doubleplusungood money launderers. I'd personally continue along the libertarian fork if it came to that, even if the Bitcoin Foundation and majority of miners went with the Quisling fork.

There's a saying: Relationships are better when there's a packed suitcase at the door. Don't fork, but always be ready to fork. Currently, in terms of software development support, we aren't ready to fork.

Unless the government is really stupid, the laws would cover all altcoins on top of Bitcoin, so forking wouldn't help you at all.

The laws would cover all the cryptocoins. Not all the cryptocoins (and more importantly their developers) would cooperate with the law.

If you mean it's up to the users and not the developers, it's hard to have a cryptocoin with no developers.

If you mean it's not up to the developers because they have to follow the law or go to prison, then I guess you're right. It does make me wish everyone coding and even using bitcoin had followed Satoshi's lead and remained pseudonymous. In fact, I'm starting to regret using my real name and photo on this forum.

That is really you?

If Bitcoin users chose not to upgrade from Current-Bitcoin to Next-Bitcoin, then they will be using a *coin I'll refer to as Current-Bitcoin. Current-Bitcoin will then be a coin without developers. That's a potential problem. I suppose if enough users refused to upgrade, then at least one or two developers would go with them, so I'm not too worried. I just wanted to point it out.


I cannot answer your question with a simple yes or no. Identity is a tricky concept.