Bitcoin Forum

In this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfF5mJDgZWc) around 4:05 Gavin Andresen says that he does care deeply about privacy.

I'm really worried because it's been nearly a year now.  I don't hear anything from the core developers that they're going to implement something concrete to ensure bitcoin's anonymity.

I hear about Zerocoin's developers saying that the Bitcoin developers were unwilling to modify the source code and add anonymity and so Zerocoin will now become an alt coin.

I get really nervous when I read articles like this (http://rt.com/news/bitcoin-not-anonymous-stallman-522/) or talks like this (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1uizch/a_m_antonopoulos_says_bitcoin_needs_to_implement/) which highlight the extreme dangers that can be imposed by world governments without anonymity.

I don't know, guys, I want to believe Gavin Andresen, but I'm really worried that the Bitcoin core developers will choose the easy path and not implement any additional anonymity features in Bitcoin.  I really fear for the long term viability of Bitcoin and the abilities of vindictive governments to harass people if these anonymity features aren't implemented.

Ditto.

Have you looked into CoinJoin?: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0  This is already implemented in the Blockchain.info webwallet.

In general, I feel people's fear of "privacy loss" has more to do with their lack of understanding of the existing bitcoin protocol (partly due to insufficient tools/wallets to easily implement better privacy by default) than any deficiency of bitcoin. 

Sometimes you want addresses and transactions to be public and easily traceable, other times you don't.  Bitcoin allows for both. 

Better clients will get adopted by the majority of the network ... you are essentially concerned with a centralisation of the software development (and it could be a valid one). But if it proves to be a long term problem the ecosystem will react accordingly in an emergent way.

E.g. if you are given the choice between free client software that includes privacy tools and free client software that doesn't, which will you choose to install?

If coins are tainted by virtue of being used by a client which performs privacy related operations, and if retailers refuse them (because, say, there is a government mandate to honor the tainting authority's output), then I'm using the client which does not.

(Of course I'll also be spending all my BTC and switching over to an alt which is more robust, but that's just me.)

I can imagine a Coin Tainting Authority (CTA) in some dystopian future--initially implemented to blacklist the bounty of some great crime--that slowly grows more and more prejudiced.  I can see how such a system could arise.  

But how would this tainting authority discriminate coinjoin transactions of untainted coins where the inputs are controlled by a single entity, from coinjoin transactions where the inputs have multiple owners?  (see: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.0)  Stopping this legitimate need for privacy is a more difficult proposition--both technically and politically---than the CTA declaring the coins at 1IStole1BillionDollars398dj as black-listed.      

In any case, I expect any credible "tainting" efforts to be several years away, if they happen at all (I personally think blacklisting/tainting will not work for technical reasons).  And, in the absence of a truly one-world totalitarian government, there will always be some untaint-for-a-fee mechanism: for were not control and profits from money-laundering what motivated our hypothetical CTA to over-reach in the first place?

Zerocoin wasn't implemented in the first place because it simply wasn't ready. The new Zerocoin hasn't even released any code publicly yet. It's too early to judge whether or not it will make it into Bitcoin.

I would like to say yes but time alone will tell...

Bitcoin Anonymity Upgrade Zerocoin To Become An Independent Cryptocurrency

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/01/13/bitcoin-anonymity-upgrade-zerocoin-to-become-its-own-cryptocurrency/

The good thing is that zerocoin can be added later to bitcoin once released and tested. Privacy and anonymity are extremely important.  Coinjoin, dark wallet etc are all parts of the puzzle.

CoinJoin and all that is great, but Bitcoin really needs to run anonymously by default, and it must do so before we reach the tipping point of mass adoption.

I wish I could code so I could help  :-[

There's a few developers working on privacy sensitive coins besides zerocoin. Anoncoin, Stablecoin (accepting beta testers for its mixer- https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=402095), and Darkcoin. Zerocoin seems to be getting the most PR because they have a cryptography professor behind it.

Bitcoin will go mainstream so there cant be more privacy.

Zerocoin will fill that gap. And believe me: zerocoin will never be added in bitcoin. Dont wait for that.

Agree 100%. If zerocoin functionality would be implemented in bitcoin there would be two large obstacles to get gov. approval for that or at least they would pretend these were obstacles. The perfect anonymity would make the Oh-So-Dreaded-Money-Laundering™ a lot easier so no compliance with AML and also The-Poor-Customers-Would-Be-Left-Mugged-And-Scammed-Of-Their-Bitcoins™ while the criminals could disappear into the dark web...

I'm sorry to say this - but I do not trust Gavin. While he tries to appear unconventional / independent at the surface, he seems to be rather conformist at the core. Consider all the Bitcoin Foundation pro regulation stuff he's pushing and his talking with officials.

He likes flattery. He is also prone to be blackmailed since he's not an anonymous person and has family.

Conclusion: We urgently need initiatives for more privacy.

ya.ya.yo!

Forget about anonymity If you want to see $10K/btc.

I expect that Silkroad & Co will move to Zerocoin in time.

Add my thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.0) to the logic about the threats from lacking anonymity.

Zerocoin doesn't obscure IP addresses. Still vulnerable to traffic and pattern analysis too. CoinJoin can't scale due to denial-of-service in its 2nd signing step. DarkCoin appears to be fundamentally flawed. Etc.

All the gory details in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=439357.msg5355485#msg5355485

I suspect that this has nothing to do with privacy and Zerocoin wanted to make changes that Gavin didn't like to the source code, he's not stupid, I can never understand why people like Zerocoin or even Bitcoin foundation for example feel the need to hijack other peoples' work unless it was for a nefarious reason, they should have just gone and made an altcoin from the beginning.

Anoncoin did it right away and they're succeeding so I don't understand why the Zerocoin devs have such a problem with this, this kind of thing is why Satoshi released the code open source in the first place.

This whole stuff make you wonder what happended to Satoshi. Could be, he was found by NSA/CIA and killed. Then they awarded the project lead to their socket puppet Gavin.


Because it unlikely Satoshi would have choosen somebody living in the USA.

Andreas' rant started around 33 minutes or so, and he really got into by 39 min. He basically says that the developed world is too focused on profit, navel-gazing, kissing the boot of regulators. He says the 6 billion are driving the real future of Bitcoin.

Cool! He and I are shouting the same thing!

So fuck these assholes in this forum who are criticizing me.

P.S. Andreas has one flaw in his analysis, the developing world is short the dollar and the tail doesn't wag the dog yet. The USA is still fully in control for another decade or so. So we have to go through a really big mess first before we get to his ideal.

There are two ways to see $10K/btc, either because Bitcoin is ascending, or else because the USD is descending.

In spite of this I imagine the propaganda and pressure on the Bitcoin community to sell off their privacy is only going to increase.

I think the community is too smart to fall for that.

yeah wicked! lets do it. we have lots of smart people and some nice projects emerging.

Too many people spamming about Zerocoin when they don't know anything about it besides the name.  It's obviously not even close to usable for prime time in current form without drastically scaling Bitcoin backwards.  Darkcoin is the only hope for the foreseeable future.

You can also ignore Anonymint, because he was talking about "fatal flaws" of Darkcoin before having any idea how it works and bases everything on the initial coinjoin thread, when there are many different ways to implement it.

r0ach apparently (?) has no technical comprehension.

Tor, DarkCoin, CoinJoin, Zerocoin are all fundamentally (meaning can't be fixed) flawed.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=279249.msg5474597#msg5474597
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=439357.msg5454853#msg5454853

Note I think Zerocoin has a very important role to play combined with my design for mixing, but not by itself.

There are two ways to see $10K/btc, either because Bitcoin is ascending, or else because the USD is descending.
...
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Good reminder, the Dollar crashing will make BTC look higher.

His name is public, he has a wife and at least one kid. His whereabouts is known. I can imagine it would not be too difficult to influence him one way or another.

Threat from US government:

- Cooperate with us, or we will put you away indefinitely  for being a threat to national security (patriot act). If faced with the choice of either cooperating without telling anyone and maintaining his current life or being thrown in jail for life, what would most men chose, what would Gavin chose? The cooperation would not be visible to anyone in particular, the only difference would be that Gavin would simply not push features that would make Bitcoin more anonymous and private, but all his arguments would've been made such that he could not really be accused of anything. Or, he has great integrity and says bluntly he would not accept this, and rather be jailed than being coerced. Then the 3-letter agency ups their game and tells him stories about what has happened to the families of those not wanting to cooperate. Showing him some messed up pics of car wrecks and staring him deeply in the eyes. What would he chose? Go to jail and see his family wiped out?

Risk for the US Govt: Close to none, who should punish them? And they would of course deny all allegations, and there's always the convenient car accidents. Don't believe me? How do you think Michael Hastings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Hastings_%28journalist%29#Death) died?

Seeing that snowden revelations showed that there were backdoors in numerous hardware devices, what is there from imagining that the NSA has software engineers planted with big car-manufactures, or cooperate with big car-manufactures to install back doors, or kill-switches in their electronics? So, want some noisy person eliminated? Send a black op truck in range of radio transmission, and in the most convenient moment, mess up the electronics in the car, so the car crashes with a truck in an intersection or drives off a cliff. Who's to prove it was not just an accident?

Or it could be a mugging go wrong, so even the family would think it was just a freak accident. The list goes on and on. Basically, if they really want you, there's no escape unless you do not fear torture and possibly death and the loss of your dear ones.

So most people would cooperate. Because they had no choice. Many people would gladly sacrifice themselves for a cause, but very few people would sacrifice their family, esp. not someone that's really a family man.

Threat from a criminal organization:

Gavin would most likely tell the authorities, and he would receive protection and be moved to a safe place along with his family. Huge risk for the people threatening him, as they would have law enforcement after them.  Would still be effective enough to maybe scare him away from Bitcoin permanently.

Also take in account that he's paid by the Bitcoin Foundation, and although the Bitcoin Foundation claim that their mission is to protect, educate and promote bitcoin, history has shown that large business interests is their primary concern. So, if it does not fit with the agenda of the Bitcoin Foundation, I'm sure they've got some leverage on him. Hi, Gavin, could you just wait a little bit with that privacy patch ? *wink wink* Perhaps he would say no, and leave the foundation, or perhaps he would convince it is the best to keep the steady paycheck and listen to his employer, after all that particular path that made the system slightly more anonymous is not THAT important after all..

Although it's likely that he does actually have freedom to work on whatever the heck he wants in regards to bitcoin with minimal intervention from the Foundation, let's not be naive and not see the connection there. If he wanted to be truly independent, he'd remove himself from any such associations, and work independently, I'm sure the community would tip him handsomely, and there could even be a vote system where the community could vote for what features they think should be prioritized, which could be used as a guideline for work assignment.

He will probably frown on this suggestion and tell us just to trust him.

As the bitcoin network grows, it is likely some attention will be directed towards the developers who control the code. Although any new update needs consensus from the community - the devs does in fact control the whole system make the source code. If they were compromised the system could be forked, and new devs taking over. Or we could simply refuse to update the nodes, until the situation was solved. I don't know if there exist a warning system for such cases. Yes, we do trust the devs, but even trustworthy people should be watched.

So - if there's some connections between Gavin and some 3-letter agency making him into acting a certain way, he would of course deny it. No agent would ever admit to being an agent.

But if he wasan agent it would be straightforward to claim that he's very much concerned about users privacy, and then almost always pointing to some other work having a higher prio each time someone asks, and then if there's enough pressure, maybe just implement some small privacy enhancing feature to silence the critics.

Gavin could possibly have received a National Security Letter but would be compelled to answer "No" if you asked him as Linus Torvalds did while shaking his head "yes" (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=455141.msg5436637#msg5436637).

Let's not demonize him. He is a public figure. He is a human who probably who cares deeply about others (Sociopaths are very small percentage of the population). He probably has rationalized his situation so he can remain sane.

Satoshi solved the Byzantine Generals' problem, which had no known solution since its discovery in 1975. This enabled decentralized trust of untrusted (uncertain if can trust) peers.

Gavin as well intentioned as he may be, must be considered an untrusted peer. Thus the system of a controlling foundation is not to be trusted.

Actions speak louder than words. Judge by the merits of the action (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=497609.msg5475373#msg5475373).

"Talk is cheap, show me the code"-- Linus Torvalds.

Normally (https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/countering_trus.html) we assume the code can't lie, due to the Linus rule (coined by Eric S Raymond), "given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow".

It's safe to assume Gavin Andresen is compromised, if not now it's certainly true for the future.

The US Government was able to influence and silence even the largest tech companies. Once Gavins wife and child are in the firing line I guarantee there will be no true anonymity in Bitcoin.

This should not surprise any of you. Many core developers want regulation, non anonymous bitcoin transactions and even CoinValidation for those bad criminal coins.

Satoshi did not ask for permission and Satoshi did not take it up the ass.

The next incarnation of Bitcoin will be spearheaded by another anonymous genius.

I not only think you're right, I know you're right. Knowing as in thinking logically, not knowing as in 100% proof. :p

However, the source code is watched. Gavin is the one who signs released binaries, right? How many others are part of this process? If a binary was compiled on a separate system, code could be injected that was not in the main repository and still be signed with Gavin's key. If that happened and found out, of course that would for ever erode all trust in him, and might lead to some kind of crisis in the bitcoin community. Is there an easy way to see if the binaries produced are legit in regards to the official source code? Would compilation on separate systems although with same sw environment  produce the same binaries, what if we look at different os environments, still possible? And could that be done consistently? For instance, gavin releases binaries signed, and then these are put in a release que, until confirmed by other devs, and possible by volunteers in the community that just wants to help? If there are some discrepancies, these needs to be weeded out before the new release is going public.

If nefarious code is injected in the standard client and released on bitcoin.org, how long time would it take before anyone noticed? And in the event it would be noticed, what kind of alert systems are there in place to alert the community? I've seen alerts been broadcast through the client, but how many have the power to do this?

Or - perhaps I should just ask more bluntly? Has anyone drafted a crisis plan and laid out the various scenarios, ie. what's often called a contingency plan?

I can imagine many scenarios where something bad could happen, and how would everything play out then?

An attack by a very powerful entity could be done from many angles at the same time, and I'm just wondering if there's any plans for this?

I have great respect for every core dev, and I don't think they mind serious questions being asked. And I don't think they will take it personal, and it is certainly not my intention to make it personal. I'm just thinking about the network as a whole and how to protect it. That might sound cheesy, but the day anything happens, it is better to be prepared than not being prepared..


Yes, I do have a very good impression about Gavin. I'm not out to demonize him at all. I would ask the same questions no matter who were the lead dev. But - if there was a concerted attack, and mind you, that would probably be planned well and long in advance, having ways of combating it would be great.

Thank you very much.  :-X