Bitcoin Forum

I made this post in my other topic : The situation with Iran (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5073999.0), but it seems to go beyond that scope, so I started this one:

Today, the US federal agency in charge of Iran sanctions, Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), for the first time in bitcoin history, announced two bitcoin addresses associated to two Iranian individuals subject to secondary sanctions!

Obviously, the two addresses belong to Iranian local bitcoin traders/exchanges that has been transacting bitcoin for years and the accusation of being "involved" in processing ransomware related addresses is just an excuse for weakening bitcoin in Iran by threatening people all around the world.

It is a declaration of war against bitcoin too. The dick heads in Trump administration has no clue about what they are talking about! How in the hell bitcoiners should avoid this two addresses to transact with?

And it is a proof of what I'm saying about the shady zone getting narrower:

Just a few days after the above post and they are blacklisting bitcoin addresses and threatening bitcoiners all around the world by their brutal secondary sanctions!

What?! You think they may be following my posts?

But seriously, isn't it the moment of truth for bitcoin?  

There is no point in blocking 2 addresses knowing that a person can very well use a mixer, or use a privacy coin like Horizen. Privacy coins are a great example for oppressive governments.  USA is just trying to make Iran look like the Boogeyman. Even if the US requests an extradition, I doubt Iran will accept it. The tension between USA, China, Iran, Russia, North Korea, is all about getting control over the rare-earth element (REE) North Korea is the only country worldwide with so many resources. Other countries are mainly interested to be free from the US politic, central banks, control, etc.

Trump isn't my president, I don't have to follow him, except when he says he catches vaginas with his fingers like the bowling balls  :D :D :D (joking)

 :D :D :D good one.

I wonder what will be the implication if Iran will ally with China. It would take a little time now to have China as the superpower that will surpass even Russia. Their strategy with the self sufficiency and self sustainability is effective as they are using the network effect well. They have been long gone to use their people as their primary resource. That's why the crypto power does not affect them since they can create the monetary system.

Someone really has no brain at all. How do you want to stop someone from transferring BTC from "blocked" addresses to, for example, my address?!? And what if someone from the "banned" address sends me BTC? I will also be a criminal at the moment ?! Paranoia!

Both addresses will soon be forgotten:
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfMurTXinscVro9V
https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmqNsXUzSStKeq8C

Some money landed here: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/329TGdi3YgYh6oB8ko7BeYEYvB2WCHZVyT
They will blacklist this one, too? This process might be a little to slow. Why not blacklist EVERY address?

"Blocked" probably meaning that the government contacted multiple exchanges to not receive any bitcoin from that specific address. It's definitely not going to be effective for long though.

I was wondered about the ability of governments to track and stop transactions in cryptocurrencies.

What happens next is probably a scenario that will track all the coins in those addresses and then freeze them once it reaches a central platform or freeze the money of whoever makes exchanges with those addresses "This will involve mixing services" and thus become coins with the inability to spend .

In my view, Bitcoin is designed to conduct transactions without the need for banks or any credible third party, governments freeze or enact laws to protect their people. "Now you look at it from the point of view of the Iranians, not the Americans" does not interfere with transactions without the need for a third party.
If you want to fully decentralize, use cryptos designed for privacy.

I agree with you and do not understand how you can block anything in the blockchain, in my opinion it is a decentralized system.

Exactly!
It was actually tried once in the past with stolen coins. It ended up with many innocent people having "blacklisted" coins and exchanges blocking them.
It ended quickly when it just did not work.

If you have 1000BTC and receive 0.01 blaclisted BTC, and consolidate your inputs, then your whole 1000.001 BTC wallet has to be blacklisted. Soon the whole network has to be "blaklisted" and then what.

Also. If you move your coins to new address (without using mixers) it could mean that you moved them to a new address of yours OR that you sold them to a new owner. When tracking coins you can newer be 100% certain if/when ownership has changed.

This information really affects the Crypto community. The fact that significant nations around the world have declared the imposition of sanctions and bans on Bitcoin will make all markets fall further. I'm petrified that things will get worse as the market becomes more and more boring.

They have to, eventually, Trump got so many "talented" people around him.

We are doomed............. NOT!

This is already very serious. The United States once again speak negatively about cryptocurrencies. I think that special services need to deal with Iranian subjects and not to touch Bitcoin in this case

I don't really understand why the USA is trying so hard to act as the global police on these sort of things when in fact, they just wanted control and that's pretty much it. Also, the plan to blacklist addresses is just out of this world; it will never work since mixers and other methods to obfuscate taints and trails are already existing. I doubt that they will even pursue this as hard as they can since it will be a dire effort no matter how hard they follow the taint. Somehow, they will have to ban a huge number of addresses should the guys owning the said coins wanted to play some sort of game or to just hide their tracks completely.

Well, I disagree that this is a declaration of war against bitcoin. I don't think the US federal agency would've made such a statement without having strong grounds to do so. Even though bitcoin transactions don't contain any information about the ownership of accounts, these Iranians could've written their addresses to some people of something like that. They could expose their wallets is all I'm saying. If they caught people who hacked someone's computer and asked for money to return the access to files to those people - I think they fully deserve to be deprived of those bitcoins they got from their business and this has nothing to do with hating cryptos. If these people, however, never knew who they were transacting with and what they were helping to do, then it is unfair.

Both of addressed stored over 6000 Bitcoin
149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmqNsXUzSStKeq8C
1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfMurTXinscVro9V

But it's happened in 2017 when ransomware attacked in few countries. Every deposit transaction is small but withdrawn was big.
Hacker is a iranian or USA citizen?

To me it only proves how robust Bitcoin is. They managed to track and blacklist 2 addresses and there was a number of agents working on the case. This much effort and money spent to deal with 2 addresses, while somebody could make a new one and move the coins within minutes. And look how they're bragging about it like it's some kind of a great achievement. :D

If you check the statement made by them, they are saying:
It is obvious that they are faking the whole ransomware story. The addresses are used  by ordinary people as deposit like cold wallets or something. They have bought bitcoin from many sources and "some of which" are tracked down to "ransomware derived" btc. The important missing part is the way they have spotted the two Iranian citizens. My guess: the victims have used centralized exchanges like normal naive bitcoiners not like pros or smart people who are aware of their situation being an Iranian under prosecution by a hostile enemy because of their nationality.

So, what's the deal? The fools in the US treasury have spotted two rich but naive Iranians and by fooling people about ransomware thing which is totally fake, are trying to do something about it or at least show something about it.

But I maintain that it is a declaration of war against bitcoin, because they can simply use it as an excuse to prosecute every individual/exchange/... they wish to by pretending to be following related addresses. But who is not related?

They are also making excuses to encourage (actually escalate) censorship and discrimination against Iranian citizens in bitcoin ecosystem. It is an attack against bitcoin too questioning its anti-censorship features.

This is the beginning of their btc address blacklist of censorship,

Any US Miner or non-US Miner that they can inflict monetary or criminal damages too,
that includes a transaction to or from the above address will face monetary or criminal penalties as a result.
At 1st they post these warnings , after about a year where their is continued ignoring of the warnings,
they will go after the miners that included the transactions in the blockchain.

The Swedish banks cowered to the US Gov. regulations, it is most amusing ,
that you think a few guys running ASICS warehouse sponsored by VCs, have a moral virtue, their only obligation is to their own greed, unfortunately.
PoW always Centralized and as such , this control becomes possible over time.

Since BTC allows the miners to choose which transactions to process, it gives them a weakness that the US Gov. plans to exploit.
Coins that include all transactions in linear order, without choosing , would at least have a leg to stand on in court, btc does not.

So what happens after wards, is miners that refuse to obey the new address blacklist that is updated by the World Governments,
will have their power cut off, and face legal problems, where as the ones that obey the new address black list will be granted easier access to electricity.

People that had the virtue & moral backbone to resist this type of censorship have already been pushed out of the btc mining due to excessive input costs, years ago. Now all you have is businessmen that want to get along to keep the money flowing in.

 8)

FYI:
Just because you not a US miner, does not mean you are safe,
many other countries will join the US in this crackdown, just so they can include address they want blocked in the blacklist. :P

what its not saying is the 2 exchanges and the 2 randsomware people knew of each other and the exchangers knew they were funding ransomware and didnt report it
they were running an illegal exchange

the 2 published addresses are just posting proof that funds looped through the exchange that originated from the ransomware
to show proof of a financial relationship. but an actual AML crime is about knowing the PEOPLE receiving the funds and exchanging the fiat knew of the crime and still funded the criminals without reporting the criminals.

imagine detroit. street dealing fiat. imagine a dealer walked into walmart to buy gum.. walmart CEO is not liable because although fiat can be traced through its cashiers draw, there also needs to be proof that walmart knew their customer was a drug dealer and helped the drug dealer process a transaction.

what the treasury is not saying but the law requires is that an exchange could end up in trouble if it can be proven that there is a joint relationship and knowledge of a crime. and that the ones knowingly trading with criminals didnt report it. and that they were operating as a money business without a money business licence

its not a blanket ban that anyone touching funds with taint of criminal proceeds. otherwise walmart managers in detroit would get arrested for simply accepting cash payments

The Miners are the one that insert the transactions into the blockchain,
if a user sent to one of those blacklisted address, all that would happen is it would never arrive and timeout after 72 hours,
giving access back to the original sender. However multiple attempt by that sender , would probably get their address blacklisted too.

Monero won't protect anyone, as even through hidden , it's transactions are still stored on a public blockchain.
Eventually it code will be cracked and all transaction lay bare for the world to see, or the use of it will be outlawed completely as it fails to comply with AML Laws.
https://www.express.co.uk/finance/city/941591/Monero-price-ban-cryptocurrency-clampdown-bad-for-investor-crypto-market
https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@anonymint/is-monero-s-or-all-anonymity-broken
https://blockchainreporter.net/2018/11/05/taiwan-bans-anonymous-use-of-crypto-platforms-transactions/

The Public Relations spin will be these btc address belong to Terrorists and organized crime,
as such they will receive no public support against the blacklist, and many holier than thou people will hail it as a moral victory against evil.  :P
Funny thing is censorship itself is usually the act of evil people.


 

What the hell are you talking about, what are you referring to with REE?

---

I dont understand what is the big deal here, this is a milestone in sorts. Is there something new regards that cryptos are used to bypass sanctions? Which is the single worst properties of cryptos, unfortunately.

The Treasury Department published the addresses because they're putting the compliance burden on Bitcoin services like exchanges. Legally, exchanges need to block and confiscate related funds (https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Pages/faq_compliance.aspx#646) and notify OFAC. I don't think they intend to publish every address that funds move through:

legally (https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Sanctions/Pages/faq_compliance.aspx#116) #116
in short
if an exchange sees a btc deposit that under 50% DIRECT taint of coins from those addresses. green flag
if an exchange sees a btc deposit that has 50% taint of coins from those addresses. RED FLAG
if the exchange has information that the person depositing is not the criminal attached to the taint. green flag
if the exchange has information that the person depositing is the criminal attached to the taint. RED flag
if the exchange customer is not the criminal attached to the taint and shows no relationship to the criminal. green flag
if the exchange customer is not the criminal attached to the taint and shows relationship to the criminal. RED flag

if there are any red flags then freeze account
else if 3 green flags (under 50%, customer is not the direct criminal, customer has no direct relationship to criminal) dont block

is this a joke?
it is funny on different levels though. obviously you can't "blacklist an address". it just created an additional cost for the owner to move the coins through a mixer and be done with it. but that is the obvious part. the funny thing is about the exchanges accepting the coins coming from these addresses which other users are discussing. what they are forgetting is that exchanges under US jurisdiction don't allow anyone from Iran to sign up in their exchange so it doesn't matter if they blacklist them or not. not to mention that they don't sign up there either because why would they? they can't deposit/withdraw fiat and there are other places where they can trade.

in any case i guess US dudes need some beginners training on what bitcoin is and how it works :D

If the miners decide as a group to blacklist an address by not inserting any transactions into the blockchain that contain it, then it can't make it to a mixer.
Plus it only take 51% of the miners to make a blacklist happen with a PoW coin.

It seems you need the extra classes on how btc works.  :-*

 8)

FYI:
Imagine you run the company that run an ASIC Warehouse, the government approaches you , and says
"we have a list of known terrorists & criminal btc addresses, and we need you to make certain that you don't enter any transactions related to these address into the blockchain"
1.  You comply and nothing happens to you, (they may even get the utility to give you a cheaper rate on electricity prices).
or
2.  You refuse and they cut the power to your Mining Equipment and place you on trial for aiding and abetting known criminals,
     plus they confiscate all of your fiat as they claim it was ill gotten gain, which makes mounting a legal defense next to impossible,

Which do you choose?
(If you have a family , they will directly suffer if you are thrown in jail and won't be there to provide for them, so what do you choose?)

* In the Beginning, when BTC was truly decentralizes and ran on PCs, No one knew the location of all of the miners (making the above scenario impossible), however now that mining requires warehouses full of ASICS drawing industrial amounts of electricity , tracking their location is as easy as a call to the utility companies .*
Unless someone finds a way to Decentralize BTC mining as it was in the beginning, it's current centralization will lead to global censorship.

Exactly.  ;D How will they trace the coins if they use mixer services and how are they going to stop the money if it goes through the corrupt Banking system? <We have recently seen how Deutsche Bank employees, laundered millions through the Bank.>

Now take that money and push it through Banks in countries where the USA has no jurisdiction or authority and see how difficult it is to stop that money.

I think this is just political show boating to scare Iran from trying to circumvent the US sanctions with Bitcoin or Crypto currencies. The US should focus more on the corrupt Banks and the monster that they created.  >:(

I want to make it clear that no matter how stupid this action would look to us, announcing secondary sanctions against bitcoin addresses, it is an evidence of the war that is coming and bitcoin community is barely prepared for. Well may be not a complete war but certainly a major battle like what Satoshi would probably say.

1- Devs are no more anonymous, they are subject to prosecution by US feds and those bastards are so strong, they had pushed a social democracy like Sweden to fake criminal accusations against Julian Assange not for prosecution but for extradition of him to the masters in the US! The same accusations that they dropped last year, not with good faith but to void his asylum status in Ecuador embassy and let British jurisdiction to prosecute him for not to surrender. It is no joke, we should go underground, period.

2-Bitcoin is pseudonymous hence it is traceable, mixers are trust base, special measures should be taken to help people with anonymity and privacy issues in case they feel being subject to brutal surveillance/censorship/sanction threats/actions.

3- Centralized exchanges are gateways to hell. We need to abandon them once forever.

4- Most of the whales, speculators and high stake gamblers will be pushed out of the ecosystem because they won't choose messing with US feds as a reasonable greedy person, hence both the price and network hashrate will drop even more. We have to be ready for that.

5- Pools are the weakest part of the chain they should be understood as a flaw in bitcoin that needs serious treatment and fix. I've personally done a lot of research and development on this issue but it is not about my work and its details, I'm just saying there exist ways out of pooling situation and it is because the pressure behind this flaw is based on bitcoin's winner-takes-all approach to PoW, which is not the only option.

Bottom line:
True bitcoiners should re-unite and tightening their anonymity policies, be ready for a major battle. Opportunists, speculators, gamblers, ... are free to join Faketoshi Wrong and get scammed and regulated at the same time.

Maybe, but if anything, it seems more indicative of an incoming war against exchanges and MSBs who don't fully comply with AML/KYC laws.

They didn't announce secondary sanctions against Bitcoin addresses. They just identified addresses associated with individuals they've deemed Specially Designated Nationals (SDNs) because the individuals are high volume Bitcoin exchangers and US persons are prohibited from dealing with them. They expect exchanges to block funds tainted by those addresses:

pools no
a pool is just a stratum address used as a gateway for multiple asics to share work together. pools dont need physical locations.
FARMS on the other hand are fixed.
it takes too long to move such huge amounts of equipment and organise contracts to pre-buy electric at discount(many farms contract for 12 months, to ensure constant supply without brownouts aswell as getting the physical capacitors/cabling to supply the facility sorted)

though you may think that most pools are just 1 farm facility per company tag on the pool pie chart
https://www.blockchain.com/pools
each of them segments are actually more than one facility/farm

if you click on the block tally below the pie chart and then look at details of the blocks made by a particular tagged company/group. you will see that the blocks they mine differ.
some blocks are pure legacy and use a legacy address for their coin reward. some use bech32 addresses for coin reward. meaning although tagged as one group. they show that tits actually diverse facilities that individually choose what/how to mine

that said. getting back to the point. a pool is not a facility locked down to a physical location its just in essence an IP address which a group links to. a company/group could easily make many ip addresses as backup so if an IP is taken down the asics autoswitch to another IP address in seconds.

as for farms(physical facilities of large amount of asics) well thats for them to motivate themselves as to how to protect themselves.

no amount of code will ever stop people pooling effort. even PoS is seeing people pooling their stake together

Pools are far more than an IP address, they are service providers, hence centralized.
Farms are inevitable and distributed enough.

As service providerس, neither theoretically, nor practically they couldn't be categorized as anonymous, they are not. With dick heads like trump in power, they are single points of failure. US could easily make a deal with Chinese communist party and impose censorship on "terrorist addresses".

It is a false argument. Change winner-takes-all approach and you are done with pools, as I said, I have been on it for a while, I don't know why, but I just resist to include links here (why really?) ... anyway you could check the threads I've started by navigating through my profile in case you were interested. check threads started by this user ;)

Bitcoin and alt coins could help terrorists for money transferring therefore I suggest Govt should unable and look another method to utilize Bitcoin. Its decentralized system so hard to find who using bitcoin, etc.

Terrorism is a fake word invented for the same reason that is now used against anybody who is not US's bitch.

There is no such thing in real world. Nobody calls himself terrorist, some people desperately try to commit attacks against other people for some political agenda they have. They could be called like 'violent Islamic extremists' or something more specific like 'Saudi backed Islamic Fundamentalists".

I think the whole AML thing is an excuse for centralization of power by bankers and corporates behind US gov. Fighting criminals and so-called terrorists should be carried out in the actual battle fields. For instance like billions of dollars worth of weapons have been sold and smuggled to Syria and no single cargo has been seized as long as it was about ISIS or Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists ad fundamentalists who were fighting Asad and beheading civilians at the same time.

Trump isn't against terrorism, there is no fight against terrorism, they want to re-innovate slavery using technology and financial systems. This is what AML/KYC shit is about and now Iran case is a test bed for next and probably the final wave of aggression against humanity as a whole.

Logic

Dont break the law and expect bitcoin to keep you safe....pretty easy for most of society to follow that rule.

The fear mongering in this thread is lol

Bullshit! Pure garbage. :(
How could one "break the law" by sending his bitcoins to anybody? It is my asset and I wish to transfer it to another person, so what? I could have bought weed from the peer and feds hate weed? Ok they could hunt my dealer by more than few other ways, why should they stick with ruling over my money? It is my money, for the god sake! Isn't it Orwell 1984?

FYI:
Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency/movement invented to defend people against the ruling monetary system that constantly steals money from them by generating money from thin air and taking advantage of it to get even stronger, like exponentially and expanding its surveillance/censorship capabilities. You don't like it? Don't waste your time hanging around here, go watch Fox News or something and join Trump's campaign to make America centralized again.

It looks to me like you haven't been living in a country that doesn't care about your personal freedoms when it comes to fighting organized crime and terrorism.
Imagine a situation where your friends are involved in drug trafficking and you happen to lend money to them, not knowing what they're doing. They were always paying you back with interest, so it looked like a good and safe way to make some money.
If this was happening in the US and they got caught, the agencies would raid your home just like that. They'd break the doors, put you in jail for the night, search your house, take your computers and drives, and you wouldn't see most of it ever again. They'd even steal your money, if there was a chance that you were profiting from their drug business. They can do whatever they want, it's a wild west. If they get a warrant, they can shove an old sock down your throat and you won't be able to prove that it happened.

funny thing is that i see you complaining about businesses that are FIAT handling
i said in other topics.

if you want decentralisation YOU have to move away from using centralised FIAT services
if you want to not be held back by FIAT based sanctions/regulations. then stop using fiat regulated exchanges

organise a meetup and swap hand to hand with someone in a coffee shop

bitcoin is not sanctioned/regulated by fiat rules. you will not find a single fiat rule in bitcoin code,
the problem is people using FIAT services and then crying when FIAT rules apply

if you dont want the controls of fiat to apply then you need to not use fiat.
organise your local towns bitcoin meetup to discuss getting a local grocery store to accept bitcoin.

detach yourself from FIAT and FIAT rules will be of no concern to you.
didnt you read the regulations it only applies to BANKS and MSB's aka fiat regulated services

solution: dont use an MSB and you wont find funds getting blocked.. simple

This is an interesting event in the world of cryptocurrency, but the owners of bitcoins at these addresses can easily bypass the restrictions by using decentralized exchanges. Bitcoin was thought for just that. Although for supporters of anonymity it is possible to better use coins like Monero.

Werent most of the miners in China?

The chinese government tried to outlaw bitcoin two times, and failed. The miners are still there, operating their machines.

If the US government want to outlaw bitcoin with this "blacklisting" thing, I dont think its gonna work.

And yes, they blacklisting two addresses is a attack against the blockchain, since the money can be easily transferred to another address, and this address can belong to another person. Will they blacklist the other addresses? And if those coins passes through a exchange in another country, will they blacklist this exchange? Will they sanction the other country as well?

Also, the grounds for blacklisting are xenophobic, to say the least. You cant apply xenophobia to the blockchain. Bitcoin is a global, not national currency. It knows no borders. If they want to sanction iranian citizens using their dollars, which they control, fine, but they cant do it with bitcoin. It would defeat the purpose of the project, in the first place, as bitcoin was created to circumvent censorship.

But as the internet becomes more and more censored, and sites such as Reddit (a true cesspool of censorship) becomes more popular, the cuckolds who are the majority of users will just bow down to the almighty power of the modern State, and accept its iron dildo up their asses.

This probably means that in case any American citizen transfers his coins to any of these addresses, then he will be investigated. But considering how easy it is to create a Bitcoin wallet, I think that the Iranians will just create a few more fresh wallet addresses and continue their business through those wallets. The FBI won't be able to link the new ones with the two identified wallets.

I guess things like this will not make a significant impact, both on the two governments and on the market going forward, this is more or less limited to just passing news.

Blocking those address is just dig a hole to close another hole.

Everything is always about America. Honestly, wtf is wrong with that country. I use to think countries in Asia were weird and had some odd laws and things but America still takes the cake.
Don't give your personal info to anyone. They don't need. As for threats I would lol at that. Their laws don't apply here so they can kiss my arse.


Lol the mixing algorithms? Umm ok. You can't predict something that is random. No two mixes are the same. Also, you seem paranoid. Backdoors? Give me a break dude.

Who's the idiot quoting something that is 9 months old, Yes I was here but not all went down. And nope The US hasn't taken everything. And yes I know for facts they still suck in mixing algorithm and chain analysis. They can't even analyze a transaction accurately if the sender adds just 3-4 "hops" to his Tx. Not talking if you add 12...

There is noway of tracing the originating wallet ID through the "mixing algorithm". It is random and you can't reverse-engineer a random formula. But it is true that some of these mixers may be operated by the authorities. A number of dark market vendors got arrested during the past 2-3 years after the authorities were able to trace their transactions.