Bitcoin Forum

as a non hacker investor in BTC, i am tired of hearing laughing and joking about how drug dealers and gangs will most definitely use BTC to move money around the world to facilitate their illegal activities.  Hive 45 had 2 jokers laughing and joking about using BTC for assasinations.  i'm sorry, civilized ppl just don't talk like that.  if this becomes the case, BTC may be doomed in the long run to function as a new currency to replace the USD which is what i presume most of the ppl on this forum want.  i know i sure do and now i have an invested interest in making this so.  i would like to use this thread to develop ideas about how this activity might be prevented.  i don't want to hear comments about how it is inevitable, can't stop it, its gonna happen no matter what type comments that are often accompanied by a veneer of glee.  this is serious business; so i'd like to hear productive ideas about how this can be accomplished.  if everyone believes its impossible then fine, i get an empty thread.

It's as possible to prevent money laundering and illegal trade with bitcoins as it is to prevent it with regular cash. This isn't a problem for bitcoin but rather a problem for law enforcement, just moved to a new domain.

people use usd all the time for drugs and on a more limited extent killings.

crimes will always be committed in return for value (a promise), and whatever delivers that value most efficiently will be used.  Today they use usd.

because people commit crimes that involve a transaction of value doesn't mean that the medium used for the transaction is at fault.

from a large govt perspective they will need insight (to a certain extent) into the persons behind large transactions, or they will kill the medium.  btc should be prepared to some extent for this.

Decriminalize victimless crime. Eliminate positions of power without production.

Drug raid cash.

http://i123.photobucket.com/albums/o300/mk70ss/6.jpg

http://www.snopes.com/business/money/cocaine.asp

What's the emoticon for "jaw dropped to floor"?

I'm sure nobody would notice if one of those small bundles disappeared, would they?

unfortunately, the US gov't will set a higher std for BTC and laundering vs the USD.  the will use the anonymity argument against BTC while the real reason will be to protect the USD franchise.

I agree with cypherdoc that we need to have a more responsible attitude toward how we react to the use of bitcoins in illicit activities.

I do understand that it is impossible for us to prevent illegal actions from being performed with bitcoins, any more than we could prevent them from being performed with hard cash.  However, that does not mean that this community should actively promote it.

When growing a new currency, public perception is everything.  Bitcoin needs a squeaky clean image if it is ever going to be accepted by the mainstream public.  And yet, we have a section promoting businesses selling Psychotropic Drugs on the bitcoin wiki (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade)).  I understand that these drugs are actually legal in some countries.  But, that's not going to matter to most businesses that are investigating whether they should accept bitcoins from their customers.  Most will take one look at that wiki page, see that there are questionable businesses being promoted there, and immediately conclude that they do not want to associate their business name in any way with that kind of activity.  I would guess that there have been far more businesses dissuaded from joining the bitcoin community due to those advertisements than have been attracted because of it.

It is not a matter of freedom of speech.  Illicit businesses are free to advertise as they want.  But, as a community, that does not mean we have to allow them to do it here.  This is a matter of practical reality.  If we fail to police ourselves, the governments of the world will be more than eager to step in and do it for us.  They won't be able to shut down the bitcoin network in its entirety, due to its distributed nature.  But, they sure as heck can take it away from me as well as many others on this forum.

For some reason, bitcoiners here are more open about such products even though it hurts public perception.

Human beings, as what they are, not very good at thinking hard about things.

The vast majority of criminal activity is conducted in USD cash ... how about you go whale on the Fed. Res. about how they are facilitating crime and USD cash cshould be banned ... no didn't think so,


Thinking that it is the job of money to stop crime is so much facist fucked up thinking it is beyond belief ... it is not the job of money to stop crime, you have been brainwashed by the statists.

Bitcoin will be taken up by the markets that get the most benefit from it.  Markets that have high overheads using fiat money will have a much larger impulse to move to Bitcoin than those that operate relativity freely.

Money Laundering, Drug Trade, Assassinations, Tax Avoidance, Internet Payments. All have a high overhead, these will be types of things that move to Bitcoin with the most vigour.  Naturally.


Correct, the reason that Bitcoin will be used by these things  is because there is a market for it.  Without prohibition (except Assassination), the market doesn't need to be opaque.

Without prohibition, there wouldn't be much of a primed market for Bitcoin, It would be much harder to have made it popular.

In many ways the Cat is out of the bag; the horse has bolted.

Welcome to the wild west, didn't the 'wild west' get it's name from being Wild?

The war on drugs has failed miserably.
I can't see this getting any worse when switching from a centralized viritual currency (USD) to a distributed p2p version.

The crimes take place in the physical world anyway, and that is where law enforcement has to be.
Standard law enforcement methods are not hampered by bitcoin.
If you order drugs there is a box at the postal office getting picked up.
If there is a hit , there is a person with a gun and a person with a motive.
If somebody buys plutonium there is a supplier, transport and lots of people involved.

What if you took away all the crimes directly or indirectly connected to drugs?  I think the money flow associated with crimes would plummet.

Maybe that's how the gov will crush Bitcoin: Legalize drugs.

Someone hasn't been paying attention.
Just look at how many jobs have been created in law enforcement and private prisons.
look at that pile of cash that was confiscated. They don't burn it, it goes into the treasury as 100% profit.
If the state wasn't getting the result that it wanted it would cut the program faster than you could blink.
The war on drugs has been an astounding success.  ::)

That Bitcoins, as a decentralized currency, can be useful for criminal activities is obvious to anyone with half a brain. Trying to whitewash that is futile, and in doing so you may end up looking like you're trying to cover things up.

If you feel there's an image problem getting in the way of what you feel Bitcoin should achieve, focus on getting goods and services offered that are more palatable to you.

Any new technology can be used for both good and bad things.  There is nothing unique to Bitcoin about this.

Inventors and champions of new technology cannot be held personally responsible for what people choose to do with that technology.

If they were, it would be a return to the middle ages where technological development ground to a halt.

How long before we will see this Jim Bell's idea http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_market implemented with bitcoins? :)

Damn, if we had a prediction market we would know. I wonder when we'll have a predication market?

I agree with you. Goverments might think that bitcoins are a threat for their currencie and hence a higher std is needed.

Forum members, it would be helpful to get back to cypherdoc's original intent of this thread (see above and again here:)
so i'd like to hear productive ideas about how this can be accomplished.

Here are my ideas to start with:
(1) Get all illegal content off this forum. This is already in progress, at least for (i) stuff that is illegal everywhere, and (ii) stuff that is illegal in most jurisdictions. People who want to talk about those things can do this somwhwere else, outside of bitcoin.org

(2) A step further would be to publically announce on the homepage of bitcoin.org that bitoins have been created as innovation in the payment / store of value area and that the owners of bitcon.org are against illegal abuse. Of course, as with cash, some individuals may use bitcoins for other things, but bitcoin.org does not endorse this in any way and even undertakes all possible steps to avoid this on this website

(3) Continue driving bitcoin's legal use for low fee payments, legitimate businesses, start-ups, investments, etc.

MtGox is predicting astounding success for BTC.

Finally something productive.  i like #2 especially.  we should start with that.  i know the anarchists on this site object to any form of censorship or rule making.  But they have to realize that if BTC is to work we have to at least initially play within game; the game being somewhat of a civilized society with rules/laws.  anarchists know the network itself is composed of rules, laws, math, logic, fairness determined by Satoshi.  w/o those concepts the network would fail and thus BTC adoption by the masses which is what none of us want.  i have my own business; i have to follow the rules/laws of paying workmans comp, paying SS taxes, Medicare taxes, income/corporate taxes and a host of other regulations.  i disagree with most of these gov't impositions but have to comply otherwise my successful business fails.  thats life.  as much as BTC represents freedom, it shouldn't allow anarchy.
 

I'll give my thumbs-up to all three suggestions.  Thanks S3052.

Although it was implied in the suggestions, it wasn't explicitly stated that we should get all illegal content off the wiki as well as the forum.  That should be done as well.

I predict they will use bitcoin in one of the grand theft auto games :)

I'm in favor of banning discussion on this site of trade in things which are illegal in the majority of industrialized countries, if for no reason other than protecting the site itself.  In addition, someone could create a really flashy consumer and merchant oriented site that new users could be steered towards, leaving this site for development and philosophical discussions.  

I don't know. As long as people correctly put their post in marketplace, I kind of like how this forum has post for buy/sell/trades. Of course, having multiple sites is good, I'm just not sure I'd get rid of marketplace.

I guess you'll have to ban my site since it have articles on agorism and stuff like that. I am willing to accept a rebuttal on the articles though.  ;)

I even have a person writing an article on bitcoin Poker.

I personally wouldn't ban anything other than the obvious: payments for theft/violence/crime against people -there is a clear victim without much thought.

The rest is left to the consumer to decide if it's appropriate for their jurisdiction. I don't think we want this place to start policing everything.

For example: the wiki lists marijuana. There are places where the possession is tolerated/legal. The buyer determines if they are breaking the law, not the wiki. It would get way too hard for something as international as Bitcoin. Who's laws would you use?

Murphy's law  ;)

Just put a legal disclaimer on the wiki.

"These drugs may be legal or not in your jurisdiction. It is up to you to determine their legality. "

This thread is absolutely pointless, and self incriminating.
It's like bitcoin carrying the original sin of being a disruptive technology.
I don't see Smith & Wesson or Glock with such a disclaimer on their sites.

Edited : I don´t see also Citibank making a money laundering disclaimer on it's site
http://www.workers.org/ww/2004/citibank0930.php

This makes no sense. Responsibility is one the users, not the tool.

+1

While this is certainly true, there are people with (the) guns (of the state) that think otherwise.
Which makes the situation much more complicated than any of us would like.

first they come for the assassinations, then they come for the pron, then they come for me.

Don't get caught up in the hype. Bitcoin is a tool. Many murders have been committed with baseball bats. Yet we can freely talk about baseball bats.

Baseball bat bought with USD from a Visa no doubt.

I think the point is, if the powers that be want to shut down bitcoin, they will find an excuse to shut down bitcoin. Doesn't matter how squeaky clean we are. What we want to do is give them incentive to participate in bitcoin rather then shut it down. Above all else, Republicans don't want to die poor.

What we need are lobbyists. Maybe make campaign contributions with bitcoins somehow. Give them a vested interest in the network.

i don't know much about agorism but a quick scan of the Wiki page didn't invoke any negative sentiments on my part.  this may come down to what ones goals for BTC are. if agorists want to see an underground economy based on BTC then i suppose they would support drugs and money laundering.  i however would like BTC to become more mainstream and used and trusted by the average American.  i would like to see BTC become a lever to force the control of USD out of the hands of the Fed and give it back to the American ppl where it belongs.  so i'm not necessarily against the USD per say.  i'm against hows its being manipulated by the money changer elite.  i prefer order, not mad max.  i prefer stable currency, not boom bust cycles. 

The best way to fight them? Don't die.

If bitcoin don't die, we win, period. The only question is how much of the bitcoin community is willing to do bitcoin in the face of persecution.

I don't know how I am going to act when that time come.

I see where the people that are afraid of a governmental shut down are coming from. If they can that is. Did Wikileaks go down? No, and yet it is a non profit group. What could they do to a whole economy then? Not to mention they'd have to track people down on Tor... or completely shut it down, which they still haven't done, given all the outstanding reasons for it.

The demonization on wikileaks didn't work on the internet population. Sure there's lot of hatred, but there's also lot of support for it too.

Wikileaks is a much more resilient entity than Bitcoin may be.  all they're doing is disseminating info.   as i see it, BTC is an entirely different matter.  the point is to try an create a functioning economy based on trusted tx's worldwide using BTC as a new currency.  how well is that gonna work if the Feds start shutting down every merchant good or bad b/c the currency, BTC, is getting a bad rap for being the ideal vehicle for assasinations or laundering? 

The feds could start shutting down BTC trading merchants .... in America ... the rest of the world will be free to do what they want.

All US will be doing is cutting off its nose to spite its face. I'm picking that when push comes to shove they will leave it alone because in the end cutting yourself off from possibly the next big thing in global finance is economic suicide.

They may be bent, crooked, power-crazed facists but they are not that stupid (are they) to know which side their bread is buttered ... that's why the big criminals are the biggest campaign contributors. It will just be a shifting of the order.

We should get a bounty started for campaign contributions, to Ron Paul, or similar.

Another idea would be to get a bounty started to donate to any congressman that will publicly accept donations in bitcoin.

I vote for getting business that trade narcotics off the merchant list.

We do not want to promote that kind of thing on the official forum. Those who absolutely want to seek out that stuff, will be able to find it anyway.

Speak for yourself.

It was inevitable the preachy, intolerant mainstream would show up eventually I guess ... kind of sad never-the-less, they never fail to satisfy the stereotypes.

First of all, Bitcoin doesn't need merchants to exist and flourish. Hell, you can't buy squat with gold yet it is a highly sought after store of value.

Second, Wikileaks is non profit and resisted quite a severe attack. I think a profitable p2p network would be much more resilient than a non profit, single entity fueling on donations.

Illegal goods are not allowed on the official forum. bitcoin.it is not official.

That has got to be the first time I've been called "preachy".  If you think I am a member of the intolerant mainstream, then you have no idea what this community has in store for it when bitcoin actually does take off.

For the record, I am a libertarian.  I do understand the ideology that those businesses have a right to exist.

What I and the others have been promoting is the practical idea that a mainstream currency has to have a public image that is acceptable to the mainstream public.  Currently, bitcoin does not.  Although that has not played a factor in bitcoin's growth so far, it will eventually attract the attention of the powers-that-be.  Governments may not have the ability to shut down the entire bitcoin network, but they can prevent my local gas station or grocery store from accepting bitcoins.  Your ad hominem attack does not change that fact, and it is a problem this community needs to acknowledge.

Put your guns away son I wasn't talking to you.

I cannot think of a worse public image than the banks or paypal, and people use them everyday.
Eventually what will make bitcoin successful, is not it's public image, but it's usefulness.
Bitcoin is much more than useful, it's revolutionary.

Fed may ban it ? No worries, 100's of better evolutionary BTC like will appear.
 

bottom line is that if the mathematics behind bitcoin are solid, then this will be around for a long time.

if govt shuts the most popular version of it down, a new one will spring again (different servers in a different country).

another bottom line is that we can't stop drugs or killings from occurring when people use btc for the exchange method.  if at the time of the transaction btc is the easiest way as a medium to transfer a promise, then they will be used, just as usd are used today to fuel the drug mafia wars of Mexico.

can we kill this thread now?

To prevent money laundering, all the government(s) must do is legalize and control all forms of business. Thus giving the "criminals" no money left to launder.

The first bitcoin exchange to be targeted by a government will cause a shitstorm of massive proportions. Unless they destroy the internet itself what can they really do but standby impotently as bitcoin eats their lunch ?

You get points from me.  There are a lot of extreme ideologies thrown around on the internet without regard to their practical application.  I'd sink a good ship to prevent it from being used for evil any day, and I think anyone who supports the freedom for assassination markets to exist "on principle" should be made to be present during the event--after spending an hour talking with the person before and then having to sit alone with them in a room after.  Then they have to explain their principles to the person's family.  And raise their kids.

There will be no significant change in criminal or aberrant activity while we perpetuate a monetary system. When people are denied the necessities of life, and can only obtain them by engaging in a dishonest, abusive, wasteful and violent monetary system, then you get dishonest, abusive, wasteful and violent activity.

No.

What if the CIA put hit out on Ghaddafi in bitcoins?

Where would that leave all you holier than thous?

How did they pay to have Saddsam Hussein offed anyway, your taxes, in USD to hired guns most likely. FFS how sanctimonious are you going to get on us.

Maybe bitcoin is the final boss of the internet ?

That's not a bad idea.  Gaddafi or Hussein would have been taken out much more quickly and easier without the disastrous human and financial damage of statist war.  Like all tools and technological innovations, assassination markets can be used for good and evil.  I think we must must accept their inevitability thanks to tools like bitcoin, and focus on how to handle, manage, and in other ways deal with assassination markets rather than foolishly attempt to prevent them entirely.

I recommend to read the original Jim Bell's essay: http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/jimbellap.htm

As he shows, assassination market will make wars impossible (because any government official, who wants to wage a war, will get a bounty for his head). And it will probably make impossible to exist for government, that extort taxes from it's subjects by force (because they will get a bounty for their heads too). Only governments, that provide their services on voluntary contracts will be able to evade such system.

Let's clear something up. People hurt people. It's downright silly to demonize a tool. Pencils don't make spelling errors. Guns don't shoot people. And money doesn't sell drugs. People do all of these things. If you take the tools away from the bad, you take the tools away from the good as well. Shall we destroy the internet because some use it for child pornography? Ban hard drives because such files can be stored there? No, absolutely not. It would be ridiculous.

It's absurd seeing people blaming tools for the actions of people. I promise you this, take away the tool that you pose as evil, and the evil person will find another way to commit his atrocities.

+1
Thanks and lets continue to hold a strong position against illegal things here.

Bravo.  Well put.  It's clear that powerful, decentralized, technological tools that nobody can control are going to be a fact of life in our future.  We need to learn to deal with it as a society.

It's absurd to absolve the corrupting systems of money, government and religion of the actions people make while being forced to operate within their confines.

Why don't people not interested into cypherdoc's call for help discuss their egoistic views somewhere else so that we can get back to the original thread motive?

Wrong. You blame the individual, not the tool. You could not pay me enough money, give me enough power over others, or threaten me with the wrath of any god to convince me to commit murder, theft, or any other immoral act against my fellow man. If I can rise above the confines of these systems, anyone can.

Blaming the tool shifts the focus from the real actors, and practically absolves them of their misdeeds.

"Yes, he committed atrocities, but he did it in the name of his god, he can't be held fully accountable."

"Ahh, but he was poor, and offered such a large sum, who wouldn't have done the same in his place?"

"Of course he voted to go to war, he would have been ostracized by his own party had he not."

Baloney.

+1

Fortunately, those that create threads do not have absolute control over them, and cannot exile certain types of discussion to another thread. Though, I think that would be an interesting message board, if the thread creator had moderator rights in that thread...

+1

Amen to that.

Have you ever seen a person die?  Like, not in a video game or a movie?  The internet tends to make a lot of people pretend they know what they're talking about.  Tools are never bad, but there can be good reasons to scuttle a good tool--it's a simple cost-benefit analysis on the available data.  If the available data for any good tool showed it enabled more harm than good, the only rational response is that the tool isn't worth it.  Nuclear bombs are just tools too, but you're still a moron if you want to live in a version of today where everyone is handed one at birth.

since bitcoin enables money laundering and asaasination markets and tax evasion and promotes anarchism, then why do you support it? Im curious.  You have great tools with democratic-state-regulated currencies already that dont have these issues as much, right?

The available data leads me to believe that BitCoin enables more good than bad.  Neither BitCoin nor cash "promote anarchism"--at best any implications for a political ideology like anarchism are peripheral to their broader significance.

Try to step back for a moment.  BitCoin is technologically superior to and more efficient than any existing currency or payment provider.  Particularly exciting are its applications in the developing world, in enabling microtransactions, in creating the possibility for digital contracts, and in facilitating the emergence of a tipping economy.  It seems very narrowminded to me to think that BitCoin's primary relevance is political.  I'm sure there were people who thought the same of the internet, and while they were right that the internet has political consequences, it's had kind of a lot of other ones as well.

And most importantly, I'm not naive.  BitCoin is ultimately mathematics--there are plenty of drug lords and covert organisations that have the finances to run their own BitCoin-like network regardless of whether BitCoin itself succeeds or fails.  I cannot control what they do--but I can help to make BitCoin an effective counterpart to that possibility.  So that's what I try and do--think ahead, and act appropriately.

/thread

Stop making asinine arguments and whining that USD does it too!!!  ::)

Not that it is any of your business or relevant to the topic, but yes I have. Since you are asking have you?

Basically, blaming the type of money that people are using for crimes is infantile and indefensible as a logical argument. Something only a brain well-pickled and infused with statist tosh could come up with ... but then again you think you know what you are talking about so carry on ... it must be the internet doing that to you.

Kinda off-topic, but would any of you know of a site where people can vote for, and against, the assasination of individuals; just dealing with votes, no money? Even though it probably wouldn't lead to anything i guess voting there would still feel a little more productive than yelling at the TV during the news....

You could start such a site on Tor, but this would likely be illegal in many juristictions.

Saying you want someone dead publicly is against the law? Isn't it covered by freedom of speech?

Where are you that you think you have freedom of speech?

I guess you have a point; just the other day over here a senator (or perhaps it was a congressman or somthing like that) ripped the recorder out of a reporter's hand, took it home and erased everything in the memory before returning it to the reporter just 'cause he didn't like the question...

Lol, still safer to interview senators than police I guess.

Freedom of speech is a negative right, that the federal government does not have the authority to limit your ability to say what you wish about it.  And it does not.  You can say these things, but once you do you can be persecuted based upon the content.  Not by critiquing the actions of government in general, or the actions of government agents in particular; but by advocating harm being done to another person.  Generally such things are taken more seriously when the person in question also happens to be an agent of the state.  Freedom of speech doesn't imply you have the right to scream "fire!" in a crowded theater any more than the freedom to keep and bear arms implies you have a right to shoot your neighbor if he stumbles drunk into your backyard and pisses on your lillies.

And that is considering places wherein the public actually has a freedom of speech.

If you believe the theater is on fire or that there is some other important reason for everyone to leave in panic you totally have the right to yell "Fire!" inside the theater; not only the right but the duty to do so.

Your opinion on such a topic is very different if you are willing to be present, understanding the real-life implications of something that for many people is only a thought exercise.  That's why it was a fair question to ask, and one that I was asking seriously rather than as some sort of line.  It's also something that I've experienced personally and it's made me very tired of arm-chair discussions about real life things.  Like I said, the internet tends to make a lot of people pretend they know what they're talking about, so it's hard to know--and there's a heck of a lot of rhetoric bouncing around on these boards that I'd rather not give the time of day to.  Calling someone "holier than thou" and "sanctimonious" for suggesting that the real-world consequences for things need to be at the forefront of this type of discussion (and then erroneously categorising me with some imaginary stereotype of the people you think would be advancing my position) doesn't really get you off on the right foot.  Nor do phrases like "brain well-pickled blah blah blah" contribute to any useful discussion.

Saying I would DDoS an assassination board is not equivalent to blaming the type of money people are using for crimes.  But more deeply what I'm getting at is that technologies do have consequences, which we need to think about.  For example, I would not have opposed the invention of the internet because of its potential for child pornography.  But that doesn't end the discussion.  The internet does change things, and foreseeing that it might be used for child pornography would be a good time to realise that at that point child pornography has become a world issue that will require inter-country cooperation to address.  BitCoin, like the internet, is real life.  It will have real consequences, and they're worth actually thinking about.  Tone down the rhetoric, and take the opportunity to have a productive discussion about it!

The assumption in intended is that there was no such case, but only the intent to cause a panic.

So if you trully believe the wolrd would be better if X was not alive anymore it's not against the law to ask for X's assasination?

No civilised people don't lock up people for using drugs. That is what fascist totalitarian fuck heads do. I am all for the use of bitcoin for laundering money and keeping drug users and dealers safe. If you don't like it, don't fucking use bitcoin. Also I suggest you go sign up for the Nazi party you fucking fascist pig. I can't wait for the day that you brainwashed bastards are out of power and can no longer hurt me and my innocent friends who just want to enjoy ourselves and use recreational substances. You are fucking evil and I seriously hope you just die. I would rather all of the people like YOU die than the people like you get to live and ruin the lives of people who mind their own business and live a different life style than you accept. You and your ilk are a disease on society. I also am all for assassination markets resulting in the death of the nazis who impose their morality on us at the cost of our life our liberty and our pursuit of happiness. Go fuck yourself you brainwashed sheep.

Which is why you need to ship product with an transmitter / Photovoltaic cell / Volatile memory with three states: compromised, not compromised, no transmit. If the package is intercepted and opened, the photovoltaic cell gets enough light to wipe the not compromised state of the memory and replace it with compromised. If the volatile memory is in encapsulation material customs can't flash freeze it fast enough to preserve / restore the 'not compromised' state. Then you can scan the airwaves at the fake ID box office and look for the signal, and not pick up if there is no transmit or compromised signal. The entire device can be made for a few dollars and is the size of a penny, it can be configured to only transmit after some time delay to avoid customs looking for transmitting packages. If they open in a dark room, vacuum seal the drugs and use an oxygen sensor. Customs doesn't have enough money to open all packages in darkened vacuums. Now you know if the pack got intercepted prior to picking it up.

Lol, yay for internet pseudonimity!

Now on a serious note; whoever that was, i hope you used a good annonimyzing proxy to create that sockpuppet and was careful enough with traces control on your machine...

I for one am all for the legalization of the possession viewing and distribution of child pornography. I don't see people sitting in the privacy of their own homes looking at pictures to be a big fucking deal in the slightest. In fact, the distribution of child pornography on the internet is a good thing, as it allows photographic forensics to locate the actual child abuser.

God, where did all these statists come from?

I must bow to the superior eloquence of your argument.

Before I completely concede defeat, however, could you please specify what it is about my arguments that you find so asinine, so that I may have some cogent basis on which to reply?  Also, since I never mentioned USD anywhere in my post, would you be so kind as to briefly describe what I am apparently whining about concerning it?

I think he was agreeing with you and telling others to stop.

+1

I can see at least three ways to attack it other than DoS: delete the bitcoin.org domain (commonly done by US law enforcement), arrest key persons (developers, website owners), or coerce Freenode into blocking this "illegal activity" on their IRC network.

Bitcoin has an urgent need for robustness.

If you fear the consequences of negative actions, remove the impetus for those actions. People are violent because they have not been given better tools to deal with conflict. People resort to religious beliefs because they did not learn sufficient reasoning and social skills. Politics are immersed in corruption because everything is for sale in a monetary system. You can't talk about individual actions outside of the context in which they are conditioned, and to do so is to excuse the various systems and actions that produce their behavior.

Edit: Unless of course you are asserting that people will do these things because it is part of their essential "nature", in which case there can be no discussion on how to prevent such behavior, rendering the initial question moot.

Ah.  I see.

Well then, nevermind my misguided remonstrations.  :-)

None of these three attacks would do a thing to the running Bitcoin network, and aren't even likely to do much to prevent new users.

Could they secretly force Freenode to silently mute anyone joining the channel except the govt's bots that will report the addresses of honeypots to cripple the network by keeping most people making useless connections and at the same time buil.d a database of who is trying to use Bitcoin?

Not for long, and not likely to any useful degree even in the short term.  The current client no longer requires the IRC channel even for initial bootstrapping.  I don't even let my client connect.

But most people still let the client go with the default, which is relying on IRC unless it's down, right?

Down or not, the client will attempt to connect to it's internal list to fill out it's connections.  It doesn't depend on any one source for data, so such an attempt to prevent new clients from bootstrapping the blockchain would be short lived.  Clients that have already bootstrapped remember their past connections anyway.

You prevent both money laundering and assassinations by not having a totalitarian police state. Bitcoin is irrelevant.

I can think of several circunstances where both activities could still exist without the presence of totalitarian states...

Need some kind of state though. Doesn't assassination mean killing public official? And isn't money laundering just transfer designed to get around laws?

This was a fascinating read. Thanks for the link.

This one (http://www.anti-state.com/vroman/vroman9.html) is good as well.

I like his ideas on how such a service might establish trust with its userbase. I'm thinking about working on a service similar to this.

Whoa, I know it was a while back but I thought I should say something. I am one of the jokers off Hive 45, when we started talking about it we wanted to explore all the possible futures of bitcoin not to promote any illigal activity. Bitcoin is a fantastic system and I know it is going to go places, but we still need to acknowledge and discuss all possible outcomes of this going mainstream. Even if it does lead to such things as assassination networks.

I am actually kind of glad that even in my very small way I helped get the discussion about this out there. This thread had been a gold mine. Some of the ideas that have been brought up have blown my mind.

The Assassination Politics essay is definitely raising a few hairs on the back of my neck though...

What are you smoking?

Saddam Hussein was hung in front of the world to see. They had an in court trial and everything. He was convicted of war crimes and hung.

Assasins are only assasins if they target public officials? I thought they were simply executioners for hire...


Regarding money laundry, it doesn't need to be just for dealing with state laws, a subordinate to a crimelord could be doing some protection service on the side and not reporting the earnings to the boss, in order to be able to enjoy his money, he would have to for example buy a bunch of lottery tickets and only mention the winning ones and say he's on a lucky streak, since this doesn't cut into the crime org's busyness he might be able to keep what he wins on the lotto; or a store cashier could invest a little bit in his brother's bakery and each month go there as a customer and slip the acumulated change he swiped from the registrer and slip to his brother, who later would give him a similar amount back pretending it's his share of the monthly earnings.

Uh, it's not important I just thought the word implied killing a certain sort of person and I didn't think it had to be for money. Like JFK was assassinated whether the killer was paid or not, but my wife's lover was just murdered, again regardless of whether I do it or pay for it.

Thanks.  And yes I tend to agree with you here.  And bitcoin is first and foremost a currency to help people.prosper, not a political tool.

But I am still curious about pracfical ways to deal with assasination markets, given the existence of bitcoin.  They are inevitable now.  So I think preventing money laundering and trying to prevent assasination markets is foolish now, unless one wants to eliminate bitcoin.  What we can do is study block chains and internet patterns to identify these things and then possibly take action against them, not prevent.

I'm curious if you guys that are "against" an assassination market have read the article.

If not, the gist is that basically, the site is nothing but a death pool (http://stiffs.com/). It's just that, if you take matters into your own hands, you're most likely going to win the pool.

Definitely something worth thinking about, because I agree that anonymous cryptocurrency will not be undone.  For money laundering I think the key will be to use the plain old-fashioned approach of "if some guy buys a yacht but claims to be unemployed...." as well as honeypots.  The trust overlay problem for anonymous finances has yet to be solved, and I think this is also a key vulnerability of criminal enterprises because no matter how organised they are it's still hard for a criminal to trust a criminal.  But re-positioning our laws and mentalities as early as possible is important.  I think we have to start focussing on the last remaining constraint that exists for human beings--that we are not yet locationless.  I suspect that someone's being in a known physical location will emerge as one of the highest forms of trust.  As long as we can make it so that violence still has to be committed physically there will be a constraint on assassinations, and we may have to accept that that is the only one that can be any longer leveraged.

@BitterTea I've read the article.  That "incidental feature" was important enough to name the concept after, so I hardly see the difference.

The simple counter to the "Bitcoins are being used for illegal activities and should be banned" argument is that, since bitcoins have a transaction record easily available on the public net, without even needing a search warrant or anything, bitcoins are actually *more* traceable than cash.  You don't need to set someone up with marked bills.  *Every* bill is marked.  When the politicians finally get around to trumpeting about how it's a haven for criminals, be sure to point that out.  It's no worse than bank transfers between numbered accounts, and it's considerably easier for law enforcement to follow any trail that gets left behind.

If they can show a direct association between an address and the suspect, then yes.

Yeah, on the one hand I'm not sure why I made that remark. On the other hand, an assassination pool could form out of a death pool without the operator even knowing or intending, the only thing required is an anonymous payout method.

clarify something for me Creighto;  is it anonymous or not?  just how easy would it be to trace tx's?

Bitcoin's system is anonymous, in the sense that identifying information is not available from the system itself, and that such information is not neccessary for it's function; unlike credit cards and the like.  However, bitcoin does nothing to prevent the user from breaking his own cover.  Whoever desires to remain anonymous must take some rather drastic steps to maintain it, such as never allowing coins to mix from a published address to any that are intended to be used for anonymous business.  So basicly, to remain truly anonymous, care must be taken that two distinct wallet.dat files (presumedly with two clients) never intermingle.  This is so that a user can have a public business personna with Bitcoin, while maintaining an additional set of funds for cladestine business transactions. 

However, transactions can easily be traced as they flow from one address to another, which is why it is difficult to maintain an anonymous personna with only one Bitcoin wallet.dat file.  The client mixes account funds by default, and the current client makes no attempt to maintain any kind of seperation of funds.

So the short answer to the question is that Bitcoin can be anonymous, but it's the actual people who are not.

how do u earn btc anonymously?  by mining? what about when i buy btc from mtgox and then transfer them to my wallet?  as i recall, i never had to give my name or other id info when i signed up for an acct did i?

"The client mixes account funds by default, and the current client makes no attempt to maintain any kind of seperation of funds."

can u explain this further? 

Wear a mask while you're selling your body for BTC?

cypherdoc I would recommend reading this: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Anonymity)

In short, client mixes funds and if any of your addresses can be associated with your real id, then it's game over. However this same principle can be used in reverse, which is explained in the link above.

That's gonna be quite entertaining seeing plod get up to speed with the intricacies of tracinf transactions through the block chain ... probably be some consultancy BTC in for experts in blockchain analysis ... hmmm might start a web site, Sam Spade block chain private detective.

Bitcoin is cash. Expect the negative press.

Just thought I'd cross post this here...

A friend of mine has been following the discussion regarding SilkRoad and decided to check it out. He emailed me this blurb from the "new listing" page.

FTFY.

LHYD

If you truly believe what you preach, you are the problem. You, who are so enlightened, expect others to fix it for you?

It reminds me of those citizens of the U.S.A. who claim they are against the welfare / warfare state, but continue to pay for it.

If you want to change the world, start by setting an example. Stop using money. Stop using bitcoins. Stop mining bitcoins.

Who comes to a forum about a new currency and then proceeds to blame money for the evils of the world? While mining that new currency none-the-less!

It disgusts me that you continue to bad mouth money in thread after thread, yet you use it freely when it suits your needs. Hypocrite.

This is not an attack on you, it's an attack on your actions. It's a bit difficult to take you seriously when your actions do not match your words.

Indeed it is. Thanks.

Disengaging from society does not make it any better.

Money laundering is the "thought crime of finance"

An ideal form of government is democracy tempered with assassination.
-- Voltaire

When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
-- Thomas Jefferson

Let's hope Bitcoin is a key enabler for ideal government and liberty.

The ideal government is no government.
-- sortedmush

The ideal government is self-governance
--deadlizard

The ideal quote is my quote
--fetokun

The ideal ism is idealism
-- sortedmush

The ideal governance is emergent order.
--emergentorder

NICE!

Call the cops if you have reason to believe there is money laundering or assassination activity in your area.

to me all this fantasy talk about assasinations, money laundering, drugs, etc. are just wild ramblings of young btc'ers who let their minds run wild  and giddy over a new appreciating currency.  bottom line, u can be tracked if necessary.

Well, now that you've weighed in we can shut down this thread!

Care to tell me how one would track the spending of coinbase transactions?

This quote space for lease. BTC accepted.
-- Jim

icwatudidthar o_0

The crimes take place in the physical world anyway, and that is where law enforcement has to be.
Standard law enforcement methods are not hampered by bitcoin.
If you order drugs there is a box at the postal office getting picked up.
If there is a hit , there is a person with a gun and a person with a motive.
If somebody buys plutonium there is a supplier, transport and lots of people involved.

and you forgot

If there is a thread from three years ago, some noob will ncero it for absolutely no reason.

And wait for it..............you can do ALL this with DOLLARS too !!!!!!! Or any fiat for that matter  ;)

Law enforcement will find a way to get the bad guys using BTC  8)  Just hope good guys don't get caught up in the paranoia probes  :D

Whenever regulators shoot their stupid mouths off about drugs, money laundering, assassinations, human trafficking, etc., I feel like they're flushing a tremendous opportunity down the toilet to build real credibility and support from the public by instead talking about consumer protection and prosecuting fraud.