Γράφω αυτό εδώ (κι όχι επί του προσωπικού), γιατί ο συγκεκριμένος με έχει μπλοκάρει στα PM. Αν θέλει μπορεί να το αγνοήσει, κανένα θέμα. Δε με νοιάζει να διαβαστεί από τρίτους. Θέλω απλά να ξεκαθαρίζω τους λογαριασμούς μου.

Τελευταία βλέπω μια ιδιαίτερη αντιπάθεια εναντίον μου. Το καταλαβαίνω ότι δε τα βρίσκουμε, αλλά δε νιώθω πως σου έχω κάνει κάτι κακό. Να πω πως σου έχω φερθεί άσχημα, να μου τη "μπαίνεις" δικαιολογημένα, αλλά δε νομίζω πως σου έχω φερθεί. Αν σου έχω φερθεί, ζητώ συγγνώμη. Το λέω γιατί πετάς κάτι υπονοούμενα (που αντιλαμβάνομαι ότι αναφέρεσαι σε μένα), λέγοντας πως είμαι υπέρ του WEF (που ουδέποτε δεν έχω πει τέτοιο πράγμα), ή λες στο άκυρο πόσα έβγαζα παλιότερα απ' το ChipMixer (το οποίο είναι δημόσια πληροφορία btw).

Αν υπάρχει πρόβλημα σε παρακαλώ πες το μου να το λύσουμε σαν ενήλικες.

The difference is that a Bitcoin mixer advertises itself as providing privacy, I guess. The real question is what's the difference between a mixer and any method which involves obfuscating your coins like coinjoins and Monero. Practically, the latter are even better for concealing illicit activity, because they are unstoppable and do not rely on a central point of failure which can confiscate property.

We really don't know. This ban was unexpected. I think we are all in the process of trying to grasp what has happened. I am pretty confident that theymos would yield to government pressure and censor no-KYC casinos, Monero, or any other content if the authorities apply enough influence.

But, when does this end? It is quite crazy as notion to shut down something because it contains referrals to other sites that might be involved in illicit activities. How do we ensure this remains at mixers and doesn't expand on, e.g., a coinjoin tutorial? In the end, coinjoins offer pretty much the same levels of privacy, if not greater.

This ban doesn't eliminate criminal activity in the slightest. It merely makes it less comfortable to mix coins, and pushes everyone to Monero and coinjoins. Not that bad as a result, but still, this whole situation is like beating the air.

Probably has to do with this: Should Ratimov aka Symmetrick be in DT1?. Let's not derail Wasabi's thread regarding that.

With the exception that you should never suggest anyone to search a mixer on the Internet, unless you want them to get scammed.

I meant to host the forum elsewhere, not migrate elsewhere. I'm not a lawyer though. It's possible that as a US resident, hosting a legally operating site in Africa could lead to legal consequences in the US.

Sure, but this in-forum censorship makes me wonder. If I don't have the right to even talk about anti-government activities like this instance, how valuable decentralized alternatives are?

I know what you'll say, theymos wasn't blackmailed to enact this type of censorship, and that it has been done as precaution. It's just that, from my perspective, privacy-protecting tools become less and less available as time goes by. This year, a bill was proposed to discriminate against any coin which isn't controlled inside a KYC-ed exchange. Mixers fall apart, one after the other. Open-source, privacy-proclaimed services like Wasabi partner with anti-privacy organizations. Where are we heading to?

I mean, that. Advertising illegal sites, or linking to darknet sites is reasonably forbidden, because the feds could use it as an excuse to shut it down. But, we are generally forbidden from even talking about it?

What's next? Banning me for saying "Pirate Bay", "Breached", "1337x"?

He can't, but I never understood one thing: why is this forum hosted in the draconian USA? It surprises me that mixers were allowed for so long already.

Not only would this pose risk to the forum, but perhaps to us individually. If theymos believes there's a sensed chance to have 5% of the active users sanctioned, then we look after our butts, shall we?

This service might survive if it completely switches from being called a mixer to an exchanger that converts your BTC to XMR.

Not decentralized. It is centralized, administrated by theymos, or apparently, by the US government. It's theymos' property and yes, he can ban Bitcoin discussions in general if he wants to.

I guess everyone has freedom to talk except if the stuff they want to share put the butts who own this place under some legal troubles.

I know a guy, who knows a guy. Who knows another guy.


(from youtube.com)

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So, just to clear things out. In a month from now, anyone wearing a mixer signature is officially a terrorist!  

- Hey, how can I gain privacy in Bitcoin?
- Use mixers!
- Cool, which one?
- WTF, you want to get banned sir?

I'm pretty sure theymos understands the situation. He was probably contacted by a fed, or better to say, blackmailed.

Would you rather have the entire forum shutdown?

Mixers to be banned.

The authorities answered my question. Yes, there appears to be that chance. 

Locked.

So, to sum up. If a service:

- is taking property and returning roughly the same property,
- advertises itself as providing privacy,
- requires user to forfeit custody of coins,
- and does not collect KYC

is illegal in this forum.

Really sad turn of events for the Bitcoin forum.

If a non-KYC exchanger converts your BTC to XMR, is that considered legal or illegal in-forum? I'm confused.

In which criteria do we evaluate whether a transaction is beneficial, and to whom?

Bitcoin should not be a cloud storage, not because it is somewhat disturbing to the nodes of the network, but because it is extremely inefficient and expensive. But, the protocol is designed in such a way that fundamentally allows storage of information beyond financial. Even if you completely disable everything that can be exploited, and therefore negate every future potential softfork, information can still be stored as chunks of 160 or 256 bits.

Consider the implications of your argument. You suggest disabling op codes or introducing similar limits that permit the "exploit" of Bitcoin as cloud storage but advocate for allowing information storage through other means. This contradicts your initial statement, where the goal is to prevent Ordinals from being used to store arbitrary data.

This is a sad interpretation of the Bitcoin network. If you think that we are all "forcing" our gigabytes of transactions down your throat, then you should not be running a node. For a network of that kind to work harmoniously, we need to make compromises. The initial compromise to acknowledge is the equal treatment of all transactions.

Maybe I'm exaggerating, but it is for the good. I'm pretty confident we can fight this Ordinal wave of transactions by just setting these as non-standard (without even invalidating them on a protocol level with softfork). I doubt there will still be demand, but what if there is? We frequently notice people who are obsessed with the idea of injecting their data in the blockchain.

I'm generally opposed with ideas that delay the problems instead of solving them. That's probably why I'm in favor of developing second layer solutions instead of just messing with the block size limit. Same applies for Ordinals, more or less. If you impose a tapscript size limit, or any other such, for the sole reason of delaying Ordinals, then I'll oppose it.

I agree that certain limitations are necessary.

Depends on which feature. Tapscript? Yeah, it is useful. 

There is a limitation which can be imposed, such as "Tapscripts above X size are invalid", but we're just starting to bury ourselves there. Why? Well, it might put an end in Ordinals, sure. But, it might as well not. The system is designed in such a way that Ordinal transactions can be made indistinguishable from regular transactions. Meanwhile, we will have enabled censorship, or at the very least moved one step forwards to that direction. Let's avoid that, please.

When did the Bitcoin community start evaluating whether a transaction is "beneficial" before deeming it valid or invalid? Beneficial to whom? I do not recall agreeing to any Terms of Use that restrict me from conducting a transaction deemed morally unacceptable by certain individuals or requiring it to be "beneficial" for a specific group. Quite the contrary, I joined this space due to that big "Censorship Resistance in here" sign.

To treat all transactions equally, that's what's beneficial.

And many of the gamblers don't know they are wasting time and money either, but fortunately, we live in a world where you have the freedom to do that. I mean, why couldn't you? People do all sorts of nonsense with their money all the time. They throw coins in fountains, gamble, buy designer brands, shitcoins, cigarettes, accumulate excessive debts, the list is endless. And again, people should not be treated as sheep. Just because someone is under the impression they can make money by selling jpeg rocks, who am I to stop them? Everyone is responsible for their actions and pays for their mistakes. Greed is human.

The reason pooya wants this thing banned isn't to protect them from their foolishness, but to lower the transaction fees.

Is it just me or is formatting broken?

If you haven't considered the block size wars (which is a big part of Bitcoin's history), I suggest you have a read of "The Blocksize War: The battle over who controls Bitcoin’s protocol rules". It mentions quite a few notable points in summary.

You have to understand that people are voluntarily doing this. They know what they're putting themselves into; meaningless, digital trash. And they do it, because they think they are smart to resell it in a higher price. Everyone involved in this scheme is equally guilty. I can't blame a small group of Ordinal fans, because that'd be unfair. The buyers are conscious of their decisions, they should not be treated as sheep.

I say everyone has the freedom to burn their money.

Definitely easier. Joinmarket's installation is more complicated and time consuming than an Electrum extension or a Whirlpool mixing service accessible from Sparrow.

That's exactly my point. I can gain privacy by running my own node, mixing, using coin control etc., but Electrum had always had neutral stance on privacy. If they become pro-privacy, then they should then be criticized if they do mistakes regarding that. And as far as the history of that niche software is concerned, they're probably going to be criticized often.

It has always been about convenience. Cash is more difficult to carry around, split in multiple amounts, there's no history of transactions recorded if you need it, easier to lose and get stolen, change discomforts etc. It appears to be the case that these inconveniences justify the spending of billions of dollars and euros in transaction fees annually.

The West is not China. There may be similar treatment as to Chinese, but we fundamentally differ in culture.

CBDC is without doubt coming to Europe, though. This is not a conspiracy theory. A conspiracy theory is that it'll be used to pause the economic activity of people based on their social media, or political preferences, which again might be attempted to happen, but I struggle to imagine the Chinese model enforced to Europeans.