For to find the causes of paranormal epiphenomena violating the laws of forum metaphysics, I have analyzed the most cryptic secrets of daemonology, uttered dark incantations, and hereby added red boldface (with the internal quote slightly fixed):



Witty comments are hereby superfluous. 😈

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Bitcoin SV trusts The-Devil!

This is actually serious inquiry.  Some here have terrific abilities at investigating such things.  The trust and merit systems both provide intel on BSV shilling—and BSV shilling may provide leads on abuse of the trust and merit systems.

Cf.:

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Quickie question, Laura, do I get a cute name?  What am I, a nullity?

This just happened, all earned (archive):


It happened on the thread that marked my return from a 20-month absence.  Merited by cabalism13 (22), GazetaBitcoin (10), suchmoon (7), Foxpup (6), o_e_l_e_o (5), LoyceV (4), Heisenberg_Hunter (3), paxmao (2), JayJuanGee (1)

So, no activity for Legendary (or Hero, or Sr.).  No problem.  I am proud of the respective ratios of my merit to my posts and activity.  I can wait.

As a single-minded man on a mission, I will celebrate by highlighting my three most important recent posts for the love of Bitcoin:

• Bitcoin: The Social Phenomenon Merited by mk4 (3), Heisenberg_Hunter (3), Lauda (2), DooMAD (2), o_e_l_e_o (2), qwk (1), BitcoinFX (1), kryptqnick (1), buwaytress (1), Husna QA (1)
• Project Anastasia: Bitcoiners Against Identity Theft [re: Craig Wright scam] Merited by GazetaBitcoin (40), gmaxwell (5), Cyrus (5), Wind_FURY (2), bitmover (2), NeuroticFish (1), BitcoinFX (1), bL4nkcode (1), Icygreen (1)
• A Nullian Vision (new)

So, I am taking the hint, and implementing a strategy upon these of my principles:

The most effective way of telling people what Bitcoin is not, is to start with a better positive statement of what Bitcoin is.

First principle:  Say what you are, before you say what you’re against.  The positive is the reason for the negative, and not vice versa.

I am not anti-BSV as a cause:  I am anti-BSV as an effect, because I am pro-Bitcoin.  I love Bitcoin.  I hate those who attack, steal, degrade, defile, and destroy that which I love.  Therefore, I am anti-BSV.

That is the principle of the matter; and people’s reactions will be consistent with that principle.  If some member of the public who knows nothing about these issues just sees you making accusations against Craig Wright, then no matter how many facts you have on your side, he may feel that you are just yelling.  It perversely makes criminals look like victims; well, who knows, maybe you are just jealous of “Dr.” Wright.  But if you first explain that you are passionate about something that will make the world a better place, and then you shout from the rooftops that Craig Wright is lying scammer who is trying to hijack and wreck a good thing by literally stealing the identity of its creator, then people will understand why you are angry.  And they should thus understand why they should be angry, too.

I am only one obscure thinker.  All I can do is to urge others to action, share ideas, and, I should hope, inspire everybody to come together in an organized effort with a positive direction.  “...the community could do better?”  Yes, I think so; and I am acting on that, with the vision that others will stand with me, act with me, and come together as a community to take a stand here—then, organizing here, expanding the campaign to other forums, to social media, to “IRL” scenarios in business, in investing, at technical conferences, in everyday life—if necessary, in courtrooms—in every venue, on every potential battleground where this issue may arise.  Not only as a reaction to Craig Wright:  As a positive Bitcoin culture, a culture that can be shared even by people who agree on nothing except Bitcoin, a culture that can draw people together to defend Bitcoin from any threat, anywhere, anytime in the future.

It is already beginning to work.  Within the past 24 hours, the “Bitcoin SV” account on this forum stopped acting like a garden-variety scammer, and started acting completely insane.  People of low character know what is dangerous to them, and it frightens them into lashing out wildly.  But of course, for my part, I am only one individual taking a few tiny steps toward a huge goal.  This effort needs everybody who cares about Bitcoin.

That is my vision:  A Nullian Vision.  And I daresay, it is consistent with Satoshi’s vision for Bitcoin—the vision implicit in Bitcoin’s design, and not the sick travesty of a “vision” kludged together from twisted words, out-of-context quotes, and wholly made-up nonsense by a two-bit scammer dolled up in an ill-fit suit who doesn’t even know anything about cryptography.

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I want to reply to some of the thoughtful discussion here.  I have not forgotten, and I’ll be back here.  The same applies in some other threads, and I’m sorry to say, sometimes for response to PMs.  For one individual, those few tiny steps require considerable thought and preparation behind the scenes.

For the record, the “Bitcoin social phenomenon” post was in some form first intended by me in December of 2017.  I think of it as my Bitcoin manifesto, or at least a part of it.  Its implementation has been much altered by its use now; no, it is not my usual style, and yes, its style is fully intentional.  Some of my actions in the future will similarly be adaptations of things that were already in my pipeline, as I alluded upthread.

My thanks to DooMAD for starting the discussion here, and to gmaxwell for giving me the wake-up call.  This will be remembered as the classic forum thread that sparked a new Bitcoin community effort.  “...the community could do better?”  Those were the right words at the right time.

Bitcoin has a subtle value that goes beyond its current valuation in open markets.  If Bitcoin’s value were purely speculative, then I would agree that it has no value at all:  It actually would be a Ponzi scheme, with earlier fools trying to sell the scheme itself at a higher price to later fools.  But Bitcoin’s value is not merely speculative:  Bitcoin is much more than an expectation of future value!

Bitcoin is a single, unified monetary platform that everybody can use to exchange value with each other.  They don’t need to trust each other, or even like each other.  They don’t need to ask each other’s permission, or anybody’s permission.  It is this agreement which creates demand.  And that agreement is not “buy low, sell high” market speculation.  This agreement, facilitated by technology, in turn facilitates trade.  Simply, it helps people live life better.

That itself is valuable!

I am not in Bitcoin because I want it to “moon”.  I am in Bitcoin because it makes my life better—just as it can make your life better, and make everybody’s life better.  It is true that as more people discover Bitcoin, its valuation will increase due to increased demand for a limited supply.  I like that, but I think it’s an ancillary benefit.


I don’t usually do the “user-generated content” thing, i.e. working for free for somebody else’s business.  And if I do, I would prefer to do it for the Bitcoin Forum!

(Also, what Lauda said...)

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Good point.  That is why I created this thread.  We need clearer positive statements of what Bitcoin is, why it is valuable, and why people should care.

Above, I put some effort into explaining those points (and more!) in simple, familiar terms that anybody can understand.  To all readers of this thread:  Please feel free to adapt my own arguments to your own discussions with other people, when you are trying to tell them about Bitcoin and it seems they just don’t understand.  Of course, it also helps to link to this post elsewhere, if you feel that others should read it.

We also need better organized efforts to get the word out.  That’s what I am working to achieve right here—at least, one small part.  A beginning.  We can work together to bring the Bitcoin social phenomenon to the next level of its development!

If you, dear reader, are a business shark who sneers at idealistic theories, then surely you will immediately understand the danger of consumer confusion from fraudulent dilution of Bitcoin’s brand.  It’s a practical danger, a danger to you.

If you are invested in Bitcoin, it pays for you to protect Bitcoin.

Re-read everything I said above—viewing it as a prospectus statement on Bitcoin’s fundamentals, and not a political or philosophical tract.  Bitcoin has solid fundamentals and an excellent long-term market prospect.  Like any investment, there are risks; one of Bitcoin’s risks is dilution and confusion from fork-attacks.

In cut-and-dry business terms, a savvy strategy is to invest in Bitcoin for its upside, while actively protecting it against that potential downside.  It’s in your best interest to be an active investor (and to some degree, an activist investor).  That way, you enjoy the growth potential of a unique socioeconomic phenomenon that cannot be duplicated—while actively minimizing your risks, instead of just passively questioning whether the risks are worthwhile.

Indeed, there are few opportunities in investing for actively minimizing your risks.  This should change your calculation of Bitcoin’s risk:  Part of that calculation is your own willingness to protect Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin is more than a technology:  Bitcoin is a social phenomenon.  And it is the first mass social movement in history that does not propose any opinion other than its own value.

People who disagree with each other about everything else, can agree about Bitcoin.  That is what gives Bitcoin its value:  Everybody wants Bitcoin, no matter what their opinions about anything else!  And that is what makes Bitcoin immune to financial censorship.  There are people from completely opposite ends of the political spectrum who came to Bitcoin, because big banks disliked them, closed their accounts, and shut them out of the fiat financial system.

It’s scary that banks can impose an unwritten law of their own, with no accountability and no appeal, just by closing people’s accounts.  Bitcoin stops that.

I have experience living without a bank account.  It’s very difficult:  You can’t use money normally, and you are shut out of many opportunities.  That can impoverish you, and it can keep you in poverty.  Bitcoin takes away the power of unaccountable corporations to shut down people’s lives on a whim, just because they don’t like them.

You may dislike me, you may disagree with me, you may condemn me—you may even decide that you hate me.  But we both agree that Bitcoin has value; and Bitcoin itself is absolutely unbiased between us.  This is what gives Bitcoin its power—and this is how Bitcoin empowers anybody who wants to use it.  If I decide that I hate you, we still agree on Bitcoin—and we can’t tell each other what to do with Bitcoin.

Bitcoin’s freedom attracted many people.  This gave Bitcoin some value; and in turn, Bitcoin’s value attracted more people, which gave Bitcoin even more value.  Thus, its value comes from its power as a social phenomenon, and not directly from the ingenious technology which enables that social phenomenon.

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The Bitcoin technology is easy to duplicate.  But the Bitcoin social movement cannot be duplicated.  It exists because everybody agrees on Bitcoin.  People all over the world, of every race and nationality, of every religion, of every political opinion, all agree on Bitcoin.  Their agreements or disagreements about anything else are irrelevant to Bitcoin.

That is why there is only one Bitcoin.

And that is why people who hate Bitcoin itself try to break it apart.  If there are many Bitcoins, then people don’t agree on Bitcoin anymore:  There is my Bitcoin, and there is your Bitcoin, and there is someone else’s Bitcoin.  That agreement I just described is broken up.  In the long term, if one Bitcoin splits into many Bitcoins, its value will not be divided up:  Its value will be zero, worthless.  Bitcoin has value because everybody agrees on Bitcoin.  If there are many Bitcoins, then none of them has value, because none of them has everybody’s agreement.

Fortunately, Bitcoin is resilient against this type of attack.  I can easily make my own fork of Bitcoin, and declare to the world that this is the new Bitcoin.  You will just laugh at me, and keep using Bitcoin.  It turns out that trying to break up everybody’s agreement is like trying to stop a moving train by stepping in front of it.  People who do that are deliberately excluding themselves from “everybody”.  Their pretend-“Bitcoins” just get crushed and left behind, as everybody keeps using Bitcoin.

That is why most pretend-“Bitcoin” forks quickly slide away into total irrelevance.  The only ones which hang on with a relatively minuscule market share are the ones backed by rich people who have lots of money to risk attempting to manipulate the market, and organized propaganda to scam people into believing that their pretend-“Bitcoin” is Bitcoin.

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It would be difficult to attack Bitcoin with wealth alone.  Bitcoin and its value are supported by too many people, rich and poor.  A rich market manipulator who backs a forked fake-“Bitcoin” may see some short-term gains, especially from pump-and-dump market manipulation.  But in the long term, he will probably lose lots of money:  His scam-coin is competing with Bitcoin, which is collectively backed by the economic resources of too many people all over the world, rich and poor alike.

But the scam becomes dangerous when the fake-“Bitcoin” is promoted with cunning propaganda to fool people into believing that it’s the real Bitcoin.

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Newbies and people who never used Bitcoin may wonder why Bitcoiners get angry about fake-“Bitcoin” forks.

Some of that anger is principled outrage.  There are people who deeply believe in Bitcoin’s principles of financial freedom.  Some of them have devoted to those principles their careers, their passions—they have devoted their lives to Bitcoin!  Of course, they will be angry when they see Bitcoin attacked by liars and scammers promoting fake-“Bitcoin”.

More broadly, many people are morally outraged when they see lies, scams, and identity theft.  Of course, people get angry at criminals.

But there is also another reason:  If you have any Bitcoin, whether you have 1000 BTC or only a few precious satoshis, then an attack on Bitcoin is an attack on your wallet.  You may or may not care about Bitcoin’s noble principles.  You will defend those principles, to defend the value of your money.

Part of the genius of Bitcoin is that it turns greed and selfishness toward the common good:  If you have Bitcoin, you want to protect your savings, so you must stand against people who try to devalue it.  Otherwise, you risk losing your savings.

Everybody who has Bitcoin, has an incentive to protect Bitcoin.  If you have Bitcoin, then you are making the world a better place when you defend the value of your own money.  You can’t avoid protecting Bitcoin, if you want to protect your own money.  And if you have Bitcoin, then an attack against Bitcoin is not only an attack against some idealistic theory:  It’s a financial attack on you, personally!  Of course, you should be angry about that.

Whether you are selfish or altruistic—whether or not you give a hoot about making the world a better place—I urge you to rally behind Bitcoin, and stand up against scammers who make fake-“Bitcoins”.  Do it for noble principles.  Or just do it to protect your own money.  If nothing else, it would be stupid of you to ignore scammers who are trying to trash the value of your money.  By standing together, we can stop them:  Expose their lies, shred their scam propaganda, and make sure that new market entrants and the general public know:  There is only one Bitcoin, your Bitcoin, which has value because it is everybody’s Bitcoin.

Thanks, Loyce!  Useful.


This raises two important points:

In my case, I only got through a fraction of the flags thus far.  If BSV raised an abusive flag against you, and I didn’t yet oppose it, it means nothing except that I could only do so much repetitive clicking in one bout.  Thanks to nutildah, psycodad, and SockyMcSockFace for having had the stamina to slog through the whole list!  I will continue opposing these a few at a time; and yes, I would in this rare case apply a script.

While I was opposing BSV flags, I saw many other inactive flags which are probably wrong, which occurred in my absence.  I say “probably wrong” because they are against people I’d be more or less inclined to trust, and/or were opposed by people I trust.  It was a distraction that I ultimately just ignored, because I would need to do at least a cursory investigation in each case to reach my independent conclusion.  I observe this to underscore what psycodad said, “I take my responsibility and right of supporting or opposing flags quite serious”.  If I just ignore an inactive flag against you, it means nothing about you.

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Sshh.  Don’t give him the hint.  Far from wanting to ban him, I wish there were a way to force him to stay here if he tries to run away.

Here, we have a home advantage insofar as, other than noisy, stupid BSV shills, everybody here knows that he’s a liar.  I think the best strategy is containment and examination.  Yes, it seems like a waste of time to deal with that mess; but unfortunately, we will need to spend much more time counteracting BSV anyway, on and off this forum.  It’s best to start here.  Also, restating another way what gmaxwell recently pointed out in another thread, it is also a benefit when BSV supporters speak up.

The principle of freedom of speech is often explained in terms of shining a light in dark places.  I want to shine a light on BSV, in the manner of a police interrogation lamp.  He is losing his cool and lashing out wildly.  I want to encourage him to stay here for as long as BSV is a problem in places other than this forum, i.e. as long as the BSV scam exists.  This is a much bigger issue than some forum drama.

(I also note, we seem to have perpetual drama anyway; it’s better to have drama about an important issue, so we can coalesce and redirect that energy into a bigger effort.)

As for any publicity being good publicity, this was recently discussed implicitly in another thread.  I thought so, which was why I ignored BSV (the whole scam, not just the user account).  I realized that I was wrong, so I stopped ignoring it.  The community needs to organize, pay attention to BSV, and go on the offensive.  You are questioning whether or not his antics here are helping him in the bigger picture.  I am suggesting that we make sure his antics everywhere backfire, starting here.


PR protip:  “Any publicity is good publicity” reaches its limits when you just made everybody see you as crazy.

Ridiculous, yes.  That’s the point:  Fit subject for ridicule.  Thus, “damaging their own credibility”.

’Tis the fool who loses his cool in a public dispute.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

Duh, SockFace, it was signed with the spend key for Genesis Block coinbase, as recently returned to Dr. Wright by the Tulip Trust—together with the keys for another 21 billion bitcoins, and the solid gold hamster wheel that Bitcoin’s grandmother used for exercise.  YOU DIDN’T DISPROVE IT!!  I, personally, am Original Bitcoin.

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I had intended to merit your post bringing this to my attention; but I was too busy just beginning to click oppose, oppose, oppose...  Please pass it on to someone else who makes a great post tearing up Faketoshi.

Flag 1194: Thank you, BSV, for showing how scared you are to have your scam exposed. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215743.0
Flag 1195: Thank you, BSV, for showing how scared you are to have your scam exposed. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215743.0
Flag 1196: Thank you, BSV, for showing how scared you are to have your scam exposed. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215743.0

This is revealing.  I am trying to figure out why each user was targeted.  Those marked as “defamators [sic]” must be the users with the most effective recent posts showing BSV’s scam for what it is.  (Well, the highly effective Bitcoin defenders not already flagged by BSV; check flagging history.)

The message is clear:  If you show the public a new angle on BSV’s scamminess, if you start a discussion that will lead to an organized community response to BSV, then you will be honoured by the public spectacle of BSV throwing a hissy fit at you.

I suggest to the Bitcoin community that if you care about Bitcoin, and if BSV has not yet abusively flagged you, then you should do something to deserve that prize.  I see that BSV has created many absurd retaliatory flags before; and I’m ashamed that it took me more than a whole week back on the forum to get one myself.  C’mon, folks, show us what you’ve got!

If BSV has flagged you, please tell me which of your posts you think probably hurt its poor little scammer feelings sufficiently to be the trigger.  I have some sMerit that I am currently saving for what I think are the best pro-Bitcoin posts (both in a positive sense of explaining why Bitcoin is great, and by protecting Bitcoin from lies).  I will trust BSV’s “endorsement” via a ridiculous flag as a mark of potential meritoriousness.

As for BSV’s accusation that I am a “defamator”, well, I only tell THE TRUTH as I have learned it from Dr. Wright!!!  And the truth is that Craig Wright’s mother is a hamster.  You did not disprove it.  Here is the PROOF, digitally signed by Satoshi Nakamoto himself in the presence of Gavin Andresen:


Now, go away, or I will taunt BSV into flagging me again.


Whether or not it is, I hope that BSV is not banned for this.  It’s a great way for BSV to make a laughingstock of itself (for the 2ⁿth time, with large n).  I choked on my coffee when I saw this post—seriously, it almost killed me with amusement.

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P.S., BSV’s trust-flag antics are funny; but BSV’s fraudulent attack on Bitcoin is not.  Thus I want to let you know, for those who may be wondering, I will indeed be replying further on the Project Anastasia discussion about Craig Wright being an identity thief.  My response there is only a bit slow, because I have been preparing something else I want to post and link there... and because I’m meanwhile trying to catch up on other projects I had thrown aside for the past few days to begin developing a larger strategic campaign to promote and protect Bitcoin and all it stands for.  This is only the beginning.  Watch for it!

Evidently, I can travel at the speed of light!  https://bitcointalk.org/myips.php tells me that within a quite short time span, that I have connected from:


Seriously, I suggest that by default (and without an option), the forum should automatically discard Tor IPs before the information even hits the “User IP logs”—or if needed, log access as “Tor Exit” without an IP address and city:

• The logging of exit IPs does not serve the intended purpose of assisting disposition of account recovery requests.  Indeed, to the contrary:  When handling account recovery, I think you must filter Tor exits anyway.  Otherwise, if a user had ever connected through Tor, an account thief may get lucky and connect through an IP geolocated in a city which the user had apparently connected from.  The probability is not negligible:  There are over a thousand Tor exits located all over the world, mostly in densely-populated urban areas; and a Tor user can easily jump around through dozens of them in a matter of hours.
• Although the logging of Tor exits seems to be not a big privacy concern, why keep around useless data that may be useful for unlikely attacks?  Is the risk to Tor users small?  Large?  Who cares?  The principle of “need-to-know” data minimization seems implicit throughout the forum’s “about privacy” page.  Keeping those IPs around just burdens to the forum and its administration with useless data that they don’t need, and probably therefore don’t want.
• For Tor users, the forum is mostly served through Cloudflare’s onions^* via Alt-Svc, with no client IP address.  I have instrumented my Tor daemon with connection-logging functionality that would probably scandalize Tor Project developers; thus, it has been easy for me to confirm that most of my hits on bitcointalk.org actually go to a group of v3 onions with names starting with “cflare”.  I only hit bitcointalk.org via an exit when Tor Browser’s knowledge of Alt-Svc is nonexistent or stale for whatever reason.  (Due to the way Alt-Svc works, a Tor user will always hit bitcointalk.org with an exit IP at least once at the start of a new browser session.)

It’s probably a relatively low priority for forum improvement; but if you anyway must exclude Tor exits when performing account recovery, the functionality is needed.  I suggest it’s better to do that at the source of data, and discard Tor IPs, rather than later, at the time of use.

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(* Of course, Cloudflare can still see all traffic sent through its own onions.  At least their auto-onion feature takes a big load off Tor exit capacity, a perennial bottleneck due to the difficulty and risks of running an exit; and the metadata (time and IP) for connections via an onion cannot be seen by network spies who may watch traffic from Tor exits.  In fairness, I will give them significant credit for doing a bit to help user privacy against adversaries who are not Cloudflare.  In my book, is an offset against their terrifically larger debit for MITMing TLS for what seems like half the web nowadays.  —  I have observed, entities have an interest in protecting people from everybody but themselves.  The NSA wans to pwn your crypto, but doesn’t want the Chinese to pwn your crypto.  Google wants your connections to Google to be secure, so that only they will be able to buttfork your privacy.  Facebook wants you to securely connect to Facebook (even through an onion!), so that you can privately destroy your privacy on Facebook.  I think that Cloudflare is absolutely sincere in their desire to protect users against everybody except Cloudflare.  Well, generally, intelligence data loses its value if others have it...)

This is an awesome discussion.  There are a few replies I want to make; and I am working on another topic that will be relevant to this one.  Meanwhile, I must address this timely:

hv_, I am deleting some (but not all) of your posts on this topic.

If you want to post a statement that “Craig Wright is Satoshi Nakamoto” cryptographically signed by one of Satoshi’s known keys, then please feel free.  I won’t delete it; indeed, I would be very interested to see that.

If you want to contradict my OP, try intelligently explaining why identity theft isn’t identity theft.  Thus far, your posts have been irrelevant to OP.

If you continue to support identity theft with proof-by-repetition of arrant nonsense that has been exhaustively debunked all over the Internet, then you are not being honest toward Satoshi; and you may thus continue to find that I am in a bad mood, as I warned in OP.

Don’t cry “censorship”.  It’s a big forum.  You can and do promote your agenda here; I can’t stop you from doing that, and I don’t want to, because I want for Craig Wright’s claims to be scrutinized so everybody can see what a liar he is.  I’ve thoughtfully archived your deleted posts so that people can see them, if they really want to.  But this thread was made to discuss an angle that I think nobody thought of before.  It’s a narrow topic.  I watched you post a few times to see if you would say anything interesting, or even relevant.  You didn’t.  At this point, your posts are tantamount to someone walking into a physics conference, and taking the podium to repeat a random list of Flat Earth arguments.

The best of which is this, which I found too funny to delete:


Proof by wishful thinking.  It’s a winner!

Yes, I, too, wish that the Earth was flat.  —Actually, no, I don’t.

Whyever would you want to discover that Satoshi Nakamoto is really a two-faced sleazy scammer with a bad history who is completely incompetent at cryptography?

If I saw that proved, I wouldn’t reject the proof based on my own wishful thinking.  It also wouldn’t affect my love of Bitcoin:  It is implicit in Bitcoin’s design that Satoshi made it to grow bigger than himself, to grow beyond his control, to be free for everybody.  Bitcoin has done that; and my opinion of Bitcoin itself would not be affected, if it turned out that Satoshi was a disgusting scumbag like Craig Wright.  But I would be disappointed!  I certainly do not wish for such a thing.

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I will also leave here some of hv_’s posts that people substantially replied to, if I think that deleting them would make the replies stand unfairly out of context.  I am acting now so that the same reason will not apply to others.

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Edit 2020-01-16:  Sent two more of hv_’s irrelevant and/or dishonest and insulting posts to /dev/null.  Archive of second page with both posts.  Time to empty the bitbucket.

eddie13, fork you!  You forking forker.  I simultaneously laughed aloud, and vomited a little bit in my mouth.

Please link to the Wright photo from which you got that face.  I want to use the same one, and take my own shot at this.  My mind’s eye envisions something to get the message across to people who deeply trust the police, embrace ubiquitous ID checks that “keep people safe”, yet also quote Orwell and brag about how lucky they are to not live in a police state like those nasty Easteurasians.  (I know plenty like that.  How?  Doublethink.)

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72 hours ago, I could and would have written that first sentence.


Two seconds of effort is too much to expect from the average person.  The “functioning mind” part is an assumption which, like Craig Wright’s Satoshihood, is backed by zero evidence and contradicted empirically.

If a supermajority—no, a bare majority—no, even a significant plurality of people had the will and ability to research facts and think for themselves...  If even that plurality cared about freedom...  Then, tyranny in any form would not exist in this world.  Now, take two seconds to look around you.

Contra popular delusions, the “consent of the governed” is not a political theory that must be imposed:  It is a natural reality that is unavoidable, even to the most ambitious of tyrants.  Regardless of iron-fisted tactics, any régime that lacks the consent of the governed will fall within a what is a relatively short span on historical timescales; and it will meanwhile suffer internal instability.  Vide the Soviet Union.  The mere existence of stable, tyrannical régimes that last through the course of generations is proof positive that those tyrannies has at least the tacit, passive consent of the governed.  Collectively, people do get the government that they deserve—much to the dismay of the few dissenters in their midst.

Limiting myself here to only a few issues:  All Western democratic régimes today have slave-level taxation, fiat monetary systems based on debt and inflation, mass surveillance, and all those other lovely features that Bitcoiners oft complain about.  I can summarize these issues in simple terms, in 5 minutes, to anybody who will listen—probably you can, too.  But few will listen, and fewer still will take the mental effort to understand.  (Never mind taking great personal risks, as is necessary to actually change anything.)  Thus do these “features” have the “consent of the governed”.

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I have observed that otherwise smart, freethinking people tend to fall into the nearly-universal trap of assuming that others are like them.  I here speak from experience.  Fully escaping that trap requires a level of detached objectivity that almost no one can achieve—perhaps one in ten thousand or fewer.

It’s obvious to you that Craig Wright is a liar, a scammer, etc., etc.  Now, step outside yourself.  Go beyond objectivity:  Get into the heads of millions of grinning idiots happily living on Facebook between obedient daily stints at wage-slavery, and subjectively evaluate the world from their perspectives.

You now have an IQ several standard deviations lower than your own, but that’s the least-important difference.  (IQ is important, generally.  But I know many high-IQ, highly-educated people who are slavishly devoted to the chains that bind them.)  You have a near-total lack of motivation to actually think, especially when your thoughts may reach unhappy conclusions—or worse, when you risk the cognitive dissonance that may result from questioning your pre-existing beliefs.  Happily for you (in the sense of ignorance being bliss), you have a habit of forming “opinions” by copying thoughts which feel like they have social approval.

Congratulations!  You just bought BSV, beaming with sophisticated excitement about how you are on the cutting edge of “cryptos”!  You also nodded your head autonomically, unconsciously, when you saw a TvFacebookYoutube talking face tell you that measures K, Y, and C are needed to protect you from drug-dealing child-pornographic terrorists using Bitcoin on the “darknet”.  Because, tax evasion.

At this juncture, one must descend from the ivory tower, and speak in short, simple, emotionally evocative sentences peppered with smileys—sandwiched between pictures that will melt your heart into a puddle of tears.

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gmaxwell’s above post struck me like a lightning bolt, because I did not evaluate it by looking at the world through my own eyes.  I stepped outside myself, then took a hard look at Craig Wright through the eyes of people who are not me.  People who are dumber, less reckful, more careless, and vastly more numerous than I am.

I thereupon concluded that the obvious clown show of BSV is an existential threat to Bitcoin, and to all that Bitcoin stands for.  It was not unlike that moment when you realize that the latest American war based on made-up non-facts is going to happen anyway with millions of people cheering, and somewhere in the world, safely hidden behind the TV screen, people who did nothing wrong are going to get blown to smithereens because of it.

Bitcoin and its community are adaptable to meet and counteract such threats.  But it will not happen if we ignore them.  I observe that in 2017, BCH and S2X failed to destroy Bitcoin through well-funded simultaneous attacks from multiple directions.  I further observe that in 2017, the Bitcoin community was not laughing and brushing it off—people were angry; they saw the threat.

If Chipmixer were interested in running such a service, I would be interested in implementing the code to turn Chipmixer into a Chaumian bank.  Trustless for privacy, though you must trust them to not steal your money (just as now).  I would use a protocol designed by cryptographers, not my own concoction; blinded signature schemes are hard to get right (plus there is some existing open-source code I may adapt).

I am not saying this off-the-cuff.  I have been toying with this for a few years; and it’s all meticulously planned, at least on paper.  (It may take me significant time to actually do all the necessary code).  I would ask for nothing upfront, but a percentage share of revenue from the blinded service; fair is fair, it’s a business, and it would be nice to actually make money improving privacy after the opportunity cost I paid by avoiding the global public ledger for years.  Risk to them is zero:  If I deliver nothing, or if they think my protocol is insecure, or if I write shitty code, then I get nothing.  Bonus:  I could be paid in blinded chips!

(I also picked a name, and worked out some excellent branding for a new, trustless mixer service.  I would be sad not to use it; but they already have an established, respected brand.  Well, maybe they would want it adapted to a new ad campaign...)

The reason why I never did it to run my own service is that I do not think I have the resources for that.  It is a high-threat business.  It also requires significant capital up-front, especially if you want an inventory of aged UTXOs to hand out.  Chipmixer has a demonstrated record.  They’ve been attacked, DDoSed, no doubt thoroughly scrutinized by those who hate privacy—they’re still there.  They can do it—and then, there would be no ongoing incentive for anybody to track me down and get rid of me.  If I were to drop dead, it would not take down the service; I like it that way.  (If they were to disappear, I could help somebody else duplicate the service; so it’s good for them, too.)

The blinded service would require code running on the client.  It is unavoidable:  The client needs to generate blinded tokens, unblind them, etc.  This in turn invokes other practical problems that I’ve spent a long time wrestling with.  I think it would work out best if they continued running the simple, easy, trusted no-Javascript service, but added the blinded service as another option.  I would design it so that clients (including robots) could use the blinded service through a JSON API, so people could even write their own clients for my protocol; but you know, 99% of people would just use the blob of code that automagically runs in the browser.

As an ancillary benefit, I think that the willingness to run a trustless service would strongly signal “not a honeypot”.  Of course, it would not prove it.  But it is quite doubtful that a honeypot operator would ever offer a blinded alternative!

I would strongly urge them to roll over their UTXO inventory to native Segwit (bech32), and use the same inventory for both services so they have a single, unpartitioned anonymity set (for any adversary except Chipmixer itself).  The next version would integrate Lightning.

FYI, by the way, segvan started as a trivial whimsy project to efficiently bulk-generate bech32 addresses with random private keys.  It still has that feature; it grew the vanity search code later.  The motive was my frustration with Chipmixer not doing Segwit—it made me feel better to bat out some code making bech32 “chips” at a speed limited by my /dev/random.  I watched the bech32 “chips” scroll up the screen in a blur, and wished that Chipmixer would do Segwit.  I’ve had my eye on Chipmixer for a long time.  I have always wanted to like them.

My PGP key is linked in my signature, in case Chipmixer is interested in taking “mixing reinvented for your privacy” to a new level!

---

(And no, I did not plan this when I started this thread.  A blinded mixer has been my secret dream for the past few years.  The above screenshot of a Stackexchange discussion is something I found while doing research for this—at which point, I had already been on-and-off planning it for a very long time.  I’ve spent endless hours working on the design details.  I did not intend to broach it publicly; to the contrary.  But when o_e_l_e_o mentioned the word “blinded”, I just cannot resist seizing the moment to maybe, just maybe see my dream come true via Chipmixer’s existing position as a well-known, well-advertised, widely-respected mixer...  Well, dice are a popular use of Bitcoin, alea iacta est.)

With due apologies for the double-post, I request guidance that should surely be useful to others:  What is the appropriate forum for creating threads about CW/BSV, for analysis and advocacy from a Bitcoin perspective?

Please don’t tell me to go to altcoins.  This is a Bitcoin issue, and I’m trying to protect Bitcoin.

Some of my intended discussion will go to the Ivory Tower, including some essays I’ve had simmering on the back burner for awhile (now adapted to deal with issues that I was ignoring).  I’m not asking about those—some things are just Ivory Tower issues.  And I already created a relevant topic in the forum which is the opposite of Ivory Tower.  (Note my use of a different writing style.  I even use smileys.)  I am looking for something in the middle:  A forum regularly watched by the types of people in this thread, but open to everybody, but with fewer shitposts and higher S/N than Bitcoin Discussion.

Where should we organize and advocate on this issue?  Perhaps I should propose the creation of a “Bitcoin Advocacy” forum; would those reading this thread support that idea?

---

My +20 to gmaxwell was not mere grandstanding.  Ignoring Craig Wright as a clown was catastrophically naïve on my part.  I see this now—now that I am actually reading BSV propaganda.

Craig Wright is not Craig Wright.  Somebody must be pulling his strings; read between the lines.  And the agenda being pushed is one that is backed by extraordinary intelligence, in multiple senses of that word.  —Also, backed by unlimited resources.  I now believe that Wright is only a tool, who will be discarded if BSV does not bring the desired results—meanwhile, of course, he can pocket as much money from this as he can grab, without fear of arrest or lawsuits.  If my theory is correct, as long as he serves his purpose, his handlers would not care about the money or what he does with it; they have bigger fish to fry.

(And at this point, I don’t think that Gavin was stupid:  I suspect that he was compromised.)

---

The draft of one of my not-yet-published essays opens with the observation that Bitcoin has a fatal flaw; and I continue with some personal discussion of why I’m not “Bitcoin rich”:  I spent years casually watching Bitcoin as an intellectual curiosity, whilst assiduously avoiding use of an append-only global public ledger—an idea which frankly horrified me.  (My proposed solution is Lightning.  By the way, observe who hates Lightning and the Layer-1 technologies that enable it.)  BSV agrees with me, after a fashion:


Orwellian word-twisting and imposter-claims aside, the quoted portion is correct:  Bitcoin, as originally designed, is an anti-privacy technology.  I saw that years ago.  That’s why I am poor.  I am not revealing non-public information by pointing out that “nullius” appeared on the Zcash project forum before appearing here.  The Zerocoin paper caught my attention in 2013, and I am too patient for my own good.  I am not advocating Zcash here—to the contrary!  Lightning makes “privacy coins” obsolete.

The biggest incentive that I can think of to keep Bitcoin’s design “set in stone” is to retain its anti-privacy characteristics.  BSV openly, explicitly declares that this is its agenda!  WAR IS PEACE.  FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.  FINANCIAL SURVEILLANCE IS PRIVACY.

Wake up, people!  This is not about Craig Wright.  This is much bigger than a scam to grab money (though Wright is no doubt enjoying that ancillary benefit for himself).  It is a strategy to impose KYC-GovCoin by the backdoor, with the explicit public approval of “Satoshi Nakamoto”.  Financial surveillance is “Satoshi’s Vision”.

[Edit:  Need a mass-appeal meme graphic with a creepy-looking photo of Craig Wright and some imagery suggestive of Nineteen Eighty-Four:  “Satoshi’s Vision:  ‘SATOSHI’ IS WATCHING YOU.”]

Now, please, let’s not discuss that here.  Instead, let’s figure out the right forum for new topics about these issues; and I will take it up there.

Please ban newbie #2630177 “romiio0”.

Is this tactic new, or have others seen it before?  Sneaky spammer, hiding spamvertized URL in plagiarized text.  I have here broken up the BBcode and URLs, but otherwise quoted the whole post without modification.  The source of text is below.  Note:  The discussion took off, and is already on page 2.  (Do you nuke the thread, or just OP?  Edit:  What about posts innocently quoting OP with hidden spamvertized URLs?)

https://web.archive.org/web/20200106024855/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5214972.0

(Note to self:  Suggest a filter to flag likely attempts to hide text for moderator review.)

I had already reported the user for one nonsensical shitpost when I noticed likely plagiarism.  Here is the user’s full list of posts before I reported:
https://web.archive.org/web/20200106024112/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2630177;sa=showPosts
(From experience, for exactly this reason, I habitually snapshot the post histories of low-post-count newbies before reporting.)

The user variously claims the names “makotosagame”, “Bruno mars”, “Meyou Shesagame”, “Timberlake”, and “Jhon nathan”, in posts that are either totally nonsensical or likely plagiarized.

A search for the source of the text immediately found this, apparently from 21 October, 2019:

https://web.archive.org/web/20191105051519/https://medium.com/@official_83664/what-happens-if-china-bans-bitcoin-mining-7f0dfa276ded


Given the following evidence, I stopped searching right there, and did not seek further to affirmatively verify original authorship:

• The pasted text is peppered with hidden spamvertized URLs.
• The writing style of the pasted text totally mismatches all other evidence of the user’s writing ability.

Interesting replies!  Before I respond, I have a few further thoughts inspired by an argument not seen in this thread:

Al Capone was a gangster and a murderer.  He was never convicted of these crimes.  But that’s what he was!

I like to call a spade a spade.  Now, what does an identity thief ordinarily do?  He steals your identity so that he can open a credit card using your name, your ID number, your credit history—your reputation.  Thus, he scams the credit card company by pretending to be you.

Craig Wright is not only stealing a name:  He is stealing the reputation that goes with it.  He is stealing Satoshi’s fame, Satoshi’s credibility—he is stealing Satoshi’s legend!  He is using that reputation, Satoshi’s public “credit score”, to run the massive scam called “Bitcoin SV”.  If that is not identity theft, then what is?

I want to make people think about what Craig Wright is really doing:  The exact same thing as an ordinary identity thief, but blown up to be literally millions of time larger.  If the ordinary identity thief may scam out a few thousand dollars, Craig Wright is stealing a famous identity to try to wreck the Bitcoin market worth over a hundred billion dollars, and redirect that wealth into his own scamcoin project so that he can reap the profits.

(I also want to help provide other Bitcoiners with talking points that they can use in other debates, to point out the real nature of Craig Wright’s scam.  Please help me get the word out!)

---

The identities of some creative geniuses are never discovered.  In academic scholarship, they are often referred to by the word “Anonymous” with the name of the city they are believed to have lived in:  For a fictional example, “Anonymous Alexandria” may be an ancient poet or philosopher who is believed to have lived in Alexandria.

Most such persons never gave named themselves, and are not famous with the public.  Satoshi Nakamoto gave himself a name, and thus gave the history books a name for him.  We don’t know where he lived, or much of anything else not revealed in his code and his forum posts.  Unless unexpected evidence is discovered someday, it may remain that way forever.  Historians in the year 10,000 may write Ph.D. theses and academic papers examining the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto!

---

Thanks!  I’m glad to be back.


I thought so, too.  That is why before now, I have avoided all BSV-related discussions:  I didn’t want to feed the troll.  Then, I realized that I was wrong!  This persuaded me:

---

When I returned to the forum after a 20-month absence, I appreciated that some people demanded a PGP-signed statement that I am really nullius.  In the crypto-world, it’s the way to stay safe against identity thieves!

In Satoshi’s case, I think the proof of his identity would require more evidence:  It would be necessary but not sufficient that he provide a cryptographically signed proof.  It is unlikely, but possible that someone may have stolen Satoshi’s private keys.

The signed statement is the baseline, the first evidence to demand; without that, yes, “everything else bunkum, hot air, waffle”.  It would then be necessary to evaluate whether the claimant had the same level of cryptographic knowledge as Satoshi did, the same writing style, etc.  Given the amount of money that a scammer could steal by stealing Satoshi’s identity, we would need to be sure!

Craig Wright has not even provided the most basic evidence.  Of course, that’s why everybody who is knowledgeable about crypto immediately rejects his claims.  The danger is that he can fool newbies, and he can destabilize the market by making his claims to people who never used Bitcoin at all, and he can do other damage by telling his lies to the public.

That’s why the public must be told that Craig Wright is an identity thief who has stolen the identity of Bitcoin’s founder.  Words are powerful.  People know what “identity theft” is, so they will immediately get the right idea—instead of falling down into a complicated crypto discussion involving topics that are unfamiliar to them.

---

Good point.  And if Satoshi is still alive, that is really a matter of his safety, too.  If he still had any ongoing public exposure, can you imagine the money and effort that criminal gangs and repressive régimes would use to try to find him?


Replete with top-down ordered “irregular state changes”, of course. That permanently killed Ethereum’s credibility, in my view.

---

This is a princess named Anastasia, officially styled Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, the youngest daughter of the last Russian Czar, photographed c. 1910:


On 17 July 1918, Communists murdered Anastasia together with her parents and siblings.  Anastasia was only 17 years old.  Her and her family’s bodies were mutilated to impede identification, and hidden so well that the remains were only finally discovered in 1991 and 2007, in two different places.

False rumours circulated, claiming that Anastasia had survived and escaped.  It is scientifically certain that those rumours were false:  DNA testing has accounted for all of the missing bodies.  Anastasia died in 1918.

In the 1920s through 1990s, multiple different imposters claimed to be Anastasia.  The imposters persuaded many people to believe their lies.  The most famous imposter, who had a long history of mental illness, even convinced one of Anastasia’s living relatives that she was the real Anastasia.  I will not hereby repeat the whole story; it is irrelevant, and embarrassing to the family.

These imposters were identity thieves.  They stole the identity of a famous person who had disappeared.  They did it for fame, or to try to swindle money from Anastasia’s wealthy relatives, or because they were crazy—or all of the above.  What they did was wrong; and it was hurtful to people who cared about Anastasia.

---

The identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous founder has been stolen by an imposter.

Craig Wright is an identity thief:  He claims the name and reputation of someone who is not him.  His claims are so absurd, there is only one reason why anybody would believe:  Only an extreme liar would dare to make such absurd claims!  Most people see him for what he is:  An extreme liar.

He is not the first to claim to be Satoshi Nakamoto, only the most brazen.  And he will not be the last.  Mark my words!  There is a big incentive for criminal imposters to pretend to be Satoshi Nakamoto.  During the Twentieth Century, people eventually came to shrug when they heard about another Anastasia imposter.  I expect that for about the next 50–70 years, as Bitcoin grows in value and popularity, people will come to react similarly to another Satoshi imposter.

But that is no reason to ignore the imposters!

Identity theft is wrong.  It is fraudulent, and it’s a crime.  In the case of theft of a famous identity, the imposture can hurt many people.  It must be stopped.

I hereby call on Bitcoiners to unite in opposition to identity theft.  Call it out when you see it.  Call it what it is, identity theft.  Never ignore it!  Stand up to it, whether the theft is big or small.  And if the identity thief is trying to hijack a famous identity so as to scam lots of people for lots of money, make sure that everybody knows this is identity theft on a grand scale.

Do it because it’s right.  Do it to protect Bitcoin.  And do it in memory of Anastasia, an innocent victim of famous identity theft for seven decades after she was already dead.

---

Moderation note:  Posts in this thread may be deleted according to my mood.  And I am in a bad mood.  Please be kind to Anastasia, and honest toward Satoshi.  Thank you.

Sigspam and posts that quote the whole OP will be deleted.

[Quick edit:  Please see topic here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5215128.0

That was motivated by what I took to be gmaxwell’s suggestion of some better community organizing.  I made some good talking points:  A new angle that will resonate with people, written up in short, easy-English sentences (not like this post).  A simple logical argument, wrapped up in thick layers of emotional appeal delivered with visual impact (as I say in this post, below).  That is my strength, but I know my weakness:  I am not good at spreading the word far and wide.  Please help spread the word, for Anastasia and for Satoshi!]

---

Not oft does an Internet forum post instantly persuade me on a very deep level that I was dangerously wrong on an issue about which I had a strong opinion.  That happened here.

Since I found gmaxwell’s post, I have spent much of the past two days examining and rethinking this issue.  WIP.  At logically divergent points, this post will express my intentions for related future work in /* C-style comments */.

The following is primarily addressed to the people who have already posted in this thread.  It is long, complicated, and also, not as well-organized as I would like /* WIP */.  It is not the style that I would use in arguing with BSV shills, for reasons that you will see presently.


BSV happened when I was gone.  For the past few days, I have noticed the spew of Craig Wright/BSV threads; and I have been deliberately ignoring them.  I think it may help others if I introspectively analyze why (though I will sharply limit the analysis at certain points, to avoid giving tips to BSV shills).  A key point is an essential difference between BCH propaganda and BSV propaganda.

A few years ago, much of the most popularly repeated BCH propaganda was based on half-truths.  We are taught as children that the most dangerous lie is a half-truth, for the untrue half is the poison made plausible by the true half.  This is peculiarly effective when the true part is an oversimplified fact ripped out of context, and the false part cannot be understood without significant technical knowledge.  And much of the other BCH propaganda was based on twisting the semantics of technical jargon; when evaluating such propaganda or arguing against it, even an expert can be tripped up if he is not sufficiently careful, almost obsessively careful with the precise meanings of words.

E.g.:  “Anyone can spend” (true: name of an opcode; false: misrepresenting how validation actually works on the P2P network).  “Removes signatures” (true: signatures are removed from the part of the transaction hashed for the txid; false: signatures are removed entirely—actually, they are just moved to the witness data—and there is here another compound half-truth that I will omit for brevity).  Characterizing Segwit as a type of extension block or block extension (blurring of concepts, and semantic confusion of unrelated concepts).

Such lies are subtle.  They alarm intelligent people who fully understand them, because they look like the types of lies that could fool intelligent non-experts.^*  By comparison, BSV/Faketoshi yelling looks stupid and clownish.  Yes, you are Satoshi—and I’m the Queen of England!  For evidence-minded people, wildly implausible claims based on zero evidence are much easier to dismiss than plausible, subtly false claims.  And Craig Wright’s claims are so implausible that when Gavin bought them on the basis of obviously fake “evidence” (or at least said he did, for whatever motive), the substantial result was not only to instantly destroy Gavin’s credibility, but to make of him a laughingstock.

(* Incidentally, I understand Segwit much better because the Btash propaganda inadvertently pushed me to study it.  The Btashers confused me, and I thought that maybe they were right.  I wanted to know the truth!  So I did the logical thing, and studied what Segwit actually does.  After many hours of examining both primary sources (BIP 141, source code) and secondary sources (long Internet arguments—including in /r/btc, not only Core-friendly venues), I concluded that Segwit is awesome, Pieter Wuille is a genius, and Bcashers are liars.  Here’s to freedom of speech and independence of opinion!)

Since that time, ignoring Craig Wright has become a habit.  And that habit is reinforced when one notices that all he seems to have in his favour is a knack for getting attention.  Attention, surely, is the last thing that any sane person wants to give him.  Indeed, I cursed under my breath when I saw intelligent, respectable people arguing in BSV threads:  Why are you feeding into that?  It is beneath contempt!  Naturally, my such reactions strictly deterred me from getting involved.  I would not want anybody to question my motives for bumping BSV shill threads; and I would no more waste my time with “Craig Wright is Satoshi!!11” claims than argue in the notorious Flat Earth megathread.

Observe that I am not one to be shy of controversy.  I did not avoid BSV threads from a desire to avoid “drama”.  I simply saw it as pointless, unimportant drama that could only gain importance if I deigned to notice it.  That was an egregious error in judgment.

Whereas BSV propaganda is actually more effective than Bcash propaganda, because contra what you were told as a child, a half-truth isn’t the worst lie:  A Big Lie is.^*  For those not inclined to cool, objective examination of evidence, a wildly implausible claim is more plausible, because it is wildly implausible:  If it’s wildly implausible, then nobody would dare to fabricate it, so it must be true—Q.E.D.  As an implicit feeling and not an explicit process of ratiocination, that is just how human psychology works:  Extraordinary claims are their own evidence.

(* Before anyone calls Godwin on me:  Godwin is hereby inapplicable, because in fact, Hitler didn’t actually advocate using the Big Lie; he accused a Jewish conspiracy of using the Big Lie, which he condemned in no uncertain terms.  My discussion of an age-old flaw in human nature is not relevant to irrelevant history.  Anyway, I would not do the gross injustice of equating BSV shills to Hitler.)

Worse, calling out a Big Lie for what it is can backfire:  You thereby underscore the point that a statement would be so outrageous if untrue, nobody would dare to lie about it.  And logical argumentation will not work, because the essential “argument” is emotional.  E.g., if you state your own standard:  “I would believe a Satoshi claimant who met criteria, A, B, and C; Craig Wright meets none of those criteria,” it won’t help.  It won’t help, because Satoshi says so!  (Does that not make sense?  None of this makes sense:  Human nature is insensible.)

Moreover, BSV manages emotional appeal in subtle ways that the typical nerd totally fails to comprehend.  For example, look at this post.  The headline content, the primary content, the only real content is photographic.  No meticulously footnoted statements of verifiable facts:  A visual.  Craig Wright is presented looking movie-handsome (most people have low standards), strong, confident.  He is wearing a suit (not very well, but hoi polloi don’t know the difference).  He is holding a purported “diploma”, i.e. an appeal to authority.  And he is surrounded by a retinue of suit-wearing men, i.e. social proof.  (Hoi polloi are not sufficiently insightful to read the vulture-faces.)

I think that many readers are now sneering at me—no really, that is what is important!  If you’re sneering at me over what I just said, it means that you do not understand how propaganda works in real life.  And if you think this discussion is beneath your principles, then you are effectively renouncing the world to the Craig Wrights of the world so that you can live in an idealistic fantasy.

(It is at this juncture that I hope the Winklevi are real Bitcoiners in their hearts of hearts.  They look a thousand times sharper than Craig Wright:  To the 1% who can tell the difference, they wear their suits like rich men, not like dolled-up rubes running a scam.)

Craig Wright looks like a leader (to those whose idea of “leadership” is informed by the mass-media and modern-day democratic political systems).  But that is not the biggest issue.  Until gmaxwell’s post made me revisit the issue, I did not realize what Craig Wright had done.

He has assumed the name of Satoshi, and thus given Satoshi a face.  A human face is important; consider why Facebook now has 2×10^9 users.  Nature abhors a vacuum.  Against that, Bitcoin has a mysterious, quasi-mystical ghost called Satoshi, some anonymous cypherpunks, facts, logic, coding skills, and a bunch of nerds who probably don’t wear sharp suits.

The human need for a human face is present even in most Bitcoiners who would never fall for Faketoshi.  Vide the continued use of Dorian Nakamoto’s image, mostly by people who openly state that Dorian is not Satoshi.  That was always a mistake (plus just being wrong).  It does illustrate the power of the terrible vacuum left by a faceless founder.

In brief, the foregoing discussion suggests the following actions:

• Add emotional appeal.  Don’t give up on logical, factual arguments (though you may sometimes need to simplify them, to avoid losing the audience).  Add appeals to emotion in your arguments.  If that feels dirty to you, then I am very sorry:  In real life, you need to deal with human psychology.
• Non-anonymous Bitcoiners should refine their human image.  If your photo is already available online, then you have nothing to lose by making yourself look good.  Not what you think looks good, but good according to the social conventions of people who are impressed by Craig Wright’s suit.  If you have naturally photogenic qualities (as judged by usefulness to a good cause, not by your ego), then get a professional haircuit (long or short—get it neatened), get a pro-quality photo of yourself wearing a good suit, and use that as your profile photo or avatar on Github, on Gravatar, and on this forum.  If you lack those qualities, then don’t:  Play to your own strengths, and avoid your own weaknesses.  (And if your feelings are hurt by my suggestions, none of this post is for you.)
• /* XXX TODO:  Create and link here a topic expanding on what Bitcoiners can do as a counterstroke against the emotionally-evocative, image-oriented aspects of BSV propaganda. */

Quote from: gmaxwell on January 03, 2020, 04:48:41 PM

In the future we're going to see more crap like him threatening any business that accepts Bitcoin with patent litigation, to which the common response will be "damn, this bitcoin stuff isn't worth the trouble" from most parties who's business isn't primarily about Bitcoin.  How could you expect otherwise when your response to wright is "damn, this wright stuff isn't worth the trouble"?

This is extremely worrisome, and I was insufficiently aware of the issue due to ignoring Craig Wright.  A typical business owner will avoid like plague anything whatsoever that has hanging over it the clouds of IP litigation that could destroy the business.

Compare:  BSD Unix was treated as radioactive by businesses due IP litigation and threats thereof, at just the time when Linus first released Linux.  By the time the lawsuit was over, it was too late:  Linux took over the world.  (The principal differences being that Linus had nothing to do with the lawsuit; it was just a coincidence.... and that was copyright; patent suits are even worse, i.e. more catastrophically expensive.)

Counteracting that type of threat will require a well-financed, organized response by non-anonymous parties who have excellent lawyers.  Here is one immediate idea for the forum:  Document prior art that can be used by lawyers to attack the patents directly, wrecking the patent troll’s whole business model.  It worked for Cloudflare (and regardless of my general opinion of Cloudflare, it does not alter the point that they, non-cypherpunks with their non-cypherpunk lawyers, deployed an innovative strategy against a patent troll).  If someone is already doing that, I duly apologize for having been sleeping on a mountaintop in a circle of fire for the past twenty months; please drop me a link.  Any other practical ideas?

---

Quote from: gmaxwell on January 03, 2020, 04:48:41 PM

It isn't always a question of people believing him outright, often its falling for one of his lesser lies like the claim that he's an "og bitcoin investor" or that kleiman had something to do with Bitcoin's creation.

The ancient principle that “falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus” needs a signature ad (q.v.).

---

Quote from: gmaxwell on January 03, 2020, 04:48:41 PM

If someone broke into your house and was stealing stuff-- you wouldn't just say 'that thief doesn't deserve our attention' and ignore them.  We shouldn't hesitate to defend Bitcoin and the community surrounding it.

The analogy is inadmissible:  You wouldn’t debate the thief—especially not if he started by announcing that it is his house and his stuff, and you are the thief violating his “vision” of what he wants done with his stuff.  You would not dignify that with a verbal reply!  Instead, you would reply with violent force—either directly, or by proxy with recourse to the State (“call the cops”).

In theory, this is the proper use of IP laws.  If you invent an innovative technology and you name it “Bitcoin”, then you patent any patentable methods used by your invention, enforce a trademark over the good name of Bitcoin®, and claim copyright over the source code.  The State promises to enforce your monopolies on these things.  Their ultimate means of enforcement is that they can and will kick doors down.  Usually in IP lawsuits, it does not get that far, because people obey court orders to avoid getting their doors kicked down.

Perhaps the analogy is sound after all!  The problem is that we are living in a house that has no defence against thieves, other than for us to say, “Please let us explain in logical terms why the thief is wrong.”  And the thief can even steal the identity of the house’s founder.  (Action tip:  Refer to “identity thief Craig Wright” and his identity theft, because that is exactly what it is by definition—and “identity theft” is a hot buzzword with emotional appeal.)

Satoshi did it the cypherpunk way.  IP laws are neither enforceable against strongly anonymous parties, nor enforceable by strongly anonymous parties.  “Cypherpunks write code”, then release it from behind Tor whilst ignoring the State.  That is what Satoshi did; and as a result, Bitcoin never even had an identifiable owner to enforce a trademark protecting the good name of Bitcoin (never mind other types of IP).

That was by design; and that design has benefits that I should not need to explain to the readers in this thread.  But the design has tradeoffs; there is also a cost.  For comparison, there is a reason why, e.g., Linus Torvalds has consistently claimed and been prepared to defend his trademark on the name Linux.  If Craig Wright pulled the same shenanigans against Linux, then Linus could and would sue hell out of him.

At this juncture, I must raise another issue.  Although it is NOT the legally applicable standard to Bitcoin (Satoshi used the MIT License), the spirit of the CPL reflects the type of thinking that left Satoshi’s identity open to theft:

Quote from: cypherpunks

Interpretation

The user can redistribute the work or a derived or modified work

• under a different license of their choosing
• with or without source code as they choose
• without acknowledging the distributors or authors
• with false or innaccurate claims about authorship of the work
• advertise without acknowledging the authors

This is an issue that has long bothered me, and left me wondering if I am the only one in the world to notice it.  By coincidence, I recently touched on this in another thread—without elaboration, but with an intent to explain further in an appropriate context:

Quote from: nullius on January 01, 2020, 10:29:38 PM

Unlike copyright law violations, plagiarism is truly the theft of ideas.  It is singularly the most reprehensible wrong that can be committed within the realm of the intellect; and it is inherently fraudulent, an intellectual scam by definition.

/* XXX TODO:  Publish and link here an essay concisely explaining the total difference in concepts between copyright and plagiarism, and how this confusion, promulgated by the copyright lobby, has been made worse by both GPL and the Creative Commons.  Disclosure:  I am opposed to all current copyright laws.  (And the question of whether an ideal copyright law enforced by unicorns and faeries could be morally justified is mental masturbation, when all current copyright laws are corrupt beyond repair.) */

Overall, we need a better way:  A way for anonymous parties to interface with the State via non-anonymous parties.  /* XXX TODO:  Create and link here a topic about this. */  Meanwhile, we are left with this:

Quote

Now-- if you want to argue that various threads aren't very effective and that the community could do better?  I couldn't agree more.

/* XXX TODO:  Discuss further within the scope of this thread; and create and link other topics expanding that scope, including:

• An essay on Lightning Network and radically rethinking the future of Bitcoin.  I began working on this a few weeks ago; I intended to finish and publish it today (2020-01-05), but put it aside to examine the BSV issue.  This can be pivoted and adapted in a positive way to integrate with a counterstoke against BSV.  Don’t worry:  When I say “radically rethinking”, I mean that I am an extremist for the principles more moderately espoused by the most well-known Core and LN developers.
• The already-intended sequel to the preceding item:  An essay on rebranding Bitcoin in the Lightning era.  Same relevance here.  I list strengthening the positive message before I get to the negative, on the principle that you should always define yourself by what you are for before you say what you are against.
• More coherent analysis of Craig Wright, and how to tear down his sham.  First, I need to catch up on what he’s been doing for the past two years.

*/