It's semantic pedantry but it's still fact. Private information is your name, address, social security number, or whatever you don't want everyone to know. Secret information is a level higher than that. People will kill each other to protect secret information because the level of seriousness is higher.

Usually when you have networks of people in authority keeping secrets you have corruption of whatever that institution is. That is because you cannot vet anyone without a background check and you cannot trust anyone who has secrets. If a human being is in a position of authority then secrecy is risk.

While we don't need to know exactly what was transacted it's a good thing that we can see the movement of money. If a lot of people give money to a particular address that is something which should be known to anyone. We don't have to know who they all are to know that.

Personal information is your identity. Public information is a lot of people who use Bitcoins like to buy books. Private information is the particular books that you chose to buy. If you don't want the world to see what you chose to buy then you need pseudo-anonymity to mask your email address, personal information, etc. It is still important for a society to know that certain books are popular without knowing which individuals are buying the books.

No they are not logical opposites. Secrecy is the opposite of transparency. Privacy is not the same as secrecy.

Transactions should be private but not secret. If an investigation takes place it should be possible to follow a money trail. If there is secrecy in a system such as then then the secret money would have to show up somewhere.

So if politicians start dressing nice and driving in brand new cars, living beyond their means, then of course it's reasonable to consider the possibility that they could be taking a bribe. If you were a journalist trying to uncover all this then secrecy wouldn't help you. If information is private but not secret then it can be uncovered if you interview the right people or ask the right questions, but as a considerable enough cost that it couldn't be a situation where everyone is investigated by a machine.

At the same time most of us don't want to be associated with corrupt social networks, but that has nothing to do with fungibility. If Bitcoin is not fungible then you have dirty and clean Bitcoins and that cannot work. If Bitcoin is fungible then it means we don't have to care where our Bitcoins come from and this is a necessary requirement for Bitcoin.

All of these sorts of reactions only will make the situation worse. Darkwallet is not a solution, it's a patch.
We have a legitimate requirement for transparency and the ability to investigate the blockchain.

Whether it's journalists trying to uncover corruption, or law enforcement, or members of a community trying to determine whether or not to vote for certain politicians. If we do not focus on solving the problem of institutional corruption then Darkwallet will be used by the corrupt institutions to maintain their corruption.

The same technology you build for anonymity to be used by you could also be used by the people in power to control you through corrupting your community with bribes and other tactics. So no I don't think Darkwallet will fix anything. It does produce greater privacy but it also removes the ability to follow the money trail which enables and helps the corrupt individuals already in power.

If a law enforcement officer is corrupt and taking bribes behind the scenes I'm sure Darkwallet will be what they'd use. We need the ability to apply sousveillance to follow the money trail to the corrupt police officer so I'm on the side of transparency.

But I'm also on the side of privacy. I don't think every coin should be subject to scrutiny. I don't think every transaction should be carefully analyzed by law enforcement to determine whether or not a crime took place. The reason is that if you allow that then whoever has enough power to hire private investigators can simply watch their political enemies until they commit a crime and then the private investigator can pass the evidence to law enforcement.

So we must care about privacy to protect the community from fishing expeditions but we also have to care about transparency to protect the community from institutionalized corruption, hackers, scams, etc. We need a balanced approach which attempts to solve the problem while upholding both of these critical ideals.

Darkwallet is good for hackers, for corrupt politicians, cops, and perhaps some paranoid individuals, but it can also be abused if taken too far. Balance is necessary.

I agree with a lot of what you have to say but how can we have transparency with privacy?

For instance if I want to claim my transactions under a pseudo-nym as being transactions I have made then this would be possible with a digital signature and public key. It is also possible that I could have that digital signature verified by Coinbase. My personal identifiable information does not need to be shared with anyone other than Coinbase and then Coinbase could verify me and all of my transactions would be connected to a real world identity. My public key could be uploaded to a decentralized blockchain/database along with a verified digital signature.

I don't really like the idea of tainting coins but no one is offering a better alternative either. So what is an alternative idea which does not involve tainting coins which can preserve privacy, pseudo-anonymity and fungibility while also removing bank secrecy and providing transparency?

I think in order to have democracy we cannot have bank secrecy and must have transparency. In order to combat institutionalized corruption we must have the ability to follow the money trail and this means transparency. So I don't want to remove the ability of the community to use the tactic of sousveillance to investigate itself and I do not want to remove the ability of law enforcement to investigate (with the cooperation of the global Bitcoin community).

I want the ability to be able to claim my transactions under a pseudo-anonymous but verified identity so that I can be cleared if there is an investigation. Is it possible to do this?

This isn't just about politics. Bitcoin never was inherently fungible on a technical level. That much has always been true. I'm not sure it was designed to be fungible either but that is up for debate. The fact is that it was always possible to trace transactions and these ideas being presented would make it more possible.

The debate should be about the pros and cons of different solutions to a real problem. Extortion, scams, and corruption are real problems that we all have to deal with as a community. We can disagree on crime because not everyone agrees that Silk road should be illegal but there are some things that the community does agree on and has no tolerance for.

Scams for example which rob people of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoins. Trojans which hack peoples coins from their wallets. All these sorts of attacks hurt the Bitcoin economy and Bitcoin community as a whole.

So if you do not like Mike Hearns solution then you should offer a better solution which does a better job preserving privacy. Just trying to remove Mike Hearn from power isn't going to solve the real problems which he highlighted. If tainting coins isn't the solution to the problem then we need to come up with a more creative and free solution. A solution has to be presented by both sides of the debate though.

You cannot have one side which is pro extortion, pro hacking, pro corruption and expect that side to be taken seriously. So if both sides are actually against all that then both sides have to come up with solutions to protect the community from that. Mike Hearn has a point with Cryptolocker and no one is presenting solutions to dealing with it. If Bitcoins are worth $1,000,000 a coin then every single computer will be hacked for even a small amount of Bitcoins.


Is there an alternative solution to dealing with these problems which do not involve a taint list?

To a certain extent you're right we do have that today and I'm not pushing for big changes to what we have.

My opinion is that we should try our best to preserve the privacy and pseudo-anonymity that we have. We should also be trying to improve transparency and the ability to track the movement of money. The technical problem is how to adopt a balanced approach which can preserve or improve privacy while also giving investigators the tools they need to investigate and expose institutional corruption. I do not think its acceptable if we are asked to sacrifice one for the other. Our solutions should try to improve both privacy and transparency at the same time and I think it is possible.

If you move away from user registrations with passwords, names and addresses in account information and move toward digital signatures for example then there is no central database to hack. If you rely on a public key infrastructure then anyone who has your public key can ask you whatever they need to ask you in order to clear you from the investigation. If Coinbase has your public key and already knows your real name and bank information then you should be cleared. All you should have to do is give your public key to the operator and now the operator verifies that key is associated with Coinbase. If the Operator wants to communicate with you then it's encrypted by that public key and the communications can take place in a decentralized manner.

The operators should be limited in what they can access and in their power. The privacy of the user should be considered as important as transparency and the ability to investigate crime. I don't want to prevent authorities from investigating extortion or any of these crimes which could happen to any of us or people we care about. I just would like the ability to clear myself instantly without having to give out any personal identity information.

A digital signature can be pseudo-anonymous but be recognized as being owned by a verified user of Coinbase.
So I think that approach is the way to go. As far as trying to track every coin, these ideas need more thought and debate. There are pros and cons to everything and we must make sure that we don't lose anything essential in terms of privacy.

There has to be a balance between privacy and transparency.

We should want the ability to follow the money trail if necessary while also having the ability to remain pseudo-anonymous.

I think the size of transactions and the amount of money should matter. I think the implementation is everything with a system like this. When Mike Hearn says contact an operator there are a lot of unknowns.

Can it be pseudo-anonymous? I believe it must be.

Why can't I simply tag my transactions as belonging to me using my public key. Basically it should say "these addresses and transactions belong to me and are not associated with your investigation".

And then "my public key has been verified by these businesses".

I should not have to give the operator my identity. I should be able to remain pseudo anonymous with the operator. People who I bought coins from should know my identity and my public key. That public key should allow me to claim which businesses or organizations have my identity without giving my identity to that operator.

The main concern here is access control. The operator should not be able to access any information about the user other than a public key. That public key should be verified as being on the whitelist or not. For instance if that user purchased his coins from Coinbase and then marked his own purchases with his identity using his public key then merely by sharing that public key the operator could verify that the coins were indeed bought by a verified user of Coinbase.

The operator does not have to know Bob's address or personal identity information. The operator does not have any purpose other than to check to see that the public key is verified. Coinbase already has the identity on file and all the public key would do is show the operator that Coinbase has the identity. I think this would be voluntary, decentralized, and have some privacy benefits because it could preserve pseudo-anonymity.

The user could at any time change their public key as well. It is necessary to be able to follow the money trail because without that you cannot have democracy or investigate institutional corruption. We do not have to reduce privacy in order to preserve democracy. Privacy and democracy are ideals we should fight for. Democracy requires transparency.

And once again why centralize the database around an LLC when a non profit or decentralized method could do the same thing? A wiki can be edited which is a good thing because we don't all agree on which addresses belong on the black list but we probably mostly agree about which addresses belong on the white list. Once again none of this matters for addresses.

Public keys do matter and I would love to have a database of public keys which I can access to know I'm dealing with a legit company and not a scam. I endorse at least that part if that is actually what they plan to implement but based on what is on their site we don't even know what they plan to do. They are vague about it and that is why people are reacting like this. You cannot be vague when you're talking about putting the mark on peoples money. And if that isn't what they plan to do then they need to give an interview or post on this forum for debate.


The problem is we don't know what they are planning because their plans are public enough. There will always be crime and ways to beat the system but that is not what I'm concerned about. I'm concerned about democracy more than I am about crime and people beating the system. If you don't have the ability to follow the money then you cannot have a democracy for long.

Democracy is very important as an ideal just like privacy is.

The state isn't the exclusive place where all powerful people are. All power does not rest within the state.

A lot of Bitcoins are owned by the powerful and a lot of people who aren't powerful now but who own a lot of Bitcoins will become powerful in several years. Just like we would want the ability to know whether or not George Soros, Bill Gates or the Koch bros are influencing politics we would want to know what Satoshi or whomever is influencing. We have every reason to want transparency to be able to follow the money trail of anybody. It should even apply to me if necessary if I ever have a lot of money or I'm considered powerful.

But I don't think it should be used to bully everyone as a weapon of state power. I agree with you that the state should be more transparent but I think "the state" isn't just people working for the government in civilian capacity. If we have an oligarchy then there should be transparency there as well. We need transparency in the state to deal with corruption and we need transparency outside of the state to deal with corruption. There should be no safe havens for people who seek to coerce and corrupt the nation.

So for that reason there should be no bank secrecy. I'm not really a big fan of secrets which can affect the lives of many people. There might be justification for keeping some secrets (national security) and there are necessary secrets but... If you're a person in charge of other peoples lives, who has power over other people, then you shouldn't expect to live a private life where you can keep secrets from the people you rule over. You should expect to have every aspect of your life investigated so that you can be verified/vetted for access.

If you're not powerful then there has to be some line in the sand enforced by law and technological means to protect you from being politically targeted and investigated by the powerful in fishing expeditions. If a powerful person decides to trigger a criminal investigation then they hire private investigators who can watch every thing you do until you commit a crime.

It's not a very fair system. For that reason in order to have democracy and liberty in the system you need privacy to protect the people in the community from political persecution. Any system which can try to link identities to transactions in a database presents a high value target which can be abused if implemented in the wrong way or hacked if not secured.


And contact the operator how? If It cannot be done in pseudo anonymous fashion then it removes privacy from the user. The operator should not have to be trusted with identity information of the user.

If this could be done in automated fashion where I sign the coins tagging it with my digital signature (which is clean) but remain pseudo anonymous to the operator then I would be okay with that. I'll play ball with security checks to access certain sites or financial networks but I should not have to give up privacy to do it. I don't think an operator should be given the power access peoples identities linked to their private transactions is what I'm saying. I'm not against these sorts of databases existing if it were voluntary, decentralized and controlled by the user. If the database were stored in a blockchain or some decentralized network where access is granted by the user then it can work better. The user can connect their public key to their real identity and sign or tag certain things which they want to claim so that if their coins are tainted they can say "these coins belong to me and I'm associated with these addresses which also belong to me", "my digital signature is trusted and I have verified my identity with these different places".

If anything we should be moving away from storing passwords and personal identity information on the web in central databases and instead moving to a system of public keys and digital signatures. If a digital signature has a reputation and history for clean transactions and the user claims ownership of certain addresses voluntarily I would be okay with that.

It should be as simple as the system checking to see if the address I'm using is linked to any transactions being investigated by the authorities. If it is then of course websites will want to block that off so as not to be investigated themselves. But if I'm innocent or if I have nothing to hide then I should be able to claim my transactions which prove my innocence. If they ask for your name and address for every site as we saw Bitfunder trying to do then that isn't going to work. Bitfunder was asking for everyone's name and address so they could block people out based on region.

But if we don't have access to the database as users then how do we know which sites to avoid so as not to have our coins tainted?

I don't trust the news article or your explanation. We need more information and the PDFs on that site only fuel further speculation.

Finally a well reasoned and thoughtful explanation not based in fear.

The problem is that coinvalidation could be a trojan horse. We just don't know the details and part of the reason why is they didn't put a good explanation on their website. The other problem is they named their business coinvalidation. When I see an invalid address it means the address is not accepted. An invalid transaction means the transaction is not accepted by the network. That implies something else.

Why the hell do we need them to do that and why are they doing it in a centralized manner? Why not create a wiki, validation coin or DAC which decentralizes the database so anyone can contribute to or access it? Why do we have to trust some private corporation to guard the database? And these are supposed to be Bitcoiners promoting a centralized database?!

Why do we need a centralized database? Why not use decentralized methods so that everyone can access the information?
Every currency is tainted.

Okay this is fine. Can we access the database as users? Can we be assured that we users are validated by our public key without having to give up our pseudo-anonymity? If we aren't connected to any controversial addresses then what?

This presents problems. How can these coins be exchanged if we do that? As far as I understand it most coins are already clean and purchased from exchanges and not second hand. Sure when you buy coins it does make sense to have to give your information out if you're buying or selling for fiat (tax purposes too).


We will see how they implement that. Maybe coinvalidation should hire you to do public relations because they totally suck at how they presented it. The media of course may have gotten carried away but they presented it as if they are building a database to tie names to wallets. That is a nightmare.

KYC and AML are necessary. Bank secrecy enables corruption.
I don't understand how we can have a Bitcoin community which supports the goal of Wikileaks on one hand but on the other hand wants to have completely anonymous money.

You cannot have both. If you want to fight institutional corruption you have to follow the money. If you want anonymous money then you have to accept institutional corruption as the end result.

If there are bad actors then those bad actors should be investigated. That does not mean we should all be forced to get digital ID cards to access our money. A digital signature ought to be enough to prove your identity. There is no reason to have a centralized database.

It could work just fine if the digital signature could be somehow be connected to the Bitcoin blockchain itself.

What if for instance I want to validate that my coins are owned by me and that I'm trusted? I should be able to have a pseudo-anonymous trusted wallet. That wallet should attach my digital signature which is unique to me. It should connect my real world identity to my pseudo-nym without a loss of pseudo-anonymity or privacy.

Having a database with names attached to wallet addresses is absolutely not the way to do it. Having a database of digital signatures with public keys is a way to do it. If you email the owner of the wallet then you can communicate with them to ask them their real world identity in a private way.

I believe Keyhotee might actually solve the issue. It allows for verified trusted accounts. It does not seem to require all the centralization, but it doesn't prevent KYC either from my understanding of it. You can attach your pseudo identity to your real identity. So if you have to access a certain site and be verified it might be possible to do it without having to give out your real name to that site. You would give a public key to that site instead and it would know if your public key is on the whitelist or blacklist. That would be a way of doing it.

The philosophical debate is whether or not it should be done? I think if Bitcoins are going to be worth $100,000 each it will have to be done. At that point the richest people in the world will be large holders of Bitcoins. So all the bribery and other corruption will become a problem at some point and if democracy is to continue to exist then you cannot have anonymous money flowing around by the billions or trillions.

Don't be silly. Just because one US company has a potentially bad idea you want to boycott all of America? So you think no other country could do the same thing? Did it work with the RIAA?

If the bad actor is being investigated then the people investigating the bad actor need a way to clear everyone who is not that specific bad actor. I need a way to allow them to check to see that I'm not a bad actor.

But I don't want to have to be continuously checked over and over. There should be a way for me to claim my addresses and my coins with a digital signature representing me if there is a problem. Once that digital signature is recognized as matching an identity of a person who is cleared for access then I should be left alone.

The majority of people should have no problem at all and shouldn't be flagged. The people who scammed people out of thousands of coins, honestly if they get flagged and asked to verify their identity that might be a good thing.

They don't want banking secrecy because that fuels corruption. So I actually understand the argument. How effective would an organization such as Wikileaks be if they could not follow the money? How could law enforcement actually investigate on the evidence given to them from Wikileaks if there were no money trail?

But you're right that the idea of trying to separate into clean and dirty Bitcoins is unacceptable. The coins should not be tainted. If there are bad actors then investigate the bad actors and not the coins.

But should we have to go through a security check to cross the street? I don't think so. But if we get on a plane of course we have to go through a security check. So there is a balance that is missing here. You need the ability to check and investigate without requiring people get a digital ID card to access their money.

The idea of having to identify yourself is as stupid as the whole force people to get ID to access the Internet. The Internet ID card is a horrible idea and this idea is horrible if it's implemented like that. If you're trying to do something legitimate and move a lot of money into it then there should be a background check and part of that would include verification in my opinion. But once you do get verified you should be able to attach that to any of your aliases with complete privacy. The company that verified you does not have to keep track of all your aliases to know that those aliases belong to a verified individual. That is my point. You can be verified but also have pseudo-anonymity where even the database owner doesn't know which aliases belong to whom.

Do it like that and you can have privacy while also allowing people to be verified. It's not all that different from age verification on websites. A particular forum does not have to know your identity, but once you are verified as being over 18 then all websites would accept your verified pseudo-nyms without having to know any detail about you other than you passed the verification check and were cleared to enter.

There may be a way around this which preserves pseudo-anonymity.
Keyhotee for instance allows an individual to have a reputation, be trusted, and remain pseudo-anonymous.

It may be possible to tie a Keyhotee ID pseudo-identity to a real world identity for the purpose of reporting or being verified in such a way that the database owner cannot violate your privacy. If your real name isn't in the database then the information isn't centralized. Instead your public key could be checked and the government could be sent a public key allowing them to know its you when you're under your alias or code name without violating your privacy.

Would most people agree to this? Some but not all would. If I'm using a pseudo-nym but I want to allow the government to verify and check me out without allowing some commercial third party man in the middle "Coinvalidation" company to be in the picture then perhaps there should be a way for me to do that.

If for instance I have a particular Bitcoin address and a public key with contact information and lets say the government also has a public key with their contact information. They could simply put their public key up somewhere and call it the IRS public key and then anyone can encrypt their tax records or whatever directly to that public key. If it's anti-terrorism and the government is trying to deal with that then they can have a public key for the DHS. There are potentially a lot of decentralized ways of doing it without requiring that we trust Coinvalidation company not to abuse our privacy.

It's pretty simple. The government wants certain information from the Bitcoin community. If we want to report our taxes we send it directly to the IRS. If we want to fly on a plane they check us. The problem is that after the whole Facebook outcome now privacy itself is under attack. Facebook does not collect information to fight terrorism or for solving crime but instead collects it to exploit and sell it. The biggest concern I have with coinvalidator is that they might start sharing the database with other corporate entities. And of course how long does this database keep the information? What level of access control does it have? Is it role based?

That database is sensitive information and it's not the kind of information that people would want shared. If someone has a lot of Bitcoins they probably don't want the world to know it when those coins are worth $100,000.

I don't have a problem if I'm required to use a Bitcoin trusted address if we are talking about more than $10,000. It's already like that with banks and anything else and I can understand and accept why they would want to check me if I'm sending $100,000 to Yemen. But if I'm sending $10 to Yemen and they want to check me then I'm going to be completely pissed. If I have to get a trusted address to transact at all then that is completely unacceptable.

When we deal with cash there is a limit that we can deal with before regulations are triggered. We need these sorts of limits to the Bitcoin space as well. We should be able to be anonymous unless we start making large transfers of Bitcoins. If Satoshi for example were to wake up and start sending his Bitcoins to unknown places then I would expect the community to investigate that. I would also expect the intelligence agencies of the world to investigate it because they probably want to know who Satoshi is sending money to if that were to happen because Satoshi has a lot of money.

The majority of the rest of us have relatively little money and there is no good reason to force us to register our coins as if we are criminals. We don't register our dollars unless it's $10,000+ right? The IRS and FBI get called if you put $12,000 in a bank. If you put $500 into a bank you shouldn't have to be trusted because that is just oppressive.


Bitcoin was never truly anonymous. I actually think its critical to have the ability to follow the money because if you want to investigate corruption it's necessary to have that ability. I keep telling people that having the ability to investigate corruption is essential. If one address gives $5 million dollars to a political campaign then perhaps that should be investigated. Maybe an address with $5 million dollars should be validated. I can agree with that.

But the average person isn't going to have millions of dollars and shouldn't have to lose their privacy for their small amounts of money which doesn't make any real difference. If you're in a position to bribe others then its important to be able to investigate that and it has nothing to do with law enforcement and more to do with preserving the democratic process. You cannot have a good functioning society if anonymous donors are bribing everyone.

The ability to investigate the blockchain benefits the Bitcoin community as a form of sousveillance. Coinvalidation on the other hand depending on how its implemented could be a poison pill or trojan horse. It creates a database which cannot be uncreated and we don't know who is in the database or why? We don't know who will be allowed to access the information and why. The rules as for who and what triggers being put into the database must be made clear.

If you're a rich address, in the top 1000 richest then perhaps you should be in a bunch of databases. If I had 10,000 Bitcoins I would expect to be in all sorts of government databases and that is fair game. If I have 5 Bitcoins and I'm in the database then that is wrong and political in nature.

So I suggest there should be a rule in place so that only large holders (people who have coins worth beyond a certain threshold) get put in these databases. If people with 10,000 coins are in there then at least it might make some sense. You have to be a pretty big fish or big criminal to scam people out of that many coins or to get that kind of net worth.

DPR had over 100,000 Bitcoins? If it wee all in a single wallet then perhaps that could trigger the attention of the authorities and should. Who would keep that many Bitcoins in a wallet? Also if there are strange traffic patterns and it looks like its associated with dark net addresses then those addresses can go into the database.

But I shouldn't have to worry about my address going into the database if I have nothing to do with it. Worst of all if I receive some tainted coin I shouldn't have my entire address locked. And no government should have the power to stop the flow of money like that anyway. What if it were China doing that or North Korea?

The main problem with this idea is the implementation. If the goal were merely to provide KYC and other regulatory solutions this may be necessary but as far as I know you don't do that for every little transaction. A transaction over $10,000 and the bank alerts that authorities as they should.

The implementation of this coinvalidation idea doesn't seem to be setting any limit on an amount of money. I've had the idea myself to provide tools for people to comply with the law but we also have to make sure the tools we build aren't the sort of tools which can be abused later by law enforcers.

Bitcoin is not inherently fungible. It never really was designed to be because the ledger always was public.
It was designed to be pseudo-anonymous and private.  The main problem with this particular implementation is that it can easily be used later to block transactions, to prevent legitimate individuals from spending their coins. It empowers authorities in the USA or in North Korea to create blacklists and whitelists where certain addresses can spend their coins and not others.

There has to be a technical solution which we can come up with which cannot be abused easily by either side of this debate. The side pushing anonymity will have bad actors who will abuse anonymity. I'm not talking about Silk road. And the side pushing for taint lists and coin validation will develop technology and then attempt to abuse that as they are doing with Facebook.

If there is a search warrant or if I'm moving large amounts of money then of course that is when my address should go on a blacklist if it's pseudo-anonymous. From here I would have to give my identity or be blocked from moving a large amount of coins. I could agree with this if it were limited to that. The problem is what if I want to donate a small amount of coins or spend in a reasonable way and there is nothing connecting me to terrorism, money laundering or anything else. Why should I be investigated?

It's not optional to say they cannot investigate at all but it's also not optional to allow them to have free reign to investigate anyone for any reason.

You don't need to buy them. You can work for them.

What if the feed is a DAC or AI of some sort? It doesn't have to be human or centralized.

Here you go buddy:
https://masterchest.info/lookupadd.aspx?address=149B6CuCRe4QVMdWxDeUCMDAwVoGLUrfTy