Just mention it like they should already know it then answer the questions they ask.
The producer asked me what bitcoin was. I just started babbling about cryptocurrencies, decentralization, and deflationary liquidity. She put me on hold and never came back. |
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Howsabout CVD Superdiamonds with single atom arrangements forming the keys.  Really before we go crazy over physical bitcoin, shouldn't we have a way to redeem them that doesn't require 3 forms of ID and 8-10 business days. |
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The city is filled with stories like this. Some are even true.
Sally is paid by her boss in Bitcoins. Her employer automatically takes out taxes from her registered Bitcoin address. After paying her bills to registered business Bitcoin addresses she decides to take her remaining salary and go out. Sally calls an escort service and pays their public address. She then meets Lance for a night of frolic. While she is in the shower the pizza arrives at the motel room. She tells Lance to pay the pizza guy Bill with her card. Her card is designed to only accept registered addresses. Lance is disappointed because he was hoping he could buy drugs from Bill with her card too, but ended up payiing for them with a physical Bitcoin and was unable to get change. Bill pocketed his profit thinking "stupid junkie."
Bill is caught by police buying more drugs to sell. They ask him where he got a whole Bitcoin. Bill tells him that it was a tip from a nice lady. Police check his employer records and find his last delivery. They investigate and find Sally barely alive. They rush her to the hospital. Meanwhile Lance was trying to pawn her jewelry. The first pawn shop wouldn't take his items because Lance refused to give them his registered Bitcoin address. They learned their lesson when an undercover cop pawned jewelry and offered to take half the money if they would use an unregistered address. The next pawn shop would register an address for him if he would wait 10 minutes for the transaction to verify. Lance was desperate for another fix so he agreed to wait. Police picked up the unregistered transaction by the pawn shop IP address and intercepted the perp. The escort was then investigated, but the police chief cleared them of any wrongdoing. Sally later went on Oprah with a book she wrote about how Bitcoin saved her life.
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Bingo! Thank you Notme...
Unless the cops (evil repressive regime - certainly not the country in which you pay taxes) set up a honey trap, I think there is (or should be) enough plausible deniability that this concern is moot. The current behavior of the Satoshi client - to send change to a new address - is a pathetic anonymizer. It needs to be random, multiple, and continual.
I'm glad I don't live in a banana republic with "guilty by association" laws. |
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What's the use case? Pervert Bert buys smut from Sleazy Steve's website. A week later, the website's accounts get opened by law enforcement. Sleazy Steve goes to jail, now the cops are after all of its customers.
OK so far. In the meantime, Pervert Bert sent coins to Innocent Irene from the previous sleazy transaction's change address. Innocent Irene buys an apple from Merchant Mike. Merchant Mike nabs Innocent Irene and calls the cops. The cops go through Innocent Irene's transaction history and question her about a particular purchase weeks earlier. Why would the cops care about where Bert spent his money? They already have him involved with a crime. Are you assuming all criminal activity is committed by evil masterminds? |
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Bitcoin has a steep learning curve. Most of us here understand the fundamentals of the technology even if some don't understand cryptography. I called in to a radio talk show and tried to quickly explain what Bitcoin is about. I realized that there are very complex meanings to the terminology we toss about. How do you explain Bitcoin to civilians before they roll their eyes and walk away?
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We are nearly powerless against our own creation. Brave people risked certain death to try to prevent this catastrophe. Yet, we still ignore disasters facing our civilization. We can't change who we are as a species, but we can change how we do things by taking small steps in the right direction.
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I think the only debatable mechanism would be the lifetime appointments of judges. Maybe it needs a democratic influence as well. But then again it depends on how and on what ground a judge is appointed. Usually these are very smart people that have their heart in society but sometimes a rotten apple gets through and i feel that there are generally too little mechanisms for society to decide about it. But then again, justice is a subtle line and should not be subjected to the sometimes whimsical public. Judges should have as much a straight view on law as humanly possible and emotions should not play a part in it. They should be fair and to do that a certain distantiation from society is required. I think that people proposing a commercial judgement system fail to understand this special position the justice system has in society. I think that our judicical systems are some of the finest and most complex achievements humanity created. It's not perfect, the world and reality often do not coincide with what all humans consider perfect so it cannot be perfect. Never. Humans between each other cannot decide what is perfect for everyone and a judge cannot decide that for humanity. So we need people to walk the fine line, not burdened with emotion or greed but keeping a straight line while judging the weights of the parties involved against the law. This simply cannot depend on moneymaking, it needs to be in a way separated from most of society to get a broad enough view and see the bigger consequences of the decisions. It would be destructive to commercialize the juditial system as the core of the system is independence. That means that a judge should never be put in a position where one party can use a form of power to change the judgement. And this is exactly what would happen if there was a financial incentive, like in a company. Without such safeguard we would be back in the dark ages as a straightening of the judicial system was what took us out of the dark ages in the first place. Many lifes were given to get us this far and people on this forum want to get rid of it...  In the USA, I don't have a problem with lifetime appointments of SCOTUS. Interpreting laws is one thing, but I don't know where they get the authority to overturn Congress. |
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I feel like Atlas is getting less coherent and more extreme by the day. It's kind of disturbing. Like what the fuck does this even mean: There is something called desire and it isn't exclusively met by government. It seems like there's at least one sentence in every one of his posts that I can't make heads or tails of. I don't know his age, but I am getting the feeling that he may be a minor. I am putting him on ignore just to be safe. |
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I think you are over reaching with this problem. Bitcoin will eliminate most crimes.
Ok.. I'll bite. Are you being sarcastic? If not.. How? Do you classify governments and bankers as the commiters of 'most crimes' and think bitcoin will bring them down? And *I* am over-reaching?? By most crimes, I mean those that fill our prisons. I wrote about this in this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=50114.msg597113#msg597113But as for white collar crimes, well those for the most part aren't really crimes. They are legal forms of theft that sometimes go too far. Laws need better enforcement and Bitcoin can help provide tools for law enforcement while still maintaining privacy. |
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It would require escrow. The carriers would need to be bondable. Law enforcement would need to included in the process when transporting across borders. Other than that, Bitcoin is ideal for logistics.
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Did they work?  |
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The worst aspect of this sort of tagging is the possibility of silent tags.
You innocently spend some coins at the supermarket, and before you know it, the facial-recognition camera at the checkout has worked out who you are and the police come knocking to ask where you got a specific payment from.
While that has some legitimate law-enforcement use - it's also a pretty horrifying invasion of privacy and open to abuse.
I suspect there isn't a technical fix for this. Bitcoin won't remove the need to fight for legal principles and rights.
edit: Although some ordinary cash is tracked by serial number, the average person just isn't going to remember where they got a particular note from - so it's hardly likely police will come knocking. With a bitcoin wallet though, there's a record and timestamps so it's more of a possibility.
I think you are over reaching with this problem. Bitcoin will eliminate most crimes. |
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I'm not sure everybody understands the nature of money-laundering or other shady businesses. It's not the same as blood-money because it's mixed (sometimes heavily) with "clean" money. You can't penalize someone that does legitimate business with someone that also secretly does illegal business. That's the job of law enforcement to determine.
The government could indeed penalize them - and in a fairly automated way. Sorry - you should have used software which checks our public lists - 10% tax at the supermarket checkout for you! (or go spend your tainted coins on the blackmarket - maybe you'll only lose 5% there) Welcome to Bitcoin's brave new world of 'programmable money'. Whether you like it or think it sucks is immaterial. If you're lucky, your government may hit a legal wall in trying to implement it. Some governments will push such things through anyway. As I mentioned in my previous long post - I think governments will have to be judicious in their application of these lists, or it'll backfire by just increasing the blackmarket coin liquidity. Why not just have government automatically "launder" the money for you when you receive it? The onus will be on the one sending you tainted money in the first place. [edit] I don't actually think we are in disagreement here. |
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Howabout doing something with Palladium? It seems to be ignored by other speculators and a real bargain. Maybe Bitcoin can corner the market by adopting Palladium as the official coinage for offline exchange.
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Speculation works in both ways. I guess it is OK to short oil and push the price down but you must never buy it. Or any other commodity.
lol at bitcoin spirit. Where in the bitcoin protocol is written that speculating on the price of bitcoin is wrong?
You need liquid markets if you want real bitcoin businesses. And you need derivatives for those businesses to hedge their exposure.
It may not be written into the protocol, but for many years speculation (especially on margin) was illegal and for arguably good reasons. It still is in many countries. Save the economic mumbo jumbo for the pseudo-scientist believers. It's a zero-sum game. Businesses are irrelevant to markets, they are only one type of production instrument. Markets existed long before the internet and even electricity. Even ancient religions preclude making money just by trading money. THE ONLY THING THAT PROGRESSES SOCIETY IS TECHNOLOGY. Bitcoin is ALL ABOUT new technology. |
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See no need for slavery.
No worries, mate. Slavery has been abolished for centuries in most regions. |
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We should all take personal responsibility for the children in our community. If you are not a parent, then at least do something directly to be involved with helping children become a part of the community. I have little respect for any older adult that lived selfishly and did nothing significant to help children. I would not enter into any serious business venture with such a person because I simply would not trust someone that lives that way.
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