This was from Reddit, and my response The taint problem exposes a coming political era for Bitcoin, where each miner must decide what to do with a stolen coin. It is a very dangerous transition for us, because we move from a pure consensus of clients based on packets and fees, to arguing about crime reports. Needless to say, crime report collection, verification, and final judging are currently geographically monopolized.
Accept that taint claims will be available, for your use, if you choose; but beware any miner that would block a transaction.
One critical factor in coin theft is information asymmetry. The thief can mix the coins well enough before anyone knows they're gone. Unwitting parties in transaction might bear most of the cost of any coin-blocking movements.
tl;dr: coin freezing bad That's a really good point about mixing the coins before they're tainted, and given the speed at which that could be possible (fast enough to the point of being considered automated) it seems difficult to deal with. Perhaps the solution is for legitimate mixer-services to not accept coins that have been transferred within the last say 2-7 days. Shorter would work, but the less buffer you have the more likely the freeze hits an innocent. the thing you're missing Adam is proving that which is stolen from that which is allegedly stolen. i could donate 100 BTC to your podcast today. you might happily then spend that BTC immediately on needed expenses for production and expansion. i could then come to you a month later and ask you for special favors related to advertising my business. you would rightly decline from an ethical standpoint. the disagreement escalates and then i go public accusing you of stealing my 100 BTC via a hack. after all, i have the private key from the donation address proving it came from me to you. how can anyone prove who's right? should those coins be tainted forever? and should your suppliers be able to ask you to repay with non tainted coins as a result? |
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Another good show, lots of enthusiasm.
You are all very eloquent and interesting speakers, but I have to say again I am more and more impressed by how insightful and well thought out Andreas' comments are.
One thing really surprised me, even disturbed me - you gave a positive view of the idea of "tainting" coins. You barely mentioned the obvious problem - taintedness can only be defined by external authorities. Just arguing that it's a community decision is not enough - what kind of cash is it if the majority can vote that I don't "deserve" it for some reason? That's not so different to the problem we have with money now - if the majority doesn't like me using money for X then I'm just SOL. That's not OK.
I can't see it ever being accepted by the community, unless in some quasi- form with an overlay of extra technology (time locks? escrow?) which I don't understand yet. Even with any extra tech, suggestions of allowing tainted coins deserve considerable scepticism.
This is so true and so important to get right. So many newbies get trapped into this tainting argument. Monetary units have to be fungible. The units themselves are non political. They can't help themselves from being used "inappropriately" by criminals who might use them for drugs or a young girl who might use them for an abortion. If we allowed usd to be destroyed because of drug tainting we'd not have any cash left. Same goes for digital dollars. |
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Overall, I was impressed that they made it out and it was interesting to watch their keynote. I don't think we should be using the word "wannabe" when talking about the twins, they have their hard earned money invested like the rest of us so they are a part just like us. I did wish they would of stay near the stage after their keynote for some additional follow-up questions but I had reports of them around the conference so I know some others got a chance to chat it up. It was much more of a positive than a negative for Bitcoin and that is what we need. Thank you Winklevii.
My impression of that is there appears to be a difference in the personal security risk immediately after the keynote than during the next day sessions. It's probably because the keynote had the highest number of attendees, gawkers, press, us ready to rush the stage. Not to mention everyone focused on the twins at the moment after they just got done endorsing the dark side. |
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Lol!  |
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And when you hear them talk it is clear they are just in it for the money. There is no passion in their speech (if you can even call it that). I would be VERY VERY careful of these guys. They have millions and millions tide up. They are looking out for themselves first. +1 i've seen more passion from a javascript meetup talk. you don't have to be steve jobs to be a good speaker.. you just have to believe in the cause. it's just extra uuh, suprising that uhh these guys uhh graduated uhhh from Harvard. wrong. my son and i followed them out of the Conference Hall after their speech as my son wanted a pic with them. naturally we were amongst a small hoard of ppl doing the same thing. outside the hall we found them being interviewed by some female reporter surrounded by ppl. Tyler was speaking about how he thinks Bitcoin can be used to bring freedom to ppl of the third world. how a new sense of freedom and relief from poverty could be harnessed using a pure new form of money. she asked him about the mtgox seizure and he hopefully said it probably wouldn't matter in the whole scheme of things as Bitcoin is unstoppable from a global perspective. their handlers then whisked them off down the long hallway before anyone else could talk or get pictures from them. it's a long, long hallway and i decided to follow them to see if the crowd thinned out so we could grab that picture for my son. the crowd did thin some and just before they were to turn into an exit i shouted out to them to take a picture. both of them immediately stopped and said "sure" much to my surprise and the chagrin of the bodyguards. i quickly shoved my son btwn them and snapped off a very memorable picture. that picture meant a lot to the both of us. i'm convinced that the two of them are a humble, caring, thoughtful pair and my opinion of them shot up orders of magnitude. to my mind, the burden of proof has shifted to Zuckerberg to prove to me, at least, he was not the schmuck in that dispute. Great, so you have a story of them, against the wishes of their bodyguard, taking a picture with your son. That is really heartwarming but that doesn't convince me. What convinces me is what I see on a day to day basis, not a personal anecdote here and there. (Not that there is anything wrong with that - more data points in which to judge.) I think of athletes like Michael Jordon who are known to be very condescending and unfriendly to people (when the cameras aren't rolling) - saying all the right things in interviews and taking pictures with kids. It works, it's PR (and I'm not saying the twins are doing the same, but we should keep an eye on them.) Now maybe, they just don't come across as "emotional" or "enthralling" with regard to their speeches. We will find out. But right now, we need to be very very careful with who is "let into" the BTC community - including Ripple.  Time will tell and further, where they spend all of those BTC's and money that they got. The proof will surely be in the pudding... It was more about the body language. Both hands in the pockets, head down while being interviewed, speaking softly and in measured tones. In contrast to the performers, who when interviewed in front of a crowd wave their hands, look around head up and smile flashing their teeth, speaking in loud commanding tones. Also the immediate, no hesitation to help response to my request for a picture. The behavior was completely consistent with what you saw on stage. Just my two cents. |
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So, if I understand this correctly...
Bitcoin turns the whole internet into your personal checking/savings account, while BT+OP turns the whole internet into your personal clearinghouse and loan settlement network
Or, said another way:
You use Bitcoin like an equity network, i.e. to store, transmit, and settle value, and BT+OP like a liability network, i.e. to store, transmit, and settle debt.
Is this right?
It's not OP, it's OT...... also, its not BT it's BM. lets just call it BMOT. |
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How do we know this isn't just someone OpenCoin paid to say that TradeFortress paid them to say Ripple is a scam? OpenCoin apparently has a history of paying people off, if the leaked email from Ryan Fugger is authentic.
link? |
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What Open Transaction is trying to do is to provide a transfer mechanism, rather than issuing a currency, they use the word "cash" in this sense. If you want to hide your Bitcoin transfer, you can choose to use an OT server, which provably cannot see the link between two accounts involved in a transaction.
Fellowtraveler-- if you're willing to do some hand-holding I'd be really interested in making a Chaumian cash transaction through an OT server. I only ever understand about 30% of your posts. It doesn't make sense to me how Bitmessage could possibly be a missing link for OT, but I'd rather just go through the motions of making a few transactions and see how it works. PM me me too. |
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This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.
i read most of the anti-Ripple posts in the many Ripple threads over the last several days and no one appeared to me to be a paid over the top anti-Rippler except for Shadow of Harbinger and obviously Tradefortress. most of our criticisms of Ripple are based on hard facts, imo. |
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Ripple has been spamming the Discussion Forum with anti-Bitcoin threads
I'd love to read those. Can you provide a link? ..unless they cannot be proven to be from OpenCoin directly (which means they might be TradeFortress paying someone else to post them to make them look bad, you never know) in which case I don't care to read them. Otherwise I sure as hell do! they all got moved en masse earlier today to Service thank gaud. |
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i criticize Ripple b/c i honestly think the economic assumptions behind the Ripple concept are highly dubious and will fail. i've never been approached nor accepted any bribe money to be anti-Ripple.
i never signed up for any XRP b/c i never believed in the concept. yes, i have BTC but that doesn't influence my opinion at all.
what also pushed me to become vocal about this in just the last few days is the fact that Ripple has been spamming the Discussion Forum with anti-Bitcoin threads and trying to steal Bitcoiners away to Ripple in what i view as a zero sum game.
otoh, OT + BM appears to be a promising combination built on the same principles that Bitcoin was and i will look at their platform with enthusiasm.
But Cypherdoc would you say its a scam for 5 BTCmoney wouldn't affect my decision one way or the other. |
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i criticize Ripple b/c i honestly think the economic assumptions behind the Ripple concept are highly dubious and will fail. i've never been approached nor accepted any bribe money to be anti-Ripple.
i never signed up for any XRP b/c i never believed in the concept. yes, i have BTC but that doesn't influence my opinion at all.
what also pushed me to become vocal about this in just the last few days is the fact that Ripple has been spamming the Discussion Forum with anti-Bitcoin threads and trying to steal Bitcoiners away to Ripple in what i view as a zero sum game.
otoh, OT + BM appears to be a promising combination built on the same principles that Bitcoin was and i will look at their platform with enthusiasm.
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And when you hear them talk it is clear they are just in it for the money. There is no passion in their speech (if you can even call it that). I would be VERY VERY careful of these guys. They have millions and millions tide up. They are looking out for themselves first. +1 i've seen more passion from a javascript meetup talk. you don't have to be steve jobs to be a good speaker.. you just have to believe in the cause. it's just extra uuh, suprising that uhh these guys uhh graduated uhhh from Harvard. wrong. my son and i followed them out of the Conference Hall after their speech as my son wanted a pic with them. naturally we were amongst a small hoard of ppl doing the same thing. outside the hall we found them being interviewed by some female reporter surrounded by ppl. Tyler was speaking about how he thinks Bitcoin can be used to bring freedom to ppl of the third world. how a new sense of freedom and relief from poverty could be harnessed using a pure new form of money. she asked him about the mtgox seizure and he hopefully said it probably wouldn't matter in the whole scheme of things as Bitcoin is unstoppable from a global perspective. their handlers then whisked them off down the long hallway before anyone else could talk or get pictures from them. it's a long, long hallway and i decided to follow them to see if the crowd thinned out so we could grab that picture for my son. the crowd did thin some and just before they were to turn into an exit i shouted out to them to take a picture. both of them immediately stopped and said "sure" much to my surprise and the chagrin of the bodyguards. i quickly shoved my son btwn them and snapped off a very memorable picture. that picture meant a lot to the both of us. i'm convinced that the two of them are a humble, caring, thoughtful pair and my opinion of them shot up orders of magnitude. to my mind, the burden of proof has shifted to Zuckerberg to prove to me, at least, he was not the schmuck in that dispute. |
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what's interesting is that in the Angels Meeting on Sunday i brought up BitMessage as an investment idea. i've been following them for a while and planning on trying it out but wanted to get more feedback from users. i think they have a brilliant idea as pgp is too hard for most ppl.
anyone have some good experiences?
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Duuuuude! Holy shit! I only got OP when you explained it to me at the Tradehill thing, but this just takes it to a whole other level! Doesn't this basically allow for "Ripple," but in a fully decentralized way, and without XRP?
this is a very good thing. |
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Combining the above Bitmessage capabilities--which we already proved out experimentally--with Open-Transactions, makes possible fully-decentralized p2p markets, as well as p2p escrow across OT federated servers, easy p2p and server-to-server wiring of funds and conversion of currencies, both within OT and also between OT and the conventional banking system.
How does this enable wiring of funds and conversion of currencies between OT and the conventional banking system? i am wondering about this too. perhaps fellowtraveler could take us thru an example of how to convert BTC to USD and the exact steps involved. |
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I'm not saying Ripple is a scam or doomed to fail, all I'm saying is I still see some very fundamental issues with their business model, especially knowing the history of their founders.
please explain further. i understand Chris Larson founded Prosper. how well did that go? |
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best of luck on this.
i have some studying to do.
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