They are not yet obsolete. 

I have hopes, and I am working hard on making at least some aspects of them obsolete, but for now anyway, it would not be prudent to attempt to form a working society without any.

Bitcoin's blockchain is an example of "self enforcing law" -- in particular people don't counterfeit bitcoins because they can't.  People don't misrepresent amounts because they can't.  It's all set up by protocol and enforced because enough ordinary people who don't want to be the victims of those crimes continue to honor the protocols that protect them.  I applaud the concept.

If we can extend it to cover most kinds of commodities trading, in a way that most of those crimes cannot be committed either, that will be a huge step toward obsoleting more functions of government.  It would be a huge win for everybody, a relief of that part of the tax burden combined with a relief from that kind of crime. 

But I have to believe that we will always need someone whom we can rely on to respond if some idiot stands up in a theatre and starts shooting people, and I can't come up with a cryptographic protocol that would prevent that. 

Not saying that government won't be completely obsolete within a century or so, but understand that to make government completely obsolete will take an AI capable of faster and more accurate thought than humans, fully capable of using force, and not under human control.  Right now I consider that more than a little bit scary.

I've read it.  I've reconsidered my stance.  And I am still firmly convinced that John Nash Senior is not Satoshi.

Once again - a brilliant analyst and probably right about the future of money with various currencies in competition with each other.  But not the programmer who put Bitcoin together. 

Programming is not easy to pick up and Bitcoin is not the work of a beginner.  Note even a brilliant beginner. 

I don't think Satoshi would get as many things right about the future of money as Nash did.  But I don't think Nash could have programmed it like Satoshi did either.

This one.  If each client checks a randomly-selected one-third of all transactions, each transaction would still get checked thousands of times and we'd be running considerably faster.  Miners would want to check everything so they don't get orphan blocks, but other full nodes could, without practical loss of security, trust each other for a substantial fraction of their checking - a "randomly-selected third of all bitcoin nodes" is for practical purposes just as uncontrollable to an attacker as "all the bitcoin nodes."

Dorian is not Satoshi. 

For starters, Satoshi's English (grammar, spelling, etc) was much more fluent than there is any evidence Dorian's has ever been.  Second, they have entirely different vocabularies and there is no evidence that Dorian has ever worked on cryptographic code at all.

When you ban something people desire, you create a black market which is corrosive to respect for the law, as well as create the expense of prisons, judicial, etc.  Such treatment should be reserved for things that truly cause greater problems than the ban. 

When you regulate something, otoh, it can become a revenue source. 

Short answer; they're not banning it because they're too busy setting up to get a piece of it.

Bzzzt.  Wrong answer.  Nash is an awesome analyst, but almost never writes code.  Satoshi has a completely different and highly fluent coding style, a different set of synthesis skills, and uses a different set of tools. 

No.  Just .... no.  It wouldn't.

I expect that the reason why will become evident in a few years.  Be patient.

Well, it's not as though you really need to be hugely cynical to have greater than average success in the marketplace.  You just need to be a little more cynical than the average for the people around you. 

It's kind of like that old joke about hikers getting chased by a bear.  Nobody can outrun the bear, but the ones that outrun the other hikers survive.

First railroad pic in a while.  We ran out of freight cars and locomotives.  Now it's just the rare occasional caboose. 

Heh.  Some of us found the skill relatively easy to master because we were terrifyingly cynical people in the first place.

In fact, I was too cynical to buy bitcoin back when it was really low.  I figured Satoshi was just running a scam, you know?  In fact, I still think he might have been running a scam, but at this point it doesn't matter anymore.  At least not to me.

The nice side is that I find it fairly easy to make money in open markets. 

The not-so-nice side is that the rare artist whose work I actually like usually either commits suicide or becomes an inpatient at a mental institution with a few years of starting his or her "best" work.  Either way, of course, they stop making art.

Sorry to hear it.  If you didn't contact the site admins, and the account went away anyhow, It's a strong indication that you were not the only victim.  The scammer's got to figure that if she scams people from her account, the admins are going to hear about it and she will lose the account within hours  (or get it marked as a scammer, which would be just as bad for scamming).  Therefore, once she makes her move she only has a few hours of active scamming before she loses the ability to abuse whatever trust people have in the person behind that account.

So, to make the most of a few hours of active scamming, she'd spend weeks and weeks on the setup, with as many targets as she could handle.  Heck, she might even have operated tor sites giving the very best prices for bitcoin (at a slight loss) in order to "earn" the marks' trust.  All of that ... unfortunately for you ... is bait.

But once the active scam starts, she has to move on all the targets and move fast before the account gets marked scammer and the targets notice.   If she  can get all of them to trust her with a few BTC, on the same day, then she walks away with a tidy profit.

Think back...  was there a big looming deadline or brief window of opportunity that the scammer (or one of those onion sites whom you don't actually know wasn't her) told you you were about to miss out on?  I'd almost bet that there was. 

Okay, non-FUD time.  Here is a list of things you may have done with Bitcoin that would make you vulnerable.


If you did one of those things, while someone who knew about heartbleed was paying attention, then they may have your password and/or keys. 

Whether or not you did one of those things, you should change all your passwords every so often anyway and now is a better time than most.

FWIW, the capabilities of bitcoind which definitely are exposed to this bug are as follows: 


If you have used RPC over the network to talk to bitcoind, your SSL keys have been exposed to a possible attacker who was exploiting this bug at the time.

If you have used the new "Payment protocol" capabilities of the most recent client over the network, your SSL keys have been exposed to a potential attacker exploiting this bug.

As far as I know, those are the only vulnerabilities in the bitcoind versions published prior to today. 

Anyway - it is worthwhile to change all your keys and passwords every so often anyway; this is a kick in the shorts to do it, but we should be doing it occasionally anyway.

But treasuries pay better than cash.

As far as I can see, this bug affects bitcoind in the case that you use RPC over a network to access your wallet.

If you don't, I don't believe there's any vulnerability that this exposes.  (This is a quick examination only; there could be something I missed).  If you have, and someone who knew about this bug was paying attention at the time, then that person may have your password.  

OTOH, I think this explains the widespread SSL break implied by the Snowden papers.  

EDIT: 

I had not looked at the new payment protocol stuff with the recent client.  It is also exposed to this bug. So, if you have used the payment prototocol over the network, you have been exposed. 

This is utterly reasonable.

Bitcoin is going to be part of mutual funds at some point.  Just like any other real asset.

It appears I wasn't cynical enough.

Correction:  it looks like A vulnerability was below the level of the CAs.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26935905

News story. 

I knew shit was getting out that openSSL ought to have protected - it's one of the reasons I ranted about the CA certs in the new bitcoind.

But it looks like the vulnerability was actually below the level of CAs.