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"What if a poor person gets sick, doesn't have insurance, and can't get friends, family, or charity to pay for treatment?" "What if an elderly person gets defrauded out of his entire retirement and the perpetrator vanishes into thin air?" "What if a child is starving on the street, and no one voluntarily feeds him?" "What if someone just can't find a job?" If you're a libertarian, you face what-ifs like this all the time. The point, normally, is to make you say, "Tough luck" and look like a monster. What puzzles me, though, is why libertarians rarely ask analogous questions. Like: "What if Congress passes an unjust law, the President signs it, and the Supreme Court upholds it?" "What if the government conscripts you to fight in an unjust war, and you die a horrible death?" "What if a poor person drinks and gambles away his welfare check?" "What if the government denies you permission to legally work?" "What if the President decides your ethnicity is a national security risk and puts you in a concentration camp, and the Supreme Court declares his action constitutional?" "What if a person lives an extremely unhealthy lifestyle, so by the time they're retired, they're in constant pain no matter how generous their Medicare coverage is?" "What happens if a President lies to start a war, and voters don't particularly care?" Once you start the what-if game, it's hard to stop. Name any political system. I can generate endless hypotheticals to aggravate its supporters. The right lesson to draw: Every political perspective eventually has to say "Tough luck" when confronted with well-crafted what-ifs. There's nothing uniquely hard-hearted or cruel about libertarianism. Defenders of democracy, nationalism, liberalism, conservatism, the American Constitution, and social democracy all eventually sigh, "Life's not fair," or "Well, what do you want me to do about it?" The obvious reply is that some of these hypotheticals are more realistic than others. But that puts the critics of libertarianism on extremely thin ice. None of my alternate what-ifs are fanciful. Several of them - lethal conscription, unhealthy lifestyles, denying foreigners the right to work, mendacious wars - have happened or continue to happen on a massive scale in the most democratic nations on earth. In contrast, we've never seen a rich, modern, libertarian society. For all we know, private charity in Libertopia would more than suffice to end absolute poverty. Stranger things have happened. Why the double standard? The root, I suspect, is status quo bias. Most people tolerate the unpleasant ramifications of the status quo because they're used to them. You might get conscripted and die a horrible death? Oh well, that's life. Most people won't tolerate the unpleasant ramifications of libertarianism because they're used to a world where government says, "We'll never let that happen." But what's so great about that assurance, when it's bundled with a long list of other evils that governments blithely tolerate - or actively commit on a grand scale every day? http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/tough_luck.html |
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I've just been told that a given address cannot be credited and debited in the same block. That any output filling an address must be at least one block behind of any input spending it. If this is true, why is it such? What's the point of such limitation? Thanks. |
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Recently I found this paper: http://wbl.github.com/bitcoinanon.pdfI read it once, and realize it's just too much to me. Satoshi's paper I could grasp, this one talks about things I've never heard of. I imagine I could spend days or weeks trying to dig through the references, studying them and finally understand what Mr. Ladd is proposing. But well, I'm not a cryptographer, I have my ordinary job to watch for, and I guess I'm just too lazy for that. Has anyone here with deep cryptography knowledge understood the paper? Could you eventually explain what is he proposing and how could that eliminate traceability in bitcoin transactions, with simple analogies that a mere mortal like me would understand? I mean, I do understand the principles of symmetric and asymmetric cryptography, and I believe I do understand the basic of blinded signature (you sign an encrypted piece of data and in the same shot you also sign its unencrypted form, without knowing it). But I just can't understand what the hell Alice is doing with all those B-named men in the paper..... |
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An interesting technical idea has came out on the discussion about the alt chain recently attacked by the Eligius pool. Probably the idea is not feasible, since otherwise Satoshi would have think of it since the beginning.  But maybe we should discuss it more. Who knows... This is the post that presented it: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56675.msg684088#msg684088Summarizing, the idea is that we could eliminate the risk of the network being frozen by an attacker by considering shorter chain forks as partially valid blocks as well. This obviously immediately raises many issues. First issue, conflicting transactions. Different forks may contain incompatible transactions. A simple solution would be, in case such thing happens, to only consider the conflicting transactions that are on the larger chain. Only non-conflicting transactions of the smaller fork would be recognized as valid. That might solve the conflict issue, but it leaves open another. Spamming. An attacker wanting to freeze the chain could still send tons of transactions-to-self to honest miners, and then double-spend them all on his longer chain. He achieves the same goal. The only way I see to counter-attack this is by making him pay for the transactions he inserts on the smaller fork as well, by taking their fees, while not crediting the outputs. But then, as the inputs which are paying the fees on the smaller chain also are being fully spent on the larger chain, this is impossible. Unless, perhaps, if we change what was defined above and treat every conflicting transaction as invalid. But then, there are at least two other problems that I can think of: Reversible transactions: Although freezing the network is not possible anymore, now miners can reverse transactions. This is obviously not desired. A possible solution would be to get severe and consider double-spent coins as sent to /dev/null. The double-spender loses his coins, and no outputs are credited. Discourages double-spends, but we're not over... Invalidation of a chain of transactions: How to prevent a miner to generate a short chain fork which creates a double-spend with the sole intend of canceling a transaction and all the transactions that follow? I don't have an answer for this one. Unless if we keep the original solution that considers the conflicting transaction of the larger chain as valid, but then some other solution should be found to the spamming problem... Still one more... inflation. If the coin has inflation in its block reward, then it becomes to easy to Zimbabwelize it, as shorter forks could be produced on tons. That could be solved by making the inflationary reward of shorter-forks not applicable, only the fees get credited to the generation address. Well, these are the problems I could find, and some solutions I could quickly think of. I think there are more problems, and I'm not very confident that all of them can be solved. But as there are many intelligent people on these forums, I wonder if any of them can elaborate on this idea. If we could find a way to build a chain which is immune against "freezing attacks", that would be great. Please keep in mind that someone with >50% would still be able to double-spend. Protecting from this kind of attack is not the goal here. |
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Para os que não acompanham a seção em inglês do fórum, Luke-Jr, operador do Eligius pool, assumiu recentemente ter usado o seu pool para promover um ataque >50% numa blockchain alternativa criada recentemente. Luke-Jr, basicamente: - Fez acusações caluniosas aos criadores da blockchain alternativa, chamando-os de "scammers" e comparando seu projeto a um esquema de pirâmide. Qualquer pessoa com neurônios pode perceber que nenhuma blockchain é um esquema de pirâmide. Aliás, se uma blockchain alternativa o é, então o mesmo se aplicaria às bitcoins. E nem mesmo esquemas de pirâmide autênticos (voluntários) são fraudulentos, mas enfim, isso é outra discussão.
- Usou os recursos de sues mineradores de uma maneira não previamente acordada, i.e., fraude.
- Atacou criminalmente uma blockchain, usando o poder computacional superior a sua disposição para impedir proprietários da moeda alternativa de transacionarem.
Em resumo, ele não merece as GPUs de ninguém. A confissão de Luke-Jr: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=56675.msg678006#msg678006 |
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Apenas para manter a par quem eventualmente não acompanha as seções em inglês deste fórum, um bug sério foi encontrado na função de criptografia da carteira (arquivo wallet.dat).
Após pedir para criptografar uma carteira previamente não criptografada, é possível que as chaves privadas antigas continuem não criptografadas. Aparentemente se você esgotar todos os endereços do pool existentes antes da criptografia (i.e., gerar + de 100 novos endereços), seus novos endereços terão suas chaves criptografadas. Um workaround seria fazer isso e transferir toda sua grana para endereços novos.
Ou, melhor ainda, continue tratando seu wallet.dat como um arquivo em claro, e use as mesmas técnicas que você usava antes para protegê-lo (truecrypt por ex.)
Os desenvolvedores já estão atacando esse bug e a idéia é que a versão 0.5 definitiva não saia sem essa correção.
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Many months ago, when MtGox was still a one man show, its operator spotted an obvious thief trying to cash out money he had stolen from another MtGox account. Jed (MtGox creator, who after sold it to MagicalTux) froze the account of such thief, and started an investigation that after a while became public. The thief created an account on this forum and started his protest here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3712.0A summary may be found on the OP of this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4065.0Baron was very likely a thief, as those topics indicate. But nevertheless, if you just navigate through them, you'll realize the amount of concern such attitude of Jed brought. People knew that it could set dangerous precedents, and some, even on the strong evidences of Baron's guilty, said that MtGox should not have blocked his account. It was not up to him to make justice, mainly due to the dangers such thing would imply. Today, MtGox is randomly doing the exact same thing, in a much larger scale. People's accounts are being blocked based on unknown "suspicious activity", and, as claimed by MtGox support, their money will not be returned if they don't comply with MtGox arbitrary demands, which, afaik, were not agreed upon before such money was sent to MtGox. They are behaving worse than Paypal does, because paypal at least makes you agree that your money may be frozen randomly like that, before you give them the money - and no, I'm not making a compliment to paypal. But the greatest difference from then and now, is that now, even the actions being much more outrageous, there's barely any reaction on these forums, or, more important, in markets. Yes, those directly concerned are complaining, but it seems everybody else just find it normal that an exchange freeze people's money like that. Months ago, that would completely ruin MtGox business. Today, that doesn't even scratch their volumes. What has happened to bitcoiners? Is this "mainstream" we've hit? Bitcoiners no longer have the sense of Justice (and danger) they once had? Should I be happy that the largest bitcoin related institution is behaving just like, if not worse, the main financial institutions bitcoin was supposed to change? Is that the "sign of bitcoin evolution" - becoming almost as bad as everything else? Maybe, but I'm not happy or comfortable with this. And it isn't MtGox actions that worry me the most... it's the lack of action of bitcoiners towards that. |
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Hello all,
I've been around for more than a year, and some recent events motivated me to create this account and open this topic.
The event in question was Mr Garzik interview on CBS news.
According to Mr Garzik, bitcoins are "fully traceable" and people behind Silk Road are "dumb kids".
First of all, what you claim, Mr Garzik, is simply false. Bitcoins are fully traceable? Really? Traceable to what, exactly? I challenge you to trace mine.
Please, don't spread lies! In the current state of things, it's really difficult to trace any of SR users, and you know this pretty well. Even if MtGox and other exchangers get attacked by governments and all their database is stolen, how would the government in question know which coins went to Silk Road, which didn't? Which excuse would they use to steal all data from exchanges? And even if they do steal all exchange data and then set themselves as fake silk road sellers in order to receive some coins, how much damage could they do before getting bad rep? Finally, even in this unlikely scenario, if the users of SR have the caution of making the coins jump one address only before sending them from the exchange withdraw address to SR, there is already plausible deniability.
Actually, I don't know why I'm saying all this. Mr Garzik obviously know it. What begs the question, why would he say those things in TV then?
The answer is: he is a frightened coward, particularly when compared to those he dares calling "dumb kids".
These "dumb kids" are simply making something heroic. Something that Mr Garzik obviously doesn't have the courage to do. They are not dumb at all. They know their risks and how to mitigate them. They are bravely lifting the middle finger to the criminals who want to enslave them. They are the pioneers of something great that might improve the life of millions. No, I'm not exaggerating. If you think I am, that's probably because you're a lucky person who has never been close to any victim of the war on drugs.
Mr Garzik, on the other hand, is completely frightened by the enslavers. So frightened, he even offers them his support in chasing those who dare resisting, by offering help to so-called "regulators"!
I understand Mr Garzik fears. I also have some of them - I'm definitely not as brave as SR folks. But at least I wouldn't go on TV, throw inaccurate claims on the air and call "dumb kids" those who deserve our deep respect.
Sincerely, Mr Garzik, your interview disgusted me. I've seen you doing great things for bitcoin before, so I honestly hope that this was a panic reaction that won't happen again. I hope that you redeem yourself by keep being a honest contributor to the project and by not throwing lies and flames towards those who do so great things for mankind. In the meanwhile, I would also hope that every freedom lover C++ programmer strictly revise any code done by Mr Garzik, since we should never trust someone that claims to be willing to work with a mafia - even if he only claimed that on his own defense.
PS: Before someone asks, no, I'm not affiliated to SR in any way. I don't even do drugs. I just recognize the great job they are doing.
PS2: If you are among those who really fear government reaction due to bitcoins being used to buy drugs, understand this: bitcoin being an annoyance to the DEAs and IRSes out there is nothing compared to the serious threat that bitcoin is to the entire central banking system. Bitcoin is indeed much greater than a way to buy drugs. When big governments out there understand this, then my friend, there is no whining and begging that will prevent "the regulators" from trying to ban bitcoin somehow. So, instead of bashing those who use bitcoins to circumvent state aggression, just leave them alone. Circumventing state aggression is the whole point of bitcoin anyway!
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