Yes, this make perfect sense. I was not thinking this through properly.



Yes, I jumped ahead and was running with ideas that didn't really apply.
Thanks for taking the time to explain this.

OK. Thank you for the explanation.

One question: If someone attained 100% of hash and held it and prevent new outside hash, and eventually
caused a lowering of the difficultly greatly, which allows for lower hash for work, it would be easier to redo the
full chain in less time than 1 year (possibly down to a few months from this "retargeting pumping")?

What I'm getting at is this data is only good assuming the attacker will still use the full 100% hash.
So for example, if the Chinese government seized all their mining farms (100%) and assume there
where no other miners worldwide, then it would take the Chinese government 1 year to rebuild the
chain assuming they do not do any purposeful difficultly retargeting. I'm not advanced in Bitcoin so
my question may be very wrong and borderline moronic.

I may be wrong but this is how I'm reading it:

I think what that graph is estimating is that it would take the malicious block builder
around 325 days to redo the work for the past 7 or past 30 days if the hash rate is
at its current amount. If the hash decreased, it becomes easier to rewrite that past work.
It is not about building a whole new chain, but going backwards to undo past work on our chain.

Edit: I must be wrong. I am very confused now.
What is seems to be is that at the current hash rate, if 100% of hash was attained, stopped mining,
and "reversed" work, it would take less than 1 year to rebuild the full blockchain. This assumes that
there would be no new blocks created and all hash/work is dedicated to rebuilding this other chain.

I think it would take much longer than 1 year.
I would have assumed at least 3 years of nonstop building.

Can you please provide the info/link your are referring to?

Most simply, someone could in theory do this in order to change past transactions.

In order to do this they would need 100% of new hash plus a lot more extra hash than
the Bitcoin network currently has, to first catch up to our chain, and then to over take our
chain. Obviously this would be malicious and would be extremely expensive for the attacking
chain builder. This would need to be done by a State actor. There are steps that could be taken
so that a majority of Bitcoin nodes will reject this purposeful malicious chain.




Maybe you should be asking yourself, how do you know she wasn't born with balls?

There are no government laws regarding space.
There may be international treaties or proclamations from organizations such as the UN,
as to what space should or should not be used for, but those are worthless proclamations
with no ability of direct enforceability. Any attempts are indirect and by sanctions or etc.

Some countries have classified systems sitting and waiting in geosynchronous orbit including
nuclear weapons platforms, attack satellites, and space drones, which would be considered
violations of such treaties. Most agreements of space are only agreements as to disclosed human
objects in space such as the international space station and other educational/technological vessels,
and not of space itself.

The point is, that in order for a government to have a law about an issue or an object means that they
have full governance over that issue or object through control or enforcement. Since there can be
no true enforcement of the space around the Earth without creating an international space command
that is tasked to patrol that territory, there can be no official law regarding that space. The effect, is
that space is more like the wild west, where anything goes since there is no sheriff, just like Bitcoin.
Until there are direct laws and regulations about Bitcoin, it is as worthless as trying to regulate space.

You may attempt to apply pre-existing laws to Bitcoin directly, but without enforcement mechanisms
and intervention abilities it is worthless.

The Euro is a internationally recognized currency controlled and regulated by the EU.
The US recognizes that government and currency and thus agrees to enforce it as a currency within the US.
If a bank stores Euros and that bank is robbed, it is a normal currency theft, not an asset.

If there is no need for governments to control currencies or assets, then there would be no laws over them.
Your statement makes no sense from a legal point of view.

Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Experts Call Craig Wright a ‘Con Man’ and ‘Fishy’ for Claiming He Created Bitcoin

No one knows how many coins Satoshi personally mined.
It is estimated to have been around 1.5 million based upon an investigation that used assumptions.

There is no wallet or address that contains all the coins, since Satoshi used a new address after each found block.
The most Satoshi controls per address is about 50 bitcoins, plus any dust that users sent to those addresses.
If you look at many of the early blocks where the coinbase in unmoved, those may be Satoshi's mined coins.

1. Satoshi is dead. He will very likely never again appear.
2. If he was still alive and went on the media circuit, bitcoins price would drop for many different reasons.
3. If he was still alive and dumped his coins, the experiment would be over and others would move to a fair altcoin.

Sometimes people say "the Fed" meaning the US Federal Government, but "the Fed" is only the Federal Reserve.
So xhomerx10 is correct in his original answer in this context.

If your question is that all financial transactions from outside the US is monitored and checked with other
international financial systems, then the answer is yes. In theory, if you have money in a bank account that is
associated with illegal activity and they have flagged it as such and then you attempt to transfer it overseas to
the US, it could be frozen and seized. If your funds are not flagged currently, but are in the future, the US will
then also freeze and seize within the US banking system.

If you have converted those "illegal" funds into bitcoin within your own country and then mixed those coins good
enough that the original links have been entirely disconnected, and then you transfer those bitcoins to a US property
owner for the purpose of purchasing their property, everything in theory should be fine as long as those coins future
use will be deemed as "clean" by regulated exchanges or other regulated wallets.

If the home seller learns later that their coins were dirty and unusable or becomes frozen in exchanges or etc, they
would be able to open a legal action against you and your new property due to fraud and other counts. If they win,
they will likely get their property back and you will be in a US jail and then ultimately deported back to the country
that has determined you participated with or in the original crime that allowed you to get the "illegal funds" and they
will charge and prosecute you there.

Ultimately, the US government will not care as long as you are not breaking any laws or participating in criminal activity.
The issue with bitcoins and physical property sales is whether those coins are bad or dirty and you transferred that
liability knowingly and whether the original property owner has remedies. If the coins are transferred for example, from
your coinbase account to the home sellers coinbase account, that would somewhat satisfy some of the issues since the
home seller could assume that coinbase checked those coins and determined they were clean before allowing them to be
transferred from your coinbase account.

Other issues to consider are the contract/agreement terms and the terms of sale for the property that needs to
incorporate bitcoin clauses and elaborations to protect all parties. It may be your only protection if a dispute arises.

You are talking ignorant nonsense garbage just to meet your daily sig spam quota.

Legal private property does not exist in Bitcoin, that is contrary to the system's design.
Legal theft does not exist in Bitcoin, that is contrary to the system's design.

If it was so, then Bitcoin has failed in it original design and purpose and would be currently regulated.

Bitcoin is only classified as such in the US for taxation purposes.
The US does not grant bitcoin users any property rights or anything beyond.
That would be impossible without direct regulation of the blockchain.
In order for bitcoin to be a property, it would need legal control over the blockchain.

Money is not normally private property, it is owned and controlled by the government's treasuries.
Most governments retain all rights of the money that is attributable to you, so there is no true ownership.
They allow you to hold and use it as legal tender only for the purpose of commerce.
They reserve all rights and can take it away from you depending on the circumstances.

Unless the money you are referring to is old paper/coin collectibles, you do not have the same
legal property rights as like holding land property.

Bitcoin Tip: Only lend/trade what you are willing to lose.
Any profits you make will almost always be offset by others that defaulted.
Lending & trading is always risky and most of the time you will likely be in the red.

Bitcoin Pro Tip: Only hloding bitcoin is a safe and almost sure way toward increased value.

1MB Block space limit will very likely not exist in 2140. SegWit alone will increase it to about 1.7MB in 2017.
As time goes on and technological advancements and efficiencies come about, the block limit will be raised to
higher levels that will be deemed safe, so that the network will be able to remain secure and decentralized as
well as scale for increased tx growth.

If by 2140 the block limit is still at 1MB, it will most likely be due to Bitcoin being dead and abandoned.
By 2140, it is highly likely a 1GB block will be considered a very small block.

I support the original idea for both temporary bans as well as permanent bans.

Throwing out some suggestions:

1. When a forum name displays the "BANNED"/"TEMP BANNED" user rank, make the rank a link
that goes to the forum rules. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=703657.0
Many times I have seen noobies complain they didn't know the rules nor ever see them, especially
after they have been banned. This addition would help diminish that argument further as well as
help guide other users to the thread when they see that a member has a "BANNED" marking by
chance within normal thread browsing.

2. What about having a ban counter (obviously for temp bans)?
So for example, if you have been banned once before, you will receive a "1" in some section within
your profile, but not displayed in the normal thread displays. That way Signature Campaign Admins
could institute policies or auto scripts that drop or don't include users with 1 or 2 bans within their
campaigns. This may create a shaming by having ban numbers and cause sig spammer to "attempt"
not to spam as much, especially after their account is flagged with a "2". It may reduce spamming.

3. Make the user rank of "BANNED"/"TEMP BANNED" a different color, like Red or Orange.

Just throwing these out there. I have no idea what it would take to code #2 and whether it would
even be helpful in any worthwhile way.

Though most of what you are saying is true, most legal systems have not determined bitcoin to
be a legal property type, like fiat, coins, collectables, and etc. It is easy to say that it is, since that would
be the obvious assumption since in normal legal systems everything can fall into some form of pre-existing law,
but the true legal issue arises where when does the new "owner" of those inputs take possession of those
coins within the blockchain system? Isn't the blockchain always the owner and possessor of the coins and
the blockchain only grants you a temporary control?

The legal question is, can bitcoin be a legal property if the value token never leaves the possession of the
blockchain system? If the Bitcoin blockchain itself does not care about who owns what nor can prove who
owns what nor will correct or reverse stolen bitcoins, would it be the correct legal theory to place bitcoins
within the normal standards for property, or should a new type/term and definition be created?

For example, maybe bitcoin is a virtual item or virtual good?
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oliverherzfeld/2012/12/04/what-is-the-legal-status-of-virtual-goods/#25b527a6be21
My understanding is Bitcoin is a free to participate experiment that can never grant users/miners/devs any rights or guarantees
and as such if the system fails or disappears, users have no legal right to take any enforceable action against anyone, including
the developers, since bitcoin was not intended to be a currency/asset that governmental laws would "protect" or "regulate".
When a user/miner/dev participates within the Bitcoin system, they waive any and all rights by default. If users do not agree
with automatically waving their rights when using this experimental system, then they should not participate within the bitcoin
blockchain, but only with bitcoin within regulated exchanges.

In the context of a virtual item, can it be a legally enforceable property that should fall under normal theft laws?
I don't think so, users are granted no rights by any human or governmental authority on-chain.

That is only a ledger entry. The developers and software specifically grant no rights of ownership to anyone.
You can not own those coins since the blockchain never transfers ownership from itself. It always stays within
its own possession, that was the purpose of the system to prevent easy regulation. Your private key is only a
temporary control right, not a possession or ownership right.


The blockchain is not merely a ledger. The blockchain is the bitcoins themselves.
On a technical level they are the same entity. According to your logic, then your privatekey
by virtue grants ownership rights over the blockchain itself, but obviously you can not,
so thus you can't own the bitcoins at all. Technically ownership is illusionary in this system.
You probably only own the privatekey, whether there are coins in it or not.


But that doesn't answer the legal question of ownership rights.
Legal ownership is normally determined by third party registration agencies.
So, if two people have the same control of bitcoins within the an address, who is the legal owner?
The blockchain doesn't care, they both control. That is the Bitcoin system.
The first to move, is the next temporary controller.


True, but that is only to the IRS and such tax agencies.
If there was no ability to "write off the loss", such as prior to 2013,
then your property would just be gone because you never truly owned or possessed it.
You would have only had a temporary control, that fell into the abyss.

By your view point, it seems you would prefer regulation since it would allow you to be bailed out from
your own actions. For example, it would allow you and other to not fully lose from your bad choices, interestingly
in opposition of the very reason why Satoshi created Bitcoin in the first place, to prevent bailouts and manipulation
of financial and insurance systems. I think Satoshi created the system as is, and not allow the granting of rights, so
that the Bitcoin system COULD survive into the future. If it must conform to the laws, it would die from having no
novel purpose or reason for existence. Its true value comes from not being directly regulatable or legal property.


Value is irrelevant to me here, I only care about the legal aspects.
All agencies disagree on what bitcoin is because there is no official definition on what it is.
Each agency will govern bitcoin as they see fit until there is a legislative decision and law.


Ultimately, I may be very easily proven wrong in a few months to years when laws are passed or whatever,
but I think that if that day comes, it will be a marker in Bitcoin history of when things began to go backwards
and fall apart as opposed to when things "went to the moon" and "bitcoin wins". I believe that the world has to
conform to Bitcoin and not the other way around. If we do ultimately conform to governmental regulations, I think
personally I could realistically say that Bitcoin has failed in what one of its original goals was.

If Bitcoin users are granted rights by governments, there will be many resulting legal issues with the system.
Clean and Dirty coins will likely be the first attack from these new regulations.

That is not how the US legal system works, sometimes the federal prosecutors (and low level
prosecutors) will lay dozens of charges only to, after many months of trial and testimony, narrow
them down to the only ones they believe they could win. They have the right to add or subtract
charges in mid-case based upon the record made during the trial. Normally, they lay their so many
counts and stick with them, but they still reserve the right to amend them during the trial and not
bound to the original charges.

There is no doubt that the government had overwhelming evidence against him, they were
watching him in real time and letting him hang himself, was my understanding. But the fact
that he pled guilty does not mean that the extortion charge proves that bitcoin is a legal property.

I am aware of what the IRS says and their statement is only an advisory opinion. It is not an official
determination that is based on law and legislative definitions, it is only an opinion on how US citizen
should determine what bitcoin is for the purpose of paying taxes. So the IRS says that it is a property,
but only as far as it determines it as a taxable asset, otherwise for things like property rights and thefts
and etc, they don't really care and have no opinion or advice. There is no doubt that US Citizen should
pay any taxes on the profit from bitcoins at the time of selling them into fiat, but anything beyond the IRS
is speculative until those agencies provide their opinions or the legislators create laws that define and regulate
it.Also, and most interestingly, IRS has no way currently to audit your coins to determine if you are even
complying with their advisory opinion, so even if they say its property for tax purposes, they themselves
admit by omission that they can't force or determine if you have bitcoins or if you should pay taxes on them.
It is voluntary and in normal governmental legal determinations and laws, nothing is voluntary but mandatory.

In theory, if bitcoin is a property, it should be reported to the FBI and they should investigate each theft report
and provide the victim with the result of the investigation as well as information into any prosecutions since bitcoin
is a borderless, cross-state, international currency payment system. It would legally fall within in jurisdiction due
to the cross state nature in the US and how the Bitcoin network works, in general. My understating now is the FBI
doesn't care and tells users to report it to their local police departments, which is obviously going to go no where.
The FBI doesn't want to look into each bitcoin theft because they are already overloaded with thefts from federally
insured banking systems.

No, that is not an official governmental determination.
He willingly pled guilty to those charges without contest, meaning the government didn't
have to prove whether a legal property was extorted. Obviously, the federal agent "extorted" the victim,
but that does not prove that the gain was a legal property, only that the victim was coerced with
threats to provide some form of compensation. "Extortion" is more about the act of threatening to get a gain.
Not whether that gain is a certain property type or not, that is irrelevant to the threat for gain.

There is no official judgment, ruling or law for any high court which determines bitcoin to be a
legal property. In fact, different agencies and different US Courts have determined that bitcoin is many
different things, sometimes out right contradicting other judgments and opinions.

Citing a single case where the defendant pled guilty without contest does not create official
governmental legislative determination of what bitcoin is and is not. It only applies in this case.

US money can not be owned and is not a property.
So if bitcoin is money and property, that would contradict US law.

If you think bitcoin is a property, what aspect is the part that you own?
If the bitcoins never leave the blockchain system, how do you own them?
If another user generates your private key by chance, does he own those coins too?
If the Bitcoin network disappeared tomorrow, where did your property go?

If your answer is so simple, why isn't there a clear understanding between agencies?

The Bitcoin system does not grant users any rights and is use at your own risk.
If the government wants to declare it a legal property type, they don't understand what Bitcoin and
the bitcoin blockchain is on a technical level. Ownership and property rights are virtual illusions here.

Understandable, but just for example as to why even consumer protection is dangerous,
take a look at the New York BitLicense. It was originally supposed to help bitcoin users from
being scammed and grant them certain protections from and with exchanges and etc.

All that it really did was pushed bitcoin businesses out of New York, made the rules and regulations
more strict, and made the licenses almost impossible to get, thus creating a "control" over bitcoin in NY.
At the end of the day, a clarification of regulation of bitcoin in order to "protect the bitcoin users" turned
into a mechanism to control, restrict, and prevent bitcoins growth in that area. With one strike, NY became
a no-go zone for bitcoin, even p2p Localbitcoin sales are "illegal" under the BitLicense.

So even though consumer protection are normally great and needed for most products, Bitcoin/bitcoin may
be the only system that currently exists where such regulation would cause the opposite of what most users
would probably desire.