And Coinbase happen to be the biggest one.
Please think, in the future, this will be the norm. All major service providers are going to end up like this, it's only a matter of time the government throws endless resources into blockchain analysis linking it all to all possible gateways like exchanges in order to catch everyone that is unlucky to be holding coins that are traced back to criminal activities.
The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.
How do you suggest to improve the privacy of bitcoin when you can monitor everything ,the government will come up with solutions to identify major players in the bitcoin echo system in the future without a doubt,until then everyone is free to trade without any restriction.It is really unfortunate to see police knocking at doors just for handling bitcoin,if that is the case. You don't wait "until then". That is a recipe for disaster. You get ready before things happen. And im certain governments will only get increasingly tyrannical as BTC reaches $10,000 and starts challenging gold as a solid store of value outside of the system. I count on the likes of gmaxwell and others that understand the importance of privacy, to keep thinking about innovative ways to obscure bitcoin transactions (ideally at protocol level) |
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The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core.
CoinJoin and joinmarket are cool. Will be interesting when joinmarket is more mature. But aren't those essentially the same as mixers but decentralized? The fact that you are not relying on a centralized host that can store and handle logs to authorities is a step in the right direction for increased privacy, but ultimately, the problem remains: you could end up with coins that are from criminal origin after the mix. So I don't see any other way out but to somehow obscure every single address. And I don't think this can be done at this point, it should have been designed like this since day 1. We would need to hide the actual addresses. With Confidential Transactions, we will be able to hide the amounts, now we need to hide the addresses too, make them some random useless string of characters with no correlation or something. We need something quick. |
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The bottomline is, it's a lottery, anyone could be holding coins that were once used by some criminal, they end up in a exchange, and then you deposit money on a exchange, do your trading, withdraw and you end up raided. Thats not what happened here. Most companies are aware that blockchain analysis is not accurate (except for coinbase) What happened is she sent/received over 10,000euro to her bank account. In the EU, you are required to report bank transactions over 10,000euro to the tax office. Due to a loophole you are not required to report Bitcoin transactions over 10,000euro, only bank/cash transactions. It is supposedly to prevent money laundering and funding terrorism. She didn't report it. She got raided. The initial raid was just to investigate the unreported transaction(s). Who knows if she'll face charges or not, depends on the evidence the police have. And Coinbase happen to be the biggest one. Please think, in the future, this will be the norm. All major service providers are going to end up like this, it's only a matter of time the government throws endless resources into blockchain analysis linking it all to all possible gateways like exchanges in order to catch everyone that is unlucky to be holding coins that are traced back to criminal activities. The *only* way to counteract it is to make it impossible by improving bitcoin privacy at its core. |
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Before y'all start talking about how the state robbed someone of their Bitcoins, do some research. You can obviously tell, just by reading the first comment, that something's fishy here:  OP is basically a drug drealer and police had every right to do what they did. Then in this case it is totally different. This girl doesn't need to cry if she is related to drug activities ect. The one who can cry are the families victims of people like her selling death with drugs because a member family using drugs, or died because of drugs, ect The police doesn't have a right to do shit (they can I know, but that doesn't mean it's right). Again, anyone can use mixers, and if someone uses a mixer to improve their privacy, you can end up fucked by the police due unlucky coins received after the mixing. The bottomline is, it's a lottery, anyone could be holding coins that were once used by some criminal, they end up in a exchange, and then you deposit money on a exchange, do your trading, withdraw and you end up raided. We need improvements in privacy now. |
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https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/68nh7q/knock_knock_police_you_have_bitcoins/I think this deserves it's own thread, and it shows how much we need Confidential Transactions, CoinJoin, Schnorr sigs, Mimblewimble, and whatever else we can do to improve fungibility of bitcoin. The fear of ending up in trouble due owning BTC that may have been connected to criminal activity in the past is a very reasonable concern. How do we solve this? Tone Vays already said that he is pretty scared to sell his BTC because he doesn't know if he is going to end up having problems.
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This is why we need to improve the privacy features of bitcoin immediately: https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/68nh7q/knock_knock_police_you_have_bitcoins/This is going to keep happening more and more. If you are unlucky to hold coins tied to former criminal activity you risk that you get raided, it's crazy. People are becoming scared to deal with bitcoin because of this. Fungibility to needs to improved. All bitcoins should be the same, no way to differentiate them. We need to somehow make blockchain analysis impossible. Counting on mimblewimble, , CT coinjoin or whatever to improve this situation. |
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Because buying in person always has a premium. This premium is charged on the basis that exchanging Bitcoin locally and in person is normally much more private than doing it on an exchange.
But there's people charging ridiculous premiums even if they do not meet in person, so a regular bank transaction and requiring scan of ID too etc, plus charging a big premium. There are a lot of scammers in Localbitcoins. The only reason to use Localbitcoins is to meet in person as you said, other than that, just buy in an exchange. You are going to have the same levels of privacy (none). |
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you are missing the whole point of FUD. those who are spreading it are not idiots who really believe themselves! that would be funny though  the whole point of FUD is to create F + U + D in the market and benefit from it. when the panic starts FUDsters start their work and it is like pouring oil on fire, it makes it grow or so is their plan! that is exactly why he is only active when price is either stable or on a correction dip. the worst part is, when an FUD takes a victim that would be a newbie holding a small amount of coins. to rest of us he is a source of amusement. What poster below said. Kwukduck isn't some Machiavellian genius that is crashing the markets with his post. Do you really believe anyone here has enough power to influence the markets? don't be stupid. Kwukduck is just an idiot that sells too early, then feels bad about missing on the gains and starts creating threads about bitcoin going to hell to feel better and (in his delusion) try to influence the markets. At the end of the day, all he is doing is wasting his time. Right now he has been rendered a clown after so many failed predictions. |
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As we know, kwukduck spends his days creating FUD threads for months. Eventually a dip happens and he says "see, told ya". I wonder if in his delusion he thinks he ever guesses anything right?. Anyway, as we know, BTC is headed towards $1400+. Anyone that followed kwukduck advice is missing on massive gains. How can he keep doing this any longer?  |
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You shouldn't call them out like that, essentially people with enough money in pockets when start buying any coin off the market as a natural consequence price will pump. Thats called a speculative bubble  Of course I should call them out. People who are investing in [X] or promoting [X] solely or primarily because it has made them money are greedy idiots. They don't care about any fundamentals that crypto was built upon. Do I know this is a bubble formed by firstly whales and secondly the community (community with buy power starting from $10 up to $10,000 and above that considers whales which in turn they have their sizes) and there is actually no use cases for such an altcoin in the real world?
The market capitulation of altcoin is in a crazy bubble. What could ETH do when price was under $7 and what it can do now that price is 10 folds?
Nothing. what will happen when people start trying to take their profits out?
Imagine the panic triggered if the SEC suddenly were to approve the appeal (the reason for rejection is nonsensical is anyways). Altcoins would plummet into an abyss as people run to save their wealth. I hope im wrong, but I think the current bubble is mostly triggered by the SEC re-considering the ETF, and I think they didn't re-consider it themselves, this is just the Winklevoss being insistent. Nothing has changed so the ETF will fall again which means the price will probably crash then recover finding a new floor. As this happens, some alts will fly, possibly LTC, and maybe ETH goes even higher. People just love to speculate and to make money without working, this is why I think altcoins will never disappear, people love the crypto casino. Making a great trade feels too good. |
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 Bobby Lee CEO of Chinese exchange BTCC made a prediction about Bitcoin's price after halving in 2020. Remember: after next halving block mining reward will be lowered to 6,25 BTC According to other speculations I have seen, Bobby's guess is rather on lower side of the spectrum. Will it come true? Tweet: https://twitter.com/bobbyclee/status/835875006731034624The price needs to be 5 figures by the next halving. So im going to give the $10,000 prediction a pass. It may seem crazy now, but bitcoin's marketcap is tiny so we are going to see either continued growth or a massive parabolic rise 2013 style all the way up to $10,000+. The fundamentals may not be perfect but we'll get through it. Bitcoins going only up. Limited supply, continued demand = moon. It's really that simple. |
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You have been explained already by a couple people how satoshi's vision is incompatible with the concept of cash, because setting a blocksize big enough to allow for main stream transactions on-chain, would mean the people validating the transactions have the power to censor transactions at will because it would be no longer people running nodes but corporations.
Satoshi was wrong when he wanted datacenters running nodes while calling his project p2p cash.
translation: "gigabytes by midnight" "visa by midnight" "hold bitcoin at 1mb to prevent it growing naturally at a pace that home nodes can cope with over decades, because visa by midnight not naturally in a few decades" (facepalm) You are out of your mind if you think technology will grow naturally with the amount of blocksize needed for mainstream onchain cheap fast transactions while allowing people to run nodes at home. By the time bitcoin reaches VISA levels, VISA will be lightyears away. We can't never compete against the expected standards of the average joe onchain, because they are used to the perceived speed of centralized systems. We can do very moderate blocksize increases and that's about it (if you care about network decentralization that is) |
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I believe in Satoshi's vision. Hate me for it if you want, I don't care  You have been explained already by a couple people how satoshi's vision is incompatible with the concept of cash, because setting a blocksize big enough to allow for main stream transactions on-chain, would mean the people validating the transactions have the power to censor transactions at will because it would be no longer people running nodes but corporations. Satoshi was wrong when he wanted datacenters running nodes while calling his project p2p cash. |
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We know nowadays the security has became a very vital issue anyone who has some idea about what is cyberspace knows the level of risk every user potentially have. and the most vurnability thing is that we can not stay without technologies, maybe they are our pc's or our phones or tablets. we are using such a protected cryptocurrency which can not be hacked directly but there are numerous of indirect methods available so what will it effect on bitcoin and even other crypto's
The entire banking industry is backed by the same SHA256 algo so if it gets somehow cracked, the entire economy would be at risk, and therefore civilization itself probably. This is a more realistic doomsday scenario (SHA256 broken due quantum computer advancements). I don't believe in an asteroid hitting earth, or solar storms. I think those are simply memes. |
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which pool does Chandler Guo control?
That's what I've been trying to find and I can't nothing. Anyone can tell what pool Chandler Guo is operating? he has threatened in the past to attack ETC with a 51% hashrate attack, then HOURS later he became an ETC supporter. The chinese miners are the most unstable bipolar people on earth. |
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Bitcoin is getting reconsidered once again do you think its going to get approved or denied? Approval does it mean BTC rockets up ? Denial does it mean it takes a dump like in March? May 15th is the last day of approval.
No way we are going to see the ETF approved. If I could I would short BTC once it gets rejected, but im not sure 100% so im not going to risk losing a lot of money. I'll just continue watching the show from the sidelines while holding, and if it crashes as hard as the last ETF rejection of the Winklevoss, im going to buy more because as we saw the last time, those opportunities are very rare and get bought back real fast. |
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It's not an ATH until Bitstamp hits it in my opinion. BTC-E hit a new ATH ($1315), it almost hit a new ATH on Bitstamp but the damn peak at the ETF of $1350 made it miss it by 2 dollars. I think we are going to see a higher price as the bitfinex USDT fear gets cleared out. I think the fear is overblown. If you factor in the actual billions that have came out within the ecosystem, you'll realize this rise is legit and not a side effect of USDT.
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Overstock used to accept bitcoin and the CEO is very pro-bitcoin but im not sure if he is still accepting it. Microsoft also used to accept BTC. Find more here: http://spendbitcoins.com/places/ |
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