... you have zero evidence for this shameful lie. You are just a propaganda shill for stupidly repeating it, calling it a "fact" makes you a prime AH.

Bitcoin is used no more, but probably less to "commit crime" than fiat currencies as a percentage of total bitcoin usage. In terms of total overall usage, cash USD by many orders of magnitude has the largest volume in criminal activity.

Just to add another point to the above list:

Court accepts DOJ's 'state secrets' claim to protect shadowy neocons: A new low.


i didn't think it was possible but this makes the situation even worse.

My gaud;

The government’s considerable efforts at keeping this monumental scandal from being aired at Ross Ulbricht’s trial is itself scandalous. In addition to keeping any information about the investigation from the defense for nearly nine months, then revealing it only five weeks prior to trial, and then moving to keep sealed and secret the general underlying information so that Mr. Ulbricht could not use it in his defense at trial, and then stymying the defense at every turn during trial when the defense tried to introduce favorable evidence, the government had also refused to agree to the defense’s request to adjourn the trial until after the indictment was returned and made public – a modest adjournment of a couple of months, since it was apparent that the investigation was nearing a conclusion. Throughout Mr. Ulbricht’s trial the government repeatedly used the secret nature of the grand jury investigation as an excuse to preclude valuable defense evidence that was not only produced in discovery, independent of the investigation of Mr. Force, but also which was only at best tenuously related to that investigation. In that manner the government deprived the jury of essential facts, and Mr. Ulbricht of due process. In addition, the government failed to disclose previously much of what is in the Complaint, including that two federal law enforcement agents involved in the Silk Road investigation were corrupt. It is clear from this Complaint that fundamentally the government’s investigation of Mr. Ulbricht lacked any integrity, and was wholly and fatally compromised from the inside. Also, it is clear that Mr. Force and others within the government obtained access to the administrative platforms of the Silk Road site, where they were able to commandeer accounts and had the capacity to change PIN numbers and other aspects of the site – all without the government’s knowledge of what precisely they did with that access. In light of the information provided in the Complaint, it is now apparent to all just how relevant some of the issues raised by the defense at trial were, including the payment by Dread Pirate Roberts to a law enforcement agent for information about the investigation, the ramping up of the investigation of Mr. Ulbricht in mid-2013, soon after that paid information began flowing, and the creation of certain evidence at trial, such as the 2013 journal that conveniently begins – again – in Spring 2013, after the corruption alleged in this Complaint ripened. As the evidence at trial – particularly from the government’s law enforcement witnesses – demonstrated, the Baltimore investigation and agents were inextricably involved in the evolution of the case and the evidence, as well as with alerting Mark Karpeles that he was under investigation, and meeting with his lawyers and exchanging information. At Mr. Ulbricht’s trial, knowing full well the corruption alleged in the Complaint made public today, the government still aggressively precluded much of that evidence, and kept it from the jury (and had other similar evidence stricken from the record). Consequently, the government improperly used the ongoing grand jury process in San Francisco as both a sword and a shield to deny Mr. Ulbricht access to and use of important evidence, and a fair trial.

They were able to introduce paper dollars because these are, in many ways, better than gold coins; then they were able to introduce electronic dollars because these are, in many ways, better than paper dollars. But this works as long as the new system reduces friction in payments. Now the game is over.

on balance, i think it's too late to make Bitcoin illegal or even put sharp restrictions on it here in the US.  

mainly b/c it's global and their are too many large, legitimate US investors involved already.  think NYSE, NASDAQ, multiple hedge funds, banks, VC funds, and numerous financial luminaries and Wall St folk.  just about the entire Silicon Valley wants it as fintech has been irrationally and unfairly excluded from financial innovation forever.  this is their time.  Wall St has begun to sense the inevitability and are climbing aboard.  there are plenty of overt data points and pending signs.

i'm not making the argument with tvbcof that gvt won't enforce unreasonable laws onto Bitcoin.  that probably is in Bitcoin's future.

what i'm arguing is their ability to actively taint tx's, either thru addresses or UTXO's.   that's not technically possible for them and also for those they demand to do so.  thus, their work will be cut out for them, assuming they need to actually track and enforce against those who disobey.

nice catch. I'm picking that we could have a good night or two swapping similar stories over some bottles ...

edit: just noticed that there were still nothing in the comments after 8 years for that damning article about the countrywide CEO making off with $150 million before the company collapsed (and was bailed out?)

this is exactly the sort of drivel i'd expect from your socialistic mindset.  "i'd just mandate it be so".

notice that there is no depth to your assertions as they just represent your lips flapping once again.  let me spell it out for you.  the working assumption here is that there will be mass disobedience of your pronouncements as most ppl who are even remotely familiar with how the protocol works understands that it is impossible to "taint coins" as there is no such concept in reality.  the trick for you is how to enforce your pronouncements.  there are just inputs and outputs which get split & joined constantly giving "coins" that are ever lessening shades of grey as time goes by.  and w/o a mechanism to identify owners of whatever unit you choose to monitor be it addresses or UTXO's, there is plausible deniability at every hop.  the only way to prove someone guilty of a theft is to catch them with the private keys on their computer used at the time of the theft.

It's not super simple. There is a reason why you do not pay tax when you buy firewood from your neigbor. He and you say no. There is a reason why they can not say: You to can not have sexual intercource, how could you think that, here it is WE who decide who is to have sex and not to have sex. But the people says no, no way. There is a reason they can not say that you have to go to church every sunday. Everybody say no, no way, basta! This is also what people will say to the blacklists or the whitelists. They will say, no, not a chance, basta, the coins are mine. Mine! Get out of my face. That is what everybody will say. Not super simple at all. Without support, they can do nothing. Whitout you giving them resources, they have no resources. Bitcoin will make that clear to a lot of people.

This is my fundamental disagreement with Gavin's proposal.  It not only makes no attempt to figure it out, it takes away the impetus to do so for 20 years, when we have had Bitcoin for only a third of that time.  This is what makes it such a jaw-droppingly misguided proposal unworthy of someone in his position.

Instead we are expected to undertake new risks without even the promise of the improvements needed to resolve the issue in either a long term manner (using a measured rate based on block-size need) or a permanent manner (removal of the limit based on it no longer being necessary). 

My "economic majority" phrasing becomes a little confusing here because we must continually ask, "A majority among whom?" A large enough minority with enough difference of opinion from the majority will break away and become the economic majority of a community of people who agree with their values. There are still reasons why each little economic community with varying beliefs about ideal money will not necessarily fork off: size is an advantage, voice can still work if the minority makes convincing arguments, etc.

Any democratic system of money is far inferior to Bitcoin.  It is fundamentally the opposite of that, it is an economic system.
An occurrence of democratic action is seen as a threat to Bitcoin, AKA 51% attack.

Voting is in all cases the supreme failure of an attempt to create quality.  Where there is quality, voting is not needed.  Voting is for avoiding violent conflict by replacing it with as much as possible with social conflict.  It is the use of law against others, and it is for subjugating minorities.  We in democratic societies are taught how wonderful it is to have democracy, and it is better than most any other option, but it is also utter crap.  I do not wish for a "democratic" system of money and I am very happy that Bitcoin isn't one.

I don't get it... Isn't this taking the worst of both worlds?

On forkability in general, I see it as a great strength, not a weakness. It means that the economic majority is always in control even when major changes have to be made.

As a side note, I find it cumbersome during deeper analysis to think in terms of "Bitcoin." Rather, I think more fluidly in terms of the economic majority ledger (currently known as the Bitcoin ledger). Forking the protocol is largely powerless* to affect the economic majority ledger, because - by the same logic as in my previous two posts - the new protocol fork only retains control of the economic majority ledger to the extent that the protocol change is compelling to the economic majority.**

Since every differentiated protocol fork (here I mean altcoins) has so far created an entirely new ledger, of course they aren't very compelling to the economic majority, receiving at most tepid investment interest. A spin-off would be based on the economic majority ledger, so it would have a great advantage over an altledger/altcoin, though if it wasn't compelling it would just be sold off by bitcoin holders for more bitcoins.

If a substantially different protocol fork or spin-off is ever more compelling to the economic majority, and of course using the same ledger is the first requirement for that, it would be adopted. The economic majority retains their ledger with their wealth in all cases. Bitcoin-the-protocol may be no more, but the ledger stays so bitcoin holders have nothing to fear except a re-naming.

Suppose a substantial segment of the economic majority shows interest in some change you find repulsive. Likely many others will agree with you, so in some unlikely scenarios you will potentially have two ledgers form over time.** If this does occur, it's the most amazing form of democracy (not voice democracy, but exit democracy) because everyone can use the system they want without compromise. However, again, there is a strong tendency to simply converge on ideal money based on the wisdom of (investing) crowds.

For instance, if we suppose a substantial segment of the economic majority shows interest FedCoin, then the legal situation may make it likely that the two coexist, with Bitcoin either on the black market in that country or competing directly with FedCoin. In that case, again, exit-democracy prevails and the Feds have no more tools to corrupt cryptocurrency than they do now (see the arguments in my two previous posts).

Here's another important implication of thinking in terms of the economic majority ledger: Bitcoin issuance is not limited to 21 million coins because of the protocol, but because of the exit-democratic consensus of the economic majority. It is incorrect to say we have moved from an era of control by central bankers to an era of control by mathematics. We have moved to an era of control by the economic majority.

This is a great advance, but not because "no one" can change the protocol, but because no one can force any group of people to stop using it. To effectively change the coin limit, you have to either convince the economic majority to do so, which is a herculean task, or convince some subset of the economic majority - but then that doesn't affect the rest of the people. That means the coin limit could change (for example, in 50 years to deal with mining incentives), but not without a reason that is so incredibly compelling that it sways all or most of the economic majority - in which case the typical bitcoiner should probably not worry, despite how bad it sounds, because the economic majority has those same reservations to overcome. And also we know that the change wouldn't allow for any net-harmful degree of continuing inflation or other effects, because the wisdom of the economic majority would be behind it.***

This is the kind of guarantee Bitcoin provides; it's essentially a decentralized governance where voice vs. exit is fully exercised at all times. What Bitcoin provides is not a guarantee by code or math, rather code and math are what enforce the "edicts" of this decentralized governance structure subject to the continual pressures of voice and exit backed by investment flows.

If, for example, the economic majority believes that increasing max_blocksize to 20MB or shorter block times or Turing completeness will make the protocol for updating the economic majority ledger more compelling, a fork incorporating these changes would thrive and beat out the Bitcoin Classic protocol.

So to me, all that's required for Bitcoin-the-ledger to survive in perpetuity and make every investor rich is for the protocol to be upgraded if and only if the economic majority deems it truly compelling, with all the prudence about viability that that entails. Forking makes that happen, giving that critical exit option to balance voice, which in Bitcoin is already vastly superior to government democracy voice since it's backed by actual money.

*So far around 90% powerless, considering the combined market cap of all the altledgers compared to the economic majority ledger (Bitcoin).

**Although some kind of 50/50 or 40/60 split could happen in theory, the incentives involved make it seem unlikely in practice - and even if it does happen (because both forks are highly compelling in their own right), the market can only support a few such splits because there are only so many protocol feature sets to compete on through differentiation.

***If you're skeptical of the wisdom of the economic majority, first realize this is what controls Bitcoin right now, in fact, as is the theme of this post. Secondly realize this is as good as it gets; there is no way to create a system smarter than the economic majority, at least not without centralization (and in my opinion not even then). Third, if you're convinced that prediction markets are a huge deal, this should be appealing for the same reasons. If you're not sold on prediction markets, read the five numbered documents here. Although Truthcoin may be a misguided system, Paul Sztorc's arguments on the importance of prediction markets are impressive.

Bitcoin issuance is not limited to 21 million coins because of the protocol, but because of the exit-democratic consensus of the economic majority. It is incorrect to say we have moved from an era of control by central bankers to an era of control by mathematics. We have moved to an era of control by the economic majority.

The edict backed by the world's superior machinery for causing harm did a long way as well: "10 years of prison & 10k USD in fines to anyone who dares even possess gold."

I get the analogy to gold vs. gold-backed dollars, but in Bitcoin's case I can't think of any specific changes the Feds could make to a fork that would allow it to both (a) obviate almost everyone's need for Bitcoin and (b) be enough different from Bitcoin for the government to be satisfied with it (and hardcore bitcoiners to be dissatisfied with it).

For example, if the money supply remains un-changeable, this is awesome as the Federal Reserve has effectively been neutralized. If they make a fork that can be inflated, Bitcoin Classic retains its store-of-value properties and will be highly sought after. If they do something in between, we get a little of both. If they remove all anonymity possibilities in their fork, Bitcoin thrives in the black market; if they don't, awesome. If in between, a little of both.

At one end of the spectrum they take just a few of Bitcoin's properties to build a system that is better than current fiat, which would be moderately liberty-promoting, while still leaving Bitcoin's differentiated value proposition very firmly intact. At the other end of the spectrum they adopt almost all of Bitcoin's properties, which would be extremely liberty-promoting, but leaving Bitcoin with little differentiated advantage. Either result is overall very good liberty-wise (though the result where they mimic Bitcoin quite closely may not be very good for Bitcoin investors - but that result is also highly unlikely), and I see no point in between those extremes that would be any worse. So I conclude there is nothing to worry about.

If they can fork Bitcoin to their liking while not destroying its major selling points, more power to them and I'll even invest in their fork, but I don't think that's possible. The changes the government would demand would make it orders of magnitude less valuable and most of the current economic majority would stay with Bitcoin Classic. They could grow FEDCoin larger than Bitcoin, more valuable, etc., but Bitcoin would still have its uses - precisely those uses that were neutered in FEDCoin.

In summary, government-sponsored forks aren't a threat to Bitcoin. In fact they would probably just help, because they would get the general public familiar with the ins and outs of crypto, such as security. Then there's Bitcoin with its ex-hypothesi better features.

I agree.

I would like this scenario a lot more if we replaced "exchanges set up to handle multiple forks" to "wallets/nodes set up to handle multiple forks".

Maybe I should prepare for such scenario and have a node / wallet ready that does that. Anyone have a suggestion?

proof of work wont make it to the mainstream.
1billion^TM people will never benefit from it ~directly.
its insane. they just need ~apps.

ETFs, sidechains, offchains, blythechains.. whatever.

I'm not a huge fan of side chains yet, but Bitcoin's Grandfather (Adam Back) and a couple of other notables participating in this thread have done a lot to convince me they won't be the end of the world and may ameliorate pressure to adopt Gavin's Bloatchain proposal.

Doc's economic attack via free options still worries me, but I have faith antifragility win out in the end.

OTOH, 20MB blocks would destroy TOR, etc. compatibility and poke holes in our beautifully small (defensible/diffuse/resilient) network, which is the vehicle for BTC's antifragility.

Sorry I can't be more specific and impressively techie!   

What's your take on the matter, old bean?

Good to know.


Yes. The power of Bitcoin is enhanced by in-built flexibility. Many nodes will always have and always want the full blockchain, many will be happier with the UTXO set secured by hashes in the main-chain, and many users will be OK with SPV only.

Just because alternative models are available, and can work concurrently with earlier implementations, does not mean everyone jumps ship to one model.