How bitcoin could turn into a 'Big Brother' nightmare

[reg]

in principle (as others have pointed out) preventing the use of tainted money deters theft,laundering ,illegal (as defined by the state) use of money. Why don't we try this out on the fiat system where most of this occurs? We could set up a list of issue numbers on dollars, euro's pounds etc and if on this list you refuse to accept or hold these notes? if that would work then you could apply something similar to BTC. reg

[The_Duke]

Bitcoin is often regarded as a new era of freedom and anonymity in money.

bitcoin is not anonymous and that isn't claimed by bitcoin.org and the satoshi whitepaper

Ok, great. Can we then stop advertizing bitcoin as being anonymous and remove that off of our list with advantages of bitcoin over fiat when we try to convince newbies to use bitcoin?

[phelix]

1.) assign everyone a state authorized bitcoin address at birth.

2.) hit everyone on the head sending to or not telling about receiving from unauthorized addresses

-> have full control over white market and strong borders against black market

[da2ce7]

1.) assign everyone a state authorized bitcoin address at birth.

2.) hit everyone on the head sending to or not telling about receiving from unauthorized addresses

-> have full control over white market and strong borders against black market

Or if they can control the bitcoin mining; refuse to send to a bitcoin address that is unauthorized, and will not confirm any transactions from unauthorized addresses.

[interlagos]

Authority people working to enforce these rules would eventually want to get paid in bitcoins.
Any authority will quickly go bankrupt wasting significant amount of coins on the rule enforcement.

Going after the pools is futile thanks to P2Pool.

[ElectricMucus]

Another thing that might happen is oppressive Governments using bitcoin as a base to build a centralized version of it where currency is issued by their cronies and wallets are tied to biometrics.

Sure they probably have to resources to do it anyway, but (right now) not the incentive. A successful bitcoin economy might change that.

[Hawkix]

What about if there is mechanism to mix the coins in the block? To take all the inputs put into block and form HUGE M-to-N transaction mapping the all inputs into all outputs.

I know this cannot work with current script priv/public keys etc. stuff, but maybe there is some crypto-magic which would made it possible?

[Desolator]

didn't read any replies yet but in response to the OP, bitcoin transactions are just as difficult to determine if it's legal or illegally gained money as cash.  One has serial numbers, one has sort of a tracking history I guess.  So really, they'd be more inclined to block it just because they don't like bitcoin than because of money laundering issues.  Although, the accounting/auditing side of money laundering is a big problem in bitcoin since most people don't report anything in it, lol.

[reg]

didn't read any replies yet but in response to the OP, bitcoin transactions are just as difficult to determine if it's legal or illegally gained money as cash.  One has serial numbers, one has sort of a tracking history I guess.  So really, they'd be more inclined to block it just because they don't like bitcoin than because of money laundering issues.  Although, the accounting/auditing side of money laundering is a big problem in bitcoin since most people don't report anything in it, lol.
[/quot

accounting /auditing side of money laundering in fiat is a big problem too. Simply because the only people who know when anything is sold illegally are those doing it and are not going to simply hand over any information on the currency used. The only real solution is to make everything legal and simply collect taxes on transactions to reduce the budget deficit instead of spending millions on law enforcement that does not work!. A lot of people (well almost everyone in society ) are not going to like this but making others conform to a set of moral standards that constitute "laws" is the crux of the problem. Consider this-let the fanatic shia kill the fanatic sunni and all you have left are peaceful citizens!. Make drugs legal and the addicts will either cure or kill themselves and the drug barons will go out of business. let people sell themselves and just rake in the taxes!. No need to track or check anything, people spend their own money on what they want. end of problem!. reg

[firefop]

didn't read any replies yet but in response to the OP, bitcoin transactions are just as difficult to determine if it's legal or illegally gained money as cash.  One has serial numbers, one has sort of a tracking history I guess.  So really, they'd be more inclined to block it just because they don't like bitcoin than because of money laundering issues.  Although, the accounting/auditing side of money laundering is a big problem in bitcoin since most people don't report anything in it, lol.

Except for there isn't a publicly available list of every transaction automatically compiled and kept current for cash.

Cash probably is tracked when it goes through banks and government agencies. . . but you carrying it around in your pocket is sort of like browsing through tor... you can pay in cash and whoever you paid can then pay in cash, etc... with the only tracking done when someone runs it through a bank.

I think as bitcoin as a community needs to stop looking at btc as a longterm 'store of value' because it shouldn't be - what it should be is fast/cheap way to transfer value from fiat to fiat or from fiat to 'other store of value'. Ideally, we have an interest in keeping btc itself constantly moving around and racking up micro-transaction fees.

If you're 'saving' or 'hoarding' btc - you aren't participating in the bitcoin economy --- you're simply speculating.

[phelix]

1.) assign everyone a state authorized bitcoin address at birth.

2.) hit everyone on the head sending to or not telling about receiving from unauthorized addresses

-> have full control over white market and strong borders against black market

Or if they can control the bitcoin mining; refuse to send to a bitcoin address that is unauthorized, and will not confirm any transactions from unauthorized addresses.

nice one. hunting illegal miners is also a good excuse for more government control.

[crazy_rabbit]

Some time ago I mentioned the idea of "the mark of the beast".....

[Hasimir]

Who will decide which coins are 'tainted' ?

Heh.  You didn't read the thread, did you?

In this thread, the discussion assumes that some entity is making that taint decision.  Pretend that it is the United Nations Special Committee on Bitcoin Taint, or whatever.

Given what's currently in the news it would probably be the ITU. 

Either that or worked into a treaty like the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement.

[Dansker]

I love how this discussion goes on, even after I threw in the towel!

[Desolator]

You know, the more governments and stuff try to control BTC -> USD (like the BSA rules about withdrawing more than $1000 from MTGox), the more people will want to spend BTC on goods and services, which is extremely beneficial to the BTC community.

[Ichthyo]

I love how this discussion goes on, even after I threw in the towel!

While we already had a lot of threads regarding tainted coins, the new angle you brought in is that taint might be an regulation instrument imposed on the Bitcoin economy by forces that be. Given the current state of affairs, such an "attack" would certainly be depressingly effective. Bitcoin is very innovative, but most of the apparent activities don't explore that potential.

Maybe we even need such an attack (and the following economic crash) to stop rebuilding old-style economy and head out for something really innovative. The basic technologies are there: the Bitcoin blockchain, scripts, multisig and Open Transaction. So we should focus on the next layer which needs to be built on top of that

[cypherdoc]

we have a Big Brother Nightmare right on this Forum; hazek.

lets see how fast this comment disappears.

[Raoul Duke]

we have a Big Brother Nightmare right on this Forum; hazek.

lets see how fast this comment disappears.

Altho I don't agree with you, I'll quote it. Just to avoid it disappearing, you know...

[SellStuff]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia

In all seriousness wouldn't that right there be enough to jeopardize Bitcoin? I mean if they really wanted to how hard could it be to control the majority of hashing power for a government/corporation?

[anu]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Sequoia

In all seriousness wouldn't that right there be enough to jeopardize Bitcoin? I mean if they really wanted to how hard could it be to control the majority of hashing power for a government/corporation?

Back to CPU mining? Sequoia is not remotely powerful enough.