...

[knight22]

I'm not surprised there is hidden crap in the XT fork. A certain group is pushing hard to try and force it's adoption. The spam/stress tests was the beginning of it. It made people feel that blocks were full when they were just orchestrated that way.

Of course that stress test was to push forward the scaling. What you need to understand is that there is shit load of businesses out there that are waiting for bitcoin to scale to start their operations. There is a need right now in the market and it seems the core devs are ignoring that need so that's why Gavin and Mike threw the code in the wild so that market can have that option that fits their needs. This situation is inevitable through market forces and they will choose the implementation that will handle their shit load of transactions so they can make a profit. The race is on for Core and XT. XT has made the first move.

XT did make the first move. Mike and Gavin decided their way was best and instead of working together as a team with the rest of the core devs they just forked the project hoping everyone would follow them. I can't follow a move like that.

The core devs were willing to compromise the market needs of scaling on time to pursue their own fit. However, Core has still time to turn off their feet quickly. You can follow the project you want but neither you and I nor theymos nor the Core team can do shit about the outcome. The market will decide. Remember "no one controls bitcoin"? By market I mean all the businesses that will rely on transactions to make a profit. Bitcoin is going beyond this community right now you'll have accept that. We have learnt a child to walk and now he's going on its own.

[iCEBREAKER]

Looks like XT is a piece of shady bullshit. What will be in the next version ? Direct reporting to NSA ?

That's already in here, using DNS lookups.

Fuck Heam, the core dev he rode in on, and everyone who has been enabling his anti-cypherpunk agenda.

[Dire]

Remember "no one controls bitcoin"?

But if IP addresses can be blocked from making transactions, then something, essentially, does control Bitcoin - or at least the users of it, as a form of regulation. Which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

Before you know it, there will only be 'verified' Bitcoin addresses/IP allowed to join/utilize the protocol.

It's only a small jump to that, all you have to do is look at your Paypal's, Googles and so on to see where this kind of thing (always) goes. Make a bit of change, ride the small storm, wait for the calm, make another change, ride that storm... then rinse and repeat.

[knight22]

Remember "no one controls bitcoin"?

But if IP addresses can be blocked from making transactions, then something, essentially, does control Bitcoin - or at least the users of it, as a form of regulation. Which pretty much amounts to the same thing.

Before you know it, there will only be 'verified' Bitcoin addresses/IP allowed to join/utilize the protocol.

It's only a small jump to that, all you have to do is look at your Paypal's, Googles and so on to see where this kind of thing (always) goes. Make a bit of change, ride the small storm, wait for the calm, make another change, ride that storm... then rinse and repeat.

If this grows really as a concern I don't see why it couldn't be patched.

[brg444]

Of course that stress test was to push forward the scaling. What you need to understand is that there is a shit load of businesses out there that are waiting for bitcoin to scale to start their operations.

This is so fcking ass-backwards.

Where are the users standing in line with bags of transactions holding on to them and waiting for the "shit load of businesses" to start their operations?

I'm guessing they'll appear out of thin air once the blocks increase!?

This cargo cult that there is somehow an imminent massive retail adoption of Bitcoin waiting just around the corner is a sorry appeal to the greed of naive holders who think the block size is hindering their dreams of moon.

[knight22]

Of course that stress test was to push forward the scaling. What you need to understand is that there is a shit load of businesses out there that are waiting for bitcoin to scale to start their operations.

This is so fcking ass-backwards.

Where are the users standing in line with bags of transactions holding on to them and waiting for the "shit load of businesses" to start their operations?

I'm guessing they'll appear out of thin air once the blocks increase!?

This cargo cult that there is somehow an imminent massive retail adoption of Bitcoin waiting just around the corner is a sorry appeal to the greed of naive holders who think the block size is hindering their dreams of moon.

You don't know how businesses work obviously. Most businesses build in secret to not get their idea stolen. There as been more than a bilion in investment in bitcoin businesses up to date. They are out there waiting the right timing in silence. You can be sure. And scaling is part of that timing.

[marcus_of_augustus]

XT is compromised, you can say that again. Things got more leaks than a rusty old bucket, it's been designed that way.

[balu2]

knight22 about "market needs" LOL

He's gonna eat his words when we hit sub 100$

Exactly people like this try to pull the whool over everyones' eyes and will continue to do so to the very last minute.

[brg444]

Of course that stress test was to push forward the scaling. What you need to understand is that there is a shit load of businesses out there that are waiting for bitcoin to scale to start their operations.

This is so fcking ass-backwards.

Where are the users standing in line with bags of transactions holding on to them and waiting for the "shit load of businesses" to start their operations?

I'm guessing they'll appear out of thin air once the blocks increase!?

This cargo cult that there is somehow an imminent massive retail adoption of Bitcoin waiting just around the corner is a sorry appeal to the greed of naive holders who think the block size is hindering their dreams of moon.

You don't know how businesses work obviously. Most businesses build in secret to not get their idea stolen. There as been more than a bilion in investment in bitcoin businesses up to date. They are out there waiting the right timing in silence. You can be sure. And scaling is part of that timing.

It seems you are one of the lunatics that believe Bitcoin needs or is waiting for some sort of "killer app" that will unleash its adoption.

You obviously don't know how building an economy (Bitcoin) works. Just as a heads up it isn't built on the shoulders of startups, VCs and iphone apps.

[slaveforanunnak1]

Gavin CIA Andresen tracking IPs??? Noaaawwwwwwww
FK XT

[RustyNomad]

Any interest and or consideration I had for XT and the 'team' behind it just went out the window.

I will not touch XT and for that matter entertain anything coming from the XT 'team' anymore, no matter what explanation and or changes they come up with after this.

For me personally XT is as good as dead.

[JackH]

This is just the tip of the iceberg in XT.

IF XT wins it will bring on so many changes that the Bitcoin we thought we knew and had, will be something completely different. Be prepared for a fully centralised coin should it happen that XT gains consensus.

At this point, I hope more and more realize that XT is yet another attempt by someone to destroy Bitcoin, since all other ventures to destroy it have failed.

[Kprawn]

On the one side, you can see why they are doing this. In the USA they need to adhere to all these KYC/AML regulations and they have to allow for those 3 letter agencies to have access to all your informations as a citizen.

What they tend to forget is, not EVERYONE live in the USA and Bitcoin is a global technology, where these "USA Rules" do not apply to everyone. They cannot infringe on sovereign countries privacy to protect their own

interest.  This is why Bitcoin XT will fail in my opinion.... It's not a fork being done in the interest of a global need, but to satisfy the USA government and all it's regulations.

[danielW]

So can somebody explain this for me? When running XT through TOR you original ip address will be seen? How is it seen?

And there is a specific list of ip addresses that are banned? What are these ip addresses?

[tvbcof]

On the one side, you can see why they are doing this. In the USA they need to adhere to all these KYC/AML regulations and they have to allow for those 3 letter agencies to have access to all your informations as a citizen.

What they tend to forget is, not EVERYONE live in the USA and Bitcoin is a global technology, where these "USA Rules" do not apply to everyone. They cannot infringe on sovereign countries privacy to protect their own

interest.  This is why Bitcoin XT will fail in my opinion.... It's not a fork being done in the interest of a global need, but to satisfy the USA government and all it's regulations.

cypherdoc was arguing the other day that the increased block size could be used to freeze out the Chinese miners who are hamstrung by their government's network policy.  The guy is a technical nobody.  Whether he is formally shilling for and in communication with the XT crowd is unknown but seems quit possible.  He makes a good living by shilling and picked up 3000 BTC from HashFast (which failed) doing it so he must be effective and he has been non-stop XT form many months now.

One way or another, it is funny to argue out of one side of your mouth that the increased blocksize load is perfectly safe and out of the other side that it can thwart people who are operating behind even the mild form of network control exercised in by the Chinese government at this time.

[OmegaStarScream]

What the actual fuck , guys does this mean that Lightweight wallets like Electrum & Multibit will be affected aswell since those will be full running nodes on their servers , does it mean we will get affected too or it's only who is using BitcoinXT client directly

[marcus_of_augustus]

Looks like XT is a piece of shady bullshit. What will be in the next version ? Direct reporting to NSA ?

confirmed, totally shady.

I have had my suspicions about Gavin for a long time, CIA visit (no transcript), CFR talk, the CA/TLS payment protocol privacy leak but this is damning if he wants to sign off on this shit. And the way the XT panopticoin fork is being pitched reads like a bad infomercial.

Never trust an Aussie, Gavin, you just made it onto my blacklist (and it is quite short).

[BayAreaCoins]

You can not discuss this here. Please move to altcoin discussion.

Agree.  Enough NSA shitcoins in the Bitcoin section.

...
Never trust an Aussie...

Totally true.

[danielW]

Some more from mailing list to make it easier for people:


F L

Bitcoin XT contains an unmentioned addition which periodically downloads
lists of Tor IP addresses for blacklisting, this has considerable privacy
implications for hapless users which are being prompted to use the
software. The feature is not clearly described, is enabled by default,
and has a switch name which intentionally downplays what it is doing
(disableipprio). Furthermore these claimed anti-DoS measures are
trivially bypassed and so offer absolutely no protection whatsoever.

Connections are made over clearnet even when using a proxy or
onlynet=tor, which leaks connections on the P2P network with the real
location of the node. Knowledge of this traffic along with uptime metrics
from bitnodes.io can allow observers to easily correlate the location and
identity of persons running Bitcoin nodes. Denial of service can also be
used to crash and force a restart of an interesting node, which will
cause them to make a new request to the blacklist endpoint via the
clearnet on relaunch at the same time their P2P connections are made
through a proxy. Requests to the blacklisting URL also use a custom
Bitcoin XT user agent which makes users distinct from other internet
traffic if you have access to the endpoints logs.


https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23

Christophe Biocca

So I checked, and the code described *does not* run when behind a
proxy of any kind, including tor:

https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23#diff-11780fa178b655146cb414161c635219R265

At least based on my admittedly weak understanding of how the internal works.

Hopefully I save the next reader of your post from also having to dig
around to find the code and realize this is a false alert.

Todd

Christophe Biocca via bitcoin-dev wrote:
> So I checked, and the code described *does not* run when behind a
> proxy of any kind, including tor:
>
> https://github.com/bitcoinxt/bitcoinxt/commit/73c9efe74c5cc8faea9c2b2c785a2f5b68aa4c23#diff-11780fa178b655146cb414161c635219R265
>
> At least based on my admittedly weak understanding of how the internal works.
>
> Hopefully I save the next reader of your post from also having to dig
> around to find the code and realize this is a false alert.

That's not entirely correct.

The code does disable downloading of the Tor exit node list if fListen
is false, or if there is a proxy setup, this means the statement:

>  Connections are made over clearnet even when using a proxy or
>  onlynet=tor,

is false. However, in the common scenario of a firewalled node, where
the operator has neglected to explicitly set -listen=0, the code does
still download the Tor exit node list, revealing the true location of
the node. This is contrary to the previous behavior of not revealing any
IP information in that configuration.

FWIW Gregory Maxwell removed the last "call home" feature in pull-req
#5161, by replacing the previous calls to getmyip.com-type services with
a local peer request. Similarly the DNS seeds use the DNS protocol
specifically to avoid leaking IP address information.

tl;dr: Yes, Bitcoin XT has a privacy problem with the automatic Tor exit
node list download.

Gregory Maxwell

It's not a bug, it's a feature: These concerns and others were
specifically called out when we rejected this submission to Bitcoin
Core in favor of a more generic approach that lacks the privacy
problems and avoids being explicitly punitave to the use of Tor.

At least it's not a full on block as soon a the node fills for the
first time like the first implementation.

Peter Todd

Oh, and I just checked, and Mike's original pull-req for the Tor
blacklist didn't include the proxy disable code; what's in master != the
pull-req, so the OP may have been looking at the wrong code by accident.
(I personally noticed this issue in the pull-req and didn't realise it
hadn't been merged into master w/o modifications)

https://github.com/mikehearn/bitcoinxt/commit/931a4d59a03c7e64d7d85ddfc07ae127533c7f28#diff-11780fa178b655146cb414161c635219R171

Kinda sloppy of Mike to be making changes in master that don't
correspond to the peer-reviewed pull-req code...

[tvbcof]

Looks like XT is a piece of shady bullshit. What will be in the next version ? Direct reporting to NSA ?

confirmed, totally shady.

I have had my suspicions about Gavin for a long time, CIA visit (no transcript), CFR talk, the CA/TLS payment protocol privacy leak but this is damning if he wants to sign off on this shit. And the way the XT panopticoin fork is being pitched reads like a bad infomercial.

Never trust an Aussie, Gavin, you just made it onto my blacklist (and it is quite short).

Seems like well past the time to get rid of Gavin's alert key.  I'll look forward to a release which does this or a patch to use next time I build from source.  I could see it being used to startle the herd at an opportune time and get them to do something which is against their interests.