Eventually the FUNGIBILITY issue of bitcoin will make headlines ...

[brg444]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

Let's imagine I have some coins that I stole during Evolution's demise. Are you willing to swap all of your coins for mine?

Or put differently: if I borrow your car for a month, and at the end of that month I give you back the same make, same model, same year, same colour car, is that ok?

Bitcoin isn't fungible for the same reason that you won't appreciate me giving you some random car in exchange for yours, regardless of the properties of that car.

Absolutely.

The car analogy is asinine. Cars are not fungible.

[onemorexmr]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Indeed, and as you explain we have established that Bitcoin is "technically fungible" which is really all that matters. Fungibility is a property inherent to a system. It is not dependent on human preferences.

well we need to agree to disagree then.
i want to use money without thinking about thefts or checking its history.
it doesnt help me if is "technically fungible" when i cant use it that way.

[adamstgBit]

BS the FBI stole hundreds of thousands of poeple coins, and had no problem selling it on the open market.

[brg444]

BS the FBI stole hundreds of thousands of poeple coins, and had no problem selling it on the open market.

 

+1

[brg444]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Indeed, and as you explain we have established that Bitcoin is "technically fungible" which is really all that matters. Fungibility is a property inherent to a system. It is not dependent on human preferences.

well we need to agree to disagree then.
i want to use money without thinking about thefts or checking its history.
it doesnt help me if is "technically fungible" when i cant use it that way.

You will, it's a matter of setting up the technology to do it. Monero is cool cause it comes with that feature baked in but it isn't impossible with Bitcoin.

I would also suggest that situations where you wouldn't be able to spend your coin are rare occurrences.

[UfoRia]

All US money is numbered, so unless you have a large block of $100 sequential bills it is hard to trace. Fiat is traceable to a point, so is Bitcoin. I really have no idea why fungibility is so concerning. Bitcoin has mixers, convenience stores, grocery stores are fiat mixers, along with that nice restaurant you enjoy.

I don see this being an issue, but maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough?


Ufo

[iCEBREAKER]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Here's an economic concept: the market places a 10% premium on freshly minted zero-taint BTC over 'gently used' coins.  Good luck with your stolen Evolution coins!

Bitcoin doesn't meet the highest 'can't be evil' / 'can't be non-fungible' technical standard because the code may be modified with black/white/grey/red lists of forbidden/allowed coins/taints.

So no need to even get into the more significant (but more general issue) of socioeconomic interchangeability.

[chennan]

All US money is numbered, so unless you have a large block of $100 sequential bills it is hard to trace. Fiat is traceable to a point, so is Bitcoin. I really have no idea why fungibility is so concerning. Bitcoin has mixers, convenience stores, grocery stores are fiat mixers, along with that nice restaurant you enjoy.

I don see this being an issue, but maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough?


Ufo

Sure bitcoins have mixers, but along with having to have to send your bitcoins to that site that mixes it for you, you still are risking your bitcoins because some of those mixers turn out to be scams and just take everything you send them.  Also, what good is it to send in your bitcoins that are say, freshly minted and have no bad history with it, and mixing it in with a bunch of coins with a bad history?  Overall, I say that anyone who is having to send their bitcoins into a mixer are literally just mixing bad coins with bad coins... so yes, the person who is sending in their coins to be mixed get away with the scam they just committed, but two wrong turns don't make a right; in other words, mixing bad with bad doesn't make it good.

[onemorexmr]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3mea6b/bitpay_is_blacklisting_certain_bitcoins_rejecting

[Sir Alpha_goy]

.

[brg444]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3mea6b/bitpay_is_blacklisting_certain_bitcoins_rejecting

 

how about you don't use fiat for your Bitcoin business?

do you understand how likely it is or easy it would be for coins to cross path with other "tainted" ones.

this is absolutely a non-issue

[Raize]

The fungibility issue is becoming more and more prominent than the blocksize issue for me. Merge avoidance would be a good thing, too. The truth is, Bitcoin is simply unattractive right now and will continue to be while exchanges constantly capitulate to external forces hell bent on destroying Bitcoin's fungibility.

There's a very real risk of an alt-coin fundamentally surpassing Bitcoin. Maybe not in market size (yet) but certainly in energy. I could name examples, but I don't necessarily want to promote them.

For what it is worth, I don't intend to run the XT client any time soon, but if XT provided actual fungibility fixes, I think a lot of us could probably overlook the hard fork concerns on blockchain size and become its greatest evangelists.

[pattu1]

Here's an economic concept: the market places a 10% premium on freshly minted zero-taint BTC over 'gently used' coins.  Good luck with your stolen Evolution coins!

Bitcoin doesn't meet the highest 'can't be evil' / 'can't be non-fungible' technical standard because the code may be modified with black/white/grey/red lists of forbidden/allowed coins/taints.

So no need to even get into the more significant (but more general issue) of socioeconomic interchangeability.

Collectors pay a premium for weird things. That doesn't mean that bitcoin is not fungible.
With respect to fiat, collectors have paid millions of dollars for nickels. So that doesn't change anything about fiat's fungibility.

[brg444]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Here's an economic concept: the market places a 10% premium on freshly minted zero-taint BTC over 'gently used' coins.  Good luck with your stolen Evolution coins!

Bitcoin doesn't meet the highest 'can't be evil' / 'can't be non-fungible' technical standard because the code may be modified with black/white/grey/red lists of forbidden/allowed coins/taints.

So no need to even get into the more significant (but more general issue) of socioeconomic interchangeability.

Sorry but that doesn't make any sense. The lists you speak of arbitrary human concepts. A USGian parasites kangaroo court AML/KYC bullshit.

I am confident I could trivially sell stolen Evolution coins on most p2p markets in major international cities today. Only fiat businesses such type of lowly scheme. They are a sham.

Don't let anyone ever tell you your Bitcoin is not as good as another. Individuals currently pay a premium on market because of a lack of private alternatives against traceability. This is a technological problem that will certainly be solved seeing the progress being made. When we do get there anyone still entertaining this notion that Bitcoin is not fungible will surely be looked at in a funny way and any money spent on "clean" coins will be money wasted.

http://trilema.com/2014/guidance-there-is-no-such-thing-as-bitcoin-taint/

[|Bitcoin|]

Haha. You got to br joking. That is a long way before we will make headlines for whatever rrason.

[smoothie]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

wow really? lol

Yes, I addressed it in another thread, here's the slightly modified version:

I'm sorry but it is increasingly apparent to me that you are making a tragic mistake of conflating very different economic concepts.

For one, individual perception of value is quite different from the market's perception of value.

Bitcoin's traceability might make it interesting for someone with a collector's mindset but it has no impact on its fungibility.

It would be one thing for the market to disagree on the value of individual satoshis but this is absolutely impossible as they are totally undistinguishable from one another. Let me use two different examples to show why your analysis fail:

- Certain gold artifacts are valued at way more important prices then the actual market worth of their weight in gold. Does that make gold a "collectible"?

- A lot of people enjoy collecting notes and coins from certain years. A bundle of cash stolen from a bank might be identified and refused in certain circumstances because of its serial number. Does that make cash a "collectible"?

These two examples, I believe, demonstrate that what you refer to as an absence of fungibility is simply a consequence of individual or authorities attaching subjective value to an item because of its history but this is not an indictment on the monetary system itself!

Imagine one individual in possession of one of these gold artifacts or a special 20$ note attempts, for some unknown reason, to either trade his gold item to a pawnshop or deposit the 20$ at the bank.

What do you guess happens? If we assume the guy running the pawnshop doesn't know or care about the "symbolic" value of the item and is only concerned with its weight in gold no amount of history is going to bring him to buy said item for more than its market worth. Same for his "special bill", the cashier at the bank could not careless if it was used by Al Capone to do lines of cocaine, to her it's worth 20$ and no more.

The same logic applies for Bitcoin. If I am in possession of one of Mt. Gox's stolen coin and send it to Bitstamp, the market is not going to offer me a premium or refuse to buy it. Sure some nerds might cry foul and alert the exchange. In that case I could still head to fucking China and sell the same coin for market price on whatever their equivalent of localbitcoin is and no one will ask me any question.

Let's pretend I have one of Satoshi's wallet address and decide to send him a bitcoin. How can you tell which one is mine from his stash?

In fact I do believe there is quite a lot of people that have sent him dust or coins over the years. If somehow he decides to move this lot of coins to an exchange are people somehow going to make a distinction between his original coins and whatever amount that was sent to him by these clowns? Of course no because they can't!

This effectively demonstrates that your logic does not hold. The market could careless whatever coin Satoshi decides to move, it is not the coins that matter because THEY ARE INDEED FUNGIBLE. It is their owner's decision that has a psychological impact on the market because they can identify ownership through the public ledger. Let's say we pretend that somehow someone is able to tie Satoshi's identity to a wallet/coins from...2013. Surely you would agree that the psychological impact on the market would be the same whether he decides to move these coins to BitStamp or the "original" ones.

All of this is to say you are confusing privacy and traceability and somehow making this aspect of Bitcoin an indictment on its fungibility. Again, this is a mistake.

Perfectly fungible is what you said. Your bolded example above proves my point that bitcoin is not perfectly fungible as in your example an exchange/site can refuse to exchange or accept a particular set of coins coming from certain addresses.


Just because you say something, doesn't make it true.  

The mere fact that you know stolen coins came from an address to another address...removes the fungibility portion. Who cares which coin was exactly the coin that was part of a scam? The point is that some of them (or all of them) are linked to a known crime/theft/scam.

NOT KNOWING which exact coin is related to a scam/crime/theft is not the way I would define bitcoin being "PERFECTLY FUNGIBLE".

I think you have your concepts/terminology mixed up.

I think not. What you are observing is a result of Bitcoin's traceability.

If I can obfuscate the provenance of what you call a "tainted" coin by use of crypto and other technologies then no one will refuse it.

It seems to me you are the one confusing terminologies. Bitcoin does not discriminate one coin from another. Within the system they are perfectly fungible. Only human preferences and personal subjective value could lead one coin to be refused.

http://trilema.com/2014/guidance-there-is-no-such-thing-as-bitcoin-taint/

OMG that's your argument? lol  

That Bitcoin doesn't view one coin different from another??

Bitcoin does not have emotions nor a brain and it did not create itself.

So what IT (bitcoin) thinks about ONE particular BTC vs another particular BTC is IRRELEVANT.

What matters is who (people/humans) is using it and what they think of the coins and how they are valued or if they are tainted/accepted/unaccepted for trade or exchange etc etc.

Your determination of fungibility is based on bitcoin (the protocol) not seeing any difference from a coin that was stolen vs one that was mined.

That's like saying that the FIAT USD system does not see any difference between ONE $ that was stolen  vs ONE $ that was printed by the Federal Reserve. That's a horrible usage of the word fungibility as fiat paper currency nor bitcoin have any idea they exist. They exist because a human created them to serve a purpose.

You are obviously dodging the issue as your own example using a mtgox stolen coin was in determination of Bitstamp/etc (YES PEOPLE) not accepting it to exchange for fiat while you claim to go to china to "exchange" it in hopes someone buys your tainted(stolen) coins (of course stolen based on a trail of addresses/transactions over time).

[smoothie]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Indeed, and as you explain we have established that Bitcoin is "technically fungible" which is really all that matters. Fungibility is a property inherent to a system. It is not dependent on human preferences.

Yeah sure THAT definition of "Fungibility" of Bitcoin is not dependent upon human preferences. But who cares?

Bitcoin does not use itself. Humans do. That's what matters and that's what gives bitcoin VALUE,.....HUMANS.

If people don't accept your BTC because they have come from a path that leads back to an address of coins that were illegally taken from someone else, then fungibility in terms of its use with HUMANS is broken and not perfect. This is assuming that the receiving party of your tainted bitcoins is not accepting them.

You are basically arguing a definition that is irrelevant to the discussion at hand of why I started this thread.

[smoothie]

BS the FBI stole hundreds of thousands of poeple coins, and had no problem selling it on the open market.

Yes but when you are the authority in a country you can pretty much do what you want.

We are talking about everyone that does not have that authority. Regular citizens.

[smoothie]

Bitcoin is perfectly fungible. Anyone who claims otherwise is confusing economic concepts.

we already had this discussion.
maybe bitcoin is technically fungible (because any coin can always be send an mixed) but practically you have problems when using coins which where stolen (eg bitstamp hack) or why do you think new minted coins are sold with a premium?

Indeed, and as you explain we have established that Bitcoin is "technically fungible" which is really all that matters. Fungibility is a property inherent to a system. It is not dependent on human preferences.

well we need to agree to disagree then.
i want to use money without thinking about thefts or checking its history.
it doesnt help me if is "technically fungible" when i cant use it that way.

You will, it's a matter of setting up the technology to do it. Monero is cool cause it comes with that feature baked in but it isn't impossible with Bitcoin.

I would also suggest that situations where you wouldn't be able to spend your coin are rare occurrences.

lol so it isn't perfectly fungible then right?

Of course nothing is impossible, but I would think that the unsettlement of the "block size" debate (pretty much one line of code) can't be decided upon. Yet you think the developers of bitcoin can add an entire set of code to allow UNLINKABILITY and UNTRACEABILITY?

Even bitcoin mixers leave someone with coins tracing back to its origin (assuming some stolen were mixed).

I beg to differ on that one.

[smoothie]

All US money is numbered, so unless you have a large block of $100 sequential bills it is hard to trace. Fiat is traceable to a point, so is Bitcoin. I really have no idea why fungibility is so concerning. Bitcoin has mixers, convenience stores, grocery stores are fiat mixers, along with that nice restaurant you enjoy.

I don see this being an issue, but maybe my tinfoil hat isn't on tight enough?


Ufo

So if I stole bitcoin and sent it to a mixer and someone else got the coin and tried to spend it and let's say that merchant flagged that address because it was linked to a hack/scam/theft...how did mixing the coins fix anything other than allowing the thief to get away with the crime?