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

[iCEBREAKER]

If someone is not able to make proper use of Bitcoin then he shouldn't bother. I really don't care if this scares away a few newbies. Bitcoin is really not something you should sell to newbies anyway. It's really not a consumer-ready tool, at least not as it currently exists.

If you are trying to buy something with bitcoin from a fiat accepting merchant: your problem, not Bitcoin's.

If you depend entirely on exchanges to cash out to fiat: your problem, not Bitcoin's.

You do have some very strong views. Border line religious in my opinion.

How do you expect bitcoin to be adopted if NO new people come to use bit coin? it's not a perfect system and thus shouldn't be dismissed as a perfect system that newbs shouldn't use. I'm pretty sure Satoshi wanted new people to start using bitcoin. If that never happens and they keep getting turned away...what's the point of Bitcoin anymore?

The serene/sovereign #B-A crowd doesn't worry about (any further) adoption.  They might even resent it, like a King would resent pretenders to the Throne as usurping his Divine Right to Rule.

In the #B-A mythos, the historical/present BTC distribution represents a Divinely Ordained Mandate From Heaven, not a less-than-ideal situation to be improved.

That their tounge-in-cheek idiom seems borderline religious is fully intentional.  It's a fun, cheeky blend of old school cyberpunk crypto-anarchist hacker manifesto and new school Red Pill neo-royalist/neo-reactionary fundamentalism.

In that paradigm, it is blasphemous to consider filthy besotted earthly matters like actual interchangeability worthy (or even capable) of affecting any aspect of Holy Bitcoin's Supreme Protocol.   

To be clear, I agree with the idea that BTC->fiat exchanges are irrelevant because everyone should hoard their coins until Crypto-Kingdom Come, when they may be spent directly.

"Satoshi wanted new people to start using bitcoin. If that never happens and they keep getting turned away...what's the point of Bitcoin anymore?" is a good question, with an even better answer.

The true value that Bitcoin brings to the table is not "everyone gets to write into the holy ledger", it is instead "everyone gets to benefit from sane and non-inflationary financial instutions whose sanity and honesty are ensured by the holy blockchain".

[Guido]

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

agreed 100%

however we know these suckers can lie, steal, cheat and kill with impunity

they just make it up as they go along. look at the U.S economy and foreign policy

[smoothie]

crosspost from me about zerocash, on topic here as well...

about zerocash. This is what can be found on the website

How does Zerocash work?

Zerocash extends the protocol and software underlying Bitcoin by adding new, privacy-preserving payments. In doing so it forms a new protocol that, while using some of the same technology and software as Bitcoin, is distinct from it. This new protocol has both anonymous coins, dubbed zerocoins, and non-anonymous ones, which, for purposes of disambiguation, we call basecoins. In contrast to Bitcoin's transactions, payment transactions using the Zerocash protocol do not contain any public information about the payment's origin, destination, or amount; instead, the correctness of the transaction is demonstrated via the use of a zero-knowledge proof. Users can convert from basecoins to zerocoins, send zerocoins to other users, and split or merge zerocoins they own in any way that preserves the total value. Users may also convert zerocoins back into basecoins, though in principle this is not necessary: all transactions can be made in terms of zerocoins.

There are some issues with this protocol

1) fungibility: by introducing basecoins, payment processors, exchnages, governments etc can force you to use these basecoins. When you use the zerocoins, you are flagged by default. Basically there is no difference when you use the ConfidentialTransactions-Sidechain or coinjoin.
2) zerocoin transactions will probably be larger, so people will try to avoid paying the fees by making as little zerocoin transactions as possible
3) due to the fact that eventually only people who want to hide a crime will use the zerocoins, it will be possible that when you get coins out, there is a possibility to link those coins to coins that were put into the zerocoin-pool. So it's tricky... Be aware of this or you'll use your anonimity.

compare this to XMR:
1) when mixin 0 isn't possible anymore (soon^TM) all transaction outputs (except the minted coins) are mixed by default. So you can't be forced not to use mixing.
2) because all tractions will have a minimum mixin, you can't avoid paying the fees. Paranoid people pay more for higher mixin.
3) everybody uses mixin, so it's impossible to detect money flows on the network

I believe this is very important to note.

Zerocash is supposedly going to be an alt coin that links to bitcoin. One huge question is, Who is going to secure the zerocash chain/network?

I'm pretty sure that not 100% of the miners of bitcoin are NOT going to instantly switch over (even if merge mined) or use mergemined source code to support zerocash.

The lack of progress and the length of it being out there and being "developed" but not released is concerning. They have done a multitude of talks at conferences but yet have provided 0 backing to their progress in any form usable by users.

Zerocash is also not even in the wild to be tested. It will be at least a year after it is released before anyone will fully trust that zerocash is reliable and contains no software/security holes to be exploited.

Supposed release date was recently said to be Feb 2016, well expect it to not gain any real traction until at least Feb 2017.

[smooth]

Zerocash is supposedly going to be an alt coin that links to bitcoin. One huge question is, Who is going to secure the zerocash chain/network?

As I understand it, they're planning just a regular alt, not a sidechain. I infer from that it will have its own miners like any other alt, although I suppose merge mining is a possibility (if they want to be foolish).

The technology may of course be used by others in different ways too.

[smoothie]

Your friend Alice gives you two $10 bills. One is good, one is bad. You take both to buy a $20 T-shirt. Now what?

You set up a JoinMarket to automate the process, then profit.  

Use the two $10 bills where both shows up as good ones. I mean not all jurisdictions will use the same regulation.

Pretty much.

It only takes a couple of business opportunities lost to a competitor for a "merchant" to think twice about this whole blacklisting shenanigan.

it also doesn't take many government agencies to get on a merchant's case to comply with any imposed blacklists by authorities to make them think twice about trying to subvert the regulators.

Oh...solution is to move to another country?

I think there will be quite a few countries that will make it difficult to operate in. We are seeing it already.

Governments appear to be afraid of people having financial privacy.

I mean seriously...if they had a problem with people having privacy then they should ban all Curtains to all houses/homes.

 

[smoothie]

Zerocash is supposedly going to be an alt coin that links to bitcoin. One huge question is, Who is going to secure the zerocash chain/network?

As I understand it, they're planning just a regular alt, not a sidechain. I infer from that it will have its own miners like any other alt, although I suppose merge mining is a possibility (if they want to be foolish).

The technology may of course be used by others in different ways too.

I think either way they will be fighting an uphill battle in terms of gaining security from miners to support the network.

Honestly I don't see much miners wanting to support this coin other than to pump and dump the crap out of it.

Ohh and...

The other issue is how do you price Zerocash? I'm guessing it will be tradeable too.

So 1 Zerocoin = 1 Bitcoin? I doubt any parity mechanism will fail.

[smooth]

I mean seriously...if they had a problem with people having privacy then they should ban all Curtains to all houses/homes.

No need, they just scan through the walls anyway.

[smoothie]

I mean seriously...if they had a problem with people having privacy then they should ban all Curtains to all houses/homes.

No need, they just scan through the walls anyway.

True but that doesn't exactly show what a person is doing behind said walls/windows/etc.

Would that work on a thick concrete wall?

[smooth]

I mean seriously...if they had a problem with people having privacy then they should ban all Curtains to all houses/homes.

No need, they just scan through the walls anyway.

True but that doesn't exactly show what a person is doing behind said walls/windows/etc.

Would that work on a thick concrete wall?

Not exactly high definition but this article from 2011 shows some pictures using a "new" scanner through 4-inch and 8-inch concrete walls

http://www.businessinsider.com/new-scanner-lets-military-see-through-concrete-walls-2011-10

"applications in disaster relief for finding people trapped in rubble"

Yeah right

[smoothie]

I wanted to open the discussion up to the following question:

What is the difference between PRIVATE vs Anonymous to you?

[bambou]

Sure, let's move to yet another subject neither the govs nor the noobs understand, and fill it with as much fud and drama as with the blocksize circus.


PS: if you have coins you fear that are tainted with bad bad behaviour, i'll buy them for say 3/4 of the amount.. helluva deal here

[onemorexmr]

I wanted to open the discussion up to the following question:

What is the difference between PRIVATE vs Anonymous to you?

private: nobody sees what i am doing
anon: anybody sees what i do but dont know who it is (may even be a group of people)

[smoothie]

Sure, let's move to yet another subject neither the govs nor the noobs understand, and fill it with as much fud and drama as with the blocksize circus.


PS: if you have coins you fear that are tainted with bad bad behaviour, i'll buy them for say 3/4 of the amount.. helluva deal here

No FUD here and no drama. <---- nothing compared to the "Blawk Saiz" discussion/circus/spectacle.

If there is FUD or drama please point me to it.

I've only posted what I believe and my prediction.

You can read in between the lines if you wish but it doesn't add to the discussion if you are going to assume my intentions without asking me what they are. 

[mallard]

Government restrictions on amount of Bitcoin to be transactions with.

http://www.coinfox.info/news/3205-mexican-government-places-bitcoin-and-cash-on-the-same-footing

Interesting

That's the right way to regulate bitcoin, IMO

Due to the coin can move instantly to abroad, and it is impossible to enforce an international regulation around the globe, the most possible way is to treat it as cash, so that all the cash regulations today applies to bitcoin. This will save the regulators a hell lot of resource and effort while still have the risk under control in the current regulation framework

Large transactions will have to follow AML and KYC regulations, and resulting in further conflict between users and regulators

How can they actually enforce it though? How will they know who is spending more than $38,000 in one go?

[CohibAA]

What is JoinMarket?

[dnaleor]

What is JoinMarket?

Not disputing this helps with privacy, but as I said before, this doesn't help with fungibility...

[brg444]

What is JoinMarket?

Not disputing this helps with privacy, but as I said before, this doesn't help with fungibility...

If you solve the privacy issue you will realize the nonexistence of the fungibility "issue"

[smoothie]

What is JoinMarket?

Not disputing this helps with privacy, but as I said before, this doesn't help with fungibility...

If you solve the privacy issue you will realize the nonexistence of the fungibility "issue"

Brg444, we pretty much have determined that you have a different perception/definition of related terminology of the subject of this thread.

[iCEBREAKER]

What is JoinMarket?

So a round of JoinMarket is equivalent to adding a Cryptonote mixin of 1?

[smooth]

So a round of JoinMarket is equivalent to adding a Cryptonote mixin of 1?

They're not really equivalent and not really directly comparable either. The two are different approaches to anonymity/privacy altogether, somewhat the way CT is yet another approach. All share the goal of making it harder to perform useful analysis on the blockchain and exploit (for surveillance and anti-fungibility purposes, both outside the original intent) the fact that the Bitcoin method of e-cash requires a public ledger.