[Poll] Is Fungibility (and therefore privacy) an issue with bitcoin?

[smoothie]

Reposting this to get some poll data.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak1iojpiHpM&feature=youtu.be&t=33m6s

Andreas A. seems to believe that bitcoin can work on its "fungibility".  

Andreas: "We need to address the issue of fungibility..."

      ...     "the metric of economic inclusion is very much affected by the fungibility and black lists ..."

Also…

Dr. Adam Back says in regards to Bitcoin (in Feb 2014) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dAdI3Gzodo&feature=youtu.be&t=28m31s

"Weak fungibility: Feature & bug"


"Fungibility provides privacy as a side effect"


"Bitcoin privacy is fragile (Shamir & Dorit network analysis)"


By Dr. Adam Back's definition of fungibility PLUS(+) his statement of "Bitcoin privacy is fragile" you therefore can deduce Dr. Adam Back also believes that Bitcoin's fungibility is also fragile.

[LiteCoinGuy]

i guess there will always be a fight between privacy and regulation.

but we are just in the beginning of it all. Zerocash sidechain....confidential transactions on bitcoin mainchain....alot of stuff is coming. nobody knows how this will play out.

[brg444]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

[brg444]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

Don't worry for the average joes, banks and their walled gardens will be there to keep them secure and ignorant of any of these problems.

[jak3]

Bitcoins provide a simple and elegant payment way and method. But, people still doubt on its privacy or fungibility. I would like to clarify here why btc provides more fungibility
(1) No fear of stealing-- btc aren't coins, which a small kid can take out from your pocket
(2) More secure -- It's considered more secured as most wallets can be protected by PIN, and no fear of getting hacked.
(3) Many methods of earning-- Earning btc is easy as many websites pay you for posting and visiting their sites, whereas for real cash , u need to do some hard work.

[dothebeats]

Bitcoins provide a simple and elegant payment way and method. But, people still doubt on its privacy or fungibility. I would like to clarify here why btc provides more fungibility
(1) No fear of stealing-- btc aren't coins, which a small kid can take out from your pocket
(2) More secure -- It's considered more secured as most wallets can be protected by PIN, and no fear of getting hacked.
(3) Many methods of earning-- Earning btc is easy as many websites pay you for posting and visiting their sites, whereas for real cash , u need to do some hard work.

The thing is, even though bitcoin per se is secure, platforms that operates with bitcoin aren't, making bitcoin look insecure to the average masses. With recent hacks and thefts in the bitcoin ecosystem, the word bitcoin isn't even appealing to the people (unless there is a massive rise in price). It is fungible and secure, but not fool-proof that make it look like it's not gonna work in our current society.

[smoothie]

i guess there will always be a fight between privacy and regulation.

but we are just in the beginning of it all. Zerocash sidechain....confidential transactions on bitcoin mainchain....alot of stuff is coming. nobody knows how this will play out.

I'm fairly certain most of the Coinjoin, CT, etc will never be mandatory in the protocol of bitcoin.

I mean let's be real the devs of bitcoin and the community can't come to consensus of a single line of code to change the block size max.

[smoothie]

Bitcoins provide a simple and elegant payment way and method. But, people still doubt on its privacy or fungibility. I would like to clarify here why btc provides more fungibility
(1) No fear of stealing-- btc aren't coins, which a small kid can take out from your pocket
(2) More secure -- It's considered more secured as most wallets can be protected by PIN, and no fear of getting hacked.
(3) Many methods of earning-- Earning btc is easy as many websites pay you for posting and visiting their sites, whereas for real cash , u need to do some hard work.

1. Fungibility has nothing to do directly with stealing, but interchangeability and the inability to discriminate one bitcoin vs another bitcoin. Being not able to steal BTC easily through the blockchain has no bearing on fungibility.

2. Not getting hacked and security also has nothing to do directly with fungibility.

3. Earning btc on many websites also has nothing to do with fungibility.

[smoothie]

Bitcoins provide a simple and elegant payment way and method. But, people still doubt on its privacy or fungibility. I would like to clarify here why btc provides more fungibility
(1) No fear of stealing-- btc aren't coins, which a small kid can take out from your pocket
(2) More secure -- It's considered more secured as most wallets can be protected by PIN, and no fear of getting hacked.
(3) Many methods of earning-- Earning btc is easy as many websites pay you for posting and visiting their sites, whereas for real cash , u need to do some hard work.

The thing is, even though bitcoin per se is secure, platforms that operates with bitcoin aren't, making bitcoin look insecure to the average masses. With recent hacks and thefts in the bitcoin ecosystem, the word bitcoin isn't even appealing to the people (unless there is a massive rise in price). It is fungible and secure, but not fool-proof that make it look like it's not gonna work in our current society.

Bitcoin is as fungible from the users standpoint (humans) as they allow it. If there is the ability to discriminate about 1 BTC vs another 1BTC because the first BTC came from a history of crime related activities...bitcoin is no longer fungible.

Bitcoin is secure if you make sure you keep your BTC safe and offline.

[franky1]

bitcoin itself is free to move, there is no cod that prefers one satoshi over another..
i wish people would realise this..

the problem is not bitcoin, its businesses and their preference.
EG
online stores do not accept bank wire transfers or banknotes by mail.. they only accept visa/mastercard.
ontop of that a majority of online stores only accept the native FIAT of the location where the HQ resides.
meaning an american store dos not accept euro's.

they dont accept gold, silver or diamonds..

this does not mean banknotes, silver, gold, diamonds, non-native fiat is screwed or has problems. it just means that the business has decided to limit its payment options and customers end up shopping elsewhere.

slowly the business will die off if it limits its payment options too much. which for narrowsighted businesses, is a good thing.

if the corner store in detroit stopped accepting banknotes, knowing the neighbourhood is 90% full of drug money. the store would close down. and thus the corner store still accepts bank notes.

it is not illegal for a business to accept funds if its from a drug dealer.. it is however illegal if the transaction itself is drug related where the shop owner has some drug related intent.

stolen funds or funds related to a crime are not permanently illegal to be used.. otherwise the court system would collapse when they cant get funding from fines and bail.

[smoothie]

bitcoin itself is free to move, there is no cod that prefers one satoshi over another..
i wish people would realise this..

the problem is not bitcoin, its businesses and their preference.
EG
online stores do not accept bank wire transfers or banknotes by mail.. they only accept visa/mastercard.
ontop of that a majority of online stores only accept the native FIAT of the location where the HQ resides.
meaning an american store dos not accept euro's.

they dont accept gold, silver or diamonds..

this does not mean banknotes, silver, gold, diamonds, non-native fiat is screwed or has problems. it just means that the business has decided to limit its payment options and customers end up shopping elsewhere.

slowly the business will die off if it limits its payment options too much. which for narrowsighted businesses, is a good thing.

if the corner store in detroit stopped accepting banknotes, knowing the neighbourhood is 90% full of drug money. the store would close down. and thus the corner store still accepts bank notes.

it is not illegal for a business to accept funds if its from a drug dealer.. it is however illegal if the transaction itself is drug related where the shop owner has some drug related intent.

stolen funds or funds related to a crime are not permanently illegal to be used.. otherwise the court system would collapse when they cant get funding from fines and bail.

I love bitcoin and what it was created to be. But in light of the ability for regulatory authorities to ban or blacklist specific coins that have a certain address history association personally I see bitcoin as losing its fungibility in that respect.

Sure "Bitcoin is not the problem" is one way of looking at it, but other side of the argument is that "why not just fix that issue by disallowing transactions to be tracked by default and just have privacy features on by default?"

We know the answer: Too much opposition to changing the core protocol allow that to happen.

So the argument has those two sides...

SIDE A: Bitcoin is broken via fungibility because one can discriminate some coins to be accepted vs others based on block chain analysis.

SIDE B: Bitcoin is not broken and the financial system and businesses who choose to discriminate certain coins from being spent/exchanged in 3rd party businesses are broken (and the problem).

Two sides and probably both right in their own respect.

Although the arguments and sides exist it doesn't change the fact that businesses/govt/individuals can discriminate from accepting certain coins based on block chain analysis of their respective histories.

We have to remember that bitcoin does exist in this current world no matter how much we disagree with TPTB or the broken legacy monetary system. As long as that type of system exists there will be some issues concerning discriminating against accepting certain coins from certain addresses.

THOUGHT SCENARIO EXERCISE DEALING WITH COIN DISCRIMINATION
This thought experiment is to merely be just that an experiment and is not intended to give people ideas on what to do or not do in certain scenarios

You are an average joe looking to trade cash for bitcoins or some object like (gold coin) for bitcoins. Assuming you know each of the possible scenarios are true below.

BOB has bitcoins he wants to trade/exchange with you.

Which scenarios below would you consider not trading with BOB and discriminating against accepting his BTC for payment or trade?

Which scenarios would you trade with BOB and not discriminate against doing a trade?

BOB wants to trade you his BTC is the same person who just:

A. Robbed an old lady of her BTC by ransacking her house then beating the crap out of her.

B. Sold Kiddie porn for BTC

C. Ordered and executed a terrorist attack on a city killing a few hundred people and was paid in BTC to do so

D. Evading taxes with BTC

E. Was paid in BTC for prositution

F. Sold illegal drugs for BTC


Now if you really think about it, people can and will discriminate if they know or suspect something has happened with those BTC.

Would you accept BTC for trade or payment knowing that one of those things happened?

Which ones would you discriminated against more than others?

This brings in different shades of discrimination. As not every person would necessarily pick all of them to discriminate against. Some might even pick all of them to discriminated against. Some possibly would not care.

[iCEBREAKER]

Another point, what if it was IBM shares instead, or any other stock or bond?

Pecunia non olet.

-Vespasian

[erre]

After some circulation  all coins will have some satoshi of " dirt money" , but....who cares?


http://edition.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/08/14/cocaine.traces.money/

 

[rik1]

Even though we consider btc safe, there are some loopholes, as follows:
(1) An individual's income and complete spending history is available for all of his or her friends, neighbors, and co-workers to see on the blockchain.
(2) Merchant cash flow is easily exposed to competitors.
(3) Another lack of privacy in bitcoin transactions is a threat to fungibility because users could decide not to accept “tainted” coins that may have been stolen or come from some sort of criminal operation. This essentially means that all bitcoins do not have an equal value. One of the main attributes of a currency is that all units are treated equally.
It's pointed out that the setup in bitcoin is actually worse than the privacy offered by a traditional bank. It is noted that, ”In a regular currency you reveal everything to the bank. Does this mean in a decentralized currency you need to reveal everything to everyone?

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

Don't worry for the average joes, banks and their walled gardens will be there to keep them secure and ignorant of any of these problems.

Do you mean banks will start accepting Bitcoin and managing people's Bitcoin? Isn't this what Xapo is doing already?

Anyway, the main point is, the software if you download it, should have by default maximum confidential options turned, and as fungible and therefore anonymous as possible. We would all benefit from that. It's just annoying, having to rely on coin tumblers, mixers, whatever, to try to have some kind of anonymity. It's not convenient. I want to be able to move money from A, to B, without having to do anything else, and still have my coins to not be traceable because that's where the fungibility ends.

[brg444]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

Don't worry for the average joes, banks and their walled gardens will be there to keep them secure and ignorant of any of these problems.

Do you mean banks will start accepting Bitcoin and managing people's Bitcoin? Isn't this what Xapo is doing already?

Anyway, the main point is, the software if you download it, should have by default maximum confidential options turned, and as fungible and therefore anonymous as possible. We would all benefit from that. It's just annoying, having to rely on coin tumblers, mixers, whatever, to try to have some kind of anonymity. It's not convenient. I want to be able to move money from A, to B, without having to do anything else, and still have my coins to not be traceable because that's where the fungibility ends.

Xapo, Coinbase, Circle, all banks yes.

Please stop confusing fungibility and privacy, two very different things.

As for the rest of your comments it is a gross over-exaggeration of the current state of the ecosystem where little to no one encounter the problems you've described.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

Don't worry for the average joes, banks and their walled gardens will be there to keep them secure and ignorant of any of these problems.

Do you mean banks will start accepting Bitcoin and managing people's Bitcoin? Isn't this what Xapo is doing already?

Anyway, the main point is, the software if you download it, should have by default maximum confidential options turned, and as fungible and therefore anonymous as possible. We would all benefit from that. It's just annoying, having to rely on coin tumblers, mixers, whatever, to try to have some kind of anonymity. It's not convenient. I want to be able to move money from A, to B, without having to do anything else, and still have my coins to not be traceable because that's where the fungibility ends.

Xapo, Coinbase, Circle, all banks yes.

Please stop confusing fungibility and privacy, two very different things.

As for the rest of your comments it is a gross over-exaggeration of the current state of the ecosystem where little to no one encounter the problems you've described.

Well, maybe no one encounters those problems because no one uses Bitcoin (compared to the mainstream population) yet, but wait for it. I think we should get stuff like this done before it goes big. Everyone would benefit from confidential transactions as a default option. And I don't think how privacy is not related to fungibility in the context of a public ledger. You can't choose, you either have increased privacy (which translates in fungibility) or decreased privacy (no fungibility because you can trace if coins have a bad or good origin).

[brg444]

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Yes, you can do things to get around the fungibility in a public ledger problem, but he thing is, it's annoying as hell. I don't want to send my funds to some place, then get them back to spend them or do whatever. This should be done by default. All transactions should be like that by default. The average Joe is not going to do any of that, it's not intuitive.

Don't worry for the average joes, banks and their walled gardens will be there to keep them secure and ignorant of any of these problems.

Do you mean banks will start accepting Bitcoin and managing people's Bitcoin? Isn't this what Xapo is doing already?

Anyway, the main point is, the software if you download it, should have by default maximum confidential options turned, and as fungible and therefore anonymous as possible. We would all benefit from that. It's just annoying, having to rely on coin tumblers, mixers, whatever, to try to have some kind of anonymity. It's not convenient. I want to be able to move money from A, to B, without having to do anything else, and still have my coins to not be traceable because that's where the fungibility ends.

Xapo, Coinbase, Circle, all banks yes.

Please stop confusing fungibility and privacy, two very different things.

As for the rest of your comments it is a gross over-exaggeration of the current state of the ecosystem where little to no one encounter the problems you've described.

Well, maybe no one encounters those problems because no one uses Bitcoin (compared to the mainstream population) yet, but wait for it. I think we should get stuff like this done before it goes big. Everyone would benefit from confidential transactions as a default option. And I don't think how privacy is not related to fungibility in the context of a public ledger. You can't choose, you either have increased privacy (which translates in fungibility) or decreased privacy (no fungibility because you can trace if coins have a bad or good origin).

The difference is explained here:

Fungibility, the property of every unit in the system being indistinguishable & capable of mutual substitution, is an inherent feature of Bitcoin.

Consider a transaction where you consolidate one tainted satoshi into an address along with 10 untainted Bitcoin. Once those inputs are combined in a single address, there is no way to distinguish the tainted satoshi from the others. If you spent each of those millions of satoshis to different addresses, there would be no way to determine which address had the tainted satoshi.

The only way you could enforce any kind of tainting logic would be to taint the address, not the satoshi. That would effectively mean that you 'tainted' 10 Bitcoin in order to track the single satoshi. If you did do that, it's likely that tainted coins would rapidly outnumber untainted coins because any tainted coins effectively infect all the clean coins they interact with. Untainted coins might command a premium, but they would almost certainly become impractically rare to treat as the only valid currency.

With regards to privacy and the ability to track every known outputs & addresses it is a field rich in innovation and one can rest assured that the alternatives to spend bitcoins anonymously will only increase in number with time.

Your concerns in regards to privacy are justified and work is being done in that regard. As for the mainstream population they will never adopt Bitcoin as it currently exists so this is really not a problem.

[iCEBREAKER]

Please stop confusing fungibility and privacy, two very different things.

Please stop confusing protocol fungibility and socioeconomic fungibility, two very different things.