Wall Observer BTC/USD - Bitcoin price movement tracking & discussion

[death_wish]

I am a very fan of Snowden, especially or what he did, although his statements about BTC do not like this time, he wants more privacy, but does not understand that BTC goes far beyond privacy.

I agree with Snowden.  Loth though I am to say this, Bitcoin has a problem:  Privacy is Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel.

To say that “Bitcoin goes far beyond privacy” is like saying that a tower goes far beyond its foundations.  Privacy is a fundamental characteristic, it is an economic necessity insofar as it affects fungibility, and it needs to be built-in:  It is a part of the foundation, not a roof ornament.

Mixing does not work; that is a child’s game, and it costs you money in fees to achieve an inferior form of something that should be built-in, provided out of the box.  (On another note, Monero is essentially a coin with a built-in mixer.)  I have spent a ridiculous amount of money over the years on Bitcoin privacy, so I think I am qualified to opine.  And no, LN is not an adequate solution.  I am not inclined to make an extensive technical critique here—just saying, um, no, that doesn’t do it.

None of this is any criticism of Satoshi.  Given the state of the art in 2008-era cryptography, Satoshi had two choices:  Try to build a centralized currency with transactional privacy, like Digicash—or build a decentralized system, which exposes all transaction data so that every P2P node can validate it.  Either/or.  In 2008, the technology did not yet exist for anything else.  Satoshi made some breakthroughs with Bitcoin, but he himself was obviously not a cryptographer; and it would be unfair to expect him personally to solve every major problem at once, all by himself!

In 2010, when he was still here, Satoshi was struggling with this issue:

This is a very interesting topic.  If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.

[...]

It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.

Bitcoin gave the impetus to terrific advances in cryptographic research.  A wave of breakthroughs in zero-knowledge proofs started in 2013–2014.  Alas, by then, Satoshi was long gone.  Not that we need his permission to improve Bitcoin:  I think he would have liked to have seen that, and to have been involved in it as Satoshi.

Thus, as it stands:

• Bitcoin has less practical privacy than bank transactions.  (Your bank knows your bank transactions.  The whole world knows your Bitcoin transactions.)
• Such monstrosities as Chainalysis exist, and they invisibly spy on you much worse than you know.
• Bitcoin’s fungibility is always more or less under threat—in the large, systemically, and in the small, for each user.  Governments and spy-companies draw up blacklists of coins.  Bitcoiners fret over avoiding “tainted” coins—a ridiculous concept which should not exist.  Even if you are irresponsibly apathetic about privacy, you need to pay attention to what this does to Bitcoin economically.
• The only major implementation of zero-knowledge proof privacy is an altcoin which, I recently discovered to my dismay, now plans to go POS.  Snowden likes that altcoin.  So do I—as long as it stays POW.  (I am proud to be a Zcasher since Sprout.)

A constructive solution:  Bring real privacy to Bitcoin!  Don’t say, “We don’t need that,” when we obviously do.  I say, “We can do it.”

Bitcoin “Is Failing as an Electronic Cash System”: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden has said that he is "very much a fan" of Bitcoin, but he thinks that its lack of privacy could mean it fails in the long term.
The American whistleblower said that there are multiple crypto assets that can be thought of as money akin to gold rather than currencies.
He added that he thinks competition between cryptocurrencies is a net positive for the world.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-failing-electronic-cash-edward-snowden/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss

I think everyone is looking for is focusing more on payments, Fiat money and do not see the complete potential that BTC represents.

Payments without privacy are—a problem.

I also agree with Snowden that competition is good.  Bitcoin doesn’t retain its dominance due to meme graphics.  It stands on being the best.  That means it needs to be the best.  The best never fear competition; and Bitcoin will only be improved by competition, if its response is “we can do it!” rather than “we don’t need it”.

I also like that Snowden tweet about gold being a non-networked form of Bitcoin.  Quotable.  He apparently has quite a high regard for Bitcoin.  If he offers some constructive criticism of it (as I do often), that is for the good of Bitcoin.

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[Gachapin]

Edward Snowden has said that he is "very much a fan" of Bitcoin, but he thinks that its lack of privacy could mean it fails in the long term.
The American whistleblower said that there are multiple crypto assets that can be thought of as money akin to gold rather than currencies.
He added that he thinks competition between cryptocurrencies is a net positive for the world.

competition?
Between POS shitcoins.... Yes.


But POW competition to Bitcoin... nothing that I can see  (especially when that mETH lab blows up, soon)
 

....
having multiple assets that could act as money was a good thing for the world. “I think the more competition we have there, then all the better,” he said.
....

Now, reading that sentence makes more sense to me. I agree, it's a good thing to have different kinds of money in competition...

[empowering]

I am a very fan of Snowden, especially or what he did, although his statements about BTC do not like this time, he wants more privacy, but does not understand that BTC goes far beyond privacy.

I agree with Snowden.  Loth though I am to say this, Bitcoin has a problem:  Privacy is Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel.

To say that “Bitcoin goes far beyond privacy” is like saying that a tower goes far beyond its foundations.  Privacy is a fundamental characteristic, it is an economic necessity insofar as it affects fungibility, and it needs to be built-in:  It is a part of the foundation, not a roof ornament.

Mixing does not work; that is a child’s game, and it costs you money in fees to achieve an inferior form of something that should be built-in, provided out of the box.  (On another note, Monero is essentially a coin with a built-in mixer.)  I have spent a ridiculous amount of money over the years on Bitcoin privacy, so I think I am qualified to opine.  And no, LN is not an adequate solution.  I am not inclined to make an extensive technical critique here—just saying, um, no, that doesn’t do it.

None of this is any criticism of Satoshi.  Given the state of the art in 2008-era cryptography, Satoshi had two choices:  Try to build a centralized currency with transactional privacy, like Digicash—or build a decentralized system, which exposes all transaction data so that every P2P node can validate it.  Either/or.  In 2008, the technology did not yet exist for anything else.  Satoshi made some breakthroughs with Bitcoin, but he himself was obviously not a cryptographer; and it would be unfair to expect him personally to solve every major problem at once, all by himself!

In 2010, when he was still here, Satoshi was struggling with this issue:

This is a very interesting topic.  If a solution was found, a much better, easier, more convenient implementation of Bitcoin would be possible.

[...]

It's hard to think of how to apply zero-knowledge-proofs in this case.

Bitcoin gave the impetus to terrific advances in cryptographic research.  A wave of breakthroughs in zero-knowledge proofs started in 2013–2014.  Alas, by then, Satoshi was long gone.  Not that we need his permission to improve Bitcoin:  I think he would have liked to have seen that, and to have been involved in it as Satoshi.

Thus, as it stands:

• Bitcoin has less practical privacy than bank transactions.  (Your bank knows your bank transactions.  The whole world knows your Bitcoin transactions.)
• Such monstrosities as Chainalysis exist, and they invisibly spy on you much worse than you know.
• Bitcoin’s fungibility is always more or less under threat—in the large, systemically, and in the small, for each user.  Governments and spy-companies draw up blacklists of coins.  Bitcoiners fret over avoiding “tainted” coins—a ridiculous concept which should not exist.  Even if you are irresponsibly apathetic about privacy, you need to pay attention to what this does to Bitcoin economically.
• The only major implementation of zero-knowledge proof privacy is an altcoin which, I recently discovered to my dismay, now plans to go POS.  Snowden likes that altcoin.  So do I—as long as it stays POW.  (I am proud to be a Zcasher since Sprout.)

A constructive solution:  Bring real privacy to Bitcoin!  Don’t say, “We don’t need that,” when we obviously do.  I say, “We can do it.”

Bitcoin “Is Failing as an Electronic Cash System”: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden has said that he is "very much a fan" of Bitcoin, but he thinks that its lack of privacy could mean it fails in the long term.
The American whistleblower said that there are multiple crypto assets that can be thought of as money akin to gold rather than currencies.
He added that he thinks competition between cryptocurrencies is a net positive for the world.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-failing-electronic-cash-edward-snowden/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss

I think everyone is looking for is focusing more on payments, Fiat money and do not see the complete potential that BTC represents.

Payments without privacy are—a problem.

I also agree with Snowden that competition is good.  Bitcoin doesn’t retain its dominance due to meme graphics.  It stands on being the best.  That means it needs to be the best.  The best never fear competition; and Bitcoin will only be improved by competition, if its response is “we can do it!” rather than “we don’t need it”.

I also like that Snowden tweet about gold being a non-networked form of Bitcoin.  Quotable.  He apparently has quite a high regard for Bitcoin.  If he offers some constructive criticism of it (as I do often), that is for the good of Bitcoin.

There is one area where BTC's current restraints in terms of privacy , is sort of a good thing.  Regulation. (try not to vomit)

I wonder if BTC would be where it is today if it was a privacy coin...... I mean it opens up an attack vector for tptb/regulators....

Feel like BTC has walked that tightrope pretty well......

A world with widely adopted truly private digital money, could well come with issues of its own, some positive, and, some negative.

But, 100% on the fungibility issue, and privacy issue as a whole.

[a1 Hashrate LLC2022]

You can keep the btc private, You can mine to a virgin btc address via nicehash.

And as long as you do not cash it in it is private.

If you want cash for it and privacy along with that good luck. I would argue that if that were possible the governments of the world would end it.

The do not mind that it can be moved from address to address around the world. They do mind if you convert it to cash on the sneak.

I would argue it was never designed for that purpose.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Wilhelm]

You can keep the btc private, You can mine to a virgin btc address via nicehash.

And as long as you do not cash it in it is private.

If you want cash for it and privacy along with that good luck. I would argue that if that were possible the governments of the world would end it.

The do not mind that it can be moved from address to address around the world. They do mind if you convert it to cash on the sneak.

I would argue it was never designed for that purpose.

+1
I would argue that KYC is designed to make Bitcoin assets end-to-end traceable

[Hueristic]

I am a very fan of Snowden, especially or what he did, although his statements about BTC do not like this time, he wants more privacy, but does not understand that BTC goes far beyond privacy.

Bitcoin “Is Failing as an Electronic Cash System”: Edward Snowden

Edward Snowden has said that he is "very much a fan" of Bitcoin, but he thinks that its lack of privacy could mean it fails in the long term.
The American whistleblower said that there are multiple crypto assets that can be thought of as money akin to gold rather than currencies.
He added that he thinks competition between cryptocurrencies is a net positive for the world.

Source: https://cryptobriefing.com/bitcoin-failing-electronic-cash-edward-snowden/?utm_source=feed&utm_medium=rss

I think everyone is looking for is focusing more on payments, Fiat money and do not see the complete potential that BTC represents.

Snowden is a Zcrap insider.

[death_wish]

I agree with Snowden.  Loth though I am to say this, Bitcoin has a problem:  Privacy is Bitcoin’s Achilles’ heel.

To say that “Bitcoin goes far beyond privacy” is like saying that a tower goes far beyond its foundations.  Privacy is a fundamental characteristic, it is an economic necessity insofar as it affects fungibility, and it needs to be built-in:  It is a part of the foundation, not a roof ornament.

[...]

I also like that Snowden tweet about gold being a non-networked form of Bitcoin.  Quotable.  He apparently has quite a high regard for Bitcoin.  If he offers some constructive criticism of it (as I do often), that is for the good of Bitcoin.

There is one area where BTC's current restraints in terms of privacy , is sort of a good thing.  Regulation. (try not to vomit)

I wonder if BTC would be where it is today if it was a privacy coin...... I mean it opens up an attack vector for tptb/regulators....

I have debated that with myself for years.  My conclusion is to the contrary:  The way that Bitcoin made decentralized, permissionless money an accomplished fact before governments could react, it could have done the same for privacy.  If only the technology had existed—which it didn’t, because the necessary technological developments were motivated by Bitcoin’s existence.  (One of the principal inventors of modern zero-knowledge proof systems now runs a company building Ethereum L2 stuff.)

Flip this around.  Imagine that we are now in 2008, and some guy who calls himself Natoshi Sakamoto proposes a new centralized, permissioned digital money system.  Would you suppose that we need to accept that, to avoid opening an attack vector for TPTB/regulators?  Or would you say:  No, let’s go instead with Satoshi Nakamoto’s idea for decentralized, permissionless money, which you can use with no KYC by generating a keypair on your computer.  You know how much TPTB/regulators love that!

Accomplished facts are powerful.  Now, regulators have been in the reactionary position of responding to the accomplished facts of “decentralized” and “permissionless”.  They have needed to adapt.  But now, Bitcoin is in the reactionary position of fighting accomplished facts of a transparent blockchain, Chainalysis, “tainted” coins, etc.  The precedent is set—one way for better, the other way for worse.

Feel like BTC has walked that tightrope pretty well......

Not to discuss altcoins in WO, but as raw data for contemplating the hypothetical of a Bitcoin with strong privacy:  Gemini supports Zcash shielded withdrawals.  That is a NY Bitlicensed, notoriously ultra-KYC exchange, under one of the most onerous regulatory regimes in the world.  They started support for shielded withdrawals, after Zcash was hit with some high-profile exchange delistings during a FUDstorm; Tyler Winklevoss made Gemini’s position quite clear.  The Rock Trading in Europe is another regulated KYC exchange that supports Zcash shielded.

The exchanges have users’ KYC dox.  Police, tax enforcers, et al. can tell targeted persons, “Give us your view keys, or else”; view keys permit viewing, but not spending of shielded money that is otherwise entirely invisible on the blockchain.  Gemini or The Rock Trading users who withdraw shielded Zcash are concealing their private finances from the world; they will not end up on any “rich lists”, their finances are protected from snooping by cyberstalkers, and they can sleep quietly at night without worrying about armed robbers.  But they are not in any position to hide from their governments.  This issue is not as simple as it seems at a glance.

I think that Zcash has walked that tightrope pretty well.  Bitcoin could have done similarly—and it could do similarly, in the future.

A world with widely adopted truly private digital money, could well come with issues of its own, some positive, and, some negative.

Since the dawn of human history, criminals have been able to transact anonymously with gold coins in the hand, with paper cash, etc.  More importantly, so could good people who deserve to have privacy—who should not be punished for the actions of others.

Now that the world is going all-digital, truly private digital money only restores, in essence, the way things were for thousands of years.

That’s a good thing—unless one idealizes transforming the whole world into a giant panopticon, where everyone is presumed guilty and thus kept under watch.

But, 100% on the fungibility issue, and privacy issue as a whole.

A little coincidence:

I have believed for years that zero-knowledge proofs will take over the world.

That is from technical discussion of my original idea to use zero-knowledge proofs for emergency salvaging of BTC, in case a large quantum computer is developed.  Zero-knowledge proofs are not only useful for privacy; they have at least three or four non-privacy use cases that I want to see in Bitcoin.  Perhaps I should stop writing forum posts, and write some code.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[death_wish]

Snowden is a Zcrap insider.

The “trusted setup” is gone in Halo2—and with it, the only plausible argument that XMR users ever raised against zk-SNARKs.^*  The cryptography now has a ton of research, peer review, development, and improvements; it is no longer bleeding-edge “moon math” that nobody understands.  It has been fielded in production for years, and it has worked for years in the real world.  Nine years after the first breakthrough research papers, I think the technology is just now hitting initial maturity as of 2022.  Those who always wait for Version 3.0 may observe that, in accord with their long-declared roadmap, Zcash just opened their third shielded value pool about two weeks ago; it has a codename indicating that they think it’s now all grown up (“Sprout” to “Sapling” to “Orchard”).

Instead of dumping on “Zcrap”, why not push to bring the same technology to Bitcoin?  It’s open-source.  And then, we could probably enjoy seeing Snowden tweet about how BTC has the best privacy.

^* Edited to add note:  I should emphasize that I am speaking only of the technology, not the coin.  I know that XMR users have many other arguments with Zcash—e.g., Zcash giving up on ASIC resistance while Monero switched to RandomX.  None of that is relevant to a privacy technology that is open source, and can be copied just the same way that Zcash copied Bitcoin Core v0.12 for their initial codebase.

[death_wish]

You can keep the btc private, You can mine to a virgin btc address via nicehash.

That is a proposal for obtaining BTC privately, not for keeping it private—much less using it privately.  It is only one way of obtaining BTC privately (experience talking here—not discussing publicly, for the obvious reason that it defeats the purpose of obtaining BTC privately).  And it is not even as private as you believe.

Do you know if Nicehash’s website has embedded trackers?  (Most websites do, nowadays.)  Does it use browser fingerprinting?  (Most websites do, nowadays.)  What information does Nicehash require on signup?  What network connection do you use to connect to them?  Have you audited their mining app (is it open source?) to see if it gathers any information about your system (so-called “telemetry”—very common nowadays)?  What network connection do you use for the mining app?  This list of questions could be continued...

I’d guess that P2Pool behind Tor is a better option.  Except that IIUC, latency is a miner’s enemy.  Tor has high latency.  Whoops.  It is probably doable, but I am not the one to ask.

How did you buy your mining hardware?  Anonymously?  Good luck with that.

But anyway, this is irrelevant:  You are trying to solve a less-difficult problem, obtaining BTC, while ignoring what happens after that.

And as long as you do not cash it in it is private.

What is “cashing it”?  Bitcoin is money:  Let’s talk first about using it.

You have an anonymous coin that you obtained “somehow” (via mining, or otherwise).  You go to Bob’s Widgets Dot Dom to buy some tech gadgets.  Bitcoin Bob is happy to accept your coin.  You pay—in a tx that sends you back a change coin.

Congratulations:  Your anonymous coin is now essentially doxed.  Chainalysis now sees the coin that went to Bob’s known wallet cluster—and their heuristics easily discerned which coin is your change.  Bob has your name and address, for shipping the widget—and unbeknownst to him, his third-party website analytics embed leaked a bunch of info about you to what are essentially commercial surveillance companies.

Now, you go to spend some of the change.  Alice is raising donations for a political protest.  Whatever controversial opinion you secretly have, Alice is 100% for it; and you want to support her efforts.  Some of the coin you received as change from your transaction with Bob—the coin which is no longer anonymous, you now send to Alice.  Whoops!

And then, you use the change you received from your tx with Alice to pay for a Copper Membership on the Bitcoin Forum.  Oh, did you want to speak here anonymously?

THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN.  This problem should not exist.  It does not need to exist.  And yet—it does exist.


^^^ Years of frustration and expense are talking here.  Using Bitcoin privately is costly and inconvenient.  It shouldn’t be.  Privacy should be the default, the easiest way to use it.

[ChartBuddy]

Explanation

[Khanvila78]

Global currencies against the U.S. dollar over the last 10 years:


https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1535728910285127684

[Gachapin]

Global currencies against the U.S. dollar over the last 10 years:


https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1535728910285127684

Here, please learn how resize images:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2958771.0

[death_wish]

WTF.

Bitcoin, you have 15 minutes to get back up.  You don’t want ChartBuddy to see you sad like that.  He’s a jerk, and it’s embarrassing.

[Blue King]

South African student purchasing goods with bitcoin 🇿🇦
Quick, easy, and instant. The future is bright!

Source: https://twitter.com/BitcoinMagazine/status/1535803485366755330

[Biodom]

Yep, why the market is so bad all of a sudden?
Apart from some TA jerks (cough-Tom Crown-cough) with their ever decreasing price targets, I fail to see why all this 'panic'?
A rhetorical question.

[Hueristic]

Snowden is a Zcrap insider.

The “trusted setup” is gone in Halo2—a

Leave the shitcoin shilling to another thread.

[a1 Hashrate LLC2022]

You can keep the btc private, You can mine to a virgin btc address via nicehash.

That is a proposal for obtaining BTC privately, not for keeping it private—much less using it privately.  It is only one way of obtaining BTC privately (experience talking here—not discussing publicly, for the obvious reason that it defeats the purpose of obtaining BTC privately).  And it is not even as private as you believe.

Do you know if Nicehash’s website has embedded trackers?  (Most websites do, nowadays.)  Does it use browser fingerprinting?  (Most websites do, nowadays.)  What information does Nicehash require on signup?  What network connection do you use to connect to them?  Have you audited their mining app (is it open source?) to see if it gathers any information about your system (so-called “telemetry”—very common nowadays)?  What network connection do you use for the mining app?  This list of questions could be continued...

I’d guess that P2Pool behind Tor is a better option.  Except that IIUC, latency is a miner’s enemy.  Tor has high latency.  Whoops.  It is probably doable, but I am not the one to ask.

How did you buy your mining hardware?  Anonymously?  Good luck with that.

But anyway, this is irrelevant:  You are trying to solve a less-difficult problem, obtaining BTC, while ignoring what happens after that.

And as long as you do not cash it in it is private.

What is “cashing it”?  Bitcoin is money:  Let’s talk first about using it.

You have an anonymous coin that you obtained “somehow” (via mining, or otherwise).  You go to Bob’s Widgets Dot Dom to buy some tech gadgets.  Bitcoin Bob is happy to accept your coin.  You pay—in a tx that sends you back a change coin.

Congratulations:  Your anonymous coin is now essentially doxed.  Chainalysis now sees the coin that went to Bob’s known wallet cluster—and their heuristics easily discerned which coin is your change.  Bob has your name and address, for shipping the widget—and unbeknownst to him, his third-party website analytics embed leaked a bunch of info about you to what are essentially commercial surveillance companies.

Now, you go to spend some of the change.  Alice is raising donations for a political protest.  Whatever controversial opinion you secretly have, Alice is 100% for it; and you want to support her efforts.  Some of the coin you received as change from your transaction with Bob—the coin which is no longer anonymous, you now send to Alice.  Whoops!

And then, you use the change you received from your tx with Alice to pay for a Copper Membership on the Bitcoin Forum.  Oh, did you want to speak here anonymously?

THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN.  This problem should not exist.  It does not need to exist.  And yet—it does exist.


^^^ Years of frustration and expense are talking here.  Using Bitcoin privately is costly and inconvenient.  It shouldn’t be.  Privacy should be the default, the easiest way to use it.

Okay So I buy this pc

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-30l-gaming-desktop-amd-ryzen-7-5800x-16gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-rtx-3060-ti-1tb-ssd-shadow-black/6477881.p?skuId=6477881

So I buy this and I mine at nicehash a shitcoin like eth and I get paid btc to a virgin address.

½ the privacy issue is solved.

No one can prove a pc is mining a shit coin like eth and converting it to btc on a site like nicehash.

Now I will not explain how to turn a virgin wallet into cash that is not traceable  as btc was not designed to cash out that way. Or. buy goods or services.

KYC is part of the program if you want btc.

[death_wish]

Yep, why the market is so bad all of a sudden?
Apart from some TA jerks (cough-Tom Crown-cough) with their ever decreasing price targets, I fail to see why all this 'panic'?
A rhetorical question.

Sunday dip usually starts later in the day.

What I am hoping not to see is the weird behaviour from early May.  Too soon to call it that, but...  C’mon, Bitcoin, please get back up.

* death_wish answers rhetorical questions when he’s worried about BTC.