Open Letter to GMaxwell and Sincere Rational Core Devs

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new Wall Observer thread incoming!!!

     

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[CoinCube]

What an interesting post. I am sorry I missed it when it was very active a few months ago.

It was compelling enough to read it from start to finish. The OP is a poor communicator but he does raise an very intellectually interesting argument. His argument was summarised upthread is as follows

So, if bitcoin maintains current gold like properties,
including not increasing the TPS whether on-chain or off-chains, then:
(1) bitcoin will increase in value.
(2) bitcoin is the "other alternative" due to increase in value.
(3) bitcoin cannot be the "ideal money".
(4) "other alternatives" existence is to force fiat to compete in value.
(5) "other alternative" ushers in the "ideal money".
(6) "Ideal money" is the end result of the competition.
 

Essentially the OP views bitcoin as a force or weapon that will compel fiat to evolve into more competitive forms to compete with bitcoin.

The OP makes the following points in a compelling manner.

1) That bitcoin can never fulfill Nash's concept of "ideal money" as it its value increases over time due to its deflationary nature.

2) That the value of bitcoin over the long run may be close enough to a stable value metric to force fiat to evolve pushing it closer to Nash's concept of "ideal money" over time. In this it can serve as the "other alternative" who's existence ushers in and accelerates the development of government created "ideal money".

On these two issues I agree with the OP. However, he goes on to make further arguments which are much less compelling.

3) He argues that we should abandon all attempts at increasing bitcoin transactions per second and work towards locking bitcoin into its current state forever so that it may function as said "other alternative". Thus leads to the argument that all attempts to increase bitcoin's price by making it more useful as a currency are misguided as such actions would serve to destabilise bitcoin's predictable "value" rendering it less suitable to serve as an "other alternative" that leads to a reform of fiat currency.

This argument is flawed in that it assumes "value" can be stabilised by artificially suppressing transactions per second. In a consensus system this is likely not possible.

An example may help here:

For most of human history Gold functioned as an "other alternative" forcing other attempts at monetary systems into its orbit or into extinction.

Bitcoin in its current state capped at 1MB blocks can for our purposes here be very grossly conceptualised as a more advanced form of something that has existed for some time. Imagine a primitive system of trade where people exchanged raw gold nuggets for goods and services. As each nugget would be different transactions would be limited and relatively time consuming/expensive to conduct as each nugget would have to be individually weighed.

In this scenario an increase in transactions per second can be envisioned as the transition from a trade in raw nuggets to the trade in hammered strips of common weights. This advance would facilitate trade by reducing the cost of a transaction aka the gross functional equivalent of an increase the transactions per second.

An even further increase in transactions per second would be for the king to mint coins of an official standard weight. This further increases the transactions per second at the cost of centralising the system. We know from history how this centralisation proves problematic over time.

What the OP is advocating is an artificial restraint on bitcoin development. It is the functional equivalent of trying to halt the development of the gold trade in the above example at the nugget stage. It is impossible because you are trying to restrict the system into an inefficient form when broad consensus will eventually develop for a transition. Even if you could somehow succeed in causing a deadlock the market will route around the artificial restraint. In the case of gold nuggets the market could and likely would eventually transition to a new standard of "value" perhaps silver coins instead. In the case of bitcoin the cryptocurrency would likely be supplanted by an altcoin.

Bitcoin will not ossify until it is perceived by market participants as being perfected. To attempt to lock it into place prematurely is doomed to failure as the consensus will follow the self-interest of the participants and the self-interest of the participants is to perfect Bitcoin.

The OP thesis #3 was also disproved by the recent fork of Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash. This split was ultimately a dispute over how best to perfect Bitcoin. There was no sizeable contingency for status quo forever and such a movement will not form until Bitcoin is widely viewed as perfected. This will probably happen someday in the future but it must form naturally not via an artificial attempt to "capture" Bitcoin.

4) The OP follows an extreme version of efficient market theory arguing that the "markets are God" and that the markets are perfect know the future and are always right. He uses this basis to argue that his position is based in accepted economic science implying that dissenting views are unscientific.

This approach is flawed for several reasons. First the OP bases his economic theory on what most traditional economists would consider fringe thinkers. The dominant school of economic "science" is currently some ideological offshoot of Keynesianism. The OP's favoured economists especially Nash are minority views in the field. I happen agree with the OP that his cited minority views are likely correct and Keynesianism and its children will eventually be looked on with disfavour, however, any argument that this is settled science is misleading.

Finally regarding the OP views of extreme efficient market theory it is very unlikely this perfection is wholly descriptive of markets composed of human actors. The best sources to convince you of this are likely billionaires who have made their fortunes exploiting the very inefficiency traditional market theory says should not exist. Although George Soros is not my favourite billionaire his writings on economic reflexively highlight this well.

[jbreher]

...

Sounds as if your conclusions are much like those I arrived at.

[notbatman]

^^^ anytime you see wall of text like that sombody is probably doing something wrong and they need many many paragraphs to justify their actions.

[QuestionAuthority]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

[sidhujag]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

[QuestionAuthority]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

[sidhujag]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

You havent analyzed who uses bitcoin. Do first look at which form of txs are generally used and then reread my post. Valueshuffle and bulletproofs are needed for fungability.

[QuestionAuthority]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

You havent analyzed who uses bitcoin. Do first look at which form of txs are generally used and then reread my post. Valueshuffle and bulletproofs are needed for fungability.

I don’t know how to respond to this because it doesn’t make any sense. Lightning simply allows strangers who have never met to transact without ever making a transaction on the bitcoin ledger. No two different transactions between private parties is ever fungible regardless of whether you are using dollars or bitcoin. If Bob gives Alice $5 in one private transaction that transaction is not interchangeable with Ted giving Mary $75. Fungibility is not an issue with LN because bitcoin will still be fungible.

Valueshuffle is just another method of mixing coins like Maxwell’s CoinJoin. I don’t buy a lot of heroin or assault rifles and I would kind of like to keep an eye on those that do, so that makes CoinJoin unnecessary for me. If you want something truly anonymous why don’t you just use dollars?

[dknight456]

Do you understand the concept of separating the signatures into a separate block structure? The discussion relevant to your Nashian prespective is about the concept, not instantiations of the concept.

I wouldn't attempt to interest you in anything that involved tps increases, it's outside the useful bounds of this discussion, we both agree that. Segregated witness blocks need not increase tps.

[QuestionAuthority]

Do you understand the concept of separating the signatures into a separate block structure? The discussion relevant to your Nashian prespective is about the concept, not instantiations of the concept.

I wouldn't attempt to interest you in anything that involved tps increases, it's outside the useful bounds of this discussion, we both agree that. Segregated witness blocks need not increase tps.

Malleability is the great boogeyman of this forum. People here exaggerate the need to fix malleability. Transaction malleability is the big lie Mark Karpeles used to steal hundreds of thousands of btc from the hands of fools.

[sidhujag]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

You havent analyzed who uses bitcoin. Do first look at which form of txs are generally used and then reread my post. Valueshuffle and bulletproofs are needed for fungability.

I don’t know how to respond to this because it doesn’t make any sense. Lightning simply allows strangers who have never met to transact without ever making a transaction on the bitcoin ledger. No two different transactions between private parties is ever fungible regardless of whether you are using dollars or bitcoin. If Bob gives Alice $5 in one private transaction that transaction is not interchangeable with Ted giving Mary $75. Fungibility is not an issue with LN because bitcoin will still be fungible.

Valueshuffle is just another method of mixing coins like Maxwell’s CoinJoin. I don’t buy a lot of heroin or assault rifles and I would kind of like to keep an eye on those that do, so that makes CoinJoin unnecessary for me. If you want something truly anonymous why don’t you just use dollars?

Most txs are multisig if you have looked at the historical analysis. Schnore will reduce those to size of p2pk. Bulletproofs combined with valueshuffle provides MPC to essentially negate any bandwidth costs of privacy by aggregating proofs into single one like schnorr does. Bitcoin is not fully fungible due to coins being public and thus my statement that its needed. Actually mimblewimble is cool cause poelstra showed you only need bandwidth to download of utxo set to sync however using bulletproofs the utxo would shrink more than 10x and the bandwidth req for new sync becomes the number of tx with utxos which is pretty much mobile accessible connectivity to network.

So you see it has nothing to do with using it for darknet.

[QuestionAuthority]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

You havent analyzed who uses bitcoin. Do first look at which form of txs are generally used and then reread my post. Valueshuffle and bulletproofs are needed for fungability.

I don’t know how to respond to this because it doesn’t make any sense. Lightning simply allows strangers who have never met to transact without ever making a transaction on the bitcoin ledger. No two different transactions between private parties is ever fungible regardless of whether you are using dollars or bitcoin. If Bob gives Alice $5 in one private transaction that transaction is not interchangeable with Ted giving Mary $75. Fungibility is not an issue with LN because bitcoin will still be fungible.

Valueshuffle is just another method of mixing coins like Maxwell’s CoinJoin. I don’t buy a lot of heroin or assault rifles and I would kind of like to keep an eye on those that do, so that makes CoinJoin unnecessary for me. If you want something truly anonymous why don’t you just use dollars?

Most txs are multisig if you have looked at the historical analysis. Schnorr will reduce those to size of p2pk. Bulletproofs combined with valueshuffle provides MPC to essentially negate any bandwidth costs of privacy by aggregating proofs into single one like schnorr does. Bitcoin is not fully fungible due to coins being public and thus my statement that its needed. Actually mimblewimble is cool cause poelstra showed you only need bandwidth to download of utxo set to sync however using bulletproofs the utxo would shrink more than 10x and the bandwidth req for new sync becomes the number of tx with utxos which is pretty much mobile accessible connectivity to network.

So you see it has nothing to do with using it for darknet.

I’m sorry to say, you have completely lost me again.

I was talking about LN fixing the transaction volume, fee and speed issues. Gavin mentioned implementing Schnorr signatures years ago as a part of his wish list (slightly smaller for all transactions, possibly better security, bla bla). That was part of Adam Back’s roadmap for bitcoin. It’s still unnecessary for implementing LN which is what I was talking about. That would be a bitcoin change not an LN change anyway and could still be implemented after the LN rollout.

Bitcoin is not fungible because coins are public? I don’t even know what that means. Fungability literally means mutually interchangeable. Dollars are fungible and they are public currency worldwide. Bitcoins will remain interchangeable after LN. The only way I can see you being able to change the fungability of bitcoin is with blacklisting or some other such nonsense.

All the rest is related mostly to privacy and, as I’ve already stated, that is unimportant to me. Dollars have perfect privacy. You can buy all the hookers, coke and rifles you will ever need with dollars and never get caught from tracking the purchase. Where people are caught using currency is by depositing too much of it in a bank (drug/arms dealers) or exchanging too much into another currency (like cash real estate buys, exchanging dollars for another fiat, failure to pay taxes and justify income, etc.). I got bad news for you, you will also get caught with even the most private crypto if you do any of those things. So, in the end, it just doesn’t matter how private the transaction is, you can’t use the money unless your transaction is legal.

[Adhesive201]

if between the advantages and the risks you think, then you will reach optmis! because optimistic it will appear after you think of everything.

[hv_]

I’m not sure this old thread is even a relevant discussion any longer. Oh sure, you could probably still discuss the fact that core devs are rude little nerd pussies with a god complex but that’s hardly a productive discussion.

Lightning is just about to take off and fix the rest.

Of course value and price are not the same thing. If you ever run across anyone again that thinks they are equal explain it this way. You are stuck in middle of the Sahara desert without water. A helicopter landed offering to sell you water for $10,000 a gallon but could not take you with them. You would buy the water with every dime in your bank account because the water has enormous value to you. Does that mean the new price of water globally is $10,000 a gallon? No.

You need schnorr with valueshuffle and LN for bitcoin to really take off. LN alone wont do.. bulletproofs may help

Sure, if you assume huge transactions requiring multisig for drug dealers and illegal arms salesmen will be the only people using bitcoin. The rest of us don’t need that for LN to work.

You havent analyzed who uses bitcoin. Do first look at which form of txs are generally used and then reread my post. Valueshuffle and bulletproofs are needed for fungability.

I don’t know how to respond to this because it doesn’t make any sense. Lightning simply allows strangers who have never met to transact without ever making a transaction on the bitcoin ledger. No two different transactions between private parties is ever fungible regardless of whether you are using dollars or bitcoin. If Bob gives Alice $5 in one private transaction that transaction is not interchangeable with Ted giving Mary $75. Fungibility is not an issue with LN because bitcoin will still be fungible.

Valueshuffle is just another method of mixing coins like Maxwell’s CoinJoin. I don’t buy a lot of heroin or assault rifles and I would kind of like to keep an eye on those that do, so that makes CoinJoin unnecessary for me. If you want something truly anonymous why don’t you just use dollars?

Most txs are multisig if you have looked at the historical analysis. Schnorr will reduce those to size of p2pk. Bulletproofs combined with valueshuffle provides MPC to essentially negate any bandwidth costs of privacy by aggregating proofs into single one like schnorr does. Bitcoin is not fully fungible due to coins being public and thus my statement that its needed. Actually mimblewimble is cool cause poelstra showed you only need bandwidth to download of utxo set to sync however using bulletproofs the utxo would shrink more than 10x and the bandwidth req for new sync becomes the number of tx with utxos which is pretty much mobile accessible connectivity to network.

So you see it has nothing to do with using it for darknet.

I’m sorry to say, you have completely lost me again.

I was talking about LN fixing the transaction volume, fee and speed issues. Gavin mentioned implementing Schnorr signatures years ago as a part of his wish list (slightly smaller for all transactions, possibly better security, bla bla). That was part of Adam Back’s roadmap for bitcoin. It’s still unnecessary for implementing LN which is what I was talking about. That would be a bitcoin change not an LN change anyway and could still be implemented after the LN rollout.

Bitcoin is not fungible because coins are public? I don’t even know what that means. Fungability literally means mutually interchangeable. Dollars are fungible and they are public currency worldwide. Bitcoins will remain interchangeable after LN. The only way I can see you being able to change the fungability of bitcoin is with blacklisting or some other such nonsense.

All the rest is related mostly to privacy and, as I’ve already stated, that is unimportant to me. Dollars have perfect privacy. You can buy all the hookers, coke and rifles you will ever need with dollars and never get caught from tracking the purchase. Where people are caught using currency is by depositing too much of it in a bank (drug/arms dealers) or exchanging too much into another currency (like cash real estate buys, exchanging dollars for another fiat, failure to pay taxes and justify income, etc.). I got bad news for you, you will also get caught with even the most private crypto if you do any of those things. So, in the end, it just doesn’t matter how private the transaction is, you can’t use the money unless your transaction is legal.

Thanks for your very clear last paragraph. There is nothing really to add, except that its a bit more challenging for hunters to keep up if momero et al is used for doing crime.  But I m very sure that here (over a tracable internet) is always a way of tracing things - not so in fiat.

For LN I m not so sure since LN to work on big scale, it will centralize to few big lending + netting = clearing hubs. And so with lost censorship resistance fungibility is at risk again.

Its not hard to conclude I prefer bitcoin cash and there is more why.

[QuestionAuthority]

Thanks for your very clear last paragraph. There is nothing really to add, except that its a bit more challenging for hunters to keep up if momero et al is used for doing crime.  But I m very sure that here (over a tracable internet) is always a way of tracing things - not so in fiat.

For LN I m not so sure since LN to work on big scale, it will centralize to few big lending + netting = clearing hubs. And so with lost censorship resistance fungibility is at risk again.

Its not hard to conclude I prefer bitcoin cash and there is more why.

You don’t need Monero or any special crypto variant to hide illegal transactions. Even bitcoin can be made to be secure enough for hiding transactions. All of these seedy developers attempting to make the perfect hidden private double super secret nerd money have always been a giant joke to me. The money isn’t what gets criminals caught.

Al Capone wasn’t caught because he used dollars. He was caught and sentenced because he failed to pay taxes. Ross Ulbricht wasn’t caught because he used bitcoin. He got caught because he let his guard down and made stupid mistakes. In both of the above cases the criminal organization was infiltrated and the money was put into mainstream legal activities.

In other words, Al Capone wasn’t caught because the government used a quantum computer to catch him selling a glass of gin and a hooker to Joe Blow. They caught him because he had too much money to launder effectively and never paid his taxes when he laundered the money.

The government doesn’t try catch every citizen that buys a line of coke and piece of ass. They don’t want to jail that many people. They bust a few of them and offer a plea deal so they can find out who sold them the pussy and coke. Then they focus (sometimes thousands of LEO’s and millions of dollars) on locating the dealer. If it’s the USA chasing him, the criminal is bad enough and he’s overseas they make the foreign government help them (like BTCe) or they drone strike him. If he’s domestic, they infiltrate his organization wait for a mistake and pounce. In either case, the money he used (yen, yuan, dollars or crypto) is inconsequential to the case.

There is no fungability between different cryptos. They are not all equally interchangeable. One BTC is not equal to one XMR or one BCH. Censorship of a single crypto is called blacklisting. That’s where you have one coin address that’s not equal to every other coin address. That keeps the coins from being equally interchangeable and destroys fungability.

All currencies require fungability (complete interchangeability between denominations) to work as currencies. However, anonymity is not required for something to function as a currency. If you have a one ounce pure gold ingot stamped in Canada and one stamped in China they are completely interchangeable and fungible but they are not anonymous. You know where they came from and can track them. If you have two dollar bills with different serial numbers you can track where they have been and where they were manufactured but they are still fungible because they are each always worth one dollar. There’s a site called “WheresGeorge” that tracks dollar bills (https://www.wheresgeorge.com) but all of those dollar bills are still worth a dollar and are fungible.

BCH is just a bitcoin fork. People are going to side with one fork or the other at their own preference. If bitcoin forks too many times it will eventually dilute the value of every bitcoin variant so much it will make them all equally worthless. Be careful supporting forks that break away from core.

[hv_]

Thanks for your very clear last paragraph. There is nothing really to add, except that its a bit more challenging for hunters to keep up if momero et al is used for doing crime.  But I m very sure that here (over a tracable internet) is always a way of tracing things - not so in fiat.

For LN I m not so sure since LN to work on big scale, it will centralize to few big lending + netting = clearing hubs. And so with lost censorship resistance fungibility is at risk again.

Its not hard to conclude I prefer bitcoin cash and there is more why.

You don’t need Monero or any special crypto variant to hide illegal transactions. Even bitcoin can be made to be secure enough for hiding transactions. All of these seedy developers attempting to make the perfect hidden private double super secret nerd money have always been a giant joke to me. The money isn’t what gets criminals caught.

Al Capone wasn’t caught because he used dollars. He was caught and sentenced because he failed to pay taxes. Ross Ulbricht wasn’t caught because he used bitcoin. He got caught because he let his guard down and made stupid mistakes. In both of the above cases the criminal organization was infiltrated and the money was put into mainstream legal activities.

In other words, Al Capone wasn’t caught because the government used a quantum computer to catch him selling a glass of gin and a hooker to Joe Blow. They caught him because he had too much money to launder effectively and never paid his taxes when he laundered the money.

The government doesn’t try catch every citizen that buys a line of coke and piece of ass. They don’t want to jail that many people. They bust a few of them and offer a plea deal so they can find out who sold them the pussy and coke. Then they focus (sometimes thousands of LEO’s and millions of dollars) on locating the dealer. If it’s the USA chasing him, the criminal is bad enough and he’s overseas they make the foreign government help them (like BTCe) or they drone strike him. If he’s domestic, they infiltrate his organization wait for a mistake and pounce. In either case, the money he used (yen, yuan, dollars or crypto) is inconsequential to the case.

There is no fungability between different cryptos. They are not all equally interchangeable. One BTC is not equal to one XMR or one BCH. Censorship of a single crypto is called blacklisting. That’s where you have one coin address that’s not equal to every other coin address. That keeps the coins from being equally interchangeable and destroys fungability.

All currencies require fungability (complete interchangeability between denominations) to work as currencies. However, anonymity is not required for something to function as a currency. If you have a one ounce pure gold ingot stamped in Canada and one stamped in China they are completely interchangeable and fungible but they are not anonymous. You know where they came from and can track them. If you have two dollar bills with different serial numbers you can track where they have been and where they were manufactured but they are still fungible because they are each always worth one dollar. There’s a site called “WheresGeorge” that tracks dollar bills (https://www.wheresgeorge.com) but all of those dollar bills are still worth a dollar and are fungible.

BCH is just a bitcoin fork. People are going to side with one fork or the other at their own preference. If bitcoin forks too many times it will eventually dilute the value of every bitcoin variant so much it will make them all equally worthless. Be careful supporting forks that break away from core.

Thx again and agian lots of truth I cannot say better.

In terms of fork I see SW is the wrong fork for me and I saw a great bunch of miners on my side from the beginning when this central idea came up and finally was dicteded into bitcoin by a trick. And I also see it good to break up the last central point of good old bitcoin, which is that core.  This finally makes bitcoin really disruptive and hopefully anti-fragil. One of the reasons I m still here.

Now see what (businesses) else are just breaking away from core, all those why I m here as well from very early, far earlier than my account date show.  Guess, it cannot be stopped, this very trendy break away.

[QuestionAuthority]

Thanks for your very clear last paragraph. There is nothing really to add, except that its a bit more challenging for hunters to keep up if momero et al is used for doing crime.  But I m very sure that here (over a tracable internet) is always a way of tracing things - not so in fiat.

For LN I m not so sure since LN to work on big scale, it will centralize to few big lending + netting = clearing hubs. And so with lost censorship resistance fungibility is at risk again.

Its not hard to conclude I prefer bitcoin cash and there is more why.

You don’t need Monero or any special crypto variant to hide illegal transactions. Even bitcoin can be made to be secure enough for hiding transactions. All of these seedy developers attempting to make the perfect hidden private double super secret nerd money have always been a giant joke to me. The money isn’t what gets criminals caught.

Al Capone wasn’t caught because he used dollars. He was caught and sentenced because he failed to pay taxes. Ross Ulbricht wasn’t caught because he used bitcoin. He got caught because he let his guard down and made stupid mistakes. In both of the above cases the criminal organization was infiltrated and the money was put into mainstream legal activities.

In other words, Al Capone wasn’t caught because the government used a quantum computer to catch him selling a glass of gin and a hooker to Joe Blow. They caught him because he had too much money to launder effectively and never paid his taxes when he laundered the money.

The government doesn’t try catch every citizen that buys a line of coke and piece of ass. They don’t want to jail that many people. They bust a few of them and offer a plea deal so they can find out who sold them the pussy and coke. Then they focus (sometimes thousands of LEO’s and millions of dollars) on locating the dealer. If it’s the USA chasing him, the criminal is bad enough and he’s overseas they make the foreign government help them (like BTCe) or they drone strike him. If he’s domestic, they infiltrate his organization wait for a mistake and pounce. In either case, the money he used (yen, yuan, dollars or crypto) is inconsequential to the case.

There is no fungability between different cryptos. They are not all equally interchangeable. One BTC is not equal to one XMR or one BCH. Censorship of a single crypto is called blacklisting. That’s where you have one coin address that’s not equal to every other coin address. That keeps the coins from being equally interchangeable and destroys fungability.

All currencies require fungability (complete interchangeability between denominations) to work as currencies. However, anonymity is not required for something to function as a currency. If you have a one ounce pure gold ingot stamped in Canada and one stamped in China they are completely interchangeable and fungible but they are not anonymous. You know where they came from and can track them. If you have two dollar bills with different serial numbers you can track where they have been and where they were manufactured but they are still fungible because they are each always worth one dollar. There’s a site called “WheresGeorge” that tracks dollar bills (https://www.wheresgeorge.com) but all of those dollar bills are still worth a dollar and are fungible.

BCH is just a bitcoin fork. People are going to side with one fork or the other at their own preference. If bitcoin forks too many times it will eventually dilute the value of every bitcoin variant so much it will make them all equally worthless. Be careful supporting forks that break away from core.

Thx again and agian lots of truth I cannot say better.

In terms of fork I see SW is the wrong fork for me and I saw a great bunch of miners on my side from the beginning when this central idea came up and finally was dicteded into bitcoin by a trick. And I also see it good to break up the last central point of good old bitcoin, which is that core.  This finally makes bitcoin really disruptive and hopefully anti-fragil. One of the reasons I m still here.

Now see what (businesses) else are just breaking away from core, all those why I m here as well from very early, far earlier than my account date show.  Guess, it cannot be stopped, this very trendy break away.

You may be right, BCH may end up the winner. Hell, it may be a better solution for a majority of people and win the race. I know people that use scrypt coins think they’re better than bitcoin core. Even if it’s true it does not matter because altcoins are seen as fundamentally different.

Different bitcoins are a different story. Bitcoin currently has the name recognition and the media attention because it was first. If Litecoin was first and used by Silk Road maybe it would be the adoption leader, who knows. The general public barely knows what to think about bitcoin as it is. People are inherently lazy and don’t really want to know how things work (even most people on this forum). If you call too many things bitcoin, they might give up on crypto altogether. The only safe bitcoin fork has unanimous community support and completely replaces the previous. Anything else is bitcoin suicide.

[Last of the V8s]

you're not @cornedbeefhash anymore

[QuestionAuthority]

you're not @cornedbeefhash anymore

Nope. CornedBeefHash died in a mining accident. LOL