Changing the client code to give allinvain's money back?

[bcearl]

True, never going to happen..but one can argue that this would be like stealing marked bill from a bank. If the police eventually find the criminals and they trace the money to them what you're saying is that it should not be returned to the rightful owner? Is there any morality or legal justice to dealing with bitcoins or should we just treat it as the financial equivalent of the wild west? I see that a lot of you come from a libertarian/anarchistic world view, so I am thinking that in your opinions the only thing that would be just would be the application of vigilante justice, no? Would you all be ok with me stealing them back?

If the police find the criminal(s) it is up to the criminal(s) to reimburse you, not the entire Bitcoin user base.

Of course! I never said otherwise. Why are people even thinking this? Can't people read what I'm typing..

The criminal must be treated as innocent until proven guily.

[ironwolf]

This scheme removes one of the raison d'etre for Bitcoin, and with all due sympathy to anyone who does get robbed (even me at some point in the future), I pledge here and now that I will never run a Bitcoin client that enforces a "blacklist" of addresses. Period.

[ironwolf]

The criminal accused must be treated as innocent until proven guily.

Fixed that for you.

[bitcoinminer]

The criminal accused must be treated as innocent until proven guily.

Fixed that for you.

Perhaps you can explain to us, Grammar Nazi, what "Guily" is then.

[charliesheen]

You're (probably unknowingly) spreading misinformation. I never put them on a work computer. It was my home PC. Sitting my damn house.

My mistake.

[ironwolf]

The criminal accused must be treated as innocent until proven guily.

Fixed that for you.

Perhaps you can explain to us, Grammar Nazi, what "Guily" is then.

Sorry, I'm just a grammar Nazi. You'll need to take that question up with the spelling Nazis.

[hazek]

Absolutely not.

If any sort of change happens and get's accepted that will give anyone any kind of powers over what they can do with Bitcoins other then those they have private keys for, I'll stop using Bitcoin that very second.

[unk]

Absolutely not.

If any sort of change happens and get's accepted that will give anyone any kind of powers over what they can do with Bitcoins other then those they have private keys for, I'll stop using Bitcoin that very second.

just for fun (i don't really believe it'll have any effect), i believe i have modified a customized version of the client i run on one of my desktops to shun all transactions that proceed from what allinvain has claimed is the theft from his address. once i check it later today, i'd be happy to consider sharing the shunning code, which is relatively simple.  as you perhaps know, i still advocate restarting the block chain even though i possess a large number of bitcoins in it, so this sort of disagreement among clients doesn't trouble me much, and it would be interesting to see shunning adopted more widely as an experiment.

[bitcoinminer]

Sorry, I'm just a grammar Nazi. You'll need to take that question up with the spelling Nazis.

LOL!  +einz.

[cschmitz]

The parent poster's idea should die in a fire. Seriously.

This is horrible.

QFT

[unk]

So, you would agree with an approach similar to what casascius has proposed?
https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=10755.0

yes, i believe that's one of many possible ways to help the technology.

[onesalt]

Why not just have a central managing authority for bitcoin?? That'd solve all these problems!!

Oh wait but then it'd be as fucking stupid as regular fiat money, but not quite as stupid as the idea posted in this here thread!!

[Klestin]

Those discussing means to "do something" about this theft should consider the size and scope of the can of worms they're opening. Setting aside the truth of this particular instance, what's to stop random person A from watching the block chain, looking for a particularly juicy chunk of BTC changing hands, and crying to the community that they were stolen from him?  Random person B, the rightful owner of the BTC, now finds his ability to spend them impugned.

[AntiVigilante]

I was thinking you could hard-code in an array of "illegal" bitcoin addresses (those of the perpetrators) so that no client will invalidate Bitcoins originating from them. Also, you could hardcode in an address that starts with the amount of Bitcoins stolen, and give allinvain the private key. I'm sure it could be done though I don't know the technical specifics.

You could actually turn it into an entire component of the client where you hardcode in reversals of fradulent activity, based on democratic and fair judgements.

The day something like this is done, while the intentions may be noble, is the day Bitcoin dies.

The day people are trying to get this done, knowing full well their intentions are selfish faux bleeding heart, is the day Bitcoin has a stroke.

[Forp]

I am thinking about a variant of this proposal and would like to probe into its technical feasibility and democratic acceptance.

The client gets amended by a functionality. The "owner" of a bitcoin address / wallet can decide herself not to accept money from a specific bitcoin address X. To prevent circumvention by laundering this would mean that the owner also would not accept money from another bitcoin address B, in case there is a "trail" into the past which ends up at address X. It is similar to the statement: "I do not want to be paid by AlCapone and I do not want to be paid by JohnDoe unless JohnDoe is able to demonstrate to me that he has funds available in addition to what he might have received by AlCapone" (and of course additional variants in case there is more than one intermediate). Since blockexplorer is able to trace BTC streams, this can be detected.

1) Alice decides not to take coins directly or indirectly from Mallory. So Mallory passes his money to Bob, who passes some of his money to Carol, who passes some of her money to Eve, who passes some of her money to Oscar. Now Alice is telling Oscar that she is not willing to accept his bitcoins as a settlement of his debt, since, according to her analysis of the block chain, all of the money Oscar owns could be seen as originally coming from Mallory. (BTC have no identity, so a more thorough analysis may be necessary for this). So unless Oscar also did business with John, who never received any money from Mallory, Oscar will not be able to pay Alice using Bitcoins.

Of course, at first sight, this is to the disadvantage of Alice. But it is just with egression filtering in network security: It does not help the network doing this, but it helps the entire community. After a while, everybody knows that Alice / MtGox / etc. will not accept money which can be traced back to Mallory - and so nobody is doing business with Mallory any longer.

The important word is scalability: So long as only Alice reacts this way it is to her disadvantage. Assume, Mallory kidnapped someone and requests money to be sent to his bitcoin address. The story makes headline news and, say, 1 in 8 bitcoin users decide to blacklist Mallory. And many others might follow, since they realize that money they received from Mallory (probably via intermediaries) is not accepted in the community. So, in case there is a broad consensus by many individuals to blacklist Mallory, it would should work out to blacklist Mallory. Since this form of blacklisting is a decision of the individual, no centralized arbiter or court is necessary; the solidarity of the community is sufficient.

2) How would this be implemented? Of course, Oscar can transmit a transaction from his account to Alice's acount and this would become part of the block chain. So Alice HAS the money, even though it does not show up on her wallet until she is back from her business trip and goes online with her wallt on her desktop. But if Alice maintained a publically known blacklist of bitcoin addresses (either as part of her ecommerce web site where she posts that she is accepting BTC (with the exception of these 3 blacklisted addresses) or a signed blacklist which is public and certified as part of the block chain in just the same way as transactions are presently), then Oscar would have known about this blacklist. And Oscar would not have accepted money from Eve...and back the chain up to Mallory.

We thus would have a democratic majority against accepting Mallory's coins.

The necessary adaptations would be
a) An analyzer for the BTC stream from Oscar back to Mallory
b) Optionally: An extension for managing signed blacklists



 

   

[PGPpfKkx]

It’s impossible to prove that allinvain has indeed lost his money and not just moved it himself.

+1 impossible. maybe scammed out of it or accident. or reality of course.

[Forp]

This is the kind of freedom and personal responsibility that agrees with my reasons for using Bitcoin.

That was just my motivation.

I hate being locked in by the decision of others. So unless I am able to figure out every bit on my harddisc, I feel uncomfortable. This does not mean I have to do this every day, but I want to be able to do it NOW when I want to do it NOW. 

Which means I need access to tools and not just source code I could, eventually, read, to build these tools, if I wanted.

[Rob P.]

It’s impossible to prove that allinvain has indeed lost his money and not just moved it himself.

Actually it isn't...

Just because someone got his wallet.dat file and used it without his permission, he still has THE wallet.dat file that has that address in it.

Produce it.

[Rob P.]

It’s impossible to prove that allinvain has indeed lost his money and not just moved it himself.

Actually it isn't...

Just because someone got his wallet.dat file and used it without his permission, he still has THE wallet.dat file that has that address in it.

Produce it.

But what is to say he doesn't also own the wallet.dat that the coins were sent to?

Good point.  Invalidates mine.

However, at least this would prove that allinvain did in fact own the 25,000 BTC at one time (which hasn't been proved, to my knowledge).  Of course it wouldn't prove he doesn't still own them, unless we can prove the address they were sent to couldn't possibly be his.  Of course that wouldn't prove it's not a conspiracy.

Damn it!

[PGPpfKkx]

thats what i asked at the other forum post also.

can somebody make the calcs if it is feasible to have mined 25k btc from december 2010 as he said he started?
would he need many many suspicious gigahashes?