Israeli Bitcoin Association Statement about Hashrate Attacks

[RealBitcoin]

We're not, and we don't see the importance of this distinction. Majority of hashrate is not what determines what Bitcoin is. There are two camps, each with significant weight, that have different ideas about what "Bitcoin" is - so they should share the brand, at least until one of them prefers to rebrand. It's working fine in Ethereum.

Of course that is what the free market is, everyone has their own ideas, and his own project, and they should both exist voluntarily.

If 1 side wants 1 chain, the other side wants the other, they should both be respected, and then they should both have the same capacity to compete with one another.


I came into bitcoin to see voluntarism in action, and it makes me sad, that so many fascists have taken over this debate. When they are advocating for attacking people digitally, censoring people for having different oppinions, and turning their belief of bitcoin into a cult, that is fascism right there.


And that is very dangerous for the community, we want a free currency, or possibly free currencies, as each person has a right to decide what currency they want to use. Bitcoin doesn't have a right for supremacy, nor does a particular implementation of it.

People either choose freedom or tyranny.

[RealBitcoin]

In the totally free (in the sense of liberty), trustless environment of crypto, what you call "attacks" is nothing else but exerting one's liberty in the frame of a strategy to overwhelm others (which is the principal usage of unconstrained liberty).  In a full liberty system there's only one right: the right of the strongest (smartest/fittest/fastest/wealthiest...).

So do you think violence is ok? Just because a thug has the liberty to do violence?


In the online space, agression is literally no different than in the physical world.

If you have 200 BTC worth of assets, and somebody hacks your PC, I bet you would be upset, and would not tolerate that, however that is the "freedom of the hacker to steal" according to your mindset.


So the same way, if some fucker is DDOS-ing some node, or some miner is engaged in double spend, or somebody is filling the network with low transactions, that also causes financial harm to people, in one way or the other.

So why should we be ok with that? It's no different than physical agression, which we know to be immoral.

In a full liberty system there's only one right: the right of the strongest (smartest/fittest/fastest/wealthiest...).

So what are you doing here, go back to your centralized banking system currency, which is created by the mightiest financial institutions.

You would definitely love that.

[Weatherby]

In the totally free (in the sense of liberty), trustless environment of crypto, what you call "attacks" is nothing else but exerting one's liberty in the frame of a strategy to overwhelm others (which is the principal usage of unconstrained liberty).  In a full liberty system there's only one right: the right of the strongest (smartest/fittest/fastest/wealthiest...).

So do you think violence is ok? Just because a thug has the liberty to do violence?
In the online space, agression is literally no different than in the physical world.
If you have 200 BTC worth of assets, and somebody hacks your PC, I bet you would be upset, and would not tolerate that, however that is the "freedom of the hacker to steal" according to your mindset.
So the same way, if some fucker is DDOS-ing some node, or some miner is engaged in double spend, or somebody is filling the network with low transactions, that also causes financial harm to people, in one way or the other.
So why should we be ok with that? It's no different than physical agression, which we know to be immoral.

I would say that is some propaganda glad that i am not living in your full liberty system and if i am forced to live in a society like that i would rather purge what i consider is against me . If someone is trying to hack my assets i will make sure he will spend the rest of his life behind bars for trying that,stealing two hundred bitcoin is like stealing a high bank vault and he is punishable by law.

[Wind_FURY]

Brohim, you should read Satoshi's whitepaper again.  Splitting the network and ecosystem in two and having 2 bitcoins sharing or shaming the brand is not the way to go.  What's to stop someone from splintering it into 4 or more?  Would you like to see 8 bitcoins?  Would that coddle your coexist feelers? 

By design and for the best interest of Bitcoin's long-term survival, the short chain will be [naturally] killed off as outlined in Satoshi's original paper/vision.

xoxo,

Jericho911

It was not the case for Ethereum and Ethereum Classic though. This makes me wonder what Satoshi's thoughts are and how that could possibly happen to Bitcoin. Before the Ethereum split, was it supposed to happen in practice?

Interesting to see "Ethereum" token much higher priced than "Classic" token so brand is important

Yes because the founders and the real "official" developers behind it were the same people who decided to go for the hard fork. But that is not what I was asking in my post above and what the price might be should not affect your opinion. The point is the Ethereum Foundation said the fork will not result in 2 chains but now here are 2.

[dinofelis]

But just to clarify, are you supporting the "might makes right" argument?  Or just commenting that it's a distinctly possible occurrence in a permissionless system?

Both are the same statement.  In a trustless, totally free, permissionless system, what happens, happens.  There's no "morality", because moral rules are orthogonal to trustless, permissionless freedom.

As such:

 Even if such actions can't be prevented, they can still be publicly condemned.  Poor form and low blows should always be reprimanded.  People might see cryptoland as a sort of "wild west", but (I hope) we're not savages.  It can, and should, be done cleanly.

is against the first principle.  But of course, "condemning publicly" is just as well a free act, which can be used in the game of might.  "freedom, trustlessness and permissionlessness" is exactly, I would think, the DEFINITION of "wild west" and "savages".  From the moment you introduce morality, and rules of good behaviour, you killed freedom, permissionlessness, and you'll need trust to say what are the rules now, and who is going to judge those that do not follow them, so trustlessness is out of the window too.

At "best" you get a kind of representative democracy, and we're back to square one.

[dinofelis]

In the totally free (in the sense of liberty), trustless environment of crypto, what you call "attacks" is nothing else but exerting one's liberty in the frame of a strategy to overwhelm others (which is the principal usage of unconstrained liberty).  In a full liberty system there's only one right: the right of the strongest (smartest/fittest/fastest/wealthiest...).

So do you think violence is ok? Just because a thug has the liberty to do violence?

How else do you understand freedom, trustlessness, and permissionlessness ?  If there are rules, you are not free.  Of course, violence is permitted, because *everything* is permitted (permissionlessness).  It is the first of freedoms.  

If you have 200 BTC worth of assets, and somebody hacks your PC, I bet you would be upset, and would not tolerate that, however that is the "freedom of the hacker to steal" according to your mindset.

The prey is always upset by being eaten by the predator.  
I really would like to know what you understand by permissionlessness, and trustlessness, if you need permissions to do things or not (be violent or not), and if you have to trust the judge who will condemn you when you are not following the rules that have been dictated by others (like : be not violent).

So the same way, if some fucker is DDOS-ing some node, or some miner is engaged in double spend, or somebody is filling the network with low transactions, that also causes financial harm to people, in one way or the other.

Again, what don't you understand in trustlessness and permissionlessness, apart from the fact that nobody is to be trusted, and that you don't need any permission to do anything you want ?

So why should we be ok with that? It's no different than physical agression, which we know to be immoral.

If you want a trustless, permissionless system, I don't see how you can impose "moral rules".  I'm not saying that you should adhere to trustlessness, and permissionlessness, but these are the founding principles of crypto.

Otherwise, you don't need crypto.  You introduce a moral principle that transactions should not be double-spend, and the same centralized authority that sets these rules, and that will judge these rules, is the entity that will verify whether these rules are "moral" to their standards.  In other words, the normal world out there.

[dinofelis]

I would say that is some propaganda glad that i am not living in your full liberty system and if i am forced to live in a society like that i would rather purge what i consider is against me . If someone is trying to hack my assets i will make sure he will spend the rest of his life behind bars for trying that,stealing two hundred bitcoin is like stealing a high bank vault and he is punishable by law.

Then why are you in crypto ? Why do you need miners cryptographically protecting your bitcoins, if you can just go to the judge and complain ?

[dinofelis]

So what are you doing here, go back to your centralized banking system currency, which is created by the mightiest financial institutions.

I'm simply explaining the principles of the system YOU adhere to: freedom, permissionlessness, trustlessness.  It is maybe not the rosey world you think it is.  If you need somewhere a central authority, a police you can call, laws that have been imposed, and judges that punish the bad guys, why do you want crypto in the first place ?

I'm OK with the principles of freedom, permissionlessness, and trustlessness.  But I know that it is a Mad Max world.  I'm OK with that, but visibly, you aren't.

[Wind_FURY]

By design and for the best interest of Bitcoin's long-term survival, the short chain will be [naturally] killed off as outlined in Satoshi's original paper/vision.

It was not the case for Ethereum and Ethereum Classic though. This makes me wonder what Satoshi's thoughts are and how that could possibly happen to Bitcoin. Before the Ethereum split, was it supposed to happen in practice?

Short answer: no it wasn't supposed to happen. At least it wasn't supposed to happen somehow automatically, without an intentional attack.

I missed this reply. Sorry.

So there it is. If we hard fork to Bitcoin Unlimited, I do not believe the new stewards and the supporting miners will make the same mistake the Ethereum Foundation did by leaving the original chain alone.

[RealBitcoin]

How else do you understand freedom, trustlessness, and permissionlessness ?  If there are rules, you are not free.  Of course, violence is permitted, because *everything* is permitted (permissionlessness).  It is the first of freedoms.  

Freedom to do aggression is not freedom, because you are taking away the freedom of the victim.

If you want a trustless, permissionless system, I don't see how you can impose "moral rules".  I'm not saying that you should adhere to trustlessness, and permissionlessness, but these are the founding principles of crypto.

Otherwise, you don't need crypto.  You introduce a moral principle that transactions should not be double-spend, and the same centralized authority that sets these rules, and that will judge these rules, is the entity that will verify whether these rules are "moral" to their standards.  In other words, the normal world out there.

You can have both decentralization and moral rules. This is not opposite ideology.

So nothing prohibits a person from starting up his own crypto project. But if he starts DDOS-ing his competitor, you bet there will be consequences to that.


There are already laws against DDOS, and besides, slowing down somebody's server is causing financial harm to the victim.

It's as if you would have no problem if somebody would grafitti your house, because that is freedom of art no? Well not if it's causing financial harm to you.




So the point is that your freedom ends at the point when it becomes aggressive towards others. So you can only compete in a moral way if you respect your competitor.

[RealBitcoin]

So what are you doing here, go back to your centralized banking system currency, which is created by the mightiest financial institutions.

I'm simply explaining the principles of the system YOU adhere to: freedom, permissionlessness, trustlessness.  It is maybe not the rosey world you think it is.  If you need somewhere a central authority, a police you can call, laws that have been imposed, and judges that punish the bad guys, why do you want crypto in the first place ?

I'm OK with the principles of freedom, permissionlessness, and trustlessness.  But I know that it is a Mad Max world.  I'm OK with that, but visibly, you aren't.

Again, I fail to see the freedom if the system is based on reciprocal violence.

This would be no better than if 1 business owner would burn down his competitors place. That is not freedom, that is thug tactics.


You are the one that doesnt understand the principles of freedom. You can have freedom, but it must not include agression.

Bitcoin works perfectly fine without hackers and thieves. We would consider thieves and hackers a downside to Bitcoin , not an upside.

[jonald_fyookball]

I have said several times on this forum and previously in this
thread that I'm somewhat agnostic on the issue of whether
the hashrate attack is moral.

As we start to approach the reality of breaking the blockade
and finally getting beyond 1mb, I am starting to lean more
toward feeling morally justified about attacking a minority chain.

For me, the stonewalling of the blocksize shouldn't have happened
at all and was a kind of stealth attack on Bitcoin to begin with,
and we are merely taking back Bitcoin.

I see this as a very different context from a minority wanting to
'do their own thing' during times of peace.  I feel we are at war,
and all is fair in love and war.

[Sadlife]

If you strongly desire This crypyto currencies success then you probably would wanna know the bad effects in bitcoin forking.
You should read Satoshi nakamoto's whitepaper an hardfork would drop the bitcoin's price and cut the majority of users and miners into half.

[dinofelis]

How else do you understand freedom, trustlessness, and permissionlessness ?  If there are rules, you are not free.  Of course, violence is permitted, because *everything* is permitted (permissionlessness).  It is the first of freedoms.  

Freedom to do aggression is not freedom, because you are taking away the freedom of the victim.

But all our acts have victims of which we profit.  That's the essence of life.  Life is a struggle for survival, and as such, you have to perish or kill.  The freedom resides in the fact that you can and will be just as well a victim, as a predator, and may the fittest win.  Of course, nothing stops entities from making mutually beneficial agreements, so that they become stronger over others, and can more easily render others into preys.

If you want a trustless, permissionless system, I don't see how you can impose "moral rules".  I'm not saying that you should adhere to trustlessness, and permissionlessness, but these are the founding principles of crypto.

Otherwise, you don't need crypto.  You introduce a moral principle that transactions should not be double-spend, and the same centralized authority that sets these rules, and that will judge these rules, is the entity that will verify whether these rules are "moral" to their standards.  In other words, the normal world out there.

You can have both decentralization and moral rules. This is not opposite ideology.

Of course it is, because who is going to decide and who is going to enforce the moral rules ?  After all, there's only one fundamental moral rule: good is what is good for me, and bad is what is bad for me.  All other morals are nothing else but ways to give more weight to the good and bad of some over that of others.  Because most of the time, what is good for me, is bad for the others.  That's the nature of life.  

So nothing prohibits a person from starting up his own crypto project. But if he starts DDOS-ing his competitor, you bet there will be consequences to that.

Of course, but that is because ultimately, there's nothing that can be "partially decentralized", if there is a central authority (say, law enforcement, and the bunch of assholes that dictates the laws over others) in the end.

There are already laws against DDOS, and besides, slowing down somebody's server is causing financial harm to the victim.

Indeed, that is because the laws are centralized things, imposing their ad hoc morality.

It's as if you would have no problem if somebody would grafitti your house, because that is freedom of art no? Well not if it's causing financial harm to you.

Of course it is.  But by painting grafitti on my house, he opens himself to the possibility of being shot or tortured by me, or by one of my buddies.  So maybe he should think twice, or be sure that he has enough fire power to counter mine, in which case, I can do nothing else but be like the antilope, killed by the lion.

[DooMAD]

But just to clarify, are you supporting the "might makes right" argument?  Or just commenting that it's a distinctly possible occurrence in a permissionless system?

Both are the same statement.  In a trustless, totally free, permissionless system, what happens, happens.  There's no "morality", because moral rules are orthogonal to trustless, permissionless freedom.

As such:

 Even if such actions can't be prevented, they can still be publicly condemned.  Poor form and low blows should always be reprimanded.  People might see cryptoland as a sort of "wild west", but (I hope) we're not savages.  It can, and should, be done cleanly.

is against the first principle.  But of course, "condemning publicly" is just as well a free act, which can be used in the game of might.  "freedom, trustlessness and permissionlessness" is exactly, I would think, the DEFINITION of "wild west" and "savages".  From the moment you introduce morality, and rules of good behaviour, you killed freedom, permissionlessness, and you'll need trust to say what are the rules now, and who is going to judge those that do not follow them, so trustlessness is out of the window too.

At "best" you get a kind of representative democracy, and we're back to square one.

I see.  So while we might ask everyone politely to play nice, any attempt to enforce "nice" behaviour would be detrimental to the system because such power could be abused.  We can still hope for an amicable split, but should equally prepare for anarchy/chaos/mayhem to the extent that the code allows. 

Get ready to buy the dip, I guess.

[Nagadota]

In a full liberty system there's only one right: the right of the strongest (smartest/fittest/fastest/wealthiest...).

That's the worst claim about the free market I've ever heard.

It's just ignorant about literally anything.  If you're arguing that the strongest wins, then maybe you should support people who are trying to become the strongest and beat the hell out of hackers who take loads of Bitcoin instead of just letting some malicious entities be nasty to everyone.

What you seem to want is for everyone to be evil or condone it instead.

[Kprawn]

These attackers are cutting their face to spoil their own face. BU already dropped the ball twice { bad code } and what would stop them from

doing this on purpose ... once they are the dominant chain?  The miners are putting their trust in people like Gavin, who have shown that he has

made bad calls. { Wright = Satoshi type statements } .... They are allowing a jackal in the Hen house.