[Brainstorm] Implications of Blacklisting DPR's Seized Bitcoins

[angelamerkel]

"Bitcoin needs to follow the rules of the Bitcoin network protocol for everyone, without exceptions.  Otherwise it's no different than a centrally controlled currency."

I'm really sad to read that you guys want to force your values and norms on others.  The opposite is true:  Forced neutrality is almost as bad as centrally controlled currency.  


I'd like to download and use a Bitcoin client that displays blacklisted Coins separately.  Any other wallet that receives blacklisted Bitcoins will also be blacklisted if it spends more blacklisted bitcoins than it receives.  It shouldn't be so hard to code, should it? Am i missing something here?

 I believe no core developer or anyone should tell anyone if Bitcoin should be neutral or anything. The people should decide whether they want to use the Blacklist-Client or the original.  I'm willing to donate BTCs for the first coder to provide a Client with a Blacklist option.  

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[tvbcof]

how is it even possible, technically speaking?

Maybe he plans to completely monopolize the mining space.*

* Actually, that plan has been floated before to eliminate such bad actors as Persians and their ilk from the economy.  I would not rule it out as a practical mechanism with sufficient consolidation of the network infrastructure.  Just gotta get that fucking block size unlimited.

[hazek]

the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

[ralree]

Even if they were blacklisted, couldn't someone mint zerocoins out of them before everyone updates their clients, then withdraw them later?
http://zerocoin.org/
Theoretically, there'd be no way to figure out which coins were the blacklisted ones after the conversion, so the holder would be able to launder them of this blacklisting.  It could either work out well, or kill zerocoin because of association.

[Peter R]

the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.

[100%digital]

the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.

AES-256 ASIC hardware i would imagine... or god forbid a 10 dollar wrench

...as leet as DPR was, he used some pretty shitty judgement along the way, i'd be willing to bet his passphrase was less than stellar -and by stellar i mean 20+ char (special/num/upper).

[angelamerkel]

I vote for neutrality, but adding a blacklist to a client would not be difficult at all. Keep in mind that a blacklist would be mostly ineffective because it would be relatively easy to circumvent.
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How would you circumvent that?  The Blacklist will be handed over as parameter to the Client when it starts  and only the original Address is needed while all others can be calculated.   If the FBI sends 100 BTC to a wallet that already contains 100 BTC and that wallet spends a total of 110 BTC, I would automatically mark the last 10 BTC spent as black Coins.  

The blacklist could be left empty or automatically updated via open market strict or less strict "central" address lists, whatever the user prefers.  It would only make sense to add addresses  which still contain the Bitoins and which are about to stay there for a while untill most clients have updated their black list.

In the end it only works out, when enough people participate. Not sure that will be the case...

[mgio]

the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

They now control the private key to those coins.  Does anything else matter?



*I still would love to know how they obtained them.

AES-256 ASIC hardware i would imagine... or god forbid a 10 dollar wrench

...as leet as DPR was, he used some pretty shitty judgement along the way, i'd be willing to bet his passphrase was less than stellar -and by stellar i mean 20+ char (special/num/upper).

No, I bet he gave up the passwords as part of a plea agreement. They definitely did not bother to go crack it themselves. He was intimidated into giving it up.

[bobdude17]

the FBI won them fair and square.

yeah, if by won you mean stolen and if by fair you mean using violence and coercion

According to reality, that's called fair and square.

[🏰 TradeFortress 🏰]

People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

[tvbcof]

If it is proven that Ulbright attempted hire the torture and execution someone to preclude them from turning states' evidence, then turned around and tried to get a hit on another person who hacked his enterprise, I would actually value the FBI coins *higher* than 'normal' ones.  Catching the guy is one of the relatively few instances where the government is actually doing what I pay them to do.

[angelamerkel]

People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

Again, who are you to force your fundamentals upon others.  There should be a client with blacklist option and the people are the only ones to decide whether they want to leave their black list blank or not.  I would add the FBI and noone else....

Another important point:
Ross Ulbricht was one of the good guys.  Sooner or Later the really bad guys will discover Bitcoin: blackmailer, hitmen, trafficker, "real" terrorists. Only a few of these guys could pose a serious threat towards Bitcoin. A working blacklist system could prevent certain problems that the current cash money system inherits.

What do you intend to do if bad guys starting kidnapping children from rich guys to extort huge amouts of bitcoin?

[justusranvier]

Output scripts are contracts. The contracts precisely specify what conditions are both necessary and sufficient for an output to be spent.

If the Bitcoin network ever stops honouring these contracts, then the currency and the network have a value of zero.

[bobdude17]

People use Bitcoin because cryptography controls there money. The advantage of Bitcoin is that nobody can take away your properly secured money except through coercion. Getting rid of this fundamental part of Bitcoin has devastating effects on what Bitcoin stands for.

Again, who are you to force your fundamentals upon others.  There should be a client with blacklist option and the people are the only ones to decide whether they want to leave their black list blank or not.  I would add the FBI and noone else....

 

[benjamindees]

I'm not saying this is a good idea, but from an economic perspective we wouldn't even have to "block" the coins indefinitely or even for very long.  Just slowing their re-entry into the Bitcoin economy would be enough.

[mootinator]

Politicization of the reference bitcoin client would inevitably kill it. Don't politicize bitcoin.

[BuhTuglia]

A lot of singles end up inside the panty of strippers. I need to find a way to blacklist them too.

Just whatever you do, don't put money in your mouth. Lord. I have seen some of these women. Probably washing your hands after handling money (especially ones) is a good idea, too.

[winnate]

I don't think the government will end up giving them up or even selling them

[Dabs]

Any good or decent mixer is going to either dislocate the original seized coins, or will effectively taint everything else.

See CoinJoin too.

A blacklist simply can not work. Unless it is implemented now while the coins have not yet left that particular address, and used by all miners in the world.

It would be trivial for someone to send coins to shared wallets, to exchanges, to gambling sites, let it sit there for a few days or weeks, then withdraw it. Or they send to an exchange or trade it for an alt-coin. Use the alt-coin to buy bitcoins later from someone else.

And how do you decentralize a blacklist?

[tvbcof]

...
And how do you decentralize a blacklist?

In a general way that is pretty straightforward.  Publish it.  If it is reliable and respected by the community, and if it is trivial to use, this would probably be fairly effective.  White-list similarly.  Furthermore, different groups could produce different [white|black]lists which either compete for credibility or augment one another.

For addresses or transactions this would be unworkable for latency reasons.  And a disastrous conceptually as well of course.  For blocks, however, it would be a quick-n-dirty way to handle superior resource attacks (aka 51%) which is one of the reasons I never worried to much about them.