Should there be a BIP for tracking stolen coins and "dirtiness" percentage

[prophetx]

00 -clean
01 -dirty
11 -stolen

I am sure more  digits can be used to create a percentage of the mix. I\m not a programmer but I am sure someone on here has the mathematical skills to figure this out.


I ask this because I think it is f--ked up that people steal other peoples money.  


This is not what this should be about.  If you are smart enough to crack into a safe, you are smart enough to make money without harming others.  If you are doing it to make a statement there are better ways to do it.

[TheRealSteve]

I think a voluntary system is perfectly fine - i.e. bitcoin clients and services that recognize an address as being marked as 'bad' and refuse to process any transactions from it.

The major problem is.. who gets to say which addresses get marked as dirty?  What would the burden of proof be?

If I can lay a claim against random person that they stole my Bitcoin after hacking my account 'somehow' - when in reality, I paid it to them for some services, but there's no paperwork of it, and the default is to just grant the claim.. that random person is going to be a might bit upset.

[p2pbucks]

 No

[prophetx]

I think a voluntary system is perfectly fine - i.e. bitcoin clients and services that recognize an address as being marked as 'bad' and refuse to process any transactions from it.

The major problem is.. who gets to say which addresses get marked as dirty?  What would the burden of proof be?

If I can lay a claim against random person that they stole my Bitcoin after hacking my account 'somehow' - when in reality, I paid it to them for some services, but there's no paperwork of it, and the default is to just grant the claim.. that random person is going to be a might bit upset.

yea that is the major issue, how to deal with that part

maybe some kind of voting system.  not sure figured it is worth a conversation.

all i know is that when something like this happens it impacts the lives of real people.

[solex]

No. No.

[odolvlobo]

I hate to be the one to break it to you, but there are no actual coins so you will have to come up with another idea.

Anyway, this is in the wrong forum. You should move it.

[TheRealSteve]

Well, unfortunately you won't get much of a conversation - you're far more likely to just get a bunch of "No" replies

Mostly the knee-jerk reaction 'no' is from people fearing that this would allow governments, or just powers-that-be, to start blocking anything they disagree with, further regulate its use, etc.  Hence my inclusion of the word 'voluntarily' (note that by design it would have to be, since the protocol doesn't mandate and require it in any way - so even if 99.9% of the clients/services adhered, the other 0.1% could still confirm/etc.)   The follow-up 'no' comes from people who think that such an approach would effectively split the Bitcoin community (into those who adhere to the blocks, and those who don't), which is not good for the ecosystem.  There's some truth to that, though it's difficult to quantify.  One of the more worrisome factors there would be if a popular enough mixing service decided not to adhere.  Next up is mostly the 'no' responses from people who just dislike any form of oversight and lean heavily on self-reliance and personal responsibility - in this case, "why should everybody else suffer just because of your failure to protect your Bitcoin?"

Can't really blame them, though - this discussion has been had several times before.  Not sure how easy to find via search here, but try Google.

[drawingthesun]

This will be great! So every new Bitcoin user will be even more confused as their client tells them the coins his mum is sending have a 0.4% chance of being stolen...

Great idea for adoption!

Where do I get my 0.4% figure from? The fact that eventually everyone will have a little stolen coins on them, no way around this. (Similar to how everyone has a fraction of the original 10,000 bitcoin pizza coins)

Sorry to be so negative but you need to consider how new people to Bitcoin are going to feel when .4% of their wallet is tainted. Makes Bitcoin look real legit.

[drawingthesun]

Consider:

Thief sends 100 bitcoin to just dice. Now a small % of Just-Dice 60,000 bitcoin address has stolen coins. Now Everyone for all time that deposit and withdraw have a small % of those stolen coins.

If this confuses you think of coins as numbers, thats all they are. So 100 into 60,000 is 0.16% of all those coins. Now everyone that withdraws contains 0.16% taint from stolen coins.

If those coins hit an exchanges main wallet eventually every Bitcoin user will have a small amount of tainted stolen coins.

[bitfromit]

No,

reasons :
1) coins are only ever "probably" stolen in the first place
2) starting down the slippery slope towards losing fungibility
3) more code

[David M]

No

[gmaxwell]

Fungability. Do you speak it??

[keatonatron]

It's a good idea for an add-on service, which I think people are already working on: an independent database that keeps track of "dirty" coins.

Similar to the address labels on Blockchain.info, I guess. I like this idea better because it lets people choose to participate.

For example, the DPR coins might be attractive to someone who wants them as a memento of Bitcoin history, but to someone else they might be unwanted as a symbol of government intervention. Letting people see that those coins have that history, if they choose to look it up, and then letting them decide for themselves if that affects their value one way or the other sounds like a much better solution than simply telling someone their coins are stolen.

[DeathAndTaxes]

No.

A required attribute of a currency is fungibility.   If Bitcoin loses fungibility it has lost its purpose for existing. 

[marcotheminer]

Undecided really

[NLNico]

I thought "chargebacks" of people whose account got "hacked" is 1 of the biggest problems of PayPal and the beauty of Bitcoins? :O


Seriously tho, an independent database just for information could be cool. And somehow a wallet or way to make hacks less common would be cool. Of course all the nerds here (including me ) can easily say "what you hold 100 btc in a hot wallet?" "what you use your password on another site too?!" "what you didn't use 2FA?!" "what you still run flash and java in your browser?!"  But the reality is that most people do that and to get bitcoins more mainstream these issues somehow have to be resolved. Saying it's the problem of the user is not the best solution I think. I would not recommend my mother to hold a lot of bitcoins at this moment. But what the real solution is.. I don't know.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I thought "chargebacks" of people whose account got "hacked" is 1 of the biggest problems of PayPal and the beauty of Bitcoins? :O


Seriously tho, an independent database just for information could be cool. And somehow a wallet or way to make hacks less common would be cool. Of course all the nerds here (including me ) can easily say "what you hold 100 btc in a hot wallet?" "what you use your password on another site too?!" "what you didn't use 2FA?!" "what you still run flash and java in your browser?!"  But the reality is that most people do that and to get bitcoins more mainstream these issues somehow have to be resolved. Saying it's the problem of the user is not the best solution I think. I would not recommend my mother to hold a lot of bitcoins at this moment. But what the real solution is.. I don't know.

What would be the solution if your mother walked around with 1KG gold bar and someone stole it from her?  Theft happens.  The "solution" to preventing (or more realistically reducing it) occurs PRIOR to the theft not after.

[Dabs]

Coins that get stolen are usually someone's fault. Negligence is the cause 99% of the time. 1% because some hacker brute forced your cold wallet private key, and maybe not even.

[N12]

Fungability. Do you speak it??

Fungibility.

[NLNico]

I thought "chargebacks" of people whose account got "hacked" is 1 of the biggest problems of PayPal and the beauty of Bitcoins? :O


Seriously tho, an independent database just for information could be cool. And somehow a wallet or way to make hacks less common would be cool. Of course all the nerds here (including me ) can easily say "what you hold 100 btc in a hot wallet?" "what you use your password on another site too?!" "what you didn't use 2FA?!" "what you still run flash and java in your browser?!"  But the reality is that most people do that and to get bitcoins more mainstream these issues somehow have to be resolved. Saying it's the problem of the user is not the best solution I think. I would not recommend my mother to hold a lot of bitcoins at this moment. But what the real solution is.. I don't know.

What would be the solution if your mother walked around with 1KG gold bar and someone stole it from her?  Theft happens.  The "solution" to preventing (or more realistically reducing it) occurs PRIOR to the theft not after.

Oh yes, my whole "chargeback" thing was meant as a disadvantage of PayPal and something that we would probably not want with Bitcoins I def. think that we should try to prevent the thefts.

What I mean is that when the bitcoins got stolen it's mostly because the user didn't had a secure computer, password, put it on a online wallet owned by a 18 year old anon, or ways to protect their BTC. So we as bitcoin users mostly just say "ah yeh, that's your own fault". However I think most people, especially the mainstream, have no idea how to protect their BTC. So I think there must be more secure ways to easily protect BTC without any knowledge. But like I said, I am just identifying something that's IMO a problem for bitcoins to be used by more people.. and I do not really know the solution.

edit: ah and the chargebacks are disadvantage for many companies, traders etc as it gets abused a lot. Obviously for the buyer/mainstream it does gives some reassurance. Still I do not think that is a solution or even possible with bitcoins. Perhaps even against the nature of bitcoins.