BOYCOTT all businesses associated to Alex Waters, Matt Mellon, and Yifu Guo!

[phelix]

can we stop this?

Yes, but not by negotiating with every fool who attempts it, for there are far too many fools in the world.  I've personally talked two startups out of similar business models in the past.

We can stop this by making sure that its not viable, by tweaking our practices and the ecosystem to be an environment that things like this just can't work in. This means: Anonymous mining, Discouraging address reuse, coinjoin, etc.  Importantly, people need to step up and fund the development of privacy tools.  Today there is no business model for decenteralized privacy tools that people can use casually and thus pervasively.

We must vote with our wallets— not our spending, but how we choose to transact and what developments we fund. As a spending group the people who really realize the importance of privacy and fungiblity will always be a small enough minority that short-sighted business people will find it all too easy to go without their business.

This.

Also Dark Wallet: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=322328

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[crazy_rabbit]

It's interesting to see this happening. I brought it up at the London conference a few years back durring a Mike Hern QA and people looked at me like I was crazy. "There's no way to associate and individual to a random bitcoin address" I seem to remember being the answer, but I was adamant that once enough of us were, and especially once enough of us were without being 'clean' about it, it was only a matter of time.

And here we are.

Personally I think it's going to happen anyway. I was even talking about the "mark of the beast" in a silly but serious way here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=86792.msg953480#msg953480

It was only a matter of time. But luckily there are ways around it. :-)

[beetcoin]

this is the most bullshit quote from the article “We’re not in this to make money, we’re in it to get it sorted with Congress,”

yeah, they're just doing it cuz they are good guys.

[zachcope]

Some kind of service that makes ALL coins dirty would be useful, as it would invalidate attempts to block 'dirty' coins.

How about a community interest mining protocol (used by choice of course) that could somehow take the mining fees and use the to spinkle 'grime' into transactions.

Have no idea how that would work but surely it must be possible.
Perhaps a client that sprinkles the grime for you from a tiny source of your own 'grime' that you can buy from a 'grime coin' supplier!

If enough people choosed to do that it would undermine the Mary Whitehouse clean coin brigade.

[crazy_rabbit]

Some kind of service that makes ALL coins dirty would be useful, as it would invalidate attempts to block 'dirty' coins.

How about a community interest mining protocol (used by choice of course) that could somehow take the mining fees and use the to spinkle 'grime' into transactions.
Have no idea how that would work but surely it must be possible.

No, it's not actually.

You idea however is what people are already working on. Which is just mixing coins constantly. It's not "grime" but it keeps them moving.

[herzmeister]

honey badger?

[EhVedadoOAnonimato]

can we stop this?

Yes, but not by negotiating with every fool who attempts it, for there are far too many fools in the world.  I've personally talked two startups out of similar business models in the past.

We can stop this by making sure that its not viable, by tweaking our practices and the ecosystem to be an environment that things like this just can't work in. This means: Anonymous mining, Discouraging address reuse, coinjoin, etc.  Importantly, people need to step up and fund the development of privacy tools.  Today there is no business model for decenteralized privacy tools that people can use casually and thus pervasively.

We must vote with our wallets— not our spending, but how we choose to transact and what developments we fund. As a spending group the people who really realize the importance of privacy and fungiblity will always be a small enough minority that short-sighted business people will find it all too easy to go without their business.

I agree and support everything you said here, Gregory, but I'm afraid that might not be enough.

Working around balcklists is feasible, through the means you cite. But the threat here are not blacklists, the threat are mandatory whitelists.

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

[zachcope]

Some kind of service that makes ALL coins dirty would be useful, as it would invalidate attempts to block 'dirty' coins.

How about a community interest mining protocol (used by choice of course) that could somehow take the mining fees and use the to spinkle 'grime' into transactions.
Have no idea how that would work but surely it must be possible.

No, it's not actually.

You idea however is what people are already working on. Which is just mixing coins constantly. It's not "grime" but it keeps them moving.

Fair enough I was thinking out loud.
Of course the miners couldn't add anything to transactions.
Voluntarily adding grime to one's own transactions could be possible though, without any underlying network bloat or changes.

[crazy_rabbit]

can we stop this?

Yes, but not by negotiating with every fool who attempts it, for there are far too many fools in the world.  I've personally talked two startups out of similar business models in the past.

We can stop this by making sure that its not viable, by tweaking our practices and the ecosystem to be an environment that things like this just can't work in. This means: Anonymous mining, Discouraging address reuse, coinjoin, etc.  Importantly, people need to step up and fund the development of privacy tools.  Today there is no business model for decenteralized privacy tools that people can use casually and thus pervasively.

We must vote with our wallets— not our spending, but how we choose to transact and what developments we fund. As a spending group the people who really realize the importance of privacy and fungiblity will always be a small enough minority that short-sighted business people will find it all too easy to go without their business.

I agree and support everything you said here, Gregory, but I'm afraid that might not be enough.

Working around balcklists is feasible, through the means you cite. But the threat here are not blacklists, the threat are mandatory whitelists.

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

I think thats why everyone has to use it. However, we are probably going to have to use declared addresses in the future for many things. [[[[

[justusranvier]

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

The alternative is to give up on "law abiding businesses" and create infrastructure that assists individuals in operating censorship-resistant business models.

[niothor]

can we stop this?

Yes, but not by negotiating with every fool who attempts it, for there are far too many fools in the world.  I've personally talked two startups out of similar business models in the past.

We can stop this by making sure that its not viable, by tweaking our practices and the ecosystem to be an environment that things like this just can't work in. This means: Anonymous mining, Discouraging address reuse, coinjoin, etc.  Importantly, people need to step up and fund the development of privacy tools.  Today there is no business model for decenteralized privacy tools that people can use casually and thus pervasively.

We must vote with our wallets— not our spending, but how we choose to transact and what developments we fund. As a spending group the people who really realize the importance of privacy and fungiblity will always be a small enough minority that short-sighted business people will find it all too easy to go without their business.

I agree and support everything you said here, Gregory, but I'm afraid that might not be enough.

Working around balcklists is feasible, through the means you cite. But the threat here are not blacklists, the threat are mandatory whitelists.

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

Hihi , so it seems I was getting somewhere with my topic , right?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333586.0

I think that it will come to how you order
allow all , deny from

[corebob]

You may coinjoin your coins as much as you want. If you want to use them in "the land of the free" you'll have to give away your freedom and privacy by declaring them to Big Brother. Otherwise your output might just be frozen by the "law abiding merchant" that receives it.
Mixers are not enough to fight back. But I fail to see alternatives.

I know you and many other bitcoin developers have brilliant minds... I hope you manage to come up with a solution.

The alternative is to give up on "law abiding businesses" and create infrastructure that assists individuals in operating censorship-resistant business models.

We should prepare for this.


Allowing government control is the same thing as making it into another fiat currency.
An altcoin with better anonimity should exist, and nobody should expect it to be "white" in any way.

[jedunnigan]

Alex Waters has not worked for BitInstant for a long time, you should take that down. He helps run the Apex Incubator as far as I'm aware.

edit: source, i've met him in person. also his linkedin: www.linkedin.com/pub/alex-waters/10/605/29b

[bitbitcoincoin]

I'm not sure you can gather enough info from this article to legitimize the personal attacks.  Then again, this behavior isn't surprising on bitcointalk.  

These guys have done a lot of development for the bitcoin community.  They are actually very nice people.  I used to work with 2 of them regularly.

I'm not saying this project is a good or bad idea.  I'm looking forward to hearing more info.

Slow your roll.  

How is it not safe to say this is a bad idea?  Other than if you're biased and have a personal relationship with those who own the company pitching it that is.

Any attempt at blacklisting coins in circulation is a horrible idea, regardless of whether it's a private institution or government doing the listing, regardless of whether it'll hurt privacy or not.   There are potentially millions of BTC that have been used in a questionable transaction during their life that have exchanged hands multiple times and are now possibly in your very bank if you've ever used an exchange. 

[Carlton Banks]

Not just privacy and fungibility issues, security too.

White-listed addresses are innately insecure. Re-using addresses makes them more vulnerable to theft.

If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist. Work out how to prevent all "white" addresses from ever getting their transactions processed.

[Lollaskates]

Not just privacy and fungibility issues, security too.

White-listed addresses are innately insecure. Re-using addresses makes them more vulnerable to theft.

If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist. Work out how to prevent all "white" addresses from ever getting their transactions processed.

boom.

[ArticMine]

...

If you run a full mining node, blacklist the whitelist. Work out how to prevent all "white" addresses from ever getting their transactions processed.

Now we have a freedom vs censorship hashpower war? And we also know why certain ASIC chips were not delivered on time.

[ph111]

  Scammers and now they want too play the perfect citizens whats next chargebacks if your coins arent clean makes me want to go out and commit crime i feel sick now i might as well use paypal from now on !!!

[corebob]

I'm a little two sided about how this would play out.
Isn't this just going to create a non-white listed market that millions of people and companies will have to use whether they want to or not?

[DeeSome]

Adam Back sums the situation up nicely.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=333882.0