Mike Hearn, Foundation's Law & Policy Chair, is pushing blacklists right now

[dewdeded]

I just replied on the bitcoin foundation forum and joined as a Platinum member:

If I had a way to communicate how bad an idea this is, I'd be willing to fly to the moon to do so.  Since I can't do that, I'm going to join the board as a platinum member today, and put my life savings in doing so.  Just to prevent this idea.

Respect!

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[Carlton Banks]

+21 million at everything conspirosphere.tk said

[maz]

Wait,

This whole gig was supposed to be decentralized and free so boardroom bastards couldn't apply stupid idea's like this. Did I miss the email that said we changed all that?

[acoindr]

That's not specific enough, ...

Okay, let me rephrase it. Any measure that causes a person to view some coins as more or less legal/suspect than others.

Bitcoins are different from dollars in that they can be combined and split apart, though. (*) It is pretty much inevitable that any taint is going to quickly spread all over the place. ...

Whatever the end unit it will have a discounted market price. There is high probability some people will value it less or reject it entirely, which inhibits its ability to function as money. People will start demanding wallets that filter/reject such coins; the more people do this the less value any of those units have, regardless to whether the spender/holder is a crook or not. It's the acceptance spiral of value Bitcoin is now experiencing done backwards. That's how money works.

[theecoinomist]

Dear lord, another Google employee having fun on his 20% spare time.

[dasein]

That's not specific enough, ...

Okay, let me rephrase it. Any measure that causes a person to view some coins as more or less legal/suspect than others.

Bitcoins are different from dollars in that they can be combined and split apart, though. (*) It is pretty much inevitable that any taint is going to quickly spread all over the place. ...

Whatever the end unit it will have a discounted market price. There is high probability some people will value it less or reject it entirely, which inhibits its ability to function as money. People will start demanding wallets that filter/reject such coins; the more people do this the less value any of those units have, regardless to whether the spender/holder is a crook or not.

Yes but others may value non-ID'd bitcoins more than ID'd ones, and reject the ones that have been ID'd. It cuts both ways. It's just another market dynamic, consistent with bitcoin's freedom and decentralization.

[acoindr]

Yes but others may value non-ID'd bitcoins more than ID'd ones, and reject the ones that have been ID'd. It cuts both ways. It's just another market dynamic, consistent with bitcoin's freedom and decentralization.

You mean value the tainted ones more? I suppose that's possible, but I have little confidence that would happen. You'd need a majority/large group of people but most will want to be "clean".

[phillipsjk]

Yes but others may value non-ID'd bitcoins more than ID'd ones, and reject the ones that have been ID'd. It cuts both ways. It's just another market dynamic, consistent with bitcoin's freedom and decentralization.

That still hurts fungibility;

A good or asset's interchangeability with other individual goods/assets of the same type. Assets possessing this property simplify the exchange/trade process, as interchangeability assumes that everyone values all goods of that class as the same.

- http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fungibility.asp

[thezerg]

10+ years ago I went to Peru to go kite surfing with a friend.  We got searched on the way home.  Nothing was found of course.  For this travel I got "redlisted".   At that point, I had traveled internationally exactly twice in 20 years.  This "redlisting" meant I was unable to use curbside checkin.  And a manager had to be called during every normal checkin -- he would show up eventually and clickety-click for another 5 minutes sometimes talking on the phone before letting me through.  My bags would be searched EVERY TIME.  This went on for YEARS.  Even when I traveled with my wife and 2 young children.



FOR YEARS



Finally, when Congress forced the TSA to clean up the list due to searches of 12 year old girls, etc this treatment magically disappeared.  I am an American citizen, and not recently arrived.  One of my ancestors founded a town in eastern Massachusetts.


There is no possible way Bitcoin will survive redlisting.  Redlisted coins will RARELY be cleared.  Its easy to redlist someone/something, but its a career ending move to clear the wrong person.

A hidden, secret NSA redlist is not good and we should use technologies to promote fungibility... the Snowden revelations have shown that our constitutional rights need to be enforced via technology because they are not being enforced by due process.

But a notice appearing in your wallet is death to Bitcoin.  (Judge asks: surely you SAW the notice why did you ignore it).  It is ILLEGAL to knowingly spend stolen money, buy stolen goods, etc.  If the wallet says the money is stolen and you spend it you are an accessory (IANAL).  And a notice is a very small step away from automatic enforcement.

Of course Bitcoin will instantly fork.  But the existence the "blessed" version will encourage lawmakers to make the other one illegal (or exchanges illegal anyway).


P.S.  I think Mike Hearn must have sold :-) he's looking for a good entry point

[bassclef]

Oh silly Mike Hearn, what a terrible, terrible idea.

By even floating this in a serious way, you have instantly lost all respect from the community and singlehandedly damaged the Foundation's reputation, probably beyond repair.

Suffice it to say I will not be entertaining any future suggestions from Mr. Hearn, nor will I be supporting the Foundation in any way, shape or form.

[Adrian-x]

Gregory Maxwell made an excellent post on this subject, emphasis mine:

We're not going to be able to prevent well funded business people from attempting to promote horrific architectures against the long term interest of Bitcoin and the public... if we could, the same stupidity would have been prevented in the wider world and there would be less need for Bitcoin.

It's hard to count the number of times newbies have made proposals which would have centralized Bitcoin completely in the name of some fool result or another. Powerful businesses interests are now reliving the same history of bad ideas, but this time the bad ideas will be funded and they don't care if luminaries tell them that they're horrible ideas, they don't necessarily care about any of the principles that make Bitcoin a worthwhile contribution to the world.

It's not, of course, a question of "anonymity": thats silly. If you have "good" and "bad" coins, that destroys fungibility, rapidly everyone must screen coins they accept or risk being left holding the bag. Fungiblity is an essential property of a money like good and without it the money cannot remove transactional friction.  Privacy is also essential for fair markets: Without privacy your counter-parties and competition can see into your finances— get a raise and get a rent hike, and as long as there are power imbalances between people privacy is essential for human dignity.

To stop this nonsense we have to make it impractical to pull off by changing the default behavior in the Bitcoin ecosystem: We consider the lack of a central authority to be an essential virtue, which means that we can't be protected by one either. We must protect ourselves. This means things like avoiding address reuse, avoiding centralized infrastructure, adopting— and funding!— privacy enhancing technology.

Miners can play a role in this as Bitcoin users, but also by supporting mining pools and methods that promote privacy.  They want to force people to use identified addresses so they can blacklist?  What happens when miners start deprioritizing transactions that use addresses that have been previously seen?

Gregory Maxwell gets it the Foundation should be nothing more than a privately funded public lobby and leave development to the community.

[Carlton Banks]

Oh silly Mike Hearn, what a terrible, terrible idea.

By even floating this in a serious way, you have instantly lost all respect from the community and singlehandedly damaged the Foundation's reputation, probably beyond repair.

Suffice it to say I will not be entertaining any future suggestions from Mr. Hearn, nor will I be supporting the Foundation in any way, shape or form.

Not the first time Mike Hearn has broached this topic.

[maz]

Oh silly Mike Hearn, what a terrible, terrible idea.

By even floating this in a serious way, you have instantly lost all respect from the community and singlehandedly damaged the Foundation's reputation, probably beyond repair.

Suffice it to say I will not be entertaining any future suggestions from Mr. Hearn, nor will I be supporting the Foundation in any way, shape or form.

Not the first time Mike Hearn has broached this topic.

What's his game plan then? He hoping to be the admin of this central redlisting service with a nice little 'coin cleaning' service fee directly payable to his wallet?

[Kouye]

Not the first time Mike Hearn has broached this topic.

His urge to react to Dark Wallet thread(-d+t?) compared to his urge to defend his ideas here sure looks dubious.
I sure hope silence can be explained because he's preparing a sensitive plea.

And not because he's trying to find who, in holy BF, leaked this...

[Carlton Banks]

Oh silly Mike Hearn, what a terrible, terrible idea.

By even floating this in a serious way, you have instantly lost all respect from the community and singlehandedly damaged the Foundation's reputation, probably beyond repair.

Suffice it to say I will not be entertaining any future suggestions from Mr. Hearn, nor will I be supporting the Foundation in any way, shape or form.

Not the first time Mike Hearn has broached this topic.

What's his game plan then? He hoping to be the admin of this central redlisting service with a nice little 'coin cleaning' service fee directly payable to his wallet?

No, he's posing as the moralistic, dad type figure. Wants to protect impressionable kids and vulnerable old ladies from Bitcoin. Unfortunately, it undermines Bitcoin, and he's full of puffed up arguments about how it's all about pragmatism.

Memo to Mike Hearn, we're here to redefine what pragmatism means in the 21st century, not to bend to the version that's existed for a few hundred years at most. Human history is 200 million years old, I don't think it's too much of a strain to change the culture of a fraction of a percentage point of that long history.

[moderate]

Oh silly Mike Hearn, what a terrible, terrible idea.

By even floating this in a serious way, you have instantly lost all respect from the community and singlehandedly damaged the Foundation's reputation, probably beyond repair.

Suffice it to say I will not be entertaining any future suggestions from Mr. Hearn, nor will I be supporting the Foundation in any way, shape or form.

Not the first time Mike Hearn has broached this topic.

What's his game plan then? He hoping to be the admin of this central redlisting service with a nice little 'coin cleaning' service fee directly payable to his wallet?

No, he's posing as the moralistic, dad type figure. Wants to protect impressionable kids and vulnerable old ladies from Bitcoin. Unfortunately, it undermines Bitcoin, and he's full of puffed up arguments about how it's all about pragmatism.

Memo to Mike Hearn, we're here to redefine what pragmatism means in the 21st century, not to bend to the version that's existed for a few hundred years at most. Human history is 200 million years old, I don't think it's too much of a strain to change the culture of a fraction of a percentage point of that long history.

I don't blame all on Mike, the company he works for has flushed his brain and adjusted it to follow the proper guidelines applied there.

[Luckybit]

There has to be a balance between privacy and transparency.

We should want the ability to follow the money trail if necessary while also having the ability to remain pseudo-anonymous.

I think the size of transactions and the amount of money should matter. I think the implementation is everything with a system like this. When Mike Hearn says contact an operator there are a lot of unknowns.

Can it be pseudo-anonymous? I believe it must be.

Why can't I simply tag my transactions as belonging to me using my public key. Basically it should say "these addresses and transactions belong to me and are not associated with your investigation".

And then "my public key has been verified by these businesses".

I should not have to give the operator my identity. I should be able to remain pseudo anonymous with the operator. People who I bought coins from should know my identity and my public key. That public key should allow me to claim which businesses or organizations have my identity without giving my identity to that operator.

The main concern here is access control. The operator should not be able to access any information about the user other than a public key. That public key should be verified as being on the whitelist or not. For instance if that user purchased his coins from Coinbase and then marked his own purchases with his identity using his public key then merely by sharing that public key the operator could verify that the coins were indeed bought by a verified user of Coinbase.

The operator does not have to know Bob's address or personal identity information. The operator does not have any purpose other than to check to see that the public key is verified. Coinbase already has the identity on file and all the public key would do is show the operator that Coinbase has the identity. I think this would be voluntary, decentralized, and have some privacy benefits because it could preserve pseudo-anonymity.

The user could at any time change their public key as well. It is necessary to be able to follow the money trail because without that you cannot have democracy or investigate institutional corruption. We do not have to reduce privacy in order to preserve democracy. Privacy and democracy are ideals we should fight for. Democracy requires transparency.

[Kouye]

There has to be a balance between privacy and transparency.
We should want the ability to follow the money trail if necessary while also having the ability to remain pseudo-anonymous.

Stopped reading here because what you wish is what we already have today.

[jojkaart]

His urge to react to Dark Wallet thread(-d+t?) compared to his urge to defend his ideas here sure looks dubious.
I sure hope silence can be explained because he's preparing a sensitive plea.

And not because he's trying to find who, in holy BF, leaked this...

Why on earth would he reply here? There's no way to have anything resembling an intelligent discussion in this thread. Well over half of the commenters have no idea what they're talking about.

Any reply from him would be like pouring oil in to the fire. It'd only spur more clueless people into writing more useless comments.

[minorman]

Cool it guys!!

Yes, I agree that lists (if anyone with guns make companies enforce them) will be the end of bitcoin.

BUT

Lay of the ad hominum attacks on Mike.

From all I have read heard and seen of him he is a *really* smart guy - and he is deeply worried about draconian legislation such as the coming "FATCA" catastrophe that the US is trying to impose on every country in the world.
Bitcoin itself ows *a lot* to Mike's contributions. Not just code, but also ideas and advocacy so lay of the "Mike is an idiot"-crap and stick to a sober discussion of this highly important topic.

Peace.