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

[Mike Hearn]

I think it would be cool if Snowden joined the Foundation. Re: "how is it going", I haven't done anything on this beyond starting this debate/discussion/flamewar. However if you look around the forums you will find other people who are building block chain analysis or coin tracking systems. Go annoy them instead.

In contemplation of FinCEN's request vs Casascius.  It is perhaps a fine line.
It is MTB because Caldwell arguably could still have the private key, and there is not a mechanism for him to provably not have it?
Thus the requests for trustworthiness?

I think it's a stretch to consider him a money transmitter to be honest, but the designation is so vague you can see how they arrived at it if you squint. A more pertinent question is, why would a criminal use his service? I can see no reasons. He only takes Bitcoins, so for A to move money to B, routing it through Mike doesn't make any difference blockchain-wise. It just adds large costs.

It'd be nice if at some point FinCEN moved from a mechanical application of the rules to a more targeted use of their time: it seems very unlikely to me that a Mexican drug cartel is buying up physical Bitcoins, so all they're achieving here is shutting down an American entrepreneur. I know there are people at the Foundation (like Jon and Patrick) who would like to help Mike and are working on it.

[tvbcof]

...
It'd be nice if at some point FinCEN moved from a mechanical application of the rules to a more targeted use of their time: it seems very unlikely to me that a Mexican drug cartel is buying up physical Bitcoins, so all they're achieving here is shutting down an American entrepreneur. I know there are people at the Foundation (like Jon and Patrick) who would like to help Mike and are working on it.

The low hanging fruit here might be to try to figure out how NOT lend assistance to frauds and scams (e.g., Inputs.io) by allowing them to use the Bitcoin Foundation as a seal of approval as they rope in suckers.

After that then maybe spend some effort scratching a friend's back...subsidized by donator's funds presumably.  OTOH, I could see the potential for useful case law coming out of such an adventure.  As for Causius Coins, they've already served their main useful purpose of providing stock photos for the media to use in stories about Bitcoin.

[NewLiberty]

...
It'd be nice if at some point FinCEN moved from a mechanical application of the rules to a more targeted use of their time: it seems very unlikely to me that a Mexican drug cartel is buying up physical Bitcoins, so all they're achieving here is shutting down an American entrepreneur. I know there are people at the Foundation (like Jon and Patrick) who would like to help Mike and are working on it.

The low hanging fruit here might be to try to figure out how NOT lend assistance to frauds and scams (e.g., Inputs.io) by allowing them to use the Bitcoin Foundation as a seal of approval as they rope in suckers.

Self regulation?  How would that work mechanically? Help pick the fruit.

[tvbcof]

...
It'd be nice if at some point FinCEN moved from a mechanical application of the rules to a more targeted use of their time: it seems very unlikely to me that a Mexican drug cartel is buying up physical Bitcoins, so all they're achieving here is shutting down an American entrepreneur. I know there are people at the Foundation (like Jon and Patrick) who would like to help Mike and are working on it.

The low hanging fruit here might be to try to figure out how NOT lend assistance to frauds and scams (e.g., Inputs.io) by allowing them to use the Bitcoin Foundation as a seal of approval as they rope in suckers.

Self regulation?  How would that work mechanically? Help pick the fruit.

My off-hand suggestion would be to 'know your members' and be clear that the DOX would be handed to law enforcement as part of an investigation driven by the Foundation itself in the event of a scam.

Actually, if I were setting policy I would only allow anonymity in unusual circumstances (for those using Bitcoin Foundation membership as a seal for business purposes.)  Inevitably, the reason for anonymity is to allow the option to take the customer's money and run whether that was the initial goal or just an operational decision which proved desirable at some point.

[Rampion]

I think it would be cool if Snowden joined the Foundation. Re: "how is it going", I haven't done anything on this beyond starting this debate/discussion/flamewar.

So you acknowledge that attacking the neutrality of Bitcoin is attacking Bitcoin itself? Did you change your mind on the whole red/black/white listing thing?

That would put some minds at rest.

[justusranvier]

My off-hand suggestion would be to 'know your members' and be clear that the DOX would be handed to law enforcement as part of an investigation driven by the Foundation itself in the event of a scam.

Actually, if I were setting policy I would only allow anonymity in unusual circumstances (for those using Bitcoin Foundation membership as a seal for business purposes.)  Inevitably, the reason for anonymity is to allow the option to take the customer's money and run whether that was the initial goal or just an operational decision which proved desirable at some point.

BF would have been a lot less controversial, and probably far more effective, if it had limited itself to hiring programmers/QA/etc for the reference client and stayed out of politics and other non-technical areas.

[tvbcof]

My off-hand suggestion would be to 'know your members' and be clear that the DOX would be handed to law enforcement as part of an investigation driven by the Foundation itself in the event of a scam.

Actually, if I were setting policy I would only allow anonymity in unusual circumstances (for those using Bitcoin Foundation membership as a seal for business purposes.)  Inevitably, the reason for anonymity is to allow the option to take the customer's money and run whether that was the initial goal or just an operational decision which proved desirable at some point.

BF would have been a lot less controversial, and probably far more effective, if it had limited itself to hiring programmers/QA/etc for the reference client and stayed out of politics and other non-technical areas.

Agree strongly.  I would likely be a supporter if they had taken that approach or at least saw it as important enough to have a fairly autonomous wing of their operations which focused on such things and collated the results in a coherent manner.

That there are quasi-secret efforts going on which need to be semi-covertly leaked is a giant turn-off to me.  It reminds me a whole lot of how government policy tends to be made in this day and age, and the ill effects such an org structure abound.

[User705]

I think it would be cool if Snowden joined the Foundation. Re: "how is it going", I haven't done anything on this beyond starting this debate/discussion/flamewar. However if you look around the forums you will find other people who are building block chain analysis or coin tracking systems. Go annoy them instead.

In contemplation of FinCEN's request vs Casascius.  It is perhaps a fine line.
It is MTB because Caldwell arguably could still have the private key, and there is not a mechanism for him to provably not have it?
Thus the requests for trustworthiness?

I think it's a stretch to consider him a money transmitter to be honest, but the designation is so vague you can see how they arrived at it if you squint. A more pertinent question is, why would a criminal use his service? I can see no reasons. He only takes Bitcoins, so for A to move money to B, routing it through Mike doesn't make any difference blockchain-wise. It just adds large costs.

It'd be nice if at some point FinCEN moved from a mechanical application of the rules to a more targeted use of their time: it seems very unlikely to me that a Mexican drug cartel is buying up physical Bitcoins, so all they're achieving here is shutting down an American entrepreneur. I know there are people at the Foundation (like Jon and Patrick) who would like to help Mike and are working on it.

But if you squint hard enough then everyone is a money transmitter from blockchain.info to the guy mining with his USB stick.  I understand every agency wants to pad its slush fund budget and regulate everything in sight but what's your feeling on where the line will be drawn eventually?

[nyuka]

I think it's a bad idea to have a redlist for Bitcoins (to track every single coin and what about fractions of a coin). No one is forcing anyone to use Bitcoins and if someone doesn't like that some of them are not clean (were used illegally),  they don't have to use Bitcoins or they can create a alternative coin and call them Cleancoins (CLC) and force them to be used for only legal purposes. What about fiat currencies we use. Probably every country has currency that was used illegally, so maybe we should track every one of them too and redlist the ones that were used illegally. I think it's the crime that needs to be tracked and not everything made unusable that was used in it (what about items, cars, and houses that were used in crimes, maybe we should redlist them too).

[ProfMac]

When a transaction mixes some stolen coins and other coins, the outputs have a certain % of dirt.  This is easy to calculate.

Then those coins, in turn, are used in a transaction, it is also easy to calculate what % of dirt in in those new outputs.

It should be trivial to build an application that can take a list of transaction ids that the user thinks are from illegal activity, and a list of (transaction IDs, output address) that are of interest, perhaps because they are unspent  transactions in a customer's wallet.

The algorithm is pretty simple.  Trace the "not inputs" back until everything is a generation block, or one of the dirty transactions.  Then walk back forward until you are at a transaction ID on the list that is being examined.

[km4700ruda]

If US law makers and enforcement wish to do something then let them, and when they and their partners finally understand the concept of a de-centralised global currency then they might realise that the rest of the world will continue without them.

[NewLiberty]

If US law makers and enforcement wish to do something then let them, and when they and their partners finally understand the concept of a de-centralised global currency then they might realise that the rest of the world will continue without them.

In the mean time, they will arrest and seize the time, reputation, and assets of localbitcoin traders.

[masterluc]

Bump