[LEAKED] Private Bitcoin Foundation Discussions On Blacklisting, more (ZIP dump)

[Mageant]

If this starts happening I'm selling all my Bitcoin to the first suckers buying.

I'm also never going to work a normal job again. I'll get a brain dead job in government and do as little as possible at all times. I'll completely opt out and exploit this corrupt system some call "society" to the fullest of my ability.

Many others will follow (because what's the point...) and money will in time be replaced by pecking orders that naturally form within government – but as I said I will not participate in that; I will be the lowest, laziest form of scum you can imagine. I.e., I will pretend to be "poor" even though I'm not.

..we will essentially all become higher order beggars and criminals.

Stay calm. Also, there are always Altcoins.

[aenemic]

I cannot formulate the words to adequately express my anger about this. I consider Bitcoin to be revolutionary. It could completely free people from the failing fiat system. It could completely free the people from the restrictions of credit card payments. It combines the best qualities of cash and plastic, AND it's impossible to steal (assuming the proper precautions are taken). And now, as with everything great that's happened since 1920, the US government and some multinational corporations have to find some way to stomp it to the ground for a few kickbacks and maybe a few years in office.

If I could find a person who knowingly allowed this to happen, and I were in the same room as him with a gun in my hand, I would have a very difficult time not pulling the trigger.

Some people might argue that "compromise is the only way to keep Bitcoin legal". If Bitcoin becomes popular enough, this may be true. I say, why gives a fuck? I believe morality overrides legality 100% of the time. I believe that in the modern world, which revolves around the Internet, free software (especially free software infrastructures such as Bitcoin) is the greatest tool we have against authoritarianism. I believe that freedom from governmental and corporate control is a human right. Therefore, I believe that as long as Bitcoin has even a small number of users, it is my moral duty to do my best to keep the Bitcoin ecosystem alive, regardless of the consequences. If everyone shared this same philosophy, Bitcoin would be literally unstoppable.

1. Reject all closed source Bitcoin software, including web wallets, and, God forbid it comes to this, the official client.
2. Reject all Bitcoin software that contradicts Satoshi's paper. This paper is the Constitution of Bitcoin. This includes any software which blacklists addresses, reverses transactions, or has ANY central point of failure, especially a central authority. The difference between Bitcoin and Paypal is that Bitcion is decentralized.
3. Governments exist to catch proverbial murderers. They do not exist to prevent the purchase of proverbial weapons. No matter what governments say, control of currency (Bitcoin or otherwise) does nothing but control innocent people.
4. Corporations exist to serve customers. They do not exist to control customers. Boycott companies that place any restrictions other than the price of their goods or services.

Free as in Freedom!

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

I have just read some of this crap. It is really disgusting.

People like that should not have the power to represent or decide ANYTHING in Bitcoin. Mike should be kicked out of the foundation immediately and the foundation should be moved to Switzerland in order to remove pro-government lobbying & political pressure (if that even helps - but after reading I doubt it).

[bluemeanie1]

They are destroying the work of satoshi which aimed decentralized currency. Maybe its time to find a new bitcoin developers.

please have a look at what I'm working on(links below).

it addresses many of these issues as it does away with mining altogether.

thanks and I 100% agree with OP, it's a huge problem.  This isn't really what Bitcoin was meant to be.

[C. Bergmann]

If this starts happening I'm selling all my Bitcoin to the first suckers buying.

I'm also never going to work a normal job again. I'll get a brain dead job in government and do as little as possible at all times. I'll completely opt out and exploit this corrupt system some call "society" to the fullest of my ability.

Many others will follow (because what's the point...) and money will in time be replaced by pecking orders that naturally form within government – but as I said I will not participate in that; I will be the lowest, laziest form of scum you can imagine. I.e., I will pretend to be "poor" even though I'm not.

..we will essentially all become higher order beggars and criminals.

Stay calm. Also, there are always Altcoins.

listen to this.

Let' them destroy bitcoin, if they want and can. They act out of greed cause they want bitcoin to be complete legitimate to become mainstream. If they want ... it'll never happen. They sell bitcoins soul for their wannabe-profit and 'll end with nothing. Every smart person owning bitcoins will rush into altcoins if those plans become reality, altcoins will rise, bitcoin will fall ... you'll loose nothing, they loose everything. Stay calm. The technology is here to stay.

[ShadowOfHarbringer]

Every smart person owning bitcoins will rush into altcoins if those plans become reality, altcoins will rise, bitcoin will fall ... you'll loose nothing, they loose everything. Stay calm. The technology is here to stay.

No need to rush into any altcoins, a simple hard fork is all we need.

[SebastianJu]

This idea is already useless from the start. I mean its to fight scams right? But any scammer that isnt fully stupid will collect the coins and change it to good ones instantly. I mean you never know before that its a scam. And then, when its a known scam, the coins are marked. And completely innocent people will lose possibly everything.

This is completely useless for preventing scams.

[notthematrix]

Have you read anything at all that I just posted? And if you didn't believe me, have you read through all the posts in the leak? What you just said is a complete fabrication supported by zero evidence.

Maybe it is a fabrication, maybe not, I don't care much. I don't think blacklists will go anywhere because people are mixing their coins for privacy reasons anyway to avoid data mining by vendors, so coins connected to crime already spread through everyone's hands.

I'm just saying that it's actually a good sign when the community shows clearly what they think about such ideas.
Developers and entrepreneurs should not see this as an attack against themselves, but rather against the idea itself.
After all, if no one plans anything evil it means that this is just a misunderstanding and all attacks are directed against foundation members in a parallel universe.

And if such discussions didn't have to get leaked, people wouldn't immediately jump to the conclusion that something shady is going on.

And if those leaks weren't in .zip format people would be able to check for themselves much easier.

]

yep like the 96% of coke on dollar bills , only bitcoins can not be printed and never leave the blockchain!
so can not be replaced by clean ones , this simply does not make sense!

[bluemeanie1]

I cannot formulate the words to adequately express my anger about this. I consider Bitcoin to be revolutionary. It could completely free people from the failing fiat system. It could completely free the people from the restrictions of credit card payments. It combines the best qualities of cash and plastic, AND it's impossible to steal (assuming the proper precautions are taken). And now, as with everything great that's happened since 1920, the US government and some multinational corporations have to find some way to stomp it to the ground for a few kickbacks and maybe a few years in office.

If I could find a person who knowingly allowed this to happen, and I were in the same room as him with a gun in my hand, I would have a very difficult time not pulling the trigger.

Some people might argue that "compromise is the only way to keep Bitcoin legal". If Bitcoin becomes popular enough, this may be true. I say, why gives a fuck? I believe morality overrides legality 100% of the time. I believe that in the modern world, which revolves around the Internet, free software (especially free software infrastructures such as Bitcoin) is the greatest tool we have against authoritarianism. I believe that freedom from governmental and corporate control is a human right. Therefore, I believe that as long as Bitcoin has even a small number of users, it is my moral duty to do my best to keep the Bitcoin ecosystem alive, regardless of the consequences. If everyone shared this same philosophy, Bitcoin would be literally unstoppable.

1. Reject all closed source Bitcoin software, including web wallets, and, God forbid it comes to this, the official client.
2. Reject all Bitcoin software that contradicts Satoshi's paper. This paper is the Constitution of Bitcoin. This includes any software which blacklists addresses, reverses transactions, or has ANY central point of failure, especially a central authority. The difference between Bitcoin and Paypal is that Bitcion is decentralized.
3. Governments exist to catch proverbial murderers. They do not exist to prevent the purchase of proverbial weapons. No matter what governments say, control of currency (Bitcoin or otherwise) does nothing but control innocent people.
4. Corporations exist to serve customers. They do not exist to control customers. Boycott companies that place any restrictions other than the price of their goods or services.

Interesting points but it's not really quite so simple to combat these problems.

Things like web wallets do contributee to the centalization aspect, making it far easier for large banks to come in and start capitalizing- just build a feature that has some price advantage, but uses centralized technologies, and suddenly everyone is back on the old program again.

One problem we face is tolerating technologies that abuse the underlying network.  In my view Color Coins and Mastercoin are an example of this.  The notion of having some kind of for-profit Color Coin system that exploits the assumptions of the network participants is just flat out intolerable if you ask me.

This issue of government charter in the realm of finance has been going on for quite some time.  J. Orlin Grabbe identitied these conflicts some time ago.  http://orlingrabbe.com/money2.htm

There's a specter haunting the international financial markets: the specter of crime by nomenclature, by theological semantics. To be sure, the faceless piece of transaction information that makes money "money"--a useful medium of exchange, whereby we exchange everything for it, and avoid the direct bartering of wheelbarrows for oranges--has been under attack before. The 60s brought us "euro"-dollars, and the 70s "petro"-dollars. Now we have "narco"-dollars, "terror"-dollars, and (who knows?) maybe "kiddie-porn"-dollars. For some of the data bits stored in banks' computers comprise "clean" money and others "dirty" money, the latter legalistically smitten with original sin.

As Yoga Berra might say, it's digital voodoo, all over again.

As we know in post-Bailout America, there is an 'insider group' and these people are working for money interests while telling us that they want to keep up safe from terror, kiddie porn, and irreversible transactions.  Do we still believe these people?

The solution though is to stay vigilant with our values and continue to forge ahead despite the 'knowns' being now salaried employees of various banking interests.  Have a look at my Confidence Chains project, it came out of some of the conclusions I came to regarding these issues and the drawbacks of other similar platforms.

[Coin.Karma]

and we thought the foundation had good intentions

[Peter Todd]

I am to the point where I would take a serious look at a codebase released from a group of people I trust to evolve the protocol in a healthy direction which rectifies some of the deficiencies.  gmaxwell, retep, and adam3us come to mind.

Ideally releases from the more desirable codebase would track and inter-operate with releases blessed by the Bitcoin Foundation.  Until they didn't.

You already have a codebase released from that group, the one at http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

If it is changed in a way that is seriously objectionable, as opposed to minor disagreements about engineering tradeoffs, believe me, you will see alternative releases from myself and many others pop up.

[corebob]

So far what I'm reading is a very adult conversation about serious issues Bitcoin faces as it grows up. I'm not seeing the sort of thread that would happen here or Reddit.

It's not decisions being forced by the Foundation and I'm tired of seeing it put across like that. It's a discussion and it's a really important one. Here is why:

Imagine Bin Laden is still around.

...

Bitcoin is not supposed to be a tool that replaces the incompetence of law enforcement.

We need an altcoin that improves the weaknesses bitcoin has, hence allows people to be free once again, and not treated as potential Bin Ladens.

You know this

[btcdrak]

Every smart person owning bitcoins will rush into altcoins if those plans become reality, altcoins will rise, bitcoin will fall ... you'll loose nothing, they loose everything. Stay calm. The technology is here to stay.

No need to rush into any altcoins, a simple hard fork is all we need.

You people are so stupid I need to go find popcorn to watch this.
You are fighting your own shadow. Let me repeat this:

Bitcoin Foundation is not imposing anything
Bitcoin Devs are not doing anything along these lines
Bitcoin miners wont allow anyone to go against the best interests of network.

It's a closed book. please stop all this stupid banter.

[btcdrak]

So far what I'm reading is a very adult conversation about serious issues Bitcoin faces as it grows up. I'm not seeing the sort of thread that would happen here or Reddit.

It's not decisions being forced by the Foundation and I'm tired of seeing it put across like that. It's a discussion and it's a really important one. Here is why:

Imagine Bin Laden is still around.

...

Bitcoin is not supposed to be a tool that replaces the incompetence of law enforcement.

We need an altcoin that improves the weaknesses bitcoin has, hence allows people to be free once again, and not treated as potential Bin Ladens.

You know this

Ya and we know how successful the altcoins are. Go take a rest.

[beetcoin]

Every smart person owning bitcoins will rush into altcoins if those plans become reality, altcoins will rise, bitcoin will fall ... you'll loose nothing, they loose everything. Stay calm. The technology is here to stay.

No need to rush into any altcoins, a simple hard fork is all we need.

You people are so stupid I need to go find popcorn to watch this.
You are fighting your own shadow. Let me repeat this:

Bitcoin Foundation is not imposing anything
Bitcoin Devs are not doing anything along these lines
Bitcoin miners wont allow anyone to go against the best interests of network.

It's a closed book. please stop all this stupid banter.

'

you shouldn't be so inflammatory and call people stupid, especially when you don't know the meaning of the word banter:

1.
an exchange of light, playful, teasing remarks; good-natured raillery.
verb (used with object)
2.
to address with banter; chaff.
verb (used without object)

[bluemeanie1]

I am to the point where I would take a serious look at a codebase released from a group of people I trust to evolve the protocol in a healthy direction which rectifies some of the deficiencies.  gmaxwell, retep, and adam3us come to mind.

Ideally releases from the more desirable codebase would track and inter-operate with releases blessed by the Bitcoin Foundation.  Until they didn't.

You already have a codebase released from that group, the one at http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

If it is changed in a way that is seriously objectionable, as opposed to minor disagreements about engineering tradeoffs, believe me, you will see alternative releases from myself and many others pop up.

you do realize that code base is a labyrinthine maze of C code, GOTOs, global variables, and other off-putting things?

there are only a few people who are effectively capable of modifying the bitcoin code in any serious way.  The only alternative client is BitcoinJ, written by Mike Hearn, who appears to be at the center of this whole controversy.

Given that not many people here seem to even know the basics of software engineering, that leaves precious few people who can have an impact and haven't been bought out.

[bluemeanie1]

We need an altcoin that improves the weaknesses bitcoin has

So none of the altcoins out there already, to be clear. They all use addresses like Bitcoin and are data-minable just as Bitcoin is. Perhaps more so given their smaller blockchains and lack of alternative clients.

at best you will duplicate the pattern and buy some time perhaps?  If the underlying technology is identical, then it's not immune to the same effects.  Some of the altcoins have departed considerably from the basic Bitcoin structure thus it takes more work to couple the various commercial systems to them, but it's not a major barrier.  All the alt-coins are structurally similar if not identical to Bitcoin.

Confidence Chains IS immune to these effects.  I re-factored some very low level elements.

[corebob]

I am to the point where I would take a serious look at a codebase released from a group of people I trust to evolve the protocol in a healthy direction which rectifies some of the deficiencies.  gmaxwell, retep, and adam3us come to mind.

Ideally releases from the more desirable codebase would track and inter-operate with releases blessed by the Bitcoin Foundation.  Until they didn't.

You already have a codebase released from that group, the one at http://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

If it is changed in a way that is seriously objectionable, as opposed to minor disagreements about engineering tradeoffs, believe me, you will see alternative releases from myself and many others pop up.

you do realize that code base is a labyrinthine maze of C code, GOTOs, global variables, and other off-putting things?

there are only a few people who are effectively capable of modifying the bitcoin code in any serious way.  The only alternative client is BitcoinJ, written by Mike Hearn, who appears to be at the center of this whole controversy.

Given that not many people here seem to even know the basics of software engineering, that leaves precious few people who can have an impact and haven't been bought out.

There is alternatives.

http://www.assets-otc.com/gocoin/

He's code looks sane, as go code usually does.

-

I was thinking that if this rubbish is implemented, the network will become a battlegound for hacking and attacks. And with the crap that gov is likely to contribute, those attacks will likely succeed.

The foundation needs to improve the strength of the protocol and its resilience, not bend it to anyone's will

[600watt]

watching

[bluemeanie1]

watching

does anyone think it's a coincidence that we have a huge run up in BTC price EXACTLY at the time this stuff is going on behind closed doors?

certainly suggests and implicates various parties in some dastardly doings.