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

[piotr_n]

The bottom line is,

if any one of you think that any system that is value in BILLIONS of USD is ever going to remain "uncontrolled" you are seriously delusional.

Bitcoin = Money

Money = Power

If not the Bitcoin Foundation, then another.

There will always be a desire and battle to control it.


~BCX~

If its contolled, ie centralized,  then its not p2p and functionally identical to Paypal, ie. Worthless.

So your inevitability argument doesnt really support a case for bitcoin's use.

I'm just stating the facts be they PC or not.

and while I am not a fan of Paypal, it is anything but worthless.

As long as Bitcoin = Money, then Bitcoin = Power and there will be inevitable battles for control.

Start all the new coins you want.


If it attains a value of Billions USD, it will meet the same fate of control by the powerful.


~BCX~

There already have been the battles for control - there are, and certainly there will be more of them in a future.
But so what? They are pretty bloodless, even quite funny, and all we need is to keep wining them. And we will because we are holding the proper weapon to win this war; 17000000000000000 hashes per second, and growing...
Our weapon is pretty much decentralized, spread all over the world - it cannot be destroyed and so there is no way that any corporation, no matter how powerful, can beat it now. At least I don't see it happening in a foreseeable future.

Plus I think you are totally missing the fact that if "Bitcoin = Money = Power", then sooner Bitcoin will destroy the governments than the other way around.

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[OleOle]

*snip*
 
Plus I think you are totally missing the fact that if "Bitcoin = Money = Power", then sooner Bitcoin will destroy the governments than the other way around.

*snip*

Take your hand off it, Bitcoin isn't going to destroy any governments, dream on soldier.

[piotr_n]

*snip*
 
Plus I think you are totally missing the fact that if "Bitcoin = Money = Power", then sooner Bitcoin will destroy the governments than the other way around.

*snip*

Take your hand off it, Bitcoin isn't going to destroy any governments, dream on soldier.

Of course not. Because no governments will be stupid enough to go on war with Bitcoin.
You don't fight things which you cannot beat - governments know it very well. If they didn't know it, they would not have been in power now.

[OleOle]

*snip*
 
Plus I think you are totally missing the fact that if "Bitcoin = Money = Power", then sooner Bitcoin will destroy the governments than the other way around.

*snip*

Take your hand off it, Bitcoin isn't going to destroy any governments, dream on soldier.

Of course not. Because no governments will be stupid enough to go on war with Bitcoin.

Fair enough, but let's not over-extrapolate. There is significant strength in the network being disparate and decentralised but as we've seen from the topic of this thread, power tends to corrupt and those that are supposedly on the Foundation to advance Bitcoin are, according to the vast majority of commentators on this thread, doing quite the opposite.

If those who are elected by a narrow minority cannot reflect the concerns of the broader majority, perhaps it's time to consider the dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation or the establishment of another more responsive body that pursues a more egalitarian decentralised agenda. I'm probably not the only independent miner who might vote for that, indeed, it's probably the extension of the 'hard fork' thinking - a voice counter to those courting entrenched financial orthodoxy.

[piotr_n]

Fair enough, but let's not over-extrapolate. There is significant strength in the network being disparate and decentralised but as we've seen from the topic of this thread, power tends to corrupt and those that are supposedly on the Foundation to advance Bitcoin are, according to the vast majority of commentators on this thread, doing quite the opposite.

If those who are elected by a narrow minority cannot reflect the concerns of the broader majority, perhaps it's time to consider the dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation or the establishment of another more responsive body that pursues a more egalitarian decentralised agenda. I'm probably not the only independent miner who might vote for that, indeed, it's probably the extension of the 'hard fork' thinking - a voice counter to those courting entrenched financial orthodoxy.

You are overestimating capabilities of the devs or any other kind of "elected" entities.
They cannot touch the protocol without getting their changes accepted by the miners - at least by 51% of them.
And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

So the only thing the people from the foundation can do is to stop their development from happening.
Which BTW they have been pretty efficient in, for the past couple of years - but since it didn't seem to disturb the price anyhow, rather caused it to skyrocket, apparently bitcoin protocol is already mature enough and its value doesn't really mind the ongoing no further protocol changes state.

[whtchocla7e]

And we will because we are holding the proper weapon to win this war; 17000000000000000 hashes per second, and growing...

What use are 17000000000000000 hashes per second if they are held by weak hands?

Miner's have become dependent on Bitcoin. No investor is going to flip the switch and let their $$$ hardware become paper weights in the name of ideals.

The power of the network in overestimated. People have more reasons to continue mining even in unfavorable conditions than they have reasons to leave.

Classic bait and hook.

[piotr_n]

What use are 17000000000000000 hashes per second if they are held by weak hands?

But why do you think that they are held by weak hands?
Are you saying that bitcoin miners are stupid?

[OleOle]

Fair enough, but let's not over-extrapolate. There is significant strength in the network being disparate and decentralised but as we've seen from the topic of this thread, power tends to corrupt and those that are supposedly on the Foundation to advance Bitcoin are, according to the vast majority of commentators on this thread, doing quite the opposite.

If those who are elected by a narrow minority cannot reflect the concerns of the broader majority, perhaps it's time to consider the dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation or the establishment of another more responsive body that pursues a more egalitarian decentralised agenda. I'm probably not the only independent miner who might vote for that, indeed, it's probably the extension of the 'hard fork' thinking - a voice counter to those courting entrenched financial orthodoxy.

You are overestimating capabilities of the devs.
They cannot touch the protocol without getting their changes accepted by the miners.
And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

So the only thing the people from the foundation can do is to stop any development from happening.
Which BTW they have been pretty efficient in for the past couple of years, but since it didn't seem to disturb the price anyhow, apparently bitcoin protocol is already mature enough and it's price doesn't really mind no development stage.

Thanks for your perspective, it is quite optimistic, or rather, more correctly, quite positive. More positive indeed than many of the understandably angry voices who have commented here.

I still think it is important that threads and conversations like this occur as I'd speculate that the vast majority of miners are in the dark with respect to what the Foundation are doing, especially with regards this topic. Perhaps you are right, maybe bitcoin will continue on its merry dance and resist those who seek to chain and dilute its value and utility?

Let's hope so.

[piotr_n]

I still think it is important that threads and conversations like this occur as I'd speculate that the vast majority of miners are in the dark with respect to what the Foundation are doing, especially with regards this topic.

Of course it is important to inform each other.
It is like with every democracy; if you don't know the actual motives behind the changes that you are about to vote for, you might just hurt yourself by voting for them.
But so far, this community has showed that they can speak up and listen, when there is a need for it.

So yeah, I'm quite convinced that this project is going to work, as long as there is no backdoor in the secp256k1 - that's like the only thing which could still kill bitcoin.

[whtchocla7e]

What use are 17000000000000000 hashes per second if they are held by weak hands?

But why do you think that they are held by weak hands?
Are you saying that bitcoin miners are stupid?

I am saying that most miners have more to lose by pulling out than by continuing to run their mining rigs.

The hobbyists can pull out and take a small loss on their GPU's or whatever. The big guys, no way.

[piotr_n]

What use are 17000000000000000 hashes per second if they are held by weak hands?

But why do you think that they are held by weak hands?
Are you saying that bitcoin miners are stupid?

I am saying that most miners have more to lose by pulling out than by continuing to run their mining rigs.

The hobbyists can pull out and take a small loss on their GPU's or whatever. The big guys, no way.

Yeah. But why would they want to pull out?
All they need to do is keep mining with the old software, if they don't like some changes in a new version - as long as they keep the majority, they loose completely nothing by not changing a protocol. Moreover: the only reason for them to vote for changing the protocol is to see an actual incentive in it. If you don't have an incentive, there is no way they would accept any change in the protocol.

[whtchocla7e]

And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

I would love to see this in practice. Maybe it's about time something happened to test this theory.
My money is you wouldn't like the results. 

[piotr_n]

And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

I would love to see this in practice. Maybe it's about time something happened to test this theory.

I'm afraid you won't see it soon.
I am not aware of any incoming blockchain protocol changes, and even if they would, last time it took like a year to upgrade the network to blocks version 2.
But that was back in the times when the network hashing power was like million times lower and the miners had much more trust in the dev team. The situation today is totally different and no sane respected person is going to put his reputation on forcing a protocol change that has even a tiny chance to not be accepted by the miners. Just look what happened to our poor Mike - and he didn't even start to write any code yet for his red and black lists that were supposed to deliver some justice into bitcoins.. Apparently all the bitcoins sheep that Mike was just trying to protect don't give a shit about his justice, so he didn't even get his brilliant ideas to a pre-voting

My money is you wouldn't like the results.  

No worries - almost all my money is already in that bet

[bluemeanie1]

Fair enough, but let's not over-extrapolate. There is significant strength in the network being disparate and decentralised but as we've seen from the topic of this thread, power tends to corrupt and those that are supposedly on the Foundation to advance Bitcoin are, according to the vast majority of commentators on this thread, doing quite the opposite.

If those who are elected by a narrow minority cannot reflect the concerns of the broader majority, perhaps it's time to consider the dissolution of the Bitcoin Foundation or the establishment of another more responsive body that pursues a more egalitarian decentralised agenda. I'm probably not the only independent miner who might vote for that, indeed, it's probably the extension of the 'hard fork' thinking - a voice counter to those courting entrenched financial orthodoxy.

You are overestimating capabilities of the devs or any other kind of "elected" entities.
They cannot touch the protocol without getting their changes accepted by the miners - at least by 51% of them.
And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

this only works for so long as BTC is appreciating.

[piotr_n]

You are overestimating capabilities of the devs or any other kind of "elected" entities.
They cannot touch the protocol without getting their changes accepted by the miners - at least by 51% of them.
And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

this only works for so long as BTC is appreciating.

Why? Please explain me why it would not work if BTC wasn't appreciating.

It does not matter whether the BTC price goes up or down.
In any case the miners will do anything to protect it, because they profit in bitcoins.
Bitcoin was actually designed with this exact intent and the design is flawless. Well, at least I don't see how it can fail.

[bluemeanie1]

You are overestimating capabilities of the devs or any other kind of "elected" entities.
They cannot touch the protocol without getting their changes accepted by the miners - at least by 51% of them.
And the miners will do everything they can to protect their interests, which is essentially the value of a single bitcoin.

this only works for so long as BTC is appreciating.

Why? Please explain me why it would not work if BTC wasn't appreciating.

It does not matter whether the BTC price goes up or down.
In any case the miners will do anything to protect it, because they profit in bitcoins.
Bitcoin was actually designed with this exact intent and the design is flawless. Well, at least I don't see how it can fail.

you can't just create value from nothing by computing some hashes.  Typically, when you bring this up, people contend that Bitcoin is 'peer to peer' but we've established that this isn't true.  Bitcoin really delivers precisely NOTHING, but there are so many people invested in it, they keep the appearance of use and value intact.

Earlier someone responded to my post that 'paypal is valuable', and he's right paypal is valuable, but a paypal that requires massive processor banks isn't valuable at all.

This is not really the place where you're going to get a a reasoned argument so it's really not worth putting to much effort into it.  There are loads of publications out there that explain why many of the ideas about Bitcoin simply aren't true.  Most people here are just trying to get Venture Capital money or make a quick buck somehow.  Practically no one uses Bitcoin for real commerce.

[piotr_n]

you can't just create value from nothing by computing some hashes. 

well, the very existence of bitcoin has proven your statement to be totally faulty.
apparently you can create value by computing some hashes, but it isn't "from nothing" - it is actually from computing these hashes...

[bluemeanie1]

you can't just create value from nothing by computing some hashes.  

well, the very existence of bitcoin has proven your statement to be totally faulty.
apparently you can create value by computing some hashes.

but it isn't "from nothing" - it is from computing hashes.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

-Abraham Lincoln

[piotr_n]

Now you sound like my TV

If you think that the value of bitcoin comes from fooling people and not from hashing, then... well, what can I say; everyone has a right to be wrong
But for all I know bitcoins value does come from hashing, because nobody would have trusted a p2p currency that is not properly protected, and the only thing that protects this system is the hashing.

[bluemeanie1]

Now you sound like my TV

If you think that the value of bitcoin comes from fooling people and not from hashing, then... well, what can I say; everyone has a right to be wrong
But for all I know bitcoins value does come from hashing, because nobody would have trusted a p2p currency that is not properly protected, and only the hashing protects this system, nothing else.

didn't we already establish that Bitcoin is not p2p?