I just read about Mike Hearns black-list (red-list) idea:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qmbtu/mike_hearn_chair_of_the_bitcoin_foundations_law/I want to make clear that I am not a fan of black-lists (or red-list like they are called now for better PR). I also did not tag these addresses yet and probably will not do it, as it will not help and will lead to such kind of black-lists.
In fact it is a difficult topic: If you are a victim easily your personal interest are getting more important to you then the principles of a free and decentralized currency.
It seems to me that some of the inner circle of the core devs of bitcoin are likely to act in a fashion which limits the liberty of bitcoin.
Then probably it is the time to look out for alt coins which comes with more anonymity/privacy. But unfortunately these alt coins does not have that enormous hash power BTC has today and could easily be attacked by a 51% attack. Even if the entity controlling > 50% does not do any harm and stay invisible, they have the control over the alt coin when it would gain higher adoption.
Imagine that people using more and more of one of these altcoins (don't know yet which offers best anonymity and privacy, zero coin is still alpha) and the market cap. grows to something like bitcoin. The government invests early into that altcoin and is mining more then 50% but let it rise until the market cap. is really high. Then some day they do the attack, corrupt all the network and make the altcoin worthless in a day. Huge shock for many people.
BTC was brought down by an alt coin promising higher anonymity, but the government was that time faster and did not miss to take over the control.
So the 2 main security holes in BTC had been exploited (the 3. is the power of the mining pools IMHO):
1. The power of the core devs: If they start to do something in a more government friendly but less BTC liberty friendly way, people will change over to a better money. An altcoin promising to give these features, could become the new BTC (also could be used for laundry).
2. The 51% attack is easy when the market cap is low but pretty difficult if it is already at a level like with BTC today. With such a new rising alt coin the government could invest early and take over invisible the control.
Of course there are other possible solutions:
- Laundry services
- On top of BTC features (?)
- Built in in BTC anonymity (zero coin?)
Just my 2 cents about that topic.
I know it is a difficult topic, and stories like the following I suppose we will see more often in future (some probably pure PR inventions):
"a little old lady was trying to buy bitcoins via the Canada ATM because she got a CryptoLocker infection. She has no clue what Bitcoin is beyond the fact that she needed some and didn't know what to do."
At the end it touches probably a much deeper problem. Crime in general.
Why is these crime coming more often from poor countries?
If you are in a country like Ukraine you have to take care much more rather then if you are living in Switzerland.
With a global accessible currency like Bitcoin we getting closer with anyone in the world. So the crime rate of these countries touches us directly. There are no borders and walls and long distances to keep us safe from them.
But if we want to live in peace and without fear the only solution will be to eliminate the reasons for the crime. And the main reason for crime is poorness and lack of education (which leads to poorness).
So why not think further and think of ways how the Bitcoin community could help to make the world a more fair place with more equal chances.
If Bitcoin really becomes the global world currency 1 BTC will be probably worth a fortune (some say 100 000 - 1 000 000 USD -
http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/).
So many of us will become super rich. Will that shift of wealth lead us to a better world? There will be winners (early adopters) and loosers (people with less access to IT). What are we doing to help those who are far away from understanding something like BTC?
BTC will cahnge the banks, but I dont think it will kill them. the banks are clever enough and tech-affine enough to get early enough into the boat, and will not be the big looser from BTC.
The big loosers will be in places without IT infrastructure, people how still are using only the absolute minimum of modern communication tools.
So I think BTC needs to stay clean from politics and law enforcement tasks. Politics had not created a really fair world in the past so why they should in the future?
Maybe we need something like BTC (how it will change the finance industry) for politics?
The pirate party (with liquid democracy) is the only light what is see in that direction, but maybe it needs a much more profound change in that area.
To fight crime we need other politics not other money.
