Gavin will visit the Council on Foreign Relations

[uranian]

I'm very much a newbie to the bitcoin community, but I can see only one reason that the CFR would want to get involved; to co-opt it in some way. The best way to control the opposition is to lead it.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Gavin visits the aristocracy...

No, I think that is when he goes to the Bilderberger meet-up (not on google meet-ups btw) ...

[Gavin Andresen]

No, I think that is when he goes to the Bilderberger meet-up (not on google meet-ups btw) ...

Bilderberger meetup is in Barbados this year.  But don't tell anybody, it is a secret.


PS to dewdeded: Mike Hearn and I both own non-US passports, so putting us on Team USA is funny. We should be Team Global Conspiracy (mmm... gotta get T-shirts made...).

[Kouye]

Let's be serious. Gavin and the US work together to kill the bitcoin protocol?

That just can't happen. They might kill the current revision of bitcoin protocol. They just cannot make us forget about it.

And I'm sure Gavin is not in the killing process.
He might just be a bit naive and too conciliant.

Because, Gavin, you need to keep in mind we don't owe anything to those people.
They, ultimately, are struggling to keep the power they have acquired over time. And bitcoin will annihilate this.

You can talk to those people, of course. But you don't have to, and this won't be relevant anyway, as they only talk to you to figure out how they could keep some crumbs of that power.

[dewdeded]

I am pretty sure Gavin as private person doesn't want to kill Bitcoin. We know, he is a correct and intelligent guy.

The problems with him are

a) Gavin wants US regulation, US govt want to kill or overtake Bitcoin, when he goes for regulation he helps them killing, thats the problem (like the poster before said, its to naive)

b) he doesn't stop or segregate bad actors like Mike Hearn, thats bad for itself, but the the real problem people have is, if he accepts Hearn, what's next? CIA becoming platinum foundation member? federal reserve bankster get consulting seat at board of directors? some BIP specification and implementation is outsourced to NSA coders?


I think >99% of the community would be happy, if Gavin
a) stops going actively for US regulation and just focusses on development and his job at Coinbase
b) disempowerment Mike Hearn and make it clear, that agents and goverments are not accepted in Bitcoin development and standardization and on the board of the Bitcoin Foundation

[Kouye]

b) he doesn't stop or segregate bad actors like Mike Hearn, thats bad for itself, but the the real problem people have is, if he accepts Hearn, what's next? CIA becoming platinum foundation member? federal reserve bankster get consulting seat at board of directors? some BIP specification and implementation is outsourced the NSA coders?

That's my point. We don't fucking care about where those people come from.
Bitcoin is not just a currency, it's a whole new protocol, a whole new way to embrace value, voting, etc.

And that magic all come from the blockchain, and all the additions/improvements such as PoS.
They can try as hard as they can, they won't be able to kill those concepts, unless they kill everyone knowing about those.
Which won't happen.

Terminate bitcoin? Maybe.
Terminate public-ledger based crypto-currencies? No FUCKING WAY.

[genjix]

Gavin, tainting any worries about powerful vested interests as conspiracy is manipulative. Either you are living a fantasy or being dishonest.

Developers control the software they make. Developers represent interests. It's not conspiracy to be worried that power becomes vested in corporations and mafias *against* the individual and black markets.

There are many deep technical decisions in the software that don't involve changing the protocol, and aren't clear to everybody. Sometimes it might be hard to make a decision one way or the other. When it's not clear, it's easy for corruption to tip the balance in favour of the big guy. And as Bitcoin grows, step by step it deviates, step by step it becomes corrupted.

If you cannot see that, you are living in la la land. Branding others as crazy means you're delusional, not others. Especially now that the Snowden revelations have shown the global adversary as FACT. Currying favour is a weak move based on fear.

You have the choice how you use your time and resources. We decide through individual action. How much are you willing to refuse to do the right thing? How about if it's a small bad for lots of money? It's easy to lose our confidence to hold steadfast and do what's right without justifying corruption in some way if we're not constantly vigilant.

Note: I'm not talking about the meeting. I'm talking about your reference to calling people conspiracy theorists.

[genjix]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-09/13/digital-economy-task-force
"Bitcoin, Tor and Gates Foundation join task force to prevent child exploitation"

I feel like you all actually believe what you're saying which is sad beyond belief.

[justusranvier]

http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-09/13/digital-economy-task-force
"Bitcoin, Tor and Gates Foundation join task force to prevent child exploitation"

I feel like you all actually believe what you're saying which is sad beyond belief.

You didn't quote the most interesting parts.

The Task Force, which launched in August, is not solely focussed on child exploitation. It has developed working groups that aim to combat a range of illicit activities, to safeguard human rights and to encourage inter-agency coordination and law enforcement. It was launched off the back of a report by Thomson Reuters Fraud Prevention and Investigation unit about digital currency laundering.

The report detailed how criminal and terrorist organisations have turned to digital currency to reap profits from drug trafficking, prostitution and the dissemination of child abuse images.

Steve Rubley, managing director, Government Segment for the Legal business of Thomson Reuters points out that the digital economy provides a plethora of new opportunities and is central to how business is conducted but there are also "dark corners" where drug cartels can easily launder money and human sex traffickers operate in near obscurity.

The Task Force will include the Bitcoin Foundation, The Tor Project, Trend Micro, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Cato Institute, The Brookings Institute, the US Agency for International Development and Vital Voices. The group will educate the public and work collaboratively across stakeholder groups including government agencies, law enforcement, academia, NGOs and industry.

A statement released by Thomson Reuters and ICMEC said: "The approach will be a balanced view of both the advantages and disadvantages surrounding the digital economy -- a place where people can enjoy the convenience of digital currencies, but where there are controls in place to regulate them like any other form of money."

[Kouye]

The USA losing its global status as reserve currency is a huge deal that most people do not realize the significances.

Interesting dialog.

You barely belong to those topics. Go back and play your power games with your friends.
This is serious talk, here.
Protocol matters. Not USD/BTC/Lambo exchange rate rants.

[Carlton Banks]

Fixating on the co-opting angle might be missing the point.

The possibility for a bitcoin-like system has existed for a lot longer than is often recognised. Influential power brokers like CFR members will have gamed the options since at least that long ago. Even if it wasn't taken seriously until bitcoin began to get real use, they will have realised that bottling the genie could be an expensive exercise in futility. Global paradigms shift, whether big movers like it or not.

So, what if the plan of these big interests is to accept cryptocurrency and the changes it brings? That could mean that their strategy to capitalise on the outcomes of such a scenario have been in place for some time already.

It might be better to look at this as something that all people who understand the significance of the CFR will be watching. Could the session appear positive for the future of open competition of cryptocurrencies with fiat currencies? Prepare for price movements, and perhaps more market entries from bigger corporate names. Possibly more love-in government hearings, too. Alot of influential governments have said close to zero about bitcoin up to now.

[Patel]

Gavin, please don't be so quick to label us as conspiracy theorists just because we are questioning motives. Watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE-YYG8nrHI

With Mike Hearn pushing for blacklists, and investigating freezing addresses by regulating miners, it doesn't make us completely crazy to think that Bitcoin developers have their own agendas. Mining is already highly centralized anyways, it could happen, and it could be very bad.

As BitCoin matures, mining will become more and more specialized until nearly all blocks are being mined by sophisticated organizations that build farms of custom ASICs near to where electricity is cheap. Perhaps even constructing their own power plants (eg solar or wind) to take advantage of the fact they can use supplies much more bursty than the grid can tolerate. Miners less efficient and dedicated will be rendered unprofitable.

This consolidation is already happening even in the very early years of BitCoins existence. DeepBit, slush and ArtForz alone probably make up >50% of the network and ArtForz is building miners using structured ASICs.

From time to time governments freeze the assets of people or organizations they believe to be criminal. Sometimes this is rather controversial and does not reflect the true consensus of society. Other times, as with dictators and war criminals, there is little or no controversy and the international community co-operates to get the job done. BitCoins apparent inability to do this will certainly make law enforcement uncomfortable with the concept.

But in reality, by the time BitCoin is large enough for this to be a real issue it will be quite possible to freeze bitcoins by requiring miners to exclude transactions from blacklisted addresses. As miners will likely be spread throughout the world, this would require the co-operation of many different governments and a total freeze is impossible (as anyone can mine), but if enough hash power can be made to co-operate the difference between "your tx might confirm in 20 years" vs "your coins are frozen" is pretty small. Because mining will be concentrated in the hands of a small number of legitimate, regulated companies, once an international framework is put in place the actual freeze orders would be enforceable very quickly or even instantly (eg by requiring miners to poll a signed list of addresses from some web site).

Freezing coins by synchronizing the bulk of hashing power works better than attempting to force co-operation from every economic actor (exchangers, merchants etc). The latter is almost impossible because coins can be split and merged in arbitrary ways making it hard to really blacklist a coin. But once an address is frozen by miners, its value can no longer be merged or split.

Whilst I think it's inevitable, this sort of legal framework would ultimately be self regulating and so should not be feared. BitCoin is a system for agreeing on a global consensus around the ordering of transactions. If that consensus is truly a consensus then there will no be real controversy over the freeze orders and few (or no) miners will ignore them. Consider temporarily freezing the assets of Gadaffi or Mubarak as examples.

However, mining can be done anonymously. If the freeze order system were to be abused a group of miners would emerge that were not motivated by profit but rather by ideals. Whilst they would likely not be able to mine as fast as the big ASIC using companies, even reaching 5% of the total network hash power would be enough to allow the coins to be spent, albiet quite slowly. Somebody whose assets were frozen in this way would certainly try and get them out of BitCoin as quickly as possible, though finding a counterparty who would anonymously accept these "slow coins" might be difficult. Most likely, that counterparty would demand a risk premium based on the chance of the political or legal issues being resolved and the coins being unfrozen (eg because the wallet file was seized and the coins can be sent to their rightful owners).

[Coin_Master]

Bilderberger meetup is in Barbados this year.  But don't tell anybody, it is a secret.

I just hope you are the same Gavin when you return from the CFR

[JohnsonRobinson]

Thanks for the advance disclosure Gavin.

FYI: Most recent CFR session mentioning Bitcoin on Nov 21st:

http://www.cfr.org/global/us-economy-fiscal-policy/p31935 (video here)

QUESTION: David Slade, Allen Overy. Could you comment on the significance of our reserve currency status to these issues, and the risk, if any, of our losing that?

REINHART: So a part of the reason there's no pressure on politicians is there's no -- we happen to enjoy the benefits of being the reserve currency historically. The first basic principle of economics applied here is, you can't beat something with nothing, and there's no other alternative obvious reserve currency right now. The euro, perhaps?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Bitcoin? Bitcoin.

REINHART: Bitcoin, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

Well that is interesting.

The USA losing its global status as reserve currency is a huge deal that most people do not realize the significances.

Interesting dialog.

Oh yeah, it's a major deal, because the US' ridonculous money printing right now (85 billion a month), combined with it's declining status as the world's reserve currency (Jim Rickard's 'Currency Wars' is a great read for this) will make for the perfect $US hyperinflation storm here shortly.  

The BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China), along with other nations, more and more no longer trust/want the US dollar (see page 165 of that book for a list of 14 non-trivial developments in this regard).  The tipping point comes when the US defaults on its debts and absolutely noone wants US dollars. Given US debt/money printing, this collapse is inevitable at this point.  When the US defaults, world fiat money will be thrust into chaos, at least for a little while.  This is when the value of other stores of wealth such as precious metals, land,...and of course bitcoin, could go through the roof.

Some might label this as 'conspiracy theorizing' but you can't just sweep US debt / money printing under the carpet.  If the money was going to the average Joe, it would be one thing, but it's going to the insolvent banks and their buddies.

This flight from fiat is accelerating, and the fact that a decentralized currency invention such as Bitcoin is emerging at exactly this time is MAJOR!

Organisations that are rooting for the US dollar and not for Bitcoin include the CFR!

[Gavin Andresen]

I'm usually pretty careful not to call people names.  Did I screw up?

I DO think there are lots of crazy conspiracy theories. I might even believe some of them myself, but that doesn't make me crazy (just "almost certainly wrong.").

RE: child exploitation:  Good example.  We all agree that child exploitation is BAD, right?

We might disagree about what (if anything) we should DO about it, but isn't it worth discussing whether or not there is something we MIGHT do about it?  For example, maybe offering mostly-anonymous bounties to reward anybody who gives information that leads to the arrest and conviction of people abusing children for profit or pleasure is a good idea.  Maybe those bounties could be paid in Bitcoin.

Maybe that is a terrible idea that will have awful consequences, but instead of rational discussion there's a knee-jerk GOVERNMENT BAD! that, in my humble opinion, is counter-productive to making the world a better place.

I don't like people assuming that they know what I'm thinking, or assume that because I'm willing to talk to people that I agree with those people, or assume that because I'm pragmatic about regulation I "want regulation."  For the record:  I'm mostly libertarian, I think we'd be just fine if we replaced 99.911% of regulations with voluntary, private, market-based solutions. But that ain't gonna happen any time soon.

[Kouye]

I'm mostly libertarian

Then why do you lose time to explain the bomb that will ultimately kill them (as in "make them poor and powerless") to those guys?
You've got better things to do, now, really.

And it will happen, no matter what, so...

[dewdeded]

Gavin:

1.) You don't have to help or empower any law enforcement agency. This is not your job. This is their problem. It's not the  problem of our community, if you want to act for us, then it shouldnt be yours.

2.) You are intelligent, you must known

a) they will 100000% extend the list of crimes you(btc foundation) needs to help fighting against (now its child rape, e.g. then its robbery, then its drugs deals, then they add political criminal act, until they arrive at their bullshit programm with copyright infrigements, trademark laws and so on)       

and

b) they will 100000% abuse the controlling/freezing/anticrime/anti whatever technology you develope and implement for them (as they in history did with EVERY spy and monitoring technology, just read your US news papers or websites)

You know deep down in side your heart both a) and b) are true.

So I wonder, why you want to do this. You don't need this, stand up against this bullshit, Mike Hearn and all future other attempts by US agencies


Look at the TOR Project or Wikileaks, their project leaders and all core team devs tell any agencies to fuck off, go away, their will never be cooperation. Do it like them.

Check this video:
http://media.ccc.de/browse/congress/2013/30C3_-_5423_-_en_-_saal_1_-_201312272030_-_the_tor_network_-_jacob_-_arma.html

It's Roger Dingledine and Jacob Appelbaum of Tor project, they describe in it how they handle agency    inquiries. It's pretty inspirering.

[justusranvier]

RE: child exploitation:  Good example.  We all agree that child exploitation is BAD, right?

We might disagree about what (if anything) we should DO about it, but isn't it worth discussing whether or not there is something we MIGHT do about it?  For example, maybe offering mostly-anonymous bounties to reward anybody who gives information that leads to the arrest and conviction of people abusing children for profit or pleasure is a good idea.  Maybe those bounties could be paid in Bitcoin.

I'll make a prediction:

The efforts of the Digital Economy Task Force will save exactly zero children from being exploited.

The spectre of child exploitation will be brandished like a club in order to silence the critics of whatever the task force is really about, just like every other time the "for the children" meme is trotted out.

[RenegadeMind]

For the record:  I'm mostly libertarian, I think we'd be just fine if we replaced 99.911% of regulations with voluntary, private, market-based solutions. But that ain't gonna happen any time soon.

That's good to hear!

But honestly, that they want to talk to you is simply scary.

Afterwards, you'll need to tell us what it was like to be surrounded by Sith.

[marcus_of_augustus]

For the record:  I'm mostly libertarian, I think we'd be just fine if we replaced 99.911% of regulations with voluntary, private, market-based solutions. But that ain't gonna happen any time soon.

That's good to hear!

But honestly, that they want to talk to you is simply scary.

Afterwards, you'll need to tell us what it was like to be surrounded by Sith.