Stealth address with SX (anonymous payments)

[spooderman]

oh ffs.

I'm with Andreas:

"Fuck off. Bitcoin is fine."

[jonald_fyookball]

I'm trying to understand what this is all about.

Does this feature mean I could send to some address,
But no one knows what the address is, except the recipient?

[justusranvier]

Oh look. They are talking about fraud and identity theft.

Hey - so are these people: http://www.govtech.com/security/Drivers-License-for-the-Internet.html

What an amazing coincidence!

[Mike Hearn]

I do not work for Circle. Amir simply made that up. Nor do I intend to work for them. I quit Google to form my own business.

You guys would have a lot more credibility and annoy people a lot less if you didn't define yourselves by who you hate. Especially when to justify it you end up lying to people.

[spooderman]

Mike, if I am mistaken I apologise, but my understanding is that you want to change various aspects of the bitcoin protocol and that you are in favour of endeavours that would colour coins.

Are you? If you have explained this elsewhere please point me there and don't waste your time explaining again.

[Mike Hearn]

The last time I posted on this topic was in this thread:

   https://bitcoinfoundation.org/forum/index.php?/topic/505-coin-tracking/

You can just go read that.

[tvbcof]

Oh look. They are talking about fraud and identity theft.

Hey - so are these people: http://www.govtech.com/security/Drivers-License-for-the-Internet.html

What an amazing coincidence!

Ya, who could have seen this coming???

Of course it would be a wild conspiricy theory to suggest that a population control mechanism like this could ever be used for anything untoward such as interfering with the freedom of action of ideological or political adversaries to those who control the solution.  I'm sure that Mike and Gavin would agree (and would welcome their input.)

Such an 'internet driver's license' solution really is the cat's meow for solving some of the (very real (no BS!)) problems that Bitcoin has.  It is, in fact, a turnkey solution and a great opportunity for Bitcoin to shake it's questionable heritage and climb on-board the mainstream bus.

It's worth note that 'mainstream bus' and 'gravy train' are two workable terms for the same thing to a goodly portion of current Bitcoin stakeholders.  Myself included in the interest of full disclosure.

 - edit: italicize, underline, etc.

[genjix]

http://www.coindesk.com/circle-advisory-board-members-burns-appointment/

"Bitcoin Developer Mike Hearn and Amex VP Michael Barrett Join Circle Team"

well at minimum you're friends / buddies / collaborators. it's like you're obsessed with fucking up bitcoin.

[justusranvier]

http://www.coindesk.com/circle-advisory-board-members-burns-appointment/

"Bitcoin Developer Mike Hearn and Amex VP Michael Barrett Join Circle Team"

That would be hilarious if it wasn't so insulting to everyone's intelligence.

"I don't work for them, I'm just on their advisory board. That's a huge difference you guys."

[genjix]

You guys would have a lot more credibility and annoy people a lot less if you didn't define yourselves by who you hate.

Mike Hearn:

There were private discussions afterwards you weren't privy to where setting a moderation policy [bitcoin-dev mailing list] was debated (drafts were put together, etc), with temporary bans being a part of that. In the end it didn't come to that - this time - as nobody wants to have to spend time on this and the tools kind of suck anyway. But you should be absolutely sure that it was considered. Your [Peter Todd] emails are in no way worth alienating entire communities of developers who would take part, but don't, because of things like this.

wow you really are a massive fascist sociopath.

http://www.mail-archive.com/bitcoin-development%40lists.sourceforge.net/msg04394.html

For what it's worth, if I were the moderator of this list I
would have banned you a long time ago because I value a friendly atmosphere
more than your "insights", which are often deeply suspect (as in this case).

derp, lets have mike hearn (inventor of blacklists, censorship technology and compromised "privacy" schemes) ban peter todd the developer who gave us stealth addresses and coinjoin.

[Mike Hearn]

From the first paragraph:

and Mike Hearn, a lead bitcoin software developer, have officially joined the advisory board

You do know what the word advisor means, right? It means they came to me and said, "we have lots of questions for you, are you willing to answer them?" and I said yes. I've answered questions about Bitcoin for hundreds of people in the past few years without passing judgement on them or being their buddies. Remember, you were once the one asking me questions about how Bitcoin worked.

So, stop lying. How often do you lie about people like this and not get caught? This behaviour does not help you or your cause.

[justusranvier]

wow you really are a massive fascist sociopath.

Speaking of fascist sociopaths, let me tell you a story typical of those I've heard from people who've been involved in the Silicon Valley startup scene:

It's the 90s and a couple of friends take their enthusiasm and ideas with them SV and start pitching. They get a check for a million dollars to fund their startup from an young member of old money family. The friends don't realize it, but their angel investor isn't what he seems. The investor barely talked with them at all, doesn't train them or ask a lot of question about the business. It's almost as if he doesn't care about it at all. A few months into the process of building their startup a few individuals show up. They have business cards from some nondescript company and say they've been retained by the investor to administer "aptitude tests". The young entrepreneurs don't see anything wrong with this and take the test, which turn out to be standard IQ tests with some questions about ethics and empathy thrown in. They never hear anything back from those two again, although later one when of them brings it up to the angel investor all he gets back in return is an offhand comment about them being from "the company".

Years later, when the two friends have moved on to other ventures, they happen to come across a news story about the war in Afghanistan. In this story, a single CIA agent is sent to help some local troops flush out a group of insurgents who are holed up in an underground bunker. The agent orders that the troops to empty the contents of few water truck into the bunker, followed by a truck of gasoline. They then order insurgents to surrender or else have the gasoline ignited around them.

One of the friends turns to the other and says, "Those guys were testing us to see if we were willing to burn people alive, weren't they?"

[Peter Todd]

From the first paragraph:

and Mike Hearn, a lead bitcoin software developer, have officially joined the advisory board

You do know what the word advisor means, right? It means they came to me and said, "we have lots of questions for you, are you willing to answer them?" and I said yes. I've answered questions about Bitcoin for hundreds of people in the past few years without passing judgement on them or being their buddies. Remember, you were once the one asking me questions about how Bitcoin worked.

Good to hear. Of course, you realize that the positions I have with Mastercoin, Dark Wallet, Coinkite, and others are advisory positions as well; as Chief Scientist/Chief Naysayer I am not involved in the day to day operations of any of these organizations. Now I hope comments like the following:

12:31 < jgarzik> But as hearn's most recent link indicated, petertodd has a ton of irons in the fire, and somehow these strenuously argued positions happen to match up with all these contracts behind the scenes
12:32 < jgarzik> Which is fine but IMO deceptive and not in the best interests of all bitcoin users

don't indicate any accusations of personal bias where I might be pushing ideas solely for the benefit of those paying me. So I'd appreciate it if you let Jeff know - I already did but some reinforcement of civility might be appreciated by all.

Along those lines, I've been working to diversify my income and clients sufficiently that would, say, Mastercoin fail I'd have no cause for concern. Similarly I've made a point of not taking significant investment positions in any of these currencies; currently the only non-Bitcoin crypto-assets I own in any significant quantity are about ~$3.5k worth of Litecoins, and ~$2.5k worth of Mastercoins, the latter only due to a misunderstanding about what compensation my contract with Mastercoin included. I'm strongly considering just selling off the latter entirely to maintain my independence, and either changing my contract or simply selling off future MSC as I earn them.

It's only reasonable to ask the same question of you: How is Circle compensating you exactly? Is implementing redlists/blacklists/tying transactions to real-world-identities in their plans? Are you going to financially benefit either directly or indirectly if technologies like that become a success?

[tvbcof]

I'm trying to understand what this is all about.

Does this feature mean I could send to some address,
But no one knows what the address is, except the recipient?

I'm sorry that nobody has yet answered your on-topic and legitimate question.  It's much more fun to have personal and personality battles.  Even if you do seem like kind of a doofus you deserve an answer, and although I'm not the most qualified person to give it, the answer is, in a nutshell shorthand, 'yes'.

[jonald_fyookball]

Thanks for the reply!

I do apologize for wading into a conversation
that is a bit over my head.

if I seem like a Doofus, you're probably right.
I'm miles behind many of you when it comes to
Bitcoin technical knowledge.

Still, I would like to learn more and why not learn
by asking questions -- that's what the forum is for.

The page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Sx/Stealth
is somewhat minimal and I don't understand
why someone couldn't follow the inputs and outputs.

[justusranvier]

The page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Sx/Stealth
is somewhat minimal and I don't understand
why someone couldn't follow the inputs and outputs.

People could publicly advertise their stealth addresses, but nobody would be able to tell which stealth outputs belong to which stealth addresses by examining the blockchain alone.

This looked like it was going to be a very promising feature until someone decided to cut the size of OP_RETURN data in half at the last minute before releasing 0.9.0.

[Carlton Banks]

The page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Sx/Stealth
is somewhat minimal and I don't understand
why someone couldn't follow the inputs and outputs.

People could publicly advertise their stealth addresses, but nobody would be able to tell which stealth outputs belong to which stealth addresses by examining the blockchain alone.

This looked like it was going to be a very promising feature until someone decided to cut the size of OP_RETURN data in half at the last minute before releasing 0.9.0.

Excuse my ignorance also, but how does the SX implementation of stealth addresses work, if it cannot work with Core client when limited to 40 bytes of arbitrary data in a transaction? Using these tricks that embed data in the transaction signature?

[tvbcof]

Thanks for the reply!

I do apologize for wading into a conversation
that is a bit over my head.

if I seem like a Doofus, you're probably right.
I'm miles behind many of you when it comes to
Bitcoin technical knowledge.

Still, I would like to learn more and why not learn
by asking questions -- that's what the forum is for.

The page https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Sx/Stealth
is somewhat minimal and I don't understand
why someone couldn't follow the inputs and outputs.

My 'doofus' comment had nothing to do with technical aspects or even Bitcoin.  I just sort of remember disagreeing with your sentiments on other political or economic bullshit or something.  I respect anyone who wishes to try to understand things from a technical level.

(I suspect that) one of the ways Bitcoin will be attacked is to attempt to use complex analytical techniques to map individuals to addresses (if not simply mandate it and dis-allow mainstream retailers from using Bitcoin unless addresses are mapped...the 'internet drivers license' discussions above.)

A matrix of mapped identities to addresses is a big problem, but nothing that people who have so-called 'big data' capabilities cannot handle.

SX (in my understanding of things) throws a huge monkey-wrench into the types of analysis that are most convenient, and probably have the potential to make certain kinds of analysis and mappings impossible.

As I mentioned in other notes, one of the most amusing things I saw at a Bitcoin convention a year ago was the expression on certain key figure's faces when they realized that an audience question was about exchanging private keys.  Normally such a thing would be dangerous (for one party at least), and that could have accounted for the alarm.  I tend to feel that the alarm was more associated with the thought of what that would do to taint analysis (which was, on that panel at least, very positively promoted as a no-brainer in 'fighting crime.')

What SX does (again, in my read of things) is systematically and safely allow exchange of values using the 'non-standard' method of using private keys.  It also does so in a way which loses some information which would be required in order to have a hope of repairing the user/value_transfer mapping.

[justusranvier]

Excuse my ignorance also, but how does the SX implementation of stealth addresses work, if it cannot work with Core client when limited to 40 bytes of arbitrary data in a transaction? Using these tricks that embed data in the transaction signature?

As I understand it the secret exchange has to happen out-of-band now instead of happening in the blockchain itself.

It doesn't kill the feature, but does make it less usable.

[jonald_fyookball]

Tvbcof, So it sounds like you are saying SX lets you put money into a separate wallet and then essentially give that wallet to someone.

Justusranvier, your explanation sounds like it's more of an internal tumbler built into bitcoin.

But those 2 ideas sound like different things.