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[BlackHatCoiner]

Hmm.  The CEO of Chainalysis (Michael Gronager) is attending at the WEF 2023 event.  Just so you know which side he is on.

I wouldn't think otherwise if you hadn't provided this link. The CEO of Chainalysis must have had some crazy government acres, considering he's been part of the USA government spending, lol. $55.4 million dollars, just for one spying company.

But Bitcoin.. well, is Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not Monero. What kind of exchange are you if you don't offer Bitcoin?

No exchange. If people don't care about their privacy, and you force it on the protocol, expect a new bill from both parties that treats Bitcoin as illegal activity (or some other nonsense), before tomorrow morning. I believe it will pass.

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[Wind_FURY]

It would be so laughable for us plebs to preach permissionlessness, and censorship-resistance, then also demand what Bitcoin should be used for or who should use it. What would be the purpose of POW, if Bitcoin is to only be used like PayPal?

I am not saying we should demand or disallow anything. It's your money and your choices. I am just saying there are better ways to market this economy than talking about dark markets. If your parents asked you to explain what bitcoin is used for, you aren't going to tell them it makes it easier for you to get heroin, meth, and fake IDs from underground forums.

Instead, tell them about borderless payments, cheap fees regardless of the amounts being sent, the speed of transaction finality, or the irreversible nature of it. Although, even the irreversibility is a feature that could scare people away, and they could instead consider it a fault or a weakness. Especially if a bank helped them correct some mistakes they made at one point in the past. 

But Bitcoin isn't a "product" or a "service", no? The reason that it should be "marketed more positively" is moot, and probably concerns mostly those who want their investment to surge in value. I would not be telling you the truth if I said I don't care about the price, BUT I'm a believer that Bitcoin will surge because of its own worthiness as a censorship-resistant, decentralized cryptocurrency. It will be used where it will be needed to be used.

The Darknet Market, and ransomware are a killer apps for Bitcoin, plus anyone who truly understood it and got it, would either use the technology or invest in Bitcoin with good reason.

[Kruw]

Wasabi Wallet v2.0.2.2 is out which is a minor release for bug fixes that would cause your wallet to freeze on sync.

Release notes: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/releases/tag/v2.0.2.2

[NotATether]

Hmm.  The CEO of Chainalysis (Michael Gronager) is attending at the WEF 2023 event.  Just so you know which side he is on.

As far as I know, he is not directly connected with Wasabi and other Bitcoin wallets.
WEF is one of the main promoters of CBDC crap, and I bet someone from ethereum shitcoin foundation will be there, it's one of their favorite little projects for a while.
It's ''good'' to hear 5000 swiss army soldiers, fighter jets, plus their private security will protect all this ''nice'' guys having good time and playing world economic fun games, while there is no-fly zone during this event.
I wonder why are they so afraid of regular people...

WEF is a place where rich people can make science projects and money experiments that never take off. A big waste of time. So much that Elon Musk (arguably a real scientist) does not even go there.

You can't make anything with just a bunch of heads. A person needs legs, arms, body etc. to function. And same with companies. So bringing a bunch of CEOs to one meeting basically makes it a "rolling heads" conference.

Old post but I thought I'd just mention that.

Wasabi Wallet v2.0.2.2 is out which is a minor release for bug fixes that would cause your wallet to freeze on sync.

Release notes: https://github.com/zkSNACKs/WalletWasabi/releases/tag/v2.0.2.2

Since when did zkSNACKs start owning the Wasabi Wallet repository?

[o_e_l_e_o]

Since when did zkSNACKs start owning the Wasabi Wallet repository?

This has always been the case.

[dkbit98]

In light of chipmixer aftermath, I found interesting tweets posted recently by @btcdragonlord, who is writing articles on BitcoinMagazine.
This is his own opinion, but he explained what happened with Wasabi in last few years, and he is talking about other alternatives for Bitcoin privacy.
What stick with me was last thing he said, and I tend to agree with this... we might be little too late already, but we still have decentralized JoinMarket and I hope more people work on that, making it easier to use for regular people.

Privacy as we can see is constantly now under attack from all fronts, even within our space. But developers are not a plenty and it is not likely we going to see more projects coming around to start developing privacy solutions for us. It might be little too late already.

https://twitter.com/btcdragonlord/status/1635521127748362240

[pooya87]

zkSNACKs Ltd. as of 2021 was registered in Gibraltar and was operating in compliant way with all regulations and was able to operate and take income and pay wages to employees.

The problems started happening when people started asking questions.

The problem is the centralization where there is a company that is trying to make money from a software (Wasabi wallet) they've created. If the things get worse with crackdowns the same thing could happen to other centralized companies that have created "regular" wallets like Coinomi. In other words it is not even a privacy-wallet related issue.

The governments will put pressure on these companies (as the centralized point of failure) and demand they comply with whatever they say. They won't stop there either, they will put pressure on any known entity they can get their hands on. I personally believe that the reasons why some core devs have acted strangely is this, like the recent case where one of them advised bitcoin LN nodes start censoring transactions from certain countries!

[ABCbits]

In light of chipmixer aftermath, I found interesting tweets posted recently by @btcdragonlord, who is writing articles on BitcoinMagazine.
This is his own opinion, but he explained what happened with Wasabi in last few years, and he is talking about other alternatives for Bitcoin privacy.
What stick with me was last thing he said, and I tend to agree with this... we might be little too late already, but we still have decentralized JoinMarket and I hope more people work on that, making it easier to use for regular people.

Privacy as we can see is constantly now under attack from all fronts, even within our space. But developers are not a plenty and it is not likely we going to see more projects coming around to start developing privacy solutions for us. It might be little too late already.

https://twitter.com/btcdragonlord/status/1635521127748362240

IMO this story should be shared by zkSNACKs much sooner. Even so, it's still a shame they decide to choose blacklist feature rather than either,
1. Shut down their service and list community coordinator on their wallet.
2. Stop taking profit and use different means of income (e.g. donation).

[dkbit98]

IMO this story should be shared by zkSNACKs much sooner. Even so, it's still a shame they decide to choose blacklist feature rather than either,

Problem is much deeper than that because they have all public developers and team members exposed in public.
I wouldn't be surprised if authorities try to shut down Wasabi in future, and at that point it's possible we could see community coordinators gaining more popularity with people.
Maybe better option is working on good web interface for JoinMarket, Jam is a good example:
https://jamapp.org/

[Wind_FURY]

zkSNACKs Ltd. as of 2021 was registered in Gibraltar and was operating in compliant way with all regulations and was able to operate and take income and pay wages to employees.

The problems started happening when people started asking questions.

The problem is the centralization where there is a company that is trying to make money from a software (Wasabi wallet) they've created. If the things get worse with crackdowns the same thing could happen to other centralized companies that have created "regular" wallets like Coinomi. In other words it is not even a privacy-wallet related issue.

The governments will put pressure on these companies (as the centralized point of failure) and demand they comply with whatever they say. They won't stop there either, they will put pressure on any known entity they can get their hands on. I personally believe that the reasons why some core devs have acted strangely is this, like the recent case where one of them advised bitcoin LN nodes start censoring transactions from certain countries!

That's why Wasabi decided to take the trade-off of blocking transactions from "nefarious sources" that's "according to" blockchain analysis companies. Wasabi believes that it gives them a layer of security. But does it truly give them a layer of security? It's currently working, but we can't be sure for how long.

[Pmalek]

I wouldn't be surprised if authorities try to shut down Wasabi in future...

I don't think it's high up on their priority list. Wasabi's resume shows a willingness to cooperate if needed or even voluntarily before it is needed. I am saying that because they claimed no one was putting pressure on them or asking that they introduce restrictive measures. The problem is, the coins their blockchain analysis partner tags as clean, get tagged as dirty on some centralized exchanges who have their own rules what is tainted and what isn't. Your dirt is dirtier than my dirt.   

[Hispo]

I wouldn't be surprised if authorities try to shut down Wasabi in future...

I don't think it's high up on their priority list. Wasabi's resume shows a willingness to cooperate if needed or even voluntarily before it is needed. I am saying that because they claimed no one was putting pressure on them or asking that they introduce restrictive measures. The problem is, the coins their blockchain analysis partner tags as clean, get tagged as dirty on some centralized exchanges who have their own rules what is tainted and what isn't. Your dirt is dirtier than my dirt.   

I also think that is going to be the next step of those who are against the privacy of Bitcoin on chain. It is more likely they will go after the liquidity on exchanges rather that pressure developers.
It is simpler and straight-forward for them, besides, since the software wallets and alike are supposed to be open source, it would be tricky to implement back doors somehow.

The battling grounds will be on the exchanges and also on the use of future proprietary operative systems iterations, like Windows 11-12, so there will be a stealth notification if the system detects the installation of specific software, like Wasabi Wallet or Trezor Bridge.

[pooya87]

~
That's why Wasabi decided to take the trade-off of blocking transactions from "nefarious sources" that's "according to" blockchain analysis companies. Wasabi believes that it gives them a layer of security. But does it truly give them a layer of security? It's currently working, but we can't be sure for how long.

That's right but I'm afraid the guys behind Wasabi wallet are doing a lot more than just censoring certain transactions. They may be fully cooperating with the government(s) and other agencies in deanonymizing all the transactions that go through their centralized "mixing" coordinator servers.

[Kruw]

~
That's why Wasabi decided to take the trade-off of blocking transactions from "nefarious sources" that's "according to" blockchain analysis companies. Wasabi believes that it gives them a layer of security. But does it truly give them a layer of security? It's currently working, but we can't be sure for how long.

That's right but I'm afraid the guys behind Wasabi wallet are doing a lot more than just censoring certain transactions. They may be fully cooperating with the government(s) and other agencies in deanonymizing all the transactions that go through their centralized "mixing" coordinator servers.

That's not at all how a coinjoin transaction works, coordinators do not have the ability to deanonymize the participants of a coinjoin even if they wanted to.  There's no "centralized mixing coordinator servers" either, a coinjoin transaction is signed by each client participating in the round, all a coinjoin coordinator does is just take messages from the previous client and passes it to the next client for each of them to sign.

[o_e_l_e_o]

What stick with me was last thing he said, and I tend to agree with this... we might be little too late already, but we still have decentralized JoinMarket and I hope more people work on that, making it easier to use for regular people.

This is the biggest area for development right now. JoinMarket is a great, but setting it up for the average user is just not possible. It's easy enough for most of us who are familiar with Linux or have something like Umbrel which it can easily be deployed on, but for your average user? Compare to simply downloading an app and being good to go, it's easy to see which option many users will pick, even if said app is vastly inferior and is indeed anti-privacy at its core. JoinMarket needs a one-click install (or similar) for all OSs in order to go properly mainstream.

like the recent case where one of them advised bitcoin LN nodes start censoring transactions from certain countries!

To be fair to Matt, he isn't actually pro-censorship but was highlight the issues with LNURL over BOLT12.

Wasabi believes that it gives them a layer of security. But does it truly give them a layer of security?

All it gives is the knowledge to various governments that they are easily bought and can be easily coerced in to implementing ever more draconian nonsense in the future.

That's not at all how a coinjoin transaction works, coordinators do not have the ability to deanonymize the participants of a coinjoin even if they wanted to.

Except of course when Wasabi reuses address and combines mixed outputs with unmixed inputs...

[Wind_FURY]

~
That's why Wasabi decided to take the trade-off of blocking transactions from "nefarious sources" that's "according to" blockchain analysis companies. Wasabi believes that it gives them a layer of security. But does it truly give them a layer of security? It's currently working, but we can't be sure for how long.

That's right but I'm afraid the guys behind Wasabi wallet are doing a lot more than just censoring certain transactions. They may be fully cooperating with the government(s) and other agencies in deanonymizing all the transactions that go through their centralized "mixing" coordinator servers.

I don't want go into that topic without proof, because if you accuse one centralized service, you can accuse them all. Plus with WasabiWallet, what's the point of being a honey pot? They block transactions from "nefarious sources", and no user from the Darknet Markets, Ransomware Market, or holders of stolen outputs would be stupid to go tumble them through Wasabi.

[Pmalek]

Plus with WasabiWallet, what's the point of being a honey pot? They block transactions from "nefarious sources", and no user from the Darknet Markets, Ransomware Market, or holders of stolen outputs would be stupid to go tumble them through Wasabi.

Because we are now in a place where if we want privacy, we are surely trying to hide something. That's how the ruling classes look at those seeking privacy. Why can't you be more like the rest of the 99% of population that doesn't mind that we (your government) looks into everything you do? Since you are trying to break the history of your coins, we (the caring government) must keep an eye on you. We only do that as a fight against terrorism, money laundering, and because it's a national security issue, obviously.

[Porfirii]

I buy my food in a local store that accepts Bitcoin as a means of payment. As my income comes from the signature campaign, my deposit address is public in this forum, and I don't want the owner of the store to know my virtual identity, I have been using Wasabi for a long time.

I understand that some people may be using this service for nefarious purposes, but we are returning to the eternal dilemma: is total control on the population worth to catch a few criminals? why don't they simply strengthen traditional methods to catch them and leave the other normal people in peace? because we have reached a point in the state of the art where global control is more efficient, I guess. But, doesn't this go against the inherent human rights? People is not aware of what can be done with their economical data.

For example, I am witnessing how supermarkets in my country are raising the prices of some products more than 50% in the last year, and this could not have been done without all the information they've collected thanks to their loyalty cards. By giving away our data we are giving not only Governments, but also big companies, an even greater advantage on the individuals, and the ability to do whatever they want with us. In an ideal world, this would be used for common benefit. But I don't think we live there.

[o_e_l_e_o]

We only do that as a fight against terrorism, money laundering, and because it's a national security issue, obviously.

Don't forget the children! Why won't anyone think of the children!

And while you are busy thinking of the children, make sure you turn a blind eye to the fact that the NSA have been unable to point to a single incident in which their mass surveillance programs have led to the prevention of a terrorist attack. It's almost like they are actually conducting mass surveillance for a different purpose!

because we have reached a point in the state of the art where global control is more efficient, I guess.

I've lost track at how many times I've shared this quote on the forum, but you are absolutely right:

The old cliché is often mocked though basically true: there’s no reason to worry about surveillance if you have nothing to hide. That mindset creates the incentive to be as compliant and inconspicuous as possible: those who think that way decide it’s in their best interests to provide authorities with as little reason as possible to care about them. That’s accomplished by never stepping out of line. Those willing to live their lives that way will be indifferent to the loss of privacy because they feel that they lose nothing from it. Above all else, that’s what a Surveillance State does: it breeds fear of doing anything out of the ordinary by creating a class of meek citizens who know they are being constantly watched.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Because we are now in a place where if we want privacy, we are surely trying to hide something.

You do want to hide something-- and that's okay. Privacy is exactly that; hiding information from entities you disapprove of. I don't understand why "trying to hide" is negatively interpreted.

I buy my food in a local store that accepts Bitcoin as a means of payment. As my income comes from the signature campaign, my deposit address is public in this forum, and I don't want the owner of the store to know my virtual identity, I have been using Wasabi for a long time.

For coinjoins, I suggest you look onto JoinMarket. It's decentralized, more flexible with coinjoin sizes, has better fee structure, and of course isn't prone to blacklisting certain outputs. If you can't stand of the terminal, there is a UI now, called Jam. I haven't tried it yet to see how easy it is to setup.

For example, I am witnessing how supermarkets in my country are raising the prices of some products more than 50% in the last year, and this could not have been done without all the information they've collected thanks to their loyalty cards.

Supermarkets have been raising prices due to inflation. I can't see how the fact that they might have collected personal information about their clients is related.