The Banking senate hearing (at one point hinting at going after code commiters)

[hemzer]

https://www.banking.senate.gov/hearings/cryptocurrencies-what-are-they-good-for

At one point the lady Ms. Walsh hints that governments should go after code committers.
Is this a weakness/threat/vulnerability for all open source projects when ever the incumbent power holders are threatened by it?  eg: Like Bitcoin?

[1715255928]

1715255928

[1715255928]

1715255928

[1715255928]

1715255928

[1715255928]

1715255928

[dkbit98]

At one point the lady Ms. Walsh hints that governments should go after code committers.
Is this a weakness/threat/vulnerability for all open source projects when ever the incumbent power holders are threatened by it?  eg: Like Bitcoin?

How can they go after developers and code committers if they are anonymous, if they are using Tor, and if nobody can find their real location?
Sure they can always ban their accounts, but they are not doing anything illegal and this is not a single point of failure because there are many Bitcoin developers, and Bitcoin code is working perfectly fine for years, even now without any new updates, and it will work fine in future.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

At one point the lady Ms. Walsh hints that governments should go after code committers.

No, she does not 'hint at' much less say that.

If you read her testimony before the senate,  she does say that the developers need to realize that they have fiduciary responsibilities in that they must be acting for the greater good of those who use their code to create and use crypto coins.

To me that is a very valid point and in my opinion the devs behind Bitcoin Core do that.

She says (emphasis mine)

In my view, the governance of crypto systems is critical to understand – who has power, how may it be exercised, and what are the limits of power? Since crypto systems emerged with Bitcoin, a dominant thread of the conversation about them has been that they are “decentralized,” and therefore lack sites of meaningful power. You may have heard that in crypto systems, you don’t have to trust humans and their fallible, corrupt natures – you just have to trust math. If I have one message for the Committee today, it is that this statement is just inaccurate.

Cryptoeconomic systems remain subject to human flaws and corruption, whether in how the software is coded, whether the game theory designed to operate the system is robust, or whether miners collude to exploit their power to order transactions in the blockchain record to their benefit. Since Bitcoin’s 2009 launch, events across the crypto ecosystem have demonstrated time and again that parties within crypto systems (not just those intermediaries outside the systems like exchanges or wallet providers) exercise meaningful power.
 

In short, it is also a fact that most (but not all) of the folks behind the myriad of altcoins DO NOT feel that they have ANY fiduciary responsibilities and as such act only in their self-interest (can you say shitcoin pump-n-dump schemes?). It is because of those crypto coin developers acting irresponsibly and all too often, fraudulently, that she has concerns which may need to be addressed through legislation.

Overall I found her testimony to be refreshingly fair and neutral, both acknowledging what crypto can bring to the table as a useful currency tool while also being fully aware of possible negative aspects that would be detrimental to its use. Not once did she even hint at the usual 'bad/illegal uses' boogeymen that the media love to jump on for eyeball or click bait. Kudos to her for that!

[Ucy]

This is actually one of the reasons we should protect the privacy of programmers, especially the independent ones who are mostly involved in good open-source autonomous projects that entities feel threatened by.
You could build systems that really protect their privacy while still able to hold the programmers accountable for their bad behavior.

[Hydrogen]

At one point the lady Ms. Walsh hints that governments should go after code committers.

I can't prove it. But suspect they've put pressure on Elon Musk to lie about bitcoin's carbon footprint.

Programmers in the cryptography sector (encryption) have been targeted by governments of the world for many years. The idea of legislators putting pressure on private citizens, in order to push dubious political agendas may sound outlandish and unrealistic to some. In reality, it could be a completely normalized process. A standard procedure which could have been in place for many years.

Mark Zuckenberg may have had pressure put on him for continuuing to push libracoin despite considerable resistance to it from regulators. Jeff Bezos may have stepped down as amazon CEO after having pressure put on him for many years.

Crypto miners may have been pressured to do strange things that have been documented. Such as filling 1 megabyte bitcoin blocks to 30% or less of full capacity. In order to push the strange agenda behind bigger blocks.

[OgNasty]

If you read her testimony before the senate,  she does say that the developers need to realize that they have fiduciary responsibilities in that they must be acting for the greater good of those who use their code to create crypto coins.

To me that is a very valid point and in my opinion the devs behind Bitcoin Core do that.

Fiduciary duty is a tricky thing with multiple perspectives. From the business community’s perspective at the time the developers did not do their duty with regards to limiting transactions with a blocksize limit that rendered many Bitcoin businesses unable to continue their business models.

I think in this case she’s referring to fiduciary duty to those that use their code from her perspective of making sure proper laws and regulations are forcibly adhered to.

[kaggie]

Fiduciary duty is a tricky thing with multiple perspectives. From the business community’s perspective at the time the developers did not do their duty with regards to limiting transactions with a blocksize limit that rendered many Bitcoin businesses unable to continue their business models.

I think in this case she’s referring to fiduciary duty to those that use their code from her perspective of making sure proper laws and regulations are forcibly adhered to.

If you were government, you would want the ability to reverse transactions due to fraud.
It could mean that.
Of course, this breaks the point of crypto, which is to have a democratic peer to peer ledger.
And you'd have to have some authority to prove that to (which a government would try to claim).

That sort of thing would cause a fork in the country that tried to enforce that, with that country's fork lowering in value.
Eventually, those people who owned on both forks would move their larger holdings to the stronger peer to peer fork.

You can apply pressure on bitcoin exchanges and websites, but it would only result in forks that all delay the inevitable.

There are certainly plenty of regulations that should be considered. The pump and dump schemes of shitcoins hurt everyone.
There are also more visionary methods that a politician could take to improve the accountability of everyone through crypto -- including themselves.

[WePiggy]

Shadowy developers creating a decentralised asset Vs Shadowy politicians printing money at will that makes their population poorer.

I'd have to put my trust in the code committers, their intentions of helping people living in countries with corrupt governments gives them a thumbs up from me

[hatshepsut93]

However it is also a fact that most (but not all) of the folks behind the myriad of altcoins DO NOT think that they have ANY fiduciary responsibilities and as such act only in their self-interest (can you say shitcoin pump-n-dump schemes?). It is because of those crypto coin developers acting irresponsibly and all too often, fraudulently, that she has concerns which may need to be addressed through legislation.

But what it would mean in reality? That developers must comply with regulations before releasing open-source software? I don't see how this can be enforced, especially since crypto is a global phenomenon that ignores borders. Best they can do is to tell exchanges which coins to list, but we're already in era of decentralized exchanges, so even that won't prevent people from investng in scamcoins.

[NotFuzzyWarm]

However it is also a fact that most (but not all) of the folks behind the myriad of altcoins DO NOT think that they have ANY fiduciary responsibilities and as such act only in their self-interest (can you say shitcoin pump-n-dump schemes?). It is because of those crypto coin developers acting irresponsibly and all too often, fraudulently, that she has concerns which may need to be addressed through legislation.

But what it would mean in reality? That developers must comply with regulations before releasing open-source software? I don't see how this can be enforced, especially since crypto is a global phenomenon that ignores borders. Best they can do is to tell exchanges which coins to list, but we're already in era of decentralized exchanges, so even that won't prevent people from investng in scamcoins.

To me it is not so much the actual software used be it Core or some bastardized mutation of it tweaked for an altcoin  -- it is what coin/token/whatnot the software is applied to and who in turn are the operators of the BUSINESS behind said coins. What is the business model? What is the point of the coin? How is the tweaked code for it maintained (and by who/how?)

Being the forerunners that gave birth to the crypto currency revolution, BTC and a few alts such as Litecoin and ETH were lucky enough to skate under those regulatory questions and have been ran openly enough, well enough, and long enough to gain the wide acceptance and for the most part at least quasi-legal status they currently enjoy. The disgusting afterbirth of ICO's/tokens/etc - and the scammy pump-n-dump nature of the vast majority of them - has now brought the need for regulation. As Binance and other exchanges have found out when they also opened up trading platforms, they are securities and as such now are treated and regulated for what they are - securities investments.

[hemzer]

How can they go after developers and code committers if they are anonymous, if they are using Tor, and if nobody can find their real location?

Not all developers are but Code committers are listed and traceable at present.   

Sure they can always ban their accounts, but they are not doing anything illegal,

Your definition of legal may be different from the Bankers/Governments and trust me it is an entity that does not care about the regular Joe.

[hemzer]

she does say that the developers need to realize that they have fiduciary responsibilities in that they must be acting for the greater good of those who use their code to create and use crypto coins.

To me that is a very valid point and in my opinion the devs behind Bitcoin Core do that.


 

Isn't this in itself a weak link? Is Bitcoin at the mercy of devs?
Then what is the difference between a bunch of devs colluding vs a bunch of bankers colluding?
Isn't consensus between all devs/miners/node that keep it honest?
In my opinion committers more than devs/miners have to go anonymous.

[dkbit98]

Problem is that this crazy regulators are now going after everything Bitcoin crypto related and they plan to raise $28 billion from crypto after new Congress proposal.
Any software like wallets, hardware wallets, multisig providers, holders and potentially even miners will be affected by new tax regulations!
I see people and business leaving United States in masses because of this, but it's probably going to expand to corrupted construct of European Union and other parts of the world soon, if people don't intervene:
https://www.coindesk.com/new-infrastructure-bill-looks-to-raise-30b-through-crypto-taxes  

[ranochigo]

I can't prove it. But suspect they've put pressure on Elon Musk to lie about bitcoin's carbon footprint.

Probably never happened. Elon Musk never lied about the carbon footprint of Bitcoin and it is nothing out of the ordinary that he wouldn't do.

Crypto miners may have been pressured to do strange things that have been documented. Such as filling 1 megabyte bitcoin blocks to 30% or less of full capacity. In order to push the strange agenda behind bigger blocks.

This is just bull. Miners has never actually done anything like this to manipulate the perception of the community during the block size debate. Isn't it quite obvious if miners try to pull off something like this? There wasn't anything that suggests bigger blocks would compromise the network, it is just purely politics that doesn't benefit any state.

Isn't this in itself a weak link? Is Bitcoin at the mercy of devs?
Then what is the difference between a bunch of devs colluding vs a bunch of bankers colluding?
Isn't consensus between all devs/miners/node that keep it honest?
In my opinion committers more than devs/miners have to go anonymous.

Devs have the power to implement changes and merging them into the reference client, this also means that since majority of the community rely solely on the reference client, they are thought to have more power than most. Good thing is that, you can choose to run them or not, if you don't like their changes, don't run it and you form an altcoin. Most changes aren't forced upon the community, miners are still voting for it and discussions are conducted in quite a transparent manner as well.

[yazher]

This is actually one of the reasons we should protect the privacy of programmers, especially the independent ones who are mostly involved in good open-source autonomous projects that entities feel threatened by.
You could build systems that really protect their privacy while still able to hold the programmers accountable for their bad behavior.

Yeah! it should be balanced though, we could not let those who do illegal actions easily hide with those who act righteously. They need to pay for their actions to prevent them from scamming people every day like those fake call centers in India where they are proud to scam people with their so-called tech service. If the senate pays attention to this one, their citizens will not be fallen victim to the foreign scammers anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6a0yvRV4pQ&ab_channel=Kitboga

[Kakmakr]

What are they going to charge them for?.... that is the big question. Remember ...Satoshi Nakomoto committed a fully functioned code for the Protocol and the other developers just tweaked the code to be more representable to the coding community, because Satoshi Nakamoto's code was sloppy. 

Also, Open-source projects like this has anonymous contributors ..... and then well known developers like Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn.. so are they only going to go after the known developers? (Will this not force future developers on Open-source projects to go fully anonymous in the future) ..... this will backfire badly for them. 

The Banks are looking for some kind of retribution for the "red face" humiliation it received for being the reason for this whole experiment. (Satoshi Nakamoto did this to give them competition and to remove their hold on people's wealth)

[hazenyc]

At one point the lady Ms. Walsh hints that governments should go after code committers.

No, she does not 'hint at' much less say that.

If you read her testimony before the senate,  she does say that the developers need to realize that they have fiduciary responsibilities in that they must be acting for the greater good of those who use their code to create and use crypto coins.

To me that is a very valid point and in my opinion the devs behind Bitcoin Core do that.

She says (emphasis mine)

In my view, the governance of crypto systems is critical to understand – who has power, how may it be exercised, and what are the limits of power? Since crypto systems emerged with Bitcoin, a dominant thread of the conversation about them has been that they are “decentralized,” and therefore lack sites of meaningful power. You may have heard that in crypto systems, you don’t have to trust humans and their fallible, corrupt natures – you just have to trust math. If I have one message for the Committee today, it is that this statement is just inaccurate.

Cryptoeconomic systems remain subject to human flaws and corruption, whether in how the software is coded, whether the game theory designed to operate the system is robust, or whether miners collude to exploit their power to order transactions in the blockchain record to their benefit. Since Bitcoin’s 2009 launch, events across the crypto ecosystem have demonstrated time and again that parties within crypto systems (not just those intermediaries outside the systems like exchanges or wallet providers) exercise meaningful power.
 

In short, it is also a fact that most (but not all) of the folks behind the myriad of altcoins DO NOT feel that they have ANY fiduciary responsibilities and as such act only in their self-interest (can you say shitcoin pump-n-dump schemes?). It is because of those crypto coin developers acting irresponsibly and all too often, fraudulently, that she has concerns which may need to be addressed through legislation.

Overall I found her testimony to be refreshingly fair and neutral, both acknowledging what crypto can bring to the table as a useful currency tool while also being fully aware of possible negative aspects that would be detrimental to its use. Not once did she even hint at the usual 'bad/illegal uses' boogeymen that the media love to jump on for eyeball or click bait. Kudos to her for that!

You hit the nail on the head, but I see another issue arising: if they decide to pass legislation concerning code committers, it can very quickly end in a slippery slope problem. Where do you draw the line? For now code committers are protected no matter what. Sure there are bad ones and good ones as is so often the case in life. Some will use Facebook for bad, many for good. Once legislation is passed for code committing, I think it will have a negative impact on programmers as a whole as you never know whether your code in front of a court will be judged as well or ill-intended.