[Blacklist] of unreliable, 'taint proclaiming' Bitcoin services / exchanges

[n0nce]

You may be surprised; in my experience especially the last few years, I get the best feedback and interest in Bitcoin when I bring up the issues that fiat has (like frozen bank accounts etc.) and ask people if they experienced similar problems with banks. Then I explain them how Bitcoin fixes that and it really sparks much more interest than trying to explain how good of an investment it is. Especially since that's not its original goal anyway.

I don't (personally) know anyone who had their bank account frozen. I know the stories, and from those it looks like it's (Amsterdam) coffee shops and prostitutes (those are legal businesses) who have a hard time keeping a bank account. But "normal" people here don't lose access to their account. The only questions I got from my bank were relating to Bitcoin trades.

While I do know of such cases, there are other easy questions you can ask that in most people spark a 'Yes! I've experienced that and it was super annoying [or something worse than annoying].'

These days, when speaking to absolute Bitcoin newbies, I try to gauge whether they've got any issues with the current system. And it turns out most do! Most people have experienced account closures, chargebacks, cards not accepted globally when travelling and high monthly fees.
If it turns out they do see issues with the money being centrally controlled, not internationally usable, with outrageous fees for international bank transfers and it losing value each and every year; then I can proceed to present them how Bitcoin is different in all of those aspects.

You do NOT want "tainted" banknotes in your hands... the police will ask where you found them.

With Bitcoin, the same powerful institutions would like to see Bitcoin fail.

It's such a hypocritical situation. No vendor ever worries about the history of the bills they receive, despite it being perfectly possible to exactly identify individual bills which were involved in robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to their serial numbers. And yet large fiat institutions advance the concept of bitcoin taint, despite it (usually) being completely impossible to identify individual bitcoin or satoshi which were involved in a robbery, theft, scam, etc., due to the very nature of UTXOs being joined and split.

In fiat we can be 100% sure which bills are tainted, but no one cares.
In bitcoin we can only poorly guess at which outputs are tainted, but apparently it has to underpin the entire ecosystem.
Buying in to this nonsense is an active attack on bitcoin.

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

~snip~

I would really appreciate if you could avoid double-posting, resize images and write more compact.
And of course, stay on topic.. Straying away a bit is kind of normal on this forum, but I'd prefer to keep talking about taint and exchanges in here.

[1714181700]

1714181700

[o_e_l_e_o]

Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against. So why not apply taint to cash like they want to do with bitcoin? Because just like mass surveillance, it has never been about preventing crime and there is absolutely no evidence that it does anything whatsoever to prevent crime. It is about population control. That's it. In the same way the knowledge that you are constantly being watched makes you compliant and obedient, knowledge that your coins will be tainted makes you compliant and unwilling to do anything your government doesn't approve of.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

[tadamichi]

Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against. So why not apply taint to cash like they want to do with bitcoin? Because just like mass surveillance, it has never been about preventing crime and there is absolutely no evidence that it does anything whatsoever to prevent crime. It is about population control. That's it. In the same way the knowledge that you are constantly being watched makes you compliant and obedient, knowledge that your coins will be tainted makes you compliant and unwilling to do anything your government doesn't approve of.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

This. It’s also an easy game for money launderers, criminals and terrorists because they will just pick out any loophole there is. Globally. It’s enough for one loophole to exist anywhere to wash billions. Added to the fact that big companies and their lobbyists have no interest in helping fight these crimes, they will create loopholes for themselves. In my country it’s this bad already that politicians are letting companies write law "drafts" for them, and no one gives af. It’s ending up in huge drafts that no regular person has the time to understand this stuff anymore, with the mass that’s flying in. Media is forcefully financed by taxes so they’re quiet on what really matters. It’s a completely opaque process.

We end up in a situation where the individual gets into complete mass surveillance and needs to justify every step they make, they get controlled harder than any criminal would. While criminals just create loopholes and get completely free passes for whatever they want to do. These regulations achieve nothing against criminals, they can now act like they’re fighting it on the outside and most won’t ever get it. And this isn’t happening in some "3rd world country" it’s happening in one of the biggest economies in the world, that has the reputation of doing things correctly. It’s so easy to fool people for them, because they have this reputation and stay discreet, but in the end it’s the same as everywhere else just no one is expecting this, not even the own population, they believe in this fairytale.

[BlackHatCoiner]

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

I'm completely against on finding a solution with cryptography as well, and I've said it in the past. Taint analysis, besides fundamentally pointless, is non-related with privacy. Take Monero as an example. There's better privacy on-chain, but nearly all centralized exchanges have decided to disapprove it. That's equal with tainting all XMR because of terrorism and money laundering.

If someone tells you that your coin is tainted, you don't look into the code, because the problem isn't into the code.

[n0nce]

That's the one thing I've got to hold against the 'The only solution is to make it cryptographically impossible to link UTXOs and deduce their history' argument that nullius brought up lately. That it 'works' (mostly) with cash, too, even though taint could be proclaimed, enforced and normalized. Heck, how hard can it be to build and code a paper money serial number scanner?

I'm completely against on finding a solution with cryptography as well, and I've said it in the past.

That's a strong and maybe unpopular opinion, but I am glad you bring it up. I believe it's debatable; whether you can solve a problem in one domain with a solution from another domain. Generally, I wouldn't say that's something impossible to do. In this case, I just don't get the hypocrisy between crypto and fiat (in the former, taint is enforced, in the latter it's not). Though it should be possible without cryptographic changes, it would be the only way to make 100% sure it cannot be enforced anymore.

Taint analysis, besides fundamentally pointless, is non-related with privacy. Take Monero as an example. There's better privacy on-chain, but nearly all centralized exchanges have decided to disapprove it. That's equal with tainting all XMR because of terrorism and money laundering.

They just 'taint' the whole coin, alright. I don't believe they can do the same with Bitcoin without destroying themselves in the process, though.

I know that 'what satoshi would think about this or that' isn't relevant today anymore; but even if we generalize to the whole set of cypherpunks, I do believe that most would advocate for some cryptographic / technical solution, even if we have a political issue at hand.
Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

The issue with trying to solve a political problem with political means (as opposed to cryptographic means) is that politics doesn't work like that. I do believe I'm going way off-topic now, so if anyone would like to pursue this line of discussion, we could continue in 'Politics & Society'. But let me state this: no matter how many votes you get for whichever party you come up with, no matter how many emails you send to your lawmakers and how many signatures you collect for a petition; significant change in politics usually just requires a lot of money coming from private corporations. And these private corporations, are very often banks. We've done a full circle!

* n0nce puts tinfoil hat off ^{[not really; this is mostly public information]}

[BlackHatCoiner]

Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

We don't deal with the banking system in a technical, cryptographic fashion. We do it by discussing the benefits of actually using bitcoin. A new merchant adopting bitcoin is a new vote in favor of our policy, and against the banking system.

Technical innovations such as bitcoin help us give solutions to technical problems, such as the cost of transaction, the speed, the efficiency, the privacy, the security etc., but it's you individually who's responsible for enforcing this policy. You're not going to be allowed to use it if you don't react to misinformation or if you don't educate others. It's you who's going to solve "taint"-like problems, not a c++ file.

[n0nce]

Heck, the fiat banking system as a whole is a 'political problem' and here we are, on Bitcointalk, spending large amounts of time talking about Bitcoin which was envisioned to solve the 'fiat banking system problem' in a technical, cryptographic fashion.

We don't deal with the banking system in a technical, cryptographic fashion. We do it by discussing the benefits of actually using bitcoin. A new merchant adopting bitcoin is a new vote in favor of our policy, and against the banking system.

Well, Bitcoin in itself is an alternative to the banking system, which thanks to its use of cryptography can be fully decentralized and trustless.

I would argue that in the same way, an alternative to the transparent blockchain with easily enforceable taint claims, would be a blockchain that uses cryptography to be fully veiled, which removes the ability to trace coins.

Technical innovations such as bitcoin help us give solutions to technical problems, such as the cost of transaction, the speed, the efficiency, the privacy, the security etc., but it's you individually who's responsible for enforcing this policy. You're not going to be allowed to use it if you don't react to misinformation or if you don't educate others. It's you who's going to solve "taint"-like problems, not a c++ file.

I believe that problems like banning a piece of technology itself are hard to solve with more technology. But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem which we can solve with tech or in this case, cryptography (and it has already been solved on other blockchains).

[o_e_l_e_o]

In this case, I just don't get the hypocrisy between crypto and fiat (in the former, taint is enforced, in the latter it's not.

The hypocrisy is as I explained above. They can already control fiat, so no need for taint analysis. They cannot control bitcoin, so better make up arbitrary nonsense to scare people in to submission.

But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem

Is it, though? There is nothing in the bitcoin code which gives anyone the ability to enforce taint or otherwise censor your outputs. Taint is only enforceable because of centralized services which have complete control over all deposits to their platforms. If everyone changed their behavior and stopped using centralized platforms, taint wouldn't exist. That makes the enforcement of taint, at least partially, an anthropological problem. Which is why I continue to advocate for education, and not just technical changes.

[cryptosize]

There's tons of hypocrisy from the establishment in nearly every aspect.

They enforce KYC on crypto exchanges, even though nobody really needs it (where's the benefit for users? zero/nada).

They don't enforce KYC on social media (FB, Twitter, IG etc.), even though they're rife with alt/scam accounts.

Why is that? Because if they enforced KYC there, MAU stats would drop like flies.

It's no wonder Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter after all...

Enforce KYC and then we'll see who is real and who isn't. In China there are bot farms where you can buy paid followers, likes etc.

ps: They could "taint" BTC even more if Russia decides to adopt it for gas exports. Suddenly it would become a... "terrorism" tool.

In reality, ECB would have to print trillions of euros to build BTC reserves and nobody from the WEF clique (Lagarde/Ursula) wants that.

[n0nce]

But taint the ability to enforce taint is a technical problem

Is it, though? There is nothing in the bitcoin code which gives anyone the ability to enforce taint or otherwise censor your outputs. Taint is only enforceable because of centralized services which have complete control over all deposits to their platforms. If everyone changed their behavior and stopped using centralized platforms, taint wouldn't exist. That makes the enforcement of taint, at least partially, an anthropological problem. Which is why I continue to advocate for education, and not just technical changes.

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I guess in a perfect utopia, without barely any centralized platforms, there would be nobody to enforce taint. However, even e.g. a wealthy individual giving out Bitcoin loans or anything like that could still discriminate against certain coins or could be discriminated against, as soon as their address is known. The very ability of attaching taint to coins by tracing UTXOs is purely technical.

Anyhow, it is going to be much easier to build a technical solution than trying to solve the problem solely through education (and I'm saying this as the creator of this thread ), if the goal is to get all centralized services shut down.

[cryptosize]

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I like Monero's tech solution (opaque ledger), but there are certain cases where I want a transparent ledger (like BTC's) to exist.

MtGox hackers were real criminals and it makes sense to trace stolen funds. They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork (too risky for such a valuable asset, which might become adopted by institutional investors one day).

Someone who is against corrupt governments/WEF is NOT a criminal, but they can "paint" him as a criminal/enemy of the state... in this case, it's better to use XMR and not BTC.

Last time I checked, Binance (biggest exchange) still has XMR listed. Kraken also has it.

There's also TradeOgre (no KYC needed) where you can exchange XMR for something else (BTC and whatnot) and atomic swaps (kinda like DEX) on a Monero wallet.

So far the establishment hasn't done a lot to ban it... why? Because CBDCs don't exist (yet), so the masses have no reason to adopt cryptos (BTC & Lightning, XMR, ZEC, BEAM etc.)

We'll see in 2025 and beyond...

[BlackHatCoiner]

If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

If Bitcoin had a blockchain similar to Monero, be sure that it'd be treated differently. In the same way the Internet would be if it was designed to work like Tor. In the same way if the most popular messengers, the masses use, were designed to work in a p2p fashion, completely privately.

As I said, when it comes to tainting, XMR and BTC is the same thing. The overwhelming majority of centralized exchanges have banned the former, because it is potential for any XMR to be tainted or subjected to criminal activity. They can't follow the coin's direction, so they're blacklisting all the coins.

They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork

No need for hard forks. A Monero-like sidechain that is backed by bitcoins is trivial to make, and requires no consensus changes. It isn't made, because privacy techniques are already good enough, I suppose.

[dkbit98]

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against.

Maybe because they are printing more money all the time and they run out of serial numbers  
But seriously, they are removing old paper bills and releasing new ones all the time, and they probably have some database that is not publicly released.
Besides, I think that most of the fiat money doesn't really exists and it's only numbers on screen, so if all the people wanted to withdraw from banks, it wouldn't be enough paper money for this transactions.

They don't need to do this with cash, because the vast majority of people use digital fiat now, with the banks enforcing the rules of the government and performing mass surveillance for them. Look at the Canadian truckers as a prime example of this happening in a western nation. Spend your money in a way the government don't like? Uh oh, now all your accounts have been seized.

Exactly, but this was slow gradual process and they offered benefits and incentives to make people switch using mostly digital fiat money.
I know one girl from China said she didn't see paper money or hold it in her hands for years, and if you don't have smartphone you can't live in China cities anymore.

I would argue that in the same way, an alternative to the transparent blockchain with easily enforceable taint claims, would be a blockchain that uses cryptography to be fully veiled, which removes the ability to trace coins.

Even if some private blockchains like this exist today, they are not totally private and they need to be constantly improved and changed.
It's fair to say that in future it's going to be possible to reveal most transactions for let's say monero, so they need algorithm improvements all the time.
I wish bitcoin had optional privacy from start, and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

It's no wonder Elon Musk didn't buy Twitter after all...

It's just a circus show for the masses.
I bet their end game is for him to buy twatter in the end but they will introduce mandatory kyc for profiles, with excuse of bot reduction and better security.
Anyone who think Musk is a good guy is delusional. just remeber mess he made with Bitcoin, Doge, etc.
Oh btw twatter was recently hacked and millions of phone numbers leaked 

[tadamichi]

Yes, it is. The fact that you can trace UTXOs is a limitation of the open blockchain. If Bitcoin had a blockchain like Monero's, amounts are hidden and a coin's history is hidden as well, through technology (cryptography).

I like Monero's tech solution (opaque ledger), but there are certain cases where I want a transparent ledger (like BTC's) to exist.

MtGox hackers were real criminals and it makes sense to trace stolen funds. They could easily get away with it if BTC was like XMR and I don't think BTC devs will ever implement a hard fork (too risky for such a valuable asset, which might become adopted by institutional investors one day).

In my mind the bigger "problem" of an opaque ledger is that its harder to verify everything or to discover bugs for most people, subjectively i have more confidence in the open one, even if it might be irrational. Isnt it like, that there is a stronger need to trust the implementation of the math, with some uncertainity left? The transparent design of bitcoin kinda removes this uncertainity, atleast to me. Im still not convinced that its absolutely necessary to make everyrthing indistinguishable, but i acknowledge the idea behind it.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Even if some private blockchains like this exist today, they are not totally private and they need to be constantly improved and changed.

That's true for everything. Bitcoin, technology, humans in general need improvement and change. Don't understand how private blockchains differ.

I wish bitcoin had optional privacy from start, and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

It didn't have optional privacy (which is pleonasm, privacy is always optional), because there weren't chain analysis scumbags to begin with. Once it appeared to be apparent that there's no privacy with or without Coin Control, proposals such as CoinJoin, Lightning, mixers, Taproot were made.

and it's crazy that so far nobody proposed any realistic protocol change for this.

Unpopular opinion: There's already sufficient privacy, especially in Layer 2 solutions which are believed to be used the most in the future.

[LoyceV]

A Monero-like sidechain that is backed by bitcoins is trivial to make

Do you mean a trustless sidechain, or one where you have to trust a certain entity? If it's trustless, I think it's a great idea.

Trivial. And trivial of course to link every such machine to a centralized database of taint. But they dont do that, and people should ask themselves why, when we know that hard cash is the preferred method of transaction for criminals, money launderers, terrorists, and all the people they say they want to protect us against.

Maybe because they are printing more money all the time and they run out of serial numbers 
But seriously, they are removing old paper bills and releasing new ones all the time, and they probably have some database that is not publicly released.

Serial numbers have been used to catch murderers, in 1988 already. I can only imagine how big the current database of known tainted bills is.
But the main difference is of course that this taint is only used to catch the real bad guy, and not to blame anyone who received the money later on.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Do you mean a trustless sidechain, or one where you have to trust a certain entity? If it's trustless, I think it's a great idea.

Trustless, in the same sense a blockchain is. Colored coins could play the big role here, because that's what it essentially is; to access sidecoin, just burn bitcoin. Initially, it'd have 0 coins, but overtime most users could transit into the sidechain, and have no dealings with the main chain.

But, I think solutions such as Lightning, wherein you move actual bitcoins and not altcoins/sidecoins just works better. You'd get about the same levels of privacy with either using the Monero-like sidechain or the Lightning Network.

[LoyceV]

Colored coins could play the big role here, because that's what it essentially is; to access sidecoin, just burn bitcoin. Initially, it'd have 0 coins, but overtime most users could transit into the sidechain, and have no dealings with the main chain.

I had to look up how Colored Coins work, but burning Bitcoins for it doesn't sound right. I'd much rather use a solution that can be turned back into on-chain Bitcoins (such as LN).

[BlackHatCoiner]

I'd much rather use a solution that can be turned back into on-chain Bitcoins (such as LN).

It could work without burning the coins, just by colorizing them. Sidecoins, in that case, would be backed by colored bitcoins. It would work like this: To acquire sidecoin, colorize bitcoin. To use sidecoin, do not touch the bitcoin. Once you're done with the sidecoin, spend the colored bitcoin; it'd decrease the colored coins circulation.

Similar thing they have done at Bisq.

[dkbit98]

That's true for everything. Bitcoin, technology, humans in general need improvement and change. Don't understand how private blockchains differ.

Yes, but Bitcoin base protocol didn't change that much since the beginning, compared to all other shitcoins that change in very drastic way.

It didn't have optional privacy (which is pleonasm, privacy is always optional), because there weren't chain analysis scumbags to begin with. Once it appeared to be apparent that there's no privacy with or without Coin Control, proposals such as CoinJoin, Lightning, mixers, Taproot were made.

Privacy is obviously not optional for privacy based applications, and it was realistic prediction that Bitcoin would be target of various government agencies in future.
Instead of using all the different hoops, different wallets, mixers, coinjoins, etc I would much more prefer to use private transactions by default.

Unpopular opinion: There's already sufficient privacy, especially in Layer 2 solutions which are believed to be used the most in the future.

Fact is there isn't, and it's not easily usable by majority of people.
You should understand that most of the people today are brainwashed zombies and they can only use easy solutions for privacy (if they care about that at all).
Tell the average crypto guy to use layer 2 for privacy and he won't have a clue what you are talking about.

But the main difference is of course that this taint is only used to catch the real bad guy, and not to blame anyone who received the money later on.

It's only used to catch small fish criminals, meanwhile you have big fishes doing what they do without any issues.
Older I am more I think that all this is just one big government circus show for the masses.