Matt Corallo advocating for censorship

[John Abraham]

I am wondering who is going to follow him if someone doesn't dislike a specific country for any personal reason. I don't think people hate a specific country for whatever reason. I never saw a racist in person. These kinds of people are racist. Bitcoin is supposed to be financial freedom for everyone and we do believe it.

I don't know how many users use nodes only to receive their transactions. Most Bitcoin users don't run nodes just for wallets. When I need to make a payment or anything with Bitcoin, I have unlimited choices. You won't be able to censor Mr. Matt Corallo.

[BlackHatCoiner]

a lightning router is a payment facilitator/money service thus has to abide by money service business rules and payment facilitator rules

According to who? You? Just because lightning nodes facilitates payments, it doesn't mean those intermediaries are responsible for the payment. Lightning nodes know absolutely nothing about the payment, other than the amount they're moving. They don't know neither the receiver nor the sender. This is exactly like telling me that the Bitcoin nodes are responsible for all Bitcoin users' transaction, because they propagate every single transaction. Or that miners have legal responsibility for every transaction they mine.

[yazher]

They starting to test this kind of limit right now so that they can even use it in some other places in the world. We really need to have some convenient way to counter this childish act because right now, it's really obvious that they trying to put bitcoins transactions in their hands and they are deciding whether to allow transactions from certain places or not. This is not how bitcoins created and everyone should be freely received bitcoins from anywhere in the world as long as they never came from a stolen BTC. I hope they will never gonna extend this kind of nonsense and make it hard for us to even send or received bitcoins in the future.

[pooya87]

No, he is making a statement against LNURL. As I pointed out above, he isn't actually pro-censorship.

That's how it starts. They don't go all the way from the start. Gavin wasn't nuts in 2010, he slowly went crazy, visited CIA office, started proposing weird things for bitcoin, abandoned bitcoin development and eventually claimed the obvious scammer CSW is the real Satoshi!

As I said above, it seems like core devs go nuts after some time. Another case is Mike Hearn who dumped all his bitcoin and said "bitcoin has failed and is dead" back in 2016. lol

[franky1]

a lightning router is a payment facilitator/money service thus has to abide by money service business rules and payment facilitator rules

According to who? You? Just because lightning nodes facilitates payments, it doesn't mean those intermediaries are responsible for the payment. Lightning nodes know absolutely nothing about the payment, other than the amount they're moving. They don't know neither the receiver nor the sender. This is exactly like telling me that the Bitcoin nodes are responsible for all Bitcoin users' transaction, because they propagate every single transaction. Or that miners have legal responsibility for every transaction they mine.

try to read some laws..

heck your girlfriends just last year were trying to claim that BITCOIN devs, nodes and miners were payment facilitators .. but here is the thing:

a. bitcoin devs dont take a commission for personally being involved in accepting a payment on one side giving it to another using their own value for a commission
b. bitcoin miners dont take a commission for personally being involved in accepting a payment on one side giving it to another using their own value for a commission
c. bitcoin nodes dont take a commission for personally being involved in accepting a payment on one side giving it to another using their own value for a commission

yet a lightning router does

try to learn a few things that differentiate bitcoin from lightning. stop assuming that lightning is bitcoin


oh and the funny thing by being a payment facilitator but without knowing whom your processing a payment for becomes another red flag and makes your routers a increased target for regulators to slap you around even more

the very fact that you admit you love and use Lightning makes you a target for them

if you cared about your own risk awareness of things that can affect you personally. you should drop the group mantra and salespitches and start to want to independently do your own research for your own risk awareness..

[o_e_l_e_o]

But he's doing bad job at discouraging usage of LNURL when he don't even better LN payment protocol (according to him).

I assume the alternative would be BOLT12, which does not require hosting your own server and includes blinded paths and onion messaging over Lightning, which I understand means that payments can be anonymous and therefore impossible to block based on IP or country of origin.

But yes, I agree a far better way to go about things would be to encourage the use of BOLT12 rather than share details on how LNURL users can censor other users.

According to who? You?

The bottom line is that we just don't know yet. The definition of a money services business (at least in the US) is so deliberately vague that it could absolutely apply to Lightning nodes if the government or other law makers want it to, just as it could apply to regular nodes or miners if the government want it to. None of this has been tested in court, so until either it is tested in court or some new clarifying legislation is passed, we don't know which way things will go.

[franky1]

^
funny part is OELEO is trying to say
play ignorant. continue as before and just wait for the knock at the door when you hear "we have a warrant"

its like criminalising drugs. being told that being a dealer will get people in trouble and then someone comes along and says "we dont know, the only way you will know is when they start hauling people off to court, so continue being a dealer"

not the right kind of advice you want to tell people.

well goodluck all those that will continue being lightning routers.

[o_e_l_e_o]

well goodluck all those that will continue being lightning routers.

If you think your government will start criminalizing people for running Lightning nodes, what makes you think they won't start criminalizing people for running regular nodes or for mining?

If I am a routing Lightning node, then all I am doing is updating the balances of my channels with my immediate connections. If you think that is going to be made illegal, then why would verifying and broadcasting "blacklisted" transactions or mining said transactions in to a block not also be made illegal?

Is your usual anti-lightning bias just clouding your thought process? Or are you just back to your usual nonsense of everyone being a good little citizen and doing exactly what your government tells you at all times, because as we all know, governments have never acted against the interests of the individual.

[franky1]

well goodluck all those that will continue being lightning routers.

If you think your government will start criminalizing people for running Lightning nodes, what makes you think they won't start criminalizing people for running regular nodes or for mining?

you keep assuming lightning is the same model as bitcoin
its not.
the way people get paid and make payments in lightning is different to bitcoin
subtle hint.
payment directly to the destined end recipient.
vs
using routers (taking in value, giving out value for third parties for a commission)


lightning value thats deemed to come into your custody or assigned to you. where you then move balance to someone else on behalf of other people for a commission
is different to how bitcoin works


now go to the regulators websites. look at the laws being drafted and already put into law
and LEARN

learn how lightning works and how its different to bitcoin
then you will have the reason why regulators treat lightning differently to bitcoin

oh by the way Scam Bankrupt fraud (sam bankman freed) was 'just moving balance between' his subsidiaries and didnt keep good logs of his customers names/locations.. and yea he played ignorant to the law too

.. and look how that ended

[BlackHatCoiner]

using routers (taking in value, giving out value for third parties for a commission)

This is so stupid as calling Tor relays responsible for the activity they route, even if they know absolutely nothing about what it is and where it goes. Point me to the law that affiliates lightning nodes likewise.

oh by the way Scam Bankrupt fraud (sam bankman freed) was 'just moving balance between' his subsidiaries and didnt keep good logs of his customers names/locations.. and yea he played ignorant to the law too

With the exception of course that, in contrast with lightning node operators, Sam has illegally taken about $10 billion in FTX customers' funds. Yeah, what a great analogy.

[franky1]

using routers (taking in value, giving out value for third parties for a commission)

This is so stupid as calling Tor relays responsible for the activity they route, even if they know absolutely nothing about what it is and where it goes. Point me to the law that affiliates lightning nodes likewise.

first of all relaying data in tor is different then using different balances in lightning to route

tor data map is different than lightning balance borrowing

also bitcoin does no play borrow the balance game to shift value around. lightning is not like tor or bitcoin

dont play dumb by pretending you dont know how value transfers in lightnings onion packets. and then cry when you get called dumb for acting dumb

oh by the way Scam Bankrupt fraud (sam bankman freed) was 'just moving balance between' his subsidiaries and didnt keep good logs of his customers names/locations.. and yea he played ignorant to the law too

With the exception of course that, in contrast with lightning node operators, Sam has illegally taken about $10 billion in FTX customers' funds. Yeah, what a great analogy.

you want to pretend in lightning

A pay D is direct communication of A paying D
reality is A-B-C-D

B and C are using their own balance and each others balance to facilitate the payment for A where the destination is D and where they take a commission(fee) for agreeing to be a payment facilitator

forget trying to read some promotional snake oil salesmans material..

actually take a couple steps away from your echo chamber and actually read the code, read how it works and then read regulations and for your own benefit of your own risk awareness.. LEARN about how regulations in the real world and functions in the real world outside of dreamy sales pitches work and affect each other

grow some confidence to break away from your echo chamber group

your forum wife this week is trying to break away from his own narrative.. its time you do too

..
if you still want to play ignorant and just echo chamber stuff.. thats on you

[Artemis3]

This is not the way. And to anyone affected by this, you can of course use Tor to bypass such stupidity.

I don't know exactly, how to run a node with tor?. are we must download the tor browser first beside the bitcoin wallet?

what I have experienced before, too many browsers rejected me just to open a website and warn me I came from a restricted country. so when I look at the TOR relay,  France as (guard), Germany, and the last one is USA (restricted country).

maybe TOR can't bypass it if always make the random relay.

I hate it when the tor project created that confusion. No, tor is not a browser, but that browser includes it.

You just run a tor node, and configure your bitcoin node to use it. Is actually rather simple.

This is the original tor project page: https://2019.www.torproject.org/

Note the 2019. I wish they kept the browser in a different domain or a subdomain...

You can set it up so that it looks like your connection comes from only one country. Let's say from Colombia you can access the site you want, be it a casino or whatever, but they seem to detect that you are using Tor in some cases.

That's because you are using a casino in the normal net from tor. If the casino was running in tor (aka hidden server) they can't. That's what you do with bitcoin nodes, make them use a tor node that is not an exit node. Exit nodes is what they detect, they can't do nothing about bridges, especially those that don't advertise (which you can add manually in your configuration). In addition, deep packet inspection is resisted using obfs4 which is an option you need to setup when configuring your tor node, and its needed in certain countries to bypass their restrictive nationwide firewalls.

Just so you get it, tor lets you browse normal internet, but that's not all it does. Some people like to call resources inside tor "dark". It is a place to put content that resists censorship, but tor is not the only project doing it.

PS: The TOR project is a free and open source project from the US Navy, so they are probably still interested in keeping it running for their own benefit. But even if they don't, the community is carrying it on.

Historical anecdote: Satoshi used it to write in this forum.

[BlackHatCoiner]

tor data map is different than lightning balance borrowing

What's "lightning balance borrowing"?

A pay D is direct communication of A paying D

I never said it's a direct communication. You deliberately twisted my words for once more. I just said that it's completely pointless and dangerous to consider routing as payment facilitating, in the same manner a bank does it. Even if you're the recipient, not only don't you know the sender, but you don't even know anyone besides the last hop. Good luck figuring out who's who.

[franky1]

you keep on trying the "not knowing" defence

you pretending to not know that A is not using As funds that D receives. then not knowing that the funds of a get 'promised' to B. but where B has to promise funds to C who promises funds to D

if you have not worked out about the promises aka IOU's that are not settled hense they are classed as IOU's.. not settled. then you still have alot to learn
if you dont understand what promises, commitments and borrowing is.. LEARN

so instead of telling me you dont know things or you are not sure of things.. GO AND LEARN

its obvious you dont want to learn from me and im not asking you to. im saying go learn yourself for yourself

but actually learn and not just recite the echo's someone told you

[Macadonian]

you pretending to not know that A is not using As funds that D receives. then not knowing that the funds of a get 'promised' to B. but where B has to promise funds to C who promises funds to D

Let me be frank with you if you do not mind I do not want to offend you. You are a intelligent person but the way you write things is difficult to follow some times just look at your quote that is not easy to follow. I think you take things to personally some times and do not realize that people will have a different opinion to you and some times they might be right.

I do not know what lightening balance borrowing is either and a search on the internet does not give me any results on it. If you can educate me I can save the time required finding out what you mean because it is probably called some thing else.

[franky1]

@Macadonian

ok let me just tell you

i am not like them i do not create buzzwords and try to make them go viral.
its their game to try to fame up their words

lightning balance borrowing is not a noun(name/buzzword) its an adjective(description)

i even described it after.. which you quoted thus now you know how lightning works

A is borrowing B 's balance to C and C is using his balance to D for A to pay D
thus yes borrowing. promising later settlements. aka IOU's

it is words that describe the process. not a random brand name/buzzword
blackhatcoiner pretends to be dumb and pretends he cannot understand things. even though i am dumbing down things for him and avoiding techno jargon because they do not like it when techno jargon is used.

i purposely use ELI-5(explain like im 5) to avoid 98% of his responses of "i dont understand" and yet he again tries to just go into dumb mode

now he is trying  to go super dumb by pretending that certain things must be a buzzword he doesnt know. rather then reading the context and learning how lightning works to understand the description

its that simple

the reason i speak to certain people with words like idiot and dumb. is becasue for a couple of years they have been shouting the same snake oil sales pitches loving and adoring lightning and trying to recruit people but always avoiding learning about the reality. they only care about speaking of the best case scenario utopian sales pitches. and due to it being a few years of opportunity to learn the real lightning network and also their discussions about legislation, jurisdiction and regulatory classification..  and the risks that lightning presents and the flaws and even the dev reports of issues they cant and wont resolve. but they continually advertise that lightning is the best..  yet they still have not took the time to think for themselves

even in 2021 and 2022 they knew about the legislation and regulatory working of payment facilitators. OELEO and them had discussions where they were trying to say that it meant bitcoin was a PF but then they went on the defence when i corrected them saying lightning routing is a PF.. not a bitcoin dev nor a bitcoin node nor a asic

yet as you can see this week they are playing dumb, and starting the same games again. denying lightning regulatory classification and then trying to swing the debate to pretend that in their mind bitcoin is more like a PF not lightning.. where in reality the opposite is true
lighting network is the middle man payment system of using funds to facilitate other peoples payments for a fee

this game of theirs is not new. so this is why i insult them. because they play the same game repeatedly but then play ignorant. and thats why they earn the insults

if it was a one time mistake no problem. if it was a two time mistake followed by them taking the time to learn.. no problem. but their snake oil salesman rhetoric has been going on for years

the whole "censorshp resistant" buzzword they throw about is pathetic too
they pretend bitcoin never had a consent system. and they think it should never have one again.

[o_e_l_e_o]

I assume the alternative would be BOLT12, which does not require hosting your own server and includes blinded paths and onion messaging over Lightning, which I understand means that payments can be anonymous and therefore impossible to block based on IP or country of origin.

Seems like that is indeed what Matt is advocating for: https://nitter.net/TheBlueMatt/status/1632510518949990401#m

Should we all be pushing for BOLT12 over LNURL as well if the privacy implications of LNURL are so severe?

Point me to the law that affiliates lightning nodes likewise.

We've been through this discussion with franky1 before. You can read my posts on the topic here and here. You can see how trivial it would be for the government to argue that a Lightning node (or a regular node, or a miner) falls under the definition of "any person who (for consideration) is responsible for regularly providing any service effectuating transfers of digital assets on behalf of another person."

I have no doubt franky1 will rant some more about how I am wrong, but the fact is that multiple CEOs of crypto businesses, multiple lawyers, and multiple representatives in both houses in the US agree with what I have said above and have spoken out against this bill for this exact reason.


I initially posted this thread in Dev & Tech, which as we all know franky1 is banned from for this exact reason. Unfortunately a mod moved it to Bitcoin Discussion, and franky1 has wasted no time in derailing it with his usual anti-Lightning rants. Since it is not self moderated, if it continues to be derailed with the same old provably false nonsense, I will simply lock it.

[franky1]

oeleo
in this topic you said how things are too vague, and it needs to be tested in court
then just now you said how lots of lawyers have said it means what you say it means

pick one narrative and stick with it. as it seems its you that is not sure about how regulators treat lightning thus play ping pong games of narratives to go back and forth

also no it does not mean those laws mean that bitcoin nodes are a PF just because lightning routing is implied as being a PF
because its not about running a node on a network relaying payments.. its about HOW the payments are facilitated that counts

learn how bitcoin payments differ to lightning payments

now please dont go back and forth with "i dont understand" "too vague " needs testing" and please do try to learn understand im not nor ever have been the type that wants or needs people to follow my words or opinion... every time i have seen you fall down a hole of being wrong about something, due to your over indulgence of being pro-snake oil sales hyper about a sub network.. i have simply said to just go DYOR do your own research

but it seems you just get angry that i break your sales pitch for the subnetwork adoration rather then take the time to research how the real world impacts the crypto world and vice versa

how about care a more about the potential recruits you are trying to sway to your favoured alt network. more so than if you have failed in your sales pitch

EG if there is things that can get people arrested. tell people the risk and how they can reduce their risk.. instead of "dont worry, just wait until you appear in court" style of mindset

now getting on topic
for those using lightning and are using your balance to allow payments for others(routing) be VERY CAREFUL.. financial regulations do apply

and right now regulators see things like doing PF for countries on the sanction list is a higher priority for regulators to find and sort out, more so then other financial crimes right now

oh and some other hints..
things called "honeypot trap"

autorities do go out and get involved in illicit deals to then arrest the people they done deals with
EG police undercover doing drug deals to catch a dealer
EG police undercover doing prostitution deals to catch a prostitute/pimp
EG bitlicence agents doing account registrations with unlicenced exchanges
EG us embassy agents living in russia seeing which services allow russian residents access to world value/funds

and yes if you are doing a defi where you are moving your fiat to a russian and swapping msats.. they can find you out by many ways.. including the LNURL (aka invoice link) the payer/payee relationship
(one of many examples)

so dont play dumb when it comes to things that can get people into alot of legal problems
..make people whom you try to recruit aware of the risks of the alt networks you want them to move over too

and yes regulators know all about lightning. they have it listed as a privacy enhancing financial tool. which is why US regulated exchanges like coinbase does not accept lightning (coinbase is sister company to the devs sponsorship group that made lightning.. yep when a group that paid for lightnings creation and deems it their product has sister companies that refuse to use said product.. you know something is up)
because using lightning is a red flag when it comes to suspicious activity

i do apologise that i have to keep bursting your dream utopian bubble of hyped up misleading promotion of a sub network. but real people do actually want to be risk aware. and not just sold a dream

[o_e_l_e_o]

in this topic you said how things are too vague, and it needs to be tested in court
then just now you said how lots of lawyers have said it means what you say it means

These are not conflicting statements.

Lawyers and Senators have both spoken out against the bill in question because the wording is too vague and could be argued to apply to nodes and miners. Until it is actually tested in court and a precedent is set, we don't know which way it will go. This is a very simple concept, and something which happens all the time. I suspect you are deliberately trying to obfuscate this to fit your agenda.


Locking this topic now as above. If anyone actually wants to discuss BOLT12 v LNURL, then I would suggest opening a thread in Dev & Tech where franky1 can't derail it with his endless nonsense.