Edward Snowden Final Warning for Bitcoin

[BlackHatCoiner]

Bitcoin is pseudonymous, not anonymous. This isn't something new. This also isn't something that we've just realized. It's more of a feature other than anything else.

And coinjoins are features. A softfork that would make privacy on a protocol level optional, would also be a feature. If you want to stay pseudonymous be traceable, no problem. Don't use the softfork technology. 

We have to realize that censorship goes beyond nodes and a decentralized network though. Monero, due to the very fact that it features anonymous payments, is the victim of a continuous censorship attack.

The only entities which censor Monero are centralized exchanges which simply remove it from their available cryptocurrencies, because their chain analysis buddies can't trace it. Every person who understands privacy, trades their BTC for XMR in a decentralized, unstoppable fashion and uses that for their spending. You can get privacy with Bitcoin already, you just need to trade it for an altcoin. So, the question is: why can't we just implement a feature that would make it optional again, without having to trade it for an altcoin?

What would bitcoin gain from being anonymous?
Recipients won't know where coins are coming from (averting some censoring scenarios).
What else?

What else do you want from privacy? To make us rich?

[HideYourKeys]

The fact that Bitcoin is pseudonymous should be enough for the majority of cases, lightning and liquid provide an additional privacy layer, that is not bad at all

[cryptosize]

If Bitcoin forks to be more like Monero, all the above benefits though are lost in an instant. Are anonymous payments worth that much over destroying what has already been built on bitcoin? I'd argue that this change would only bring more censorship by giving credence to FEDs and legislators to destroy all BTC infrastructure as it could more easily be deemed a notorious market.

Infrastructure = miners/nodes ?

[Wind_FURY]

As far as the tweet goes-- I doubt any bitcoin developer has ever heard from Snowden, I can imagine if they had they'd be quite exited.  Don't read too much into hyperbole.

Perhaps reading Snowden's post was different for a pleb like me from a person who actually developed and contributed to Bitcoin Core. From the plebs viewpoint, we immediately think that he might be right. But from a Core Developer's viewpoint - active, inactive, or retired - they're probably reading it as mere engagement farming by Snowden. Snowden never developed in Bitcoin, nor did he contribute code.

[NotATether]

If Bitcoin forks to be more like Monero, all the above benefits though are lost in an instant. Are anonymous payments worth that much over destroying what has already been built on bitcoin? I'd argue that this change would only bring more censorship by giving credence to FEDs and legislators to destroy all BTC infrastructure as it could more easily be deemed a notorious market.

Infrastructure = miners/nodes ?

LOL, in that case, good luck with that. Feds have no chance of banning Bitcoin worldwide even if Core developers merge a privacy protocol. That would destroy all crypto businesses and could actually contribute to a recession in many countries.

[Ben Barubal]

     As far as I understand it, Bitcoin is the only visible and transparent one that all the transactions we start with the address we use are the ones that are not anonymous instead visible in the blockchain network.

     But the identity is anonymous, unless they investigate where it came from, it can be matrace whether it is from CEX or DEX, or it can also be from any crypto gambling platforms and other custodial wallets.

[dkbit98]

Litecoin, which signaled MWEB into activation in May 2022, has always been something of a test environment for features later implemented in Bitcoin. Litecoin was the 1st to have SegWit, a Lightning Network, and now MWEB, which is an optional privacy enhancing feature, used by Grin as default.

I like what Litecoin is doing with mimble wimble, but they only have one wallet supporting it so far (Litecoin Core), and there is no support for mobile wallets yet.
Another important thing to say is that for mweb addresses to be more private we again should use coinjoin for them.

Eventually - if/when - we get invaded by aliens, a one-world government might not be such a bad idea. We'll really need to get our shit together. Until then we'll continue to argue with anyone who holds different beliefs than we do.

Aliens are a scam, and they could try creating fake alien invasion, but one world government is never a good idea.
It's stupid utopia with goal to make all people into slaves.

No point in using Tor, VPN, private email, Graphene OS, Bitcoin, Tails if everyone can see your financial history. That is all that is needed to take you down.

Yeah, it would all be just a security theater, but I think some people are scared they could value of their coins if bitcoin changes anything related with privacy  

Everyone needs privacy, everyone loves privacy. Even Satoshi wanted to add it.

Sure, he even clearly mentioned Privacy in Bitcoin Whitepaper section 10, but who reads that right...  

[martinex]

Turning Bitcoin into a privacy coin would lead to a mass government ban of BTC around the world.
The BTC price would most likely go back to the levels before 2015. I'm sure that 90% of the Bitcoin investors don't want this to happen.
They prefer big profits over privacy. I kinda understand them. Bitcoin being a speculative financial asset with a potential future price of 100K USD(or even more) is way more exciting than BTC being a privacy coin used only by shady people and criminals, with a price in the range of 100USD-1000USD. Achieving full privacy in the modern day internet is almost impossible.

Of course, turning Bitcoin into a privacy coin makes governments sultry and is perceived as a threat to their financial regulations. However, in practice it seems to me that the depiction of privacy coins is necessary but not to be used like irresponsible criminals but in the context of normal circumstances. as needed.

You're right and that's one of the fundamental things why it's not really needed and considered important by some investors because it understates they profits.

[Kruw]

It's ironic how the Bitcoin community prioritizes ETFs, regulations, and wealth accumulation over privacy-- the very essence embedded in the cypherpunk manifesto and its core principles.

Don't forget all of the hateful members of the Bitcoin community that prioritized scamming people with custodial "mixing sites" while purposely attacking trustless open source privacy software like Wasabi, BTCPay Server, and Trezor.

Was that Bitcoin thing presented as an anarchist movement that was supposed to overthrow the government and operate without any oversight? Must have been my mistake.  

Do something about it then and run a coinjoin coordinator yourself. I already am:

I run my own coordinator. You can connect to it by adding this line to your Wasabi config file:

Code:

"MainNetCoordinatorUri": "https://btcpay.kruw.io/plugins/wabisabi-coordinator/",

You can get privacy with Bitcoin already, you just need to trade it for an altcoin.

This is COMPLETELY FALSE, you get complete privacy on Bitcoin by spending your coins in WabiSabi coinjoins. There are absolutely no shitcoins required, read the explanation from gmaxwell:

Existing "privacy coins" change the security model pretty substantially--  a DLP break results in unbounded undetectable inflation.  They also tend to have scaling/scanning problems that in practice obliterate much of the privacy gains-- e.g. because huge numbers of users hand over scanning keys who might well just be selling them to your adversaries (whomever they are).

There is no free lunch, at least not yet-- though there is a lot of research ongoing.

Meanwhile there are ways to use bitcoin much more privately with little cost-- and yet few users avail themselves of them.  So technology isn't the limiting point or at least not the only limiting point.  

[pooya87]

Lest we forget all this "privacy" talks began when centralized services got shut down! If people were worried about their privacy they should have been worried about it when these centralized services were up and they used those services not when they got shut down.

In fact in this context the Wasabi mouthpiece @Kruw pointed this out without realizing it. The part of the tweet that OP cut off is another centralized service that is known for cooperating with deanonymizing services (ie. blockchain analysis companies) that supposedly shut down its CoinJoin coordinator.
That is what the former employee of United States Armed Forces (ie. NSA which is part of DoD) Snowden replied to.

In other words people who are reacting these days have already realized what the actual problem is but their opinion is being swayed in a different and wrong direction making them think "privacy features" have to directly be added into the Bitcoin protocol itself.
Bitcoin already provides a good level of privacy to those who use it correctly. Meaning the problem is not the Bitcoin protocol, it is that people use it wrong and through centralized services that invade their privacy, some of them in the name of improving their privacy!

[BlackHatCoiner]

This is COMPLETELY FALSE, you get complete privacy on Bitcoin by spending your coins in WabiSabi coinjoins. There are absolutely no shitcoins required, read the explanation from gmaxwell

It is true that they change the security model and make the system less scalable, but it is also true that through the use of privacy technologies, they accomplish ideal anonymity. WabiSabi, Samourai, Joinmarket are all easier to attack than Monero, so there's robustness too.

But, who am I talking to. "Monero is a shitcoin". OK, lol.

Bitcoin already provides a good level of privacy to those who use it correctly.

What's the "correct" way to use it? For if you go with coin control only, you're easily traceable by chain analysis firms.

[ABCbits]

If Bitcoin forks to be more like Monero, all the above benefits though are lost in an instant. Are anonymous payments worth that much over destroying what has already been built on bitcoin? I'd argue that this change would only bring more censorship by giving credence to FEDs and legislators to destroy all BTC infrastructure as it could more easily be deemed a notorious market.

Infrastructure = miners/nodes ?

At very least, they could slow down block generation if government go after centralized mining pool. I say slow down since someone will create new centralized mining pool and maybe even revive P2Pool.

You can get privacy with Bitcoin already, you just need to trade it for an altcoin.

This is COMPLETELY FALSE, you get complete privacy on Bitcoin by spending your coins in WabiSabi coinjoins. There are absolutely no shitcoins required, read the explanation from gmaxwell:
--snip--

Just like there's no thing such as 100%, absolute or complete security, there's no thing such as complete privacy.

[Kruw]

This is COMPLETELY FALSE, you get complete privacy on Bitcoin by spending your coins in WabiSabi coinjoins. There are absolutely no shitcoins required, read the explanation from gmaxwell:
--snip--

Just like there's no thing such as 100%, absolute or complete security, there's no thing such as complete privacy.

BlackHatCoiner says otherwise:

it is also true that through the use of privacy technologies, they accomplish ideal anonymity.

[BlackHatCoiner]

Strictly speaking, there's no solution that can provide 100%, absolute privacy, but there exists realistically impossible to break solution. Similarly as to finding an address collision being not completely infeasible, but realistically, practically infeasible. You wouldn't ever argue that it is possible to generate somebody else's private key, even though it is. Instead, for the sake of simplicity, you would say it is simply impossible.

Monero does not provide absolute privacy, but it is realistically infeasible to break it.

[pooya87]

Bitcoin already provides a good level of privacy to those who use it correctly.

What's the "correct" way to use it? For if you go with coin control only, you're easily traceable by chain analysis firms.

The correct ways is not linking your identity to your coins.
I have coins I received in addresses I've published on this forum and are linked to my identity. I have "other" coins that aren't. I spent some of those "other" coins in the past 24 hours. Nobody including chain analysis firms can tell which transaction belonged to me even though I just significantly narrowed the search space with this information...

[NotATether]

The correct ways is not linking your identity to your coins.
I have coins I received in addresses I've published on this forum and are linked to my identity. I have "other" coins that aren't. I spent some of those "other" coins in the past 24 hours. Nobody including chain analysis firms can tell which transaction belonged to me even though I just significantly narrowed the search space with this information...

That comes down to using anonymity tools, because as I mentioned in other places, even chain analysis firms cannot de-obfuscate the transactions that pass through a mixer barring some catastrophic privacy mis-configuration like keeping a log of all the addresses used with a session, or access to the entire historical UTXO set by means of some wallet running in a full node used by said service.

[crwth]

Well, it's always going to be a factor when it comes to every Edward Snowden-related stuff. Privacy, he has always been on the watch out for something that could be detrimental to the general public.

Like what the other members said, it's going to be another concern to have that kind of addition to the development, it might take even more time.

There are better coins for privacy IMO. BTC is already an asset.

[cryptosize]

If Bitcoin forks to be more like Monero, all the above benefits though are lost in an instant. Are anonymous payments worth that much over destroying what has already been built on bitcoin? I'd argue that this change would only bring more censorship by giving credence to FEDs and legislators to destroy all BTC infrastructure as it could more easily be deemed a notorious market.

Infrastructure = miners/nodes ?

LOL, in that case, good luck with that. Feds have no chance of banning Bitcoin worldwide even if Core developers merge a privacy protocol. That would destroy all crypto businesses and could actually contribute to a recession in many countries.

Recession in which countries?

BTC has had 3 huge bear markets so far and no country was affected.

I agree that no one can ban it, but with 1% global adoption it's hyperbolic to claim it's going to cause recession in many countries.

[redsun114]

As far as I understand it, Bitcoin is the only visible and transparent one that all the transactions we start with the address we use are the ones that are not anonymous instead visible in the blockchain network.

Yeah and that is why many are concerned about it that they wish Bitcoin is more anonymous.

the identity is anonymous, unless they investigate where it came from, it can be matrace whether it is from CEX or DEX, or it can also be from any crypto gambling platforms and other custodial wallets.

It was CEX or CEW (Centralized Wallets) are the ones that are more traceable but as long as you use a fake info and don't submit your own KYC, I guess you will still be fine.

@OP, maybe yes that it was intentional because if not, then they already changed it a long time ago even if there are no suggestions from other people but if let say it happened, I think there will still be people who will complain or wish that BTC will only be like this ( the current that we have now ) because its already in our nature to be like that. Anyways, there are still tools that can make us more anonymous and then there are still more private coins out there that someone can use instead of BTC.

[Wind_FURY]

Well, it's always going to be a factor when it comes to every Edward Snowden-related stuff. Privacy, he has always been on the watch out for something that could be detrimental to the general public.

Like what the other members said, it's going to be another concern to have that kind of addition to the development, it might take even more time.

There are better coins for privacy IMO. BTC is already an asset.

It's probably mere FUD for engagement farming from a person who was never a Bitcoin Core Developer, nor did he contribute code for the network. Plus many people like to post/complain about what the developers should do, but they have no intention of making a proposal or to provide a solution to the "problem" that they have indicated.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯