Bitcoin petition to stop US gov from interfering

[Luno]

When you realize that you are being targetted by a conspiracy, you don't start complaining to the world, you start a larger conspiracy yourself.

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[moni3z]

[Operatr]

When you realize that you are being targetted by a conspiracy, you don't start complaining to the world, you start a larger conspiracy yourself.

I saw this comment Tech Crunch this morning:

Bitcoin was created by a special team at the Treasury called "Stack Hunt". The project began in 2006 after an internal report on illicit online transactions generated significant concern within the highest levels of the US government. "Stack Hunt" tracks every coin and uses complex statistical analytics to uncover the identities of persons using Bitcoins.  

The code is freely available to see, check it yourself for any reporting engines. Every transaction can be viewed in real time. The entire network can be seen transparently. I cannot deny that "stack hunt" exists or existed. Plus this information itself comes from a random comment on some forum somewhere, it can hardly be taken as hard evidence that Bitcoin is some kind of Government op. Aside all that, why would a totalitarian style government introduce a system that give them less control and not more.

If they wanted a universal currency, it would be under their direct control. Bitcoin goes against every system like that.

A petition is useless at this point, if they want to undermine Bitcoin they will, or will try if it screws with their own agendas. If Bitcoin comes under harsh regulated laws, we will then know what their stance is. If it does, we then know they actually fear Bitcoin as a direct threat to their financial powerbase.

[(A)social]

LOL

Asking a government to stay out?  GFL.  If they really wanted to, they'll simply use the "terrorism" clause and push their agenda that way.  After all, we all signed over our freedoms for the battle of "terrorism".  It works like this: stop believing the government has any power, and they'll cease to have power.  If you believe Bitcoin is right, you don't need a higher authority to authenticate your belief, not God, nor man.  Asking them "please, please stop bothering us!" with a petition is just advocating the state as something which has power.

+1 

[ChristianK]

If I would be a nation state opposed to bitcoin and use cyber capabilities against it, I wouldn't run DDoS attacks. I would hack MtGox and steal their coins. Both China and the US should have the capabilities to do so. If all the bitcoins of the exchanges would be constantly stolen.

The botnet's that run the DDoS on MtGox are probably payed via bitcoin by someone who spectulates on the price changes that the DDoS attacks cause.
DDoS attacks are cheap. You don't need to be a nation state to run a DDoS. You just need to pay a small sum of money to rent a botnet.

But back to a nation state attacking bitcoin, cyber attacks aren't needed. The US could simply start suing all bitcoin miners for facilitating money laundering and violating the principle of know-your-customer.

Announcing such law suits would alone do a lot more damage to bitcoins price than the DDoS attacks against exchanges. If current laws aren't enough congress can always pass additional laws.

The world doesn't look the way it would if the US government would make an attempt to shut down bitcoin. The US government isn't filled with the smartest people but if those people would go after bitcoin they could still do serious damage. Damages that exceed the damage that a single individual can cause by rented a botnet with his bitcoins.

Governments operate on the theory of plausible denial ability, so no one is going to see any "proof".

Actually the US is perfectly able to attack other groups without any plausible denial ability.

[Elwar]

Where do I put a petition to ask Obama to stop stealing my socks?

[mintybits]

If I would be a nation state opposed to bitcoin and use cyber capabilities against it, I wouldn't run DDoS attacks. I would hack MtGox and steal their coins. Both China and the US should have the capabilities to do so. If all the bitcoins of the exchanges would be constantly stolen.

They keep most of their coins in cold storage, so unless they're going to pull some physical black ops stuff, there's no stealing the bulk of any exchanges coins.  Not to mention, I doubt any expensive 0day exploit most governments have access to would not risk loosing that asset against a system that could possibly reverse engineer and ruin the very expensive "super secret 0day". 

The botnet's that run the DDoS on MtGox are probably payed via bitcoin by someone who spectulates on the price changes that the DDoS attacks cause.
DDoS attacks are cheap. You don't need to be a nation state to run a DDoS. You just need to pay a small sum of money to rent a botnet.

But back to a nation state attacking bitcoin, cyber attacks aren't needed. The US could simply start suing all bitcoin miners for facilitating money laundering and violating the principle of know-your-customer.

Announcing such law suits would alone do a lot more damage to bitcoins price than the DDoS attacks against exchanges. If current laws aren't enough congress can always pass additional laws.

The world doesn't look the way it would if the US government would make an attempt to shut down bitcoin. The US government isn't filled with the smartest people but if those people would go after bitcoin they could still do serious damage. Damages that exceed the damage that a single individual can cause by rented a botnet with his bitcoins.

Governments operate on the theory of plausible denial ability, so no one is going to see any "proof".

Actually the US is perfectly able to attack other groups without any plausible denial ability.

The Government would much rather keep things covert until the point where the gloves must come off and then they start saber rattling, followed by making laws, and examples of people to really shut Bitcoin down.  People should really check out the guy that wrote that article.  He claimed after the "correction" that this was just "their" first attempt to crash the thing and were most likely gauging the market to tune their software.  He claims that when they really want to bring it down (and roll people in front of the cameras) is when the real carnage is going to ensue.  He says they might not use their software again for years, or it could be next week, should the market go parabolic again or TPTB feel threatened.  http://www.naturalnews.com/039850_bitcoin_bubble_crash_globalists.html

[Stunna]

The petition says in part:

"There is evidence to suggest that recent attacks in the media and through so called DDOS (distributed denial of service attacks) on crypto-currency exchanges such as Mt. Gox are being run by elements of the U.S. government...."

Other than some comments on YouTube vids I never heard of any such "evidence."  I have seen claims that the hard fork was cased by the FBI because Gavin had apparently met with them a few days before.  Then I saw some comments that speculated the government did DDOS attacks against Mt. Gox but I never seen any credible evidence of that and I find it extremely hard to believe.  I would not sign a petition like that.

If the petition wants to be taken seriously they should remove this immediately. As long as it stands I cannot sign it.

[InspiredEye]

lolz

[ChristianK]

Bitcoin was created by a special team at the Treasury called "Stack Hunt". The project began in 2006 after an internal report on illicit online transactions generated significant concern within the highest levels of the US government. "Stack Hunt" tracks every coin and uses complex statistical analytics to uncover the identities of persons using Bitcoins. 

The US government isn't that stupid. Washing Bitcoins is relatively easy compared to washing hard cash.
With time it will become even easier and cheaper to wash them.

As a practical manner the US didn't even succeed with going after silk road salesman.

They keep most of their coins in cold storage, so unless they're going to pull some physical black ops stuff, there's no stealing the bulk of any exchanges coins.

Right because the US government has no possible way to run a physical blacks ops...

But even without physical attacks the government could just stay a month in the system and get the key of the "cold storage" coin vault.

Not to mention, I doubt any expensive 0day exploit most governments have access to would not risk loosing that asset against a system that could possibly reverse engineer and ruin the very expensive "super secret 0day". 

If you look at the way the government used Flame or the way the Chinese hack all kinds of US companies I don't think the have much fear to start cyber attacks if the care about hurting someone.

The black market price of a zero-day exploit for a government is around $1 million. The stuff isn't "very expensive".

The Government would much rather keep things covert until the point where the gloves must come off and then they start saber rattling, followed by making laws, and examples of people to really shut Bitcoin down.

What incentive does the government have to do this covertly?
Openly declaring that the government wants to move against bitcoin would stop the venture capitalist people from moving money into bitcoin.
The US was never really covert about opposing Wikileaks and the 100 people task force against Wikileaks.

I really don't understand the people who think that the government is an all powerful entity out to get them but then fails so miserably at the task even through it would be relatively easy.

[Marrs]

I did a search, and didn't see this posted anywhere here, so here it is. If its been posted already, feel free to remove. It doesn't look like there's much chance of reaching the goal, but ya never know!

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/cease-all-actions-overt-or-covert-intended-interfere-free-market-enterprises-bitcoin-and-mt-gox/P0X41V1X

If the US (or any major government) wanted to destroy Bitcoins, they would build enough ASICs to be about to mount constant 51% attacks until no one cared about Bitcoins anymore.

Or they could just declare Bitcoins illegal based on its use by drug-dealing, child-porn-making, terrorists.

[Merralea]

The conspiracy language isn't relevant to the main point, so I'll sidestep that.

More to the point: do people really think .gov gives a flying fuck about a petition? Has any petition to congress/president/judges/pta-moms ever actually accomplished anything beyond telling the petitionees precisely who thinks what? The website isn't there to change anything; it's there for data collection.