Freezing BitCoin addresses by regulating miners

[SpanishSoldier]

If the rest of the pools agree with the blacklist, they can also just ignore any blocks mined by pools (or solo miners) which don't abide.

I've always hoped that p2pool would be the main pool in existence (to prevent this kind of collusion), but unfortunately that didn't pan out.

Salient point... It is our duty than to insure that a decent percentage(20-30% min) of the hash rate is in control of individuals or groups who respect the fungibility of the currency and will ignore any blacklists.  Perhaps 21 or bitfury will allow us to point their IoT items to our own pools or P2Pool. I am not holding my breath and am making plans to combat this otherwise.

AFAIK, 21 has no such plan. They want their IoT to mine at their pool and offere a % of revenue to the miner.

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[BitUsher]

AFAIK, 21 has no such plan. They want their IoT to mine at their pool and offere a % of revenue to the miner.

Source? While I am not hopeful, there exists a small chance that they can see the larger picture and allow for decentralized mining where it benefits the whole ecosystem and thus themselves in the long term. If not they can prepare for us to treat them with a more critical eye instead of embracing them and becoming advocates. It is there choice still.

Any other data you have please provide.

[Envrin]

Wow, what a massive slippery slope to go down, and one I think the Bitcoin community should avoid at all costs.  How or why is the community as a whole responsible for deciding who is and isn't allowed to own Bitcoin?  You actually used Gadaffi as an example, which proves my point perfectly, because there's 10s or even 100s of millions of people out there who would happily argue against you on that.  It's pretty tough to make the argument that Libya is better off now versus under Gadaffi, when everyone had free education, electricity, house upon marriage, etc.

Who decides what addresses should be blacklisted?

Who's in charge of the processes and regulations required to blacklist an address?

Is there an appeals process of any kind?

How can we be sure the ownership of said address hasn't changed hands during investigation process?

What happens when the Russian mafia gets $80mm worth of Bitcoin frozen, and proceeds to send some people over to the mining farm(s) to handle the blacklisting issue?  Or even worse, a militant group like ISIS?

Will owners of DNMs have their coins frozen?  If so, why?  I don't personally do drugs, but don't have a problem with someone purchasing a little cocaine off the internet.

How about the FBI?  Do we get to freeze the coins they confiscated, as it could easily be argued the FBI stole them from their rightful owners.

How about the US Department of Defence?  After all, they're the largest arms dealer on the planet, and indirectly kill more humans than any other organization in existence, so are they allowed to own Bitcoin?

How about the Chinese government?  They're well known for silencing free speech, so should we allow them to have Bitcoin?

Who gets control over the frozen Bitcoins?  Where do they go, and who decides that?  Just permanently lock them, give them to the Red Cross, or?

Why would the Bitcoin community open its door to the massive amount of possible corruption this would include?

This whole idea of freezing / blacklisting coins is horrible, and filled with holes.

[jonald_fyookball]

well said.  /threadwon.

[tvbcof]

Wow, what a massive slippery slope to go down, and one I think the Bitcoin community should avoid at all costs.  How or why is the community as a whole responsible for deciding who is and isn't allowed to own Bitcoin?  You actually used Gadaffi as an example, which proves my point perfectly, because there's 10s or even 100s of millions of people out there who would happily argue against you on that.  It's pretty tough to make the argument that Libya is better off now versus under Gadaffi, when everyone had free education, electricity, house upon marriage, etc.

Who decides what addresses should be blacklisted?

Who's in charge of the processes and regulations required to blacklist an address?

Is there an appeals process of any kind?

How can we be sure the ownership of said address hasn't changed hands during investigation process?

What happens when the Russian mafia gets $80mm worth of Bitcoin frozen, and proceeds to send some people over to the mining farm(s) to handle the blacklisting issue?  Or even worse, a militant group like ISIS?

Will owners of DNMs have their coins frozen?  If so, why?  I don't personally do drugs, but don't have a problem with someone purchasing a little cocaine off the internet.

How about the FBI?  Do we get to freeze the coins they confiscated, as it could easily be argued the FBI stole them from their rightful owners.

How about the US Department of Defence?  After all, they're the largest arms dealer on the planet, and indirectly kill more humans than any other organization in existence, so are they allowed to own Bitcoin?

Who gets control over the frozen Bitcoins?  Where do they go, and who decides that?  Just permanently lock them, give them to the Red Cross, or?

Pretty much all of your concerns go out the window if you just let Big Brother worry about it.  It's his job, and those of us who count live under a Democracy so obviously nothing bad will happen, or at least not for very long, right?

This OP screed about tainting by controlling miners was written some time ago.  With time for analysis it seems (to me) to be pretty obsolete.  Let the 'invisible hand' do the grunt work.  Here's how:

 + Popularize Bitcoin for the masses so that a as many people as possible use it for buying the morning coffee and what-not.

 + The govt, in a valiant and self-sacrificing effort to protect us all from ISIS and such charters outfits like CoinValidation to work their technical magic and declares that they love Bitcoin but they just want it to be 'safe and effective' for everyone so such a service needs to be utilized by all transaction providers (Coinbase, TigerDirect, etc.)  All it would take is a quick API call to check spends (and de-value accordingly.)

 + Fairly easy to list unregistered UTXO's (Bitcoins) categorically differently from registered ones.  If one has tainted coins, they can solve the problem by registering and accounting for their holdings.

 + Nobody no matter what their disposition is going to welcome tainted coins which cannot be used as broadly at retailers.  Blustering claims to the contrary will be 99% bullshit when the rubber meets the road (and the other 1% will be creamed.)  Fungibiity attack.  I can almost promise that if the ecosystem is sufficiently heavy with Joe Coffeedrinker class users the attack will be successful.  Note that it requires no code changes, no leaning on devs, no trying to track down nodes and miners all over the world, no consolidating of mining or other infrastructure required.

The prerequisite for setting up this attack is to get Bitcoin broadly used among the masses and accepted by retailers and the like.  Unfortunately Bitcoin actually sucks for this (as evidenced by half a decade of experience now with favorable media and favorable regulations here in the U.S. even!)  It is a batch system.  Back in the day it was considered dumb to assume transactions solid without confirmations.  History is being re-written by those who need Bitcoin to be a real-time system for the reasons I mentioned (much like the global warming hoaxers have tried to memory-hole the medieval warming period which is an embarrassment and detracts from their goals.) 

Well thought out and developed off-chain solutions are one solution which offers the benefits of Bitcoin for the masses while not making it brittle and as prone to the above mentioned fungibility attack.  One level of abstraction making Bitcoin used primarily as a settlement layer and backing store would throw a giant stick into the works.  Anyone could start a sidechain with mainly open-source technology...the only real criteria for success would be attracting enough of the Bitcoin circulation to peg.  Sidechains can adapt to attack by adapting to draconian requirements or simply closing up shop (whereupon users get their money back.)  The hope would be that those primarily active at the settlement layer would be generally more able and willing to ignore the pain-points where tainting could be applied (e.g., Coinbase which they have little use for.)

[Envrin]

Ok, so who's determine the regulations as to which coins are considered "tainted" and which aren't?  Are we going off the laws of a certain country?  If so, which country?  Or is the Bitcoin community going to write its own law book, and hire it's own police force to govern such laws at to who can and can not own Bitcoin?  If so, who's the regulating body to this group to ensure they don't get out of control, and what measures does the regulating body have to stop any corruption?

[tvbcof]

Ok, so who's determine the regulations as to which coins are considered "tainted" and which aren't?  Are we going off the laws of a certain country?  If so, which country?  Or is the Bitcoin community going to write its own law book, and hire it's own police force to govern such laws at to who can and can not own Bitcoin?  If so, who's the regulating body to this group to ensure they don't get out of control, and what measures does the regulating body have to stop any corruption?

CoinValidation (for instance) has the govt charter.  They make the rules as long as they have it.  If they wrong you, go ahead and take them to court if you have $50k to burn.

You could probably bitch the the comptroller of the currency (suggested by my legislator) as I did when Wells Fargo shut down my bank account which was only used to interact with Coinbase.  Lemme tell you how much that achieved: nothing.

[Envrin]

CoinValidation (for instance) has the govt charter.  They make the rules as long as they have it.

Great, so a centralized bank / authority.  Sorry, but that defeats the entire purpose of Bitcoin.

[eerygarden]

CoinValidation (for instance) has the govt charter.  They make the rules as long as they have it.

Great, so a centralized bank / authority.  Sorry, but that defeats the entire purpose of Bitcoin.

I hate it. I hate it all.

[jonald_fyookball]

long live bitcoin.

[Elwar]

May the idea of a blacklist leave Bitcoin along with Mr. Hearn.

[lottery248]

you cannot freeze the bitcoin address unless you have majority of the private keys. you need to generate a lot of tries in order to get a chance of finding that address and "freeze" it by sending the money out from their address, this is practically impossible. there are no possibility of regulating miners, and miners doesn't have ability to control the transaction process.

[BurtW]

you cannot freeze the bitcoin address unless you have majority of the private keys. you need to generate a lot of tries in order to get a chance of finding that address and "freeze" it by sending the money out from their address, this is practically impossible. there are no possibility of regulating miners, and miners doesn't have ability to control the transaction process.

You do not know what you are talking about at all.  You could learn something by actually reading this thread but I expect that is too much to ask as you just post crap like that to up your post count for your paid signature.

[QuestionAuthority]

This thread exists and yet no one saw back then that Mike Hearn was a loon. There have been fungibility discussions on this forum ever since 2011 but Hearn never understood the concept I suppose. Good riddance.

[jonald_fyookball]

This thread exists and yet no one saw back then that Mike Hearn was a loon. There have been fungibility discussions on this forum ever since 2011 but Hearn never understood the concept I suppose. Good riddance.

Mike Hearn was dead wrong on fungibility.

And because of that, people have had a huge bias
against him and thought "he must be wrong about the blocksize too"

[tvbcof]

This thread exists and yet no one saw back then that Mike Hearn was a loon. There have been fungibility discussions on this forum ever since 2011 but Hearn never understood the concept I suppose. Good riddance.

IMO Hearn was and is anything but a loon.  For whatever set of reasons, he seems to feel that it is dangerous to allow individuals be free to operate outside carefully controlled monetary structures.  Gavin is similar in this respect.  I've long felt that Andresen probably simply 'loved big brother' while Hearn 'was big brother' in, at the very least, active spirit.  The trouble is that a large majority of people who matter on this planet 'love big brother'.  Thus, trying to achieve some of the goals I would like to see with a distributed crypto-currencies will be chronically under conflict with the 'collective.'

Also, don't count Hearn or Andresen out.  Both had a very active interest in Bitcoin which is unlikely to wear off, and both are situated to be useful in continued campaigns against it.

[QuestionAuthority]

This thread exists and yet no one saw back then that Mike Hearn was a loon. There have been fungibility discussions on this forum ever since 2011 but Hearn never understood the concept I suppose. Good riddance.

IMO Hearn was and is anything but a loon.  For whatever set of reasons, he seems to feel that it is dangerous to allow individuals be free to operate outside carefully controlled monetary structures.  Gavin is similar in this respect.  I've long felt that Andresen probably simply 'loved big brother' while Hearn 'was big brother' in, at the very least, active spirit.  The trouble is that a large majority of people who matter on this planet 'love big brother'.  Thus, trying to achieve some of the goals I would like to see with a distributed crypto-currencies will be chronically under conflict with the 'collective.'

Also, don't count Hearn or Andresen out.  Both had a very active interest in Bitcoin which is unlikely to wear off, and both are situated to be useful in continued campaigns against it.

And that's why Hearn and Andresen both need to go work for MasterCard and leave Bitcoin alone. They don't understand or don't care about the idea behind Bitcoin. It's loony to me to make a decentralized system for the people to use freely and then centralize a blacklisting system. Either they don't believe Satoshi is right or they have their own agenda that doesn't mesh with Bitcoin. Either way they can GTFO.

The white paper

What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust, allowing any two willing parties to transact directly with each other without the need for a trusted third party.