What's to be done when a huge quantity of bitcoins is stolen?(+1% of world btc)

[dreamspark]

But I'm talking about the bitcoin community somehow banning Bitcoins that the GOVERNMENT take. Not the other way around  

You cant have it both ways, as soon as you've undermined the decentralized trustless system, its ceases to exist.

[serenitys]

In the 70s, an individual allegedly took a high dive out of a passenger jet in the middle of winter, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, wearing only a suit, carrying a messed up parachute with money stolen as ransom during the hijacking, and disappeared somewhere over or into the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

They call him D.B. Cooper, and while the whole notion of what happened sounds like a fishy hoax perpetrated by the flight crew, reality is all that perfectly good money has been lost indefinitely, out of commission...

And we all dealt with it and moved on.

Difference is more fiat can be printed. More bitcoin won't be made after the cap so with coin out of commission and MIA, it would make them even more valuable in the long term.

For the record, I also lean toward no sort of decentralization. The entire premise of Liberation and Freedom is responsibility for one self, accountability to and for one self...that means you take 100% full responsibility for securing your wealth. If you still need some other guy to do it for you, you're simply not mature enough to handle your own finances and shouldn't be involved with bitcoin outside nifty gyft cards.

Freedom requires vigilance.

That requires a clear, sober head and an intact spine.

[cr1776]

MtGox, for example. Or silkroad.


Or if/WHEN a government "cracks down" on several exchanges at the same time and takes a large % of the worlds bitcoins. Is there a plan for this? Has it been discussed? Shouldn't the techies and community try to "fix" it somehow?


I'm talking about finding the bitcoins and "blacklisting" them and thus deleting them ofcourse. What problems could this have? That it takes a ton of time that theese people have to do for free?


What if 1 country with many exchanges does this(Steal all the bitcoins inside the country they can get their hands on). Couldn't this lead to other countries doing the same? I mean, if bitcoin is going to blow up to 10,000/BTC or even 100,000 as some actually expect, this could very well become a reality.



Is this a danger and/or what is preventing this?


thanks for your time,
/Guru

1. Tell people that using an exchange or Silk Road type entity as a bank is stupid. People should learn from Gox and sr1. If you don't have the keys, you don't own the coins..

2. As BurtW said - blacklisting is a bad idea and it has been discussed to death many times.

3. Dark Wallet, CoinJoin etc will hopefully help prevent blacklisting prior to it starting.

4. Make your alt-coin that allows blacklisting, but it won't be bitcoin.

[jonald_fyookball]

In the 70s, an individual allegedly took a high dive out of a passenger jet in the middle of winter, in the middle of a storm, in the middle of the night, wearing only a suit, carrying a messed up parachute with money stolen as ransom during the hijacking, and disappeared somewhere over or into the Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest.

They call him D.B. Cooper, and while the whole notion of what happened sounds like a fishy hoax perpetrated by the flight crew, reality is all that perfectly good money has been lost indefinitely, out of commission...

And we all dealt with it and moved on.

Difference is more fiat can be printed. More bitcoin won't be made after the cap so with coin out of commission and MIA, it would make them even more valuable in the long term.

For the record, I also lean toward no sort of decentralization. The entire premise of Liberation and Freedom is responsibility for one self, accountability to and for one self...that means you take 100% full responsibility for securing your wealth. If you still need some other guy to do it for you, you're simply not mature enough to handle your own finances and shouldn't be involved with bitcoin outside nifty gyft cards.

Freedom requires vigilance.

That requires a clear, sober head and an intact spine.

Mostly agree, but if you need someone to secure your wealth, free market options are and will be available.  It is up to the individual to decide, and whatever they decide they still must take responsibility for their choice.

[cr1776]

They all ready did that to a guy from North Carolina i think. He was creating gold coins and they called him a financial terrorist and seized his wealth. He followed the letter of the law but still got hammered. Great country we live in eh?

Can u plz point a link to this incident ? Would like to know more about it...

I think he was talking about Liberty Dollars:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Dollar

I don't think he was talking about Casascius coins since Mike is in Utah:
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/13/5207256/casascius-maker-of-shiny-physical-bitcoins-shut-down-by-treasury

[serenitys]

I was all for Liberty dollars and kept up with the case until the whole thing kinda just faded into oblivion. When I first heard of bitcoin, I thought it was the reincarnation of the liberty dollars - same people and it really excited me to death. I see now, though, that bitcoin solves the liberty dollar problem. The government being allowed to print money...and that's the catch.

Money and currency are not the same thing.

It came down to a sort of surrealist nonsensical sort of "trademark infringement" at the end of the day. Government said it and only it is legally allowed to print "money" and liberty dollar couldn't call it money, couldn't call it a dollar, couldn't assign it any point value, so they got taken down for counterfeiting. They tried to get around it by going with silver/gold "rounds" or coins but by then I think the government just needed to make an example of them and scared people away from it. My personal take on it is that the government won that round due to the simple fact the people, no matter how much they believed in the concept as an alternative still had no ultimate security that they'd ever see any silver/gold, that it couldn't be confiscated from their own mints and it'd be a rip off.

Bitcoin solved that problem entirely, which is why it's gained more traction and the government trying to assign it as an asset or property over currency is just shooting themselves in the foot.

Here's the thing though. By the time the government recognize just how "disruptive" bitcoin will be to global currencies, it'll be too late. They're in a catch 22 zone right now...too small to be an immediate threat so they can't outright ban it without giving it legitimacy as a threat...so they can only fear monger to hopefully scare people away like they did with the liberty dollar. Once enough adoption has set in, not just in the US but globally, where legitimate businesses have changed their payment infrastructure and are doing business with it, the government can't outright ban it without causing chaos in the economy...so they'll either have to grin and bear it or implode.

[GogglesPisano]

What's the story with the Silk Road coins? Aren't those going to be dumped on the market soon by the feds?

[MyPotPlantDied]

Nothing. That is either the good or bad thing about Bitcoin, depending who you ask.

[Beliathon]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

[jonald_fyookball]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

In the world according to Beliathon, stealing isn't a crime anyway, because there
shouldn't be any laws (anarchy), and no one can own any coins to begin with,
because private property is an invalid concept. 

[E-C.Guru]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

[whtchocla7e]

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

Good luck "enforcing" a general consensus.

lol

[jonald_fyookball]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

"Could" is the operative word here.  Everyone COULD decide to make me king and
send me all your bitcoins, but it aint gonna happen. 

Heck, we can't even agree on whether to use bits, millies, zibs, satoshis, centoshis, etc.
We're never going to agree on blacklisting coins.

[E-C.Guru]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

"Could" is the operative word here.  Everyone COULD decide to make me king and
send me all your bitcoins, but it aint gonna happen.  

Heck, we can't even agree on whether to use bits, millies, zibs, satoshis, centoshis, etc.
We're never going to agree on blacklisting coins.

I'm pretty sure certain events could change that though. You're all being narrow minded here. Take no offense, please.



Theoretically this is perhaps hard(But far from impossible) to pull off atm, but: What if US government would get their hands on 20% of existing BTC? By stealing from exchanges / kidnapping holders and extorting their keys. They could then basically drop the price to 1$. They could very well call it a terrorist act to buy/sell/OWN bitcoins. Then they, BY LAW, can put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Not even 1% of americans own bitcoins so even putting you all in theese cages isn't even that hard.


Why would they do this?

To preserve the dollar / prevent monetary revolution

Be real folks. If you can imagine what Bitcoin can do for humans(and how rich you'll get along the way, which is what most people seem to focus on) please at least put 10% of that time imagining of what government/FED/Rothschild could do to prevent it from happening. A huge well-cordinated crackdown is not a paranoid fantasy. It's a possibility.

But ok, let's put our head in the sand and brush it off as crazy.. I mean, governments and the elite are good people right?  

[cr1776]

I'm pretty sure certain events could change that though. You're all being narrow minded here. Take no offense, please.



Theoretically this is perhaps hard(But far from impossible) to pull off atm, but: What if US government would get their hands on 20% of existing BTC? By stealing from exchanges / kidnapping holders and extorting their keys. They could then basically drop the price to 1$. They could very well call it a terrorist act to buy/sell/OWN bitcoins. Then they, BY LAW, can put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Not even 1% of americans own bitcoins so even putting you all in theese cages isn't even that hard.


Why would they do this?

To preserve the dollar / prevent monetary revolution

Be real folks. If you can imagine what Bitcoin can do for humans(and how rich you'll get along the way, which is what most people seem to focus on) please at least put 10% of that time imagining of what government/FED/Rothschild could do to prevent it from happening. A huge well-cordinated crackdown is not a paranoid fantasy. It's a possibility.

But ok, let's put our head in the sand and brush it off as crazy.. I mean, governments and the elite are good people right?  

If you think it is needed, fork the client, and fork the blockchain.  Then see how many people agree.  It will be a perfect test of the theory. No one is stopping you, the code is on github, the blockchain is everywhere, and then you can see how the consensus of the network is.  No one knows what the consensus will be until someone does it - then it may put an end to the repeated threads arguing for blacklisting.

At worst, fork the code, test it, and release the blacklisting code - then it can be used at any point in the future for whatever purpose requires blacklisting.

[jonald_fyookball]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

"Could" is the operative word here.  Everyone COULD decide to make me king and
send me all your bitcoins, but it aint gonna happen.  

Heck, we can't even agree on whether to use bits, millies, zibs, satoshis, centoshis, etc.
We're never going to agree on blacklisting coins.

I'm pretty sure certain events could change that though. You're all being narrow minded here. Take no offense, please.



Theoretically this is perhaps hard(But far from impossible) to pull off atm, but: What if US government would get their hands on 20% of existing BTC? By stealing from exchanges / kidnapping holders and extorting their keys. They could then basically drop the price to 1$. They could very well call it a terrorist act to buy/sell/OWN bitcoins. Then they, BY LAW, can put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Not even 1% of americans own bitcoins so even putting you all in theese cages isn't even that hard.


Why would they do this?

To preserve the dollar / prevent monetary revolution

Be real folks. If you can imagine what Bitcoin can do for humans(and how rich you'll get along the way, which is what most people seem to focus on) please at least put 10% of that time imagining of what government/FED/Rothschild could do to prevent it from happening. A huge well-cordinated crackdown is not a paranoid fantasy. It's a possibility.

But ok, let's put our head in the sand and brush it off as crazy.. I mean, governments and the elite are good people right?  

its more likely that government will outlaw bitcoin or try a 51% attack than it is for bitcoin to adopt blacklisting.

[E-C.Guru]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

"Could" is the operative word here.  Everyone COULD decide to make me king and
send me all your bitcoins, but it aint gonna happen.  

Heck, we can't even agree on whether to use bits, millies, zibs, satoshis, centoshis, etc.
We're never going to agree on blacklisting coins.

I'm pretty sure certain events could change that though. You're all being narrow minded here. Take no offense, please.



Theoretically this is perhaps hard(But far from impossible) to pull off atm, but: What if US government would get their hands on 20% of existing BTC? By stealing from exchanges / kidnapping holders and extorting their keys. They could then basically drop the price to 1$. They could very well call it a terrorist act to buy/sell/OWN bitcoins. Then they, BY LAW, can put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Not even 1% of americans own bitcoins so even putting you all in theese cages isn't even that hard.


Why would they do this?

To preserve the dollar / prevent monetary revolution

Be real folks. If you can imagine what Bitcoin can do for humans(and how rich you'll get along the way, which is what most people seem to focus on) please at least put 10% of that time imagining of what government/FED/Rothschild could do to prevent it from happening. A huge well-cordinated crackdown is not a paranoid fantasy. It's a possibility.

But ok, let's put our head in the sand and brush it off as crazy.. I mean, governments and the elite are good people right?  

its more likely that government will outlaw bitcoin or try a 51% attack than it is for bitcoin to adopt blacklisting.

That does in fact say nothing. Governments will outlaw bitcoin and try a 51% attack.

[jonald_fyookball]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

You just said "As an anarchist I believe we need a new central authority to tell us which coins are good coins and which coins are bad coins.  We need regulation and government oversight."

Think before you type.

Blacklisting bitcoins stolen by a government is/could be done by consensus of the whole network, not centraul authority.

"Could" is the operative word here.  Everyone COULD decide to make me king and
send me all your bitcoins, but it aint gonna happen.  

Heck, we can't even agree on whether to use bits, millies, zibs, satoshis, centoshis, etc.
We're never going to agree on blacklisting coins.

I'm pretty sure certain events could change that though. You're all being narrow minded here. Take no offense, please.



Theoretically this is perhaps hard(But far from impossible) to pull off atm, but: What if US government would get their hands on 20% of existing BTC? By stealing from exchanges / kidnapping holders and extorting their keys. They could then basically drop the price to 1$. They could very well call it a terrorist act to buy/sell/OWN bitcoins. Then they, BY LAW, can put you in a cage for the rest of your life. Not even 1% of americans own bitcoins so even putting you all in theese cages isn't even that hard.


Why would they do this?

To preserve the dollar / prevent monetary revolution

Be real folks. If you can imagine what Bitcoin can do for humans(and how rich you'll get along the way, which is what most people seem to focus on) please at least put 10% of that time imagining of what government/FED/Rothschild could do to prevent it from happening. A huge well-cordinated crackdown is not a paranoid fantasy. It's a possibility.

But ok, let's put our head in the sand and brush it off as crazy.. I mean, governments and the elite are good people right?  

its more likely that government will outlaw bitcoin or try a 51% attack than it is for bitcoin to adopt blacklisting.

That does in fact say nothing. Governments will outlaw bitcoin and try a 51% attack.

when you get done using that crystal ball, i'd like to borrow it. thx.

[E-C.Guru]

I'll upload it to thepiratebay.org so everyone can use its awesomeness don't worry 

[serenitys]

As an anarchist I am 100% for blacklisting any nation-state government owned coins.

Starting with the wealth the FBI stole from all those innocent drug dealers on the Silk Road.

Because we all know the Feds are actually gonna pay the IRS some hefty capital gains taxes on all that property they confiscated, right.