We could easily stop the SR auction, would you?

[JeromeS]

So, earlier I was thinking about the SR auction situation we have now and I had a few thoughts that I'd like to discuss.

As one of the people who joined the network because of their libertarian values, the auction bothers me because

  1 - It might cause the bitcoin price to plunge if one or more of the groups that win the auction sells their share or part of it.
  2 - Even if the coins sell at $250 each, the government that basically stole them still gets to be $7 million richer.

I was thinking about ways to stop this or at least make those coins worth less, and my mind went back to ideas that were proposed before, like merchants blacklisting coins from "tainted" addresses, which would need a lot of people to sign on, making it impractical.

Another was a hard fork with an alternate blockchain where those coins are unspendable. Again, this is impractical since, unless it becomes the main chain, the fork coins would need their own exchanges and merchants and so on and judging by the forums, most people don't care enough about this issue to go through the trouble.


Finally, I had my third idea. I am sure this was proposed before in other situations but the timing couldn't be more right for it.

Mining pools like Ghash.io could refuse to include any transaction spending those coins in their blocks. If 50% or more of the miners believe it would be a good thing for bitcoin if those coins are never spent then we could easily collectively choose to keep them where they are.

I realize that I might be too late proposing this solution, but I thought I might as well put it on the record in case there is still time or if something like this happens again in the future.

To test that last idea, I added a poll (for miners only). The question is this:

If you could switch to mining a blockchain that treats the SR coins as unspendable in just one easy mouse click, would you?

Keep in mind: mining that chain would only be profitable if 50% of all other miners do the same.

[Bertso]

No I wouldn't.  If people find out that bitcoin can be manipulated by a group of people it would just do harm. This is a great lesson to be learned that you have to keep your private keys safe. We are in the wild west stage where people can break into your house or business and steal your bitcoins if you do not hide or encrypt them properly.

If I ran SR, I would have all my private keys bip38 protected and hidden very securely. If Bitcoins are stolen or confiscated from you then it is your own fault. It's time we take responsibility for our own money.
 

[darkota]

So, earlier I was thinking about the SR auction situation we have now and I had a few thoughts that I'd like to discuss.

As one of the people who joined the network because of their libertarian values, the auction bothers me because

  1 - It might cause the bitcoin price to plunge if one or more of the groups that win the auction sells their share or part of it.
  2 - Even if the coins sell at $250 each, the government that basically stole them still gets to be $7 million richer.

I was thinking about ways to stop this or at least make those coins worth less, and my mind went back to ideas that were proposed before, like merchants blacklisting coins from "tainted" addresses, which would need a lot of people to sign on, making it impractical.

Another was a hard fork with an alternate blockchain where those coins are unspendable. Again, this is impractical since, unless it becomes the main chain, the fork coins would need their own exchanges and merchants and so on and judging by the forums, most people don't care enough about this issue to go through the trouble.


Finally, I had my third idea. I am sure this was proposed before in other situations but the timing couldn't be more right for it.

Mining pools like Ghash.io could refuse to include any transaction spending those coins in their blocks. If 50% or more of the miners believe it would be a good thing for bitcoin if those coins are never spent then we could easily collectively choose to keep them where they are.

I realize that I might be too late proposing this solution, but I thought I might as well put it on the record in case there is still time or if something like this happens again in the future.

To test that last idea, I added a poll (for miners only). The question is this:

If you could switch to mining a blockchain that treats the SR coins as unspendable in just one easy mouse click, would you?

Keep in mind: mining that chain would only be profitable if 50% of all other miners do the same.

Absolutely not, leave them alone. Now get lost.

[cbeast]

How would you know which are SR coins?

[franky1]

theoretically... ill tryto explain how i see the OP's idea work/not work

if ghash had 50% and was getting 3 of the 6 blocks per hour
if eligius had 33% and was getting 2 of the 6 blocks per hour
and unknown pool had 17% and was getting 1 of the 6 blocks per hour.

now lets say both ghash and eligius both devilishly decided to tweak their code and to look at the mempool of tx's and if there was a TX belonging to a known SR hoard. Ghash and eigius wold delete th TX from their mempool so it wont enter one of their blocks.

the TX would continually get relayed for 24hours+ meaning ghash/eligius would continually delete the tx from their mempools... but..
but.. unknown pool would add it to their block, as they were not devils.. thus the end result..... the TX would finally get added to a block maybe after 50 minutes or so after the tx was first sent, as the other 5 blocks before ignored the TX because they were mined by ghash/eligius.

so all it would do is delay it.

and as for people saying that mining pools should not play with the protocol to block transactions....

im sorry to tell you, they already do. luke JR admitted already that the eligius pools ignore free transactions, fill-up with tx's that have fee's and then only let a small amount of fee free tx's in after that.

so tx's are already being hand picked allowd/disallowd based on pool miners preference. which in luke jr's case is greed. which shows it is possible to make it done for other reasons.

[ArticMine]

No

[JeromeS]

No I wouldn't.  If people find out that bitcoin can be manipulated by a group of people it would just do harm.

It can be "manipulated" if and only if 50% of miners decide that it's desirable.
I don't see this as manipulation, I see it as miners being aware on a large enough scale of what makes bitcoin work and acting in its interest. It's basically voting with your hashpower.

How would you know which are SR coins?

I thought the address they confiscated was already known. I could be wrong.

so all it would do is delay it.

No. Mining pool #1 makes a 2 block long addition to the blockchain that includes the tx, mining pools #2 and #3 make 3 blocks in the same time that do not contain the tx, everyone's client chooses the longest chain (chain #2), tx doesn't get into the blockchain.

so tx's are already being hand picked allowd/disallowd based on pool miners preference. which in luke jr's case is greed. but that does not make it physically impossible to make it done for other reasons.

Actually, "greed" works in favor of what I proposed. If we knew with certainty that the bitcoin price will tank after the auction, miners would definitely have an interest in stopping that tx in order to protect their profits, and in doing that they would also be protecting bitcoin.

[iluvpie60]

So, earlier I was thinking about the SR auction situation we have now and I had a few thoughts that I'd like to discuss.

As one of the people who joined the network because of their libertarian values, the auction bothers me because

  1 - It might cause the bitcoin price to plunge if one or more of the groups that win the auction sells their share or part of it.
  2 - Even if the coins sell at $250 each, the government that basically stole them still gets to be $7 million richer.

I was thinking about ways to stop this or at least make those coins worth less, and my mind went back to ideas that were proposed before, like merchants blacklisting coins from "tainted" addresses, which would need a lot of people to sign on, making it impractical.

Another was a hard fork with an alternate blockchain where those coins are unspendable. Again, this is impractical since, unless it becomes the main chain, the fork coins would need their own exchanges and merchants and so on and judging by the forums, most people don't care enough about this issue to go through the trouble.


Finally, I had my third idea. I am sure this was proposed before in other situations but the timing couldn't be more right for it.

Mining pools like Ghash.io could refuse to include any transaction spending those coins in their blocks. If 50% or more of the miners believe it would be a good thing for bitcoin if those coins are never spent then we could easily collectively choose to keep them where they are.

I realize that I might be too late proposing this solution, but I thought I might as well put it on the record in case there is still time or if something like this happens again in the future.

To test that last idea, I added a poll (for miners only). The question is this:

If you could switch to mining a blockchain that treats the SR coins as unspendable in just one easy mouse click, would you?

Keep in mind: mining that chain would only be profitable if 50% of all other miners do the same.

0 out of 10 for the effort tbh lol.

[p2pbucks]

yet another sinister  moron troller

[seriouscoin]

remember noobs, selecting tx based on fees is straight forward.

Other than that, you're just fcking around without knowing jack about TXs.

[JeromeS]

remember noobs, selecting tx based on fees is straight forward.

Other than that, you're just fcking around without knowing jack about TXs.

Actually, I wrote my own python-based bitcoin client a year or so ago. and that's all I have to say about that.

[Willisius]

Even if miners agreed with you (and >50% of the hashrate belongs to miners that don't care about Bitcoin at all), that would be too dangerous a precedent to set.

[JeromeS]

Even if miners agreed with you (and >50% of the hashrate belongs to miners that don't care about Bitcoin at all),

Maybe, but even those miners care about their mined coins being worth something in $.

that would be too dangerous a precedent to set.

I get what you're saying, but if it always takes 50%+ of the network to make things like that happen, where's the danger? This is democracy in action.

[_Miracle]

Even if I wanted to (which I don't) no.
If there were ever any coins that I'd like to control it would be Gox coins, to give back to the owners but still...No.

Any dip in price would be temporary: an opportunity to pick up some coin if you can.

[Harley997]

Even if miners agreed with you (and >50% of the hashrate belongs to miners that don't care about Bitcoin at all), that would be too dangerous a precedent to set.

This is 100% true.

Even if the auction is determined to be illegal or otherwise wrong in the future Ross or the "true owner" of the coins can sue and force the government to give their money back to the rightful owners.

[cosmicapex]

No, this is potentially much more damaging than the SR coins being released on the market.

[lihuajkl]

no. If any pool (gaining most of the hash power) denies any specific amount of Bitcoin to enter the blockchain for any reason, others probably will copy that to do that again using justified reasons for their own interests. It will certainly damage the Bitcon concept. So I don't agree mining pools should play with the protocol to block transactions

[Cicero2.0]

The damage to bitcoin would be tremendous. Also what do you say to the people that bought these coins in good faith? Denying them something they purchased would be a form of theft.

[jonald_fyookball]

This again?

How many times does it need to said?

Fungibility is an essential component of a digital currency, and we reject anything that threatens this.

[waldox]

the govt is not really $7 million richer
they can get federal reserve to print up $7 million, 7 mil is a drop in the bucket in their budget
i rather they divest from bitcoin, giving more cheap coins for early adopters