UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 03:11:34 AM Last edit: November 30, 2014, 03:46:39 AM by UnunoctiumTesticles |
|
The only way you can stop the government from having this power, is to hide the mining pools so the government can't find them (the servers).
Not only is this very possible, it is our civic duty to do so. Government employees must be shown their limitations to power that are already clearly laid out in the US Constitution. How is it possible now? I am guessing you don't have a technological noodle to contemplate what you are saying. I was confused by your statement regarding the blocking of private keys. It is very strange that you think government can have any control over Bitcoin at all. You seem to think you speak for most people. I disagree.
Huh? Where is your rebuttal to the fact that the government can regulate the mining pools? 2. Government has a huge moral obligation to regulate Bitcoin to protect the public from fraud, theft, and tax evasion. And please realize the government is bankrupt and has an obligation to the public (e.g. unfunded promised future liabilities of the USA government to its constituents is $150+ trillion), so they will be increasing the portion of the wealth they confiscate each year. Governments will confiscate (ahem "tax") increasingly larger share of the GDP every year for next next couple of decades, because the global debt is $158+ trillion and the debt-to-GDP ratios are greater than 200% in every western nation on earth.
While probably factual, it is irrelevant. There is nothing in the US Constitution about any of this. I think Obama's last act will be to mint many One Trillion Dollar coins to pay off all debts. But my opinion is also irrelevant. Methinks this is a troll and I fell for it. The USA Constitution is dead and was shredded a long time ago. You are living in a fantasy bubble, not reality. And you have not studied the history of how bankrupt mainstream governments always become totalitarian states. Armstrong has studied this, and I have cited him. You choose not to read his expertise at your own peril. You are correct that the USA is going to fracture and it will come to a shooting civil war being those few who believe in the Constitution and the masses who are quite contented to be taken care of by the government. I guess you haven't noticed how many millions of Americans are on food stamps, Medicare, long-term unemployment, disability payments, etc.. The government knows this is coming, that is why they have militarized the police so they can be sure to "take your Constitutional gun from your cold, dead hand". I wish the "Bundy Ranch" types can prevail, but that would be fantasy. Nobody is trolling here. Let's stick to the facts please. Answer the questions with facts. Btw, my AnonyMint profile would be at Hero or Legendary status by now if I had not abandoned it on purpose, so please don't claim tenure over me.
|
|
|
|
numismatist
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1245
Merit: 1004
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 03:16:02 AM |
|
In before cash gets banned.
Cash will never get banned. Just a small reminder, "cash" is know to humans since anno domini 600 B.C.
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 03:25:58 AM Last edit: November 30, 2014, 06:03:27 AM by UnunoctiumTesticles |
|
In before cash gets banned.
Cash will never get banned. Just a small reminder, "cash" is know to humans since anno domini 600 B.C. Cash dates back to Mesopotamia at least from which epoch Martin Armstrong has collected clay tablets of contracts (as part of the $1 billion in today's money value he claims he invested in studying and collecting data of the history of the world). But the world never before had an internet and handheld computer to make electronic money viable. This changes everything. This is why electronic money is inevitable and imminent. Also the physical black market is under numerous technological threats that did not exist before: - Body scanners at all airports, borders, and soon to be mobile scanners are coming to our roads
- All human actions (and thus movements and transactions) are correlated via their use of mobile phones, social networks, and electronic currency.
- Surveillance cameras on every lamp post, traffic signal, business establishment, etc.
- Dependence on ATM machines (haven't you noticed the Daily Withdrawal Limits are being reduced?)
- The Civil Asset Forfeiture scam[1].
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fkwout.com%2Fcutout%2Fa%2Fht%2Fup%2Fmv7_bor.jpg&t=665&c=UW9HdCn3X3Oaaw) - Etc, etc, etc.
I make a lot of footnote citations, because many of you readers are (understandably) ignorant and need to catch up on your research reading.
|
|
|
|
cbeast
Donator
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1010
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 04:15:55 AM |
|
The only way you can stop the government from having this power, is to hide the mining pools so the government can't find them (the servers).
Not only is this very possible, it is our civic duty to do so. Government employees must be shown their limitations to power that are already clearly laid out in the US Constitution. How is it possible now? I am guessing you don't have a technological noodle to contemplate what you are saying. I was confused by your statement regarding the blocking of private keys. It is very strange that you think government can have any control over Bitcoin at all. You seem to think you speak for most people. I disagree.
Huh? Where is your rebuttal to the fact that the government can regulate the mining pools? Since all we're doing here is engaging in hypotheticals, I'll take a shot. TOR can obfuscate enough to make whackamole very time consuming. There is a plethora of black markets already using the technology as well as legitimate businesses that prefer privacy. It would be good for Bitcoin to minimize pool mining anyway. It's not risk of government censure that I see to threaten pools, but extreme corporate espionage. When Bitcoin gets to a certain level, miners will need to secure their facilities and pools even more so. At some point mining pools will develop their own proprietary obfuscation networks. It's not so much about hiding money, but more about privacy and security.
|
Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.
|
|
|
jonald_fyookball
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 04:19:29 AM |
|
The USA Constitution is dead and was shredded a long time ago. blah blah blah...old news. Suppose you're right about everything. What's the implication and what do you propose we do? Stop harping on the problem and get into the solution.
|
|
|
|
cbeast
Donator
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1010
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 04:30:51 AM |
|
Anonymint, I am not ignoring your political arguments, I just don't feel any need to dwell on the problem when we have a solution in our laps.
|
Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 04:46:52 AM |
|
Anonymint, I am not ignoring your political arguments, I just don't feel any need to dwell on the problem when we have a solution in our laps.
I am not trying to be an a$$hole, and I don't mean this as a personal dislike of you, but I am frustrated when you debate me and make so many incorrect technological assumptions. So I hope you understand that I need to speak frankly in reply, so that you might get yourself more grounded to accept that you can't make analysis of what you don't understand well enough. Since all we're doing here is engaging in hypotheticals, I'll take a shot.
Afaics, I am talking technological specifics and you are handwaving. TOR can obfuscate enough to make whackamole very time consuming.
The "hiding in plain sight" because the "NSA doesn't can expend resources on small fish" doesn't apply, because the mining pools are not numerous. There are several pools which collectively have the majority of the hashrate. Thus they can be compelled by the government to blacklist the other small pools that don't comply with regulation. Is not the recent action against 100s of Tor hidden servers not a reality wakeup call for you? ![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia.coindesk.com%2F2014%2F11%2FSilk-Road-2-b.jpg&t=665&c=RTx3ilUgRA75RA) Also the government can make public examples of a few high profile cases of miners violating a regulation requiring miners to use only government approved mining pools, and this will be enough to scare most miners into compliance and provide the larger regulated pools with the majority of the hash rate. The lack of realism in your analysis is difficult to comprehend. There is a plethora of black markets already using the technology as well as legitimate businesses that prefer privacy.
Tor is not anonymous. 100s of hidden services have been seized and recent research paper explains that 81% of the users can be unmasked. I warned a long time ago that low-latency mix-nets can not be anonymous. I think you lack technological understanding to appreciate why that is so? It would be good for Bitcoin to minimize pool mining anyway.
Impossible. I can't blame you that didn't read the important link I provided upthread which explained why:
Btw, gmaxell was wrong in that thread, for which I have written a detailed design document in private to explain, but I am not going to rehash that here.
In that post I cited: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/11/toward-a-12-second-block-time/Which links to: https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/06/19/mining/If, in the current 100 PH/s network, you are running an ASIC with 1 TH/s, then every block you have a chance of 1 in 100000 of receiving the block reward of 25 BTC, but the other 99999 times out of 100000 you get exactly nothing. Given that network hashpower is currently doubling every three months (for simplicity, say 12500 blocks), that gives you a probability of 15.9% that your ASIC will ever generate a reward, and a 84.1% chance that the ASIC’s total lifetime earnings will be exactly nothing. It's not risk of government censure that I see to threaten pools, but extreme corporate espionage. When Bitcoin gets to a certain level, miners will need to secure their facilities and pools even more so.
Corporations don't have the ability to see all traffic that passes over the network. Governments do. Thus governments can unmask Tor, corporations can't. At some point mining pools will develop their own proprietary obfuscation networks. It's not so much about hiding money, but more about privacy and security.
You start with one false technological premise above, then proclaim that pools can create a better mix-net (and I know you don't realize that is the only possible solution to remain hidden) without even comprehending how a mix-net amongst a few pools would be trivially easy to unmask. For a mix-net to work, you need a lot of varied users of the internet involved, meaning you need to create the high-latency improved Tor I have called for. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect (sorry not wanting to ad hominen, but factually this is exactly Dunning-Kruger).
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 04:54:28 AM Last edit: December 01, 2014, 04:16:31 AM by UnunoctiumTesticles |
|
ArnoldChippy,
I agree that the government will probably have to contend with more disruption. I don't think we are going to be satisfied with Bitcoin or any of the existing altcoins which don't make the mining pools anonymous. Also I don't think we will be satisfied with the existing Tor or I2P, which have been proven to not be anonymous as I predicted more than a year ago.
... Suppose you're right about everything. What's the implication and what do you propose we do? Stop harping on the problem and get into the solution.
Here follows what I think is technologically plausible (but not implemented) to stand up against the government. 1. | Mining pools must be hidden services in a high-latency improvement over Tor. The low-latency Tor is shown in recent events and research to not be anonymous (as I had warned for over a year and everyone thought I was crazy). This is the only way that mining is truly decentralized in the sense that the authorities would not be in top-down control over mining and thus transaction processing.
But the economics of mining pools is such that they will always trend to centralization, even if they are anonymous. At least we could hope for the situation we have now in Bitcoin where the users migrate away from a pool when it approaches 50% of the network hashrate.
Mining pools as high-latency hidden services would increase significantly the latency (i.e. propagation delay) on the block chain network, thus block times probably could never be fast[1]. The orphan rate issue can probably solved[2] so that dependence on propagation latency would be eliminated but Vitalik has pointed out some of the complex interplay between propagation delay and fast block times[1]. Also we have to consider if it is possible to decrease the verification delay for propagation. | 2. | IP anonymity would be provided by the high-latency improvement over Tor. Block chain unlinkability and untraceability anonymity would need to be provided by prunable Cryptonote one-time, ring-signatures. Ring-signatures can be pruned if the inputs that are allowed to be mixed in each ring are limited to a defined set for all in that set. The pruning occurs when all in that set have been spent. This is also necessary to eliminate overlapping rings which could otherwise be used (along with Sybil attacks) to correlate and unmask the anonymity (which is the unmasking algorithm I was paid 5 BTC by jl777 and 2.5 BTC by Monero folks for finding). Afaik, no Cryptonote coin yet implements this improvement.
Afaics, Zerocash fails to interact with my solution to the problem of selfish-mining and rented hardware attacks. Zerocoin (e.g. Anoncoin) has problems[3]. CoinJoin (e.g. Darkcoin) is jammable and the only "solution" is to trust masternodes to unmask the anonymity and not reveal it, but the masternodes can be Sybil attacked; it also suffers from a simultaneity requirement.
All on chain anonymity mixing strategies are vulnerable to Sybil attack where adversary sends many transactions to reduce the anonymity set sizes. One mitigation is to employ tx fees. Tx fees place a cost on the adversary and all the users. This tx fee must be sent to the ether, else an adversary would have an incentive to invest in mining to recover the cost. If the adversary controls a significant portion of the coin's money supply, the cost is significantly offset by the resultant deflation, but not for the other users who do not control a significant portion (I will not write down the math, perhaps someone will in the discussion). Net costs on the adversary must be higher than the value to the adversary of unmasking the anonymity. If we are talking about governments and tax authority (especially a world government or G20 cooperation), that value is high. If txs were charged mining hashrate, the adversary would be limited to Sybil attack proportional to the adversary's portion of the network hashrate and users would be limited by their hashrate as to volume of txs they can send. If the threshold was set so that users typically only send tx volume which is 10% of their threshold (so they don't typically have a problem sending a tx), then the adversary could send 10X more tx volume than the proportion of his portion of the hashrate, e.g. with 10% of the hashrate the adversary could own (1 x 10/(9 + 1 x 10) = 53% of the txs and thus 53% of the anonymity sets.
A solution is users could send for mixing continuously at their maximum mining hashrate threshold without impacting their threshold to send a non-mixed tx, but non-mixed outputs would need to be marked so they aren't included in ring sets so they don't reduce anonymity set size. This encourages a design where users are always mining and mixing. | 3. | All anonymity strategies that rely on elliptic curves or other variants of factoring trapdoors are not secure against future quantum computing and potential advances in factoring[4]. This is important because everything can be saved and past anonymity can be broken in the future which is important if we are talking about snubbing government regulation and confiscations (ahem "taxes"). McEliece public key cryptosystems are secure against these. There is no known, well-vetted quantum proof Diffie-Helman, which Cyptonote depends on. Also there is no McEliece-based one-time ring signture, although I have seen a research paper for McEliece ring-signature and another paper for zero-knowledge proofs in McEliece, so it might be possible.
Note I am not referring to using Elliptic curves for signing the tx, which is not the same risk as using them for the anonymity encryption; but in Cryptonote ring-sigs, these can't be unconflated. |
|
|
|
|
franky1
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 4326
Merit: 4646
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:20:51 AM |
|
the protocol is just the protocol nothing more nothing less.
if people want to decentralized mine, it takes less than 2 minutes to change pool details in their miner.. thus itsnot broken, its just not reached that critical point for people to change habits.
as for the anonymity and regulation
how YOU the people decide to mask your IP addresses how YOU the people decide to volunteer personal information to third parties how YOU the people decide to follow or disobey pieces of paper which some call rules or laws how YOU the people decide to set up a business or service around the protocol
are all human traits and nothing to do with the protocol.
a police office cannot arrest the protocol a police officer cannot inform the protocol that it has the right to remain silent a police officer cannot hand cuff the protocol.
bitcoin is not broken, but humans decision to follow the law of one country where the protocol has no jurisdiction, is again your own failings. bitcoin will continue even if half if you people decide you dont understand its true benefits and give up.
|
I DO NOT TRADE OR ACT AS ESCROW ON THIS FORUM EVER. Please do your own research & respect what is written here as both opinion & information gleaned from experience. many people replying with insults but no on-topic content substance, automatically are 'facepalmed' and yawned at
|
|
|
theskillzdatklls
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:21:37 AM |
|
unun you actually bring up very good arguments.
i hate to bring in the ultra-noob idea since i know very little and i'm sure this has already been thought of multiple times but is it not possible for a theoretical coin to track the entire array of PoW and dole out coins to every single participant? such as a decentralized system of pool mining built into the infrastructure instead of a winner take all?
each period of time the amount of work done by each participant running a mining client is recorded, added up and divided by the total to receive their share to their designated address.
anonymity i know nothing about. but i feel like some kind of 'good-enough' system that could be built to be scaled over time to deal with evolving threats could be built as well.
a thing of it is, there is a huge theoretical incentive to build such a platform. if you build the actual bitcoin 2.0 you will become a multimillionaire or billionaire. very few other jobs can offer that kind of salary so i'm sure some super smart ppl will be behind something at some point if the demand for it is present.
on that final point alone, i think something will be thought of. there's just too much money in making solid money to not be innovated on by someone.
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:30:35 AM |
|
franky1, please read my posts more carefully. I have made some of the same points you made.
You underestimate (the time lag to implementation and critical importance) however the fact that there is no high-latency mix-net in existence, thus IP anonymity is impossible at this time. Apparently you lack technological detail in your thinking.
Also Bitcoin doesn't have on chain untraceability and unlinkability, and CoinJoin can't provide it for Bitcoin (I explained why upthread). So sorry, the Bitcoin protocol is broken w.r.t. to resisting government regulation of mining pools. Monero is closer to being not broken at least w.r.t. to on chain anonymity, but still does not have all the technological aspects implemented.
|
|
|
|
jonald_fyookball
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:40:23 AM |
|
I think most of us desire freedom. There's various avenues we can take to spread freedom: information, politics, technology, social, etc. Personally, I don't feel that we need an "airtight" technological solution. The famous words of Étienne de la Boétie ring just as true today: Where has he acquired enough eyes to spy upon you, if you do not provide them yourselves? How can he have so many arms to beat you with, if he does not borrow them from you? The feet that trample down your cities, where does he get them if they are not your own? How does he have any power over you except through you? How would he dare assail you if he had no cooperation from you? I personally talked to someone from the FBI and they admitted they can't really track coins on the blockchain. Like many have said, its as anonymous as you want it to be. Sure, governments can try to clamp down but only if we let them. And if you really feel you need a technological solution to all this, why not just write a white paper already?
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:46:07 AM |
|
I personally talked to someone from the FBI and they admitted they can't really track coins on the blockchain.
Hahaha. Glad to hear that you were escorted to the inner annals of the NSA (and GHCQ) and met the top crackers in the agency. As if the NSA tells the FBI what their capabilities are. ![Roll Eyes](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif) Much less low-level FBI agents willing to talk to the public. Watch cartoons much? http://www.activistpost.com/2014/11/fbi-report-accidentally-exposes.html
|
|
|
|
cbeast
Donator
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1736
Merit: 1010
Let's talk governance, lipstick, and pigs.
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:46:58 AM |
|
You start with one false technological premise above, then proclaim that pools can create a better mix-net (and I know you don't realize that is the only possible solution to remain hidden) without even comprehending how a mix-net amongst a few pools would be trivially easy to unmask. For a mix-net to work, you need a lot of varied users of the internet involved, meaning you need to create the high-latency improved Tor I have called for. This is the Dunning-Kruger effect (sorry not wanting to ad hominen, but factually this is exactly Dunning-Kruger).
Again, we're engaging in hypotheticals. Bitcoin isn't the only protocol that wants a better privacy. All I'm saying is that TOR is pretty good and most of the sites that have been shut down were just sloppy. Where do you think the governments get their hackers? They get people with little motivation to assist them, usually through coercion. While I'm not making the Libertarian argument that govts screw up everything, I go back to my point that people tend to resist ridiculous laws. I don't know enough tech to assess your "technologically plausible solution" but I will say that there are plenty of people, if not governments, that will be interested in such pursuits. I also agree with franky1 that individuals have the power to resist and demand due process in the light of day. Bullies should never be tolerated, especially in positions of authority.
|
Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.
|
|
|
franky1
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 4326
Merit: 4646
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 05:52:26 AM |
|
franky1, please read my posts more carefully. I have made some of the same points you made.
You underestimate (the time lag to implementation and critical importance) however the fact that there is no high-latency mix-net in existence, thus IP anonymity is impossible at this time. Apparently you lack technological detail in your thinking.
Also Bitcoin doesn't have on chain untraceability and unlinkability, and CoinJoin can't provide it for Bitcoin (I explained why upthread). So sorry, the Bitcoin protocol is broken w.r.t. to resisting government regulation of mining pools. Monero is closer to being not broken at least w.r.t. to on chain anonymity, but still does not have all the technological aspects implemented.
an IP is just an IP. just because you think Tor or proxies are the only way to change/mask/borrow an IP. is again nothing to do with the bitcoin protocol. but more to do with human choice and human knowledge. there are many many other ways to separate yourself so your real life info is not linked to bitcoin transactions. this is not a fault of bitcoin. this is again human choice
|
I DO NOT TRADE OR ACT AS ESCROW ON THIS FORUM EVER. Please do your own research & respect what is written here as both opinion & information gleaned from experience. many people replying with insults but no on-topic content substance, automatically are 'facepalmed' and yawned at
|
|
|
jonald_fyookball
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1302
Merit: 1008
Core dev leaves me neg feedback #abuse #political
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 06:03:39 AM |
|
I personally talked to someone from the FBI and they admitted they can't really track coins on the blockchain.
Hahaha. Glad to hear that you were escorted to the inner annals of the NSA (and GHCQ) and met the top crackers in the agency. As if the NSA tells the FBI what their capabilities are. ![Roll Eyes](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif) Much less low-level FBI agents willing to talk to the public. Watch cartoons much? http://www.activistpost.com/2014/11/fbi-report-accidentally-exposes.htmlMissing the point. The Internet itself (yeah the same one the NSA is spying on all the time), is already spreading freedom memes more successfully than government propoganda memes, at least in my opinion. Despite desperate attempts, "they" can't even control what people think or say anymore, and you're somehow worried that Bitcoin mining has failed? In the long run, the trend of humanity is toward greater freedom. We are far more free, educated, enlightened, aware, connected, and empowered as individuals today than we were 100 years ago. What's the point of this thread? What kind of discussion are you hoping to achieve? Do you just like to argue with people? Are you interested in spreading FUD? Or do you want to discuss solutions? You want a "high latency TOR" or whatever? Fine. Write up some specs on it, or start a dedicated thread on THAT. No offense, but you're all over the place with doom and gloom proclamations and I don't see the point.
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 06:08:47 AM Last edit: November 30, 2014, 07:07:23 AM by UnunoctiumTesticles |
|
an IP is just an IP. just because you think Tor or proxies are the only way to change/mask/borrow an IP. is again nothing to do with the bitcoin protocol. but more to do with human choice and human knowledge.
there are many many other ways to separate yourself so your real life info is not linked to bitcoin transactions. this is not a fault of bitcoin. this is again human choice
Yes there are other ways to obtain an IP that is untraceable to your identity such as an unregistered prepaid USB dongle, connecting through an unregistered WiFi connection, even using a botnet to get throw away IP addresses. But mining pools need to be at a stable IP address so none of those options above apply. Also you did not address the point I made about Bitcoin's protocol can't provide untraceability and unlinkability. The relevant analogy is you are the Philosopher's stone who can make gold with alchemy. Although it might be possible, it isn't practical nor realizable. I do agree with the underlying point of your thesis, which is that the more the government pushes, the more we will push back. So they would be wise not to regulate mining too soon. Wait and do it when they are really ready to take control so we don't have enough time to push back. Given your "don't worry" Philosopher's stone attitude, if they are wise and don't alert us, then we won't be able to implement fast enough once they go into rapid fire action around say 2017 or so.
|
|
|
|
johnyj
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1988
Merit: 1012
Beyond Imagination
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 06:11:29 AM |
|
You don't need to be fully anonymous, just anonymous enough so that your privacy is protected from majority of others. If someone spend lots of time and resource to social engineering, you would be found eventually, but doing so is very time consuming and costly. Unless you have become the enemy of the state, there is just not enough human resource to social engineer everyone
|
|
|
|
UnunoctiumTesticles (OP)
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 06:25:36 AM Last edit: November 30, 2014, 06:50:52 AM by UnunoctiumTesticles |
|
Someone wrote me in a PM that Bitcoin was too amateurish at launch to be a product of the NSA working group (or other taskforce created by some powerful who want to drive control over electronic currency the government). I replied as follows: The NSA would of course be astute enough to give the presentation the necessary amateurish character. And I emphatically agree the NSA was not involved in Cryptonote. Why would they? The necessary egg has already hatched. Bitcoin is perfectly matched to co-opting the transition to electronic currency. The whitepaper was perfectly written to turn the gold bugs into drooling fanboys. I use "NSA" as a catch all term for anything developed covertly. I agree more likely some working group funded directly by some umbrella of the globalists, than the NSA precisely (as you say there is a professional, structured culture there that wouldn't be a good fit to Bazaar-style open source entrepreneurial effort).
If some technical idiots banksters wanted to fund something like that, they would not have some structured process on code quality.
Nick Szabo wrote what Bitcoin became before it did. It is possible that someone put 2 + 2 together.
I agree with you that the possibility that the powers-that-be are just opportunists and at best might have just been expecting electronic currency to come and been trying to figure out how to get there, and were handed a black swan gift from a small group they did not create.You don't need to be fully anonymous, just anonymous enough so that your privacy is protected from majority of others. If someone spend lots of time and resource to social engineering, you would be found eventually, but doing so is very time consuming and costly. Unless you have become the enemy of the state, there is just not enough human resource to social engineer everyone
This is a typical, idealistic, drooling Bitcoin fanboy myopia ("there are too many of us, they can't track us all"). I mean I don't say it that way to ridicule you. Not at all. I am just saying this is blinded to the point I made. Try reading what I wrote about regulating mining pools and how that is not akin to "whackamole". They only need to track the mining pools. From there, they can require any transaction that doesn't have identification attached to it (i.e. isn't originated from Coinbase, Paypal, Bitpay, Facebook, or any other Peter Thiel corporation, do you see the plan ![Wink](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/wink.gif) ) to be blacklisted by the mining pools. When I said 18 months ago that Tor wasn't anonymous, everyone ignored me. Now we see I was correct and 100s of hidden services have been seized and research says 81% of Tor users can be unmasked. And now when I say what will happen to regulation of mining and even cite that the trend is underway, you all still ignoring me. Ignorance is bliss. How did you enjoy ignoring my warnings that Bitcoin would drop to $350? Are you going to hold for $200?
|
|
|
|
wadili89
Legendary
Offline
Activity: 1106
Merit: 1000
|
![](https://bitcointalk.org/Themes/custom1/images/post/xx.gif) |
November 30, 2014, 07:03:26 AM Last edit: November 30, 2014, 03:22:07 PM by wadili89 |
|
BTC is an experiment - whether a token can have value without being backed by anything and it has been a success. As such I dont think it has failed.
If what it says in the first post is true it merely means that there are some flaws which can be corrected.
|
|
|
|
|