Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[Dusty]

Someone has a clue on how to use Oblivious Transfer for privacy and fungibility?

 

[lunar]

@Dusty

Craig is admittedly good at talking his and BCH book. So we've got aligned incentives. The big reveal sounds like it will be at the Satoshi vision conference. I know there are quite a few things in the pipeline and so far all of the technical stuff he's promised is slowly being released. An IDE also in the works. Cautiously optimistic.

 

[freetrader]

@rocks - I also don't know what to think of this BDPL.

I do think defensive patent pools are probably a good thing for the blockchain industry. I don't see much evidence of software patents having done much good for the software industry in general. This is from the perspective of a software developer.

But IANAL and I'm not sure about the "loophole-closing" and punitive aspects of this license. And the providence and the crowd cheering for it (the anti-ASICBoost crowd, mainly, go figure) makes me a bit suspicious that there may be pitfalls with it. It all seems to be a game of cloak and daggers.

Above all, I wish for our computing platforms to remain as open and accessible to all as possible. That extends from hardware to firmware and software. We aren't in a particular good place right now in terms of security of the computing stack. This has opened some opportunities for companies that want to improve that (like SatoshiLabs, bless their hearts), but I don't want to have a special-purpose hardware gizmo for every computing need. I don't want to sound to downbeat either, I think things are slowly improving in terms of open ****ware.

One of my hopes is that cryptocurrency - through its requirement for secure computing - will lead to a major injection of capital into computing products that work FOR their users instead of against them, basically.

 

[deadalnix]

These new OP codes will bring a huge increase to fungibility and privacy.

Looks like this is the new "malleability has a ton of use cases".

 

[hodl]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/germany-wont-tax-cryptocurrencies-used-to-make-purchases/amp?__twitter_impression=true

 

[hodl]

I really don't know how to think about this. SHA-256 HW is so simple and has been around for so long that I doubt there is anything that can be patented at this point to offer any real advantage.

Mining advantage primarily comes from finding cheaper sources of electricity, not better mining HW. If someone gained a majority of mining though a technology advantage I think that advantage would be by inventing and owning a cheaper method of generating electricity such as fusion power, than anything else.

it looks to me like the BDPL could be a good thing. remember, BDPL is not a patent itself; it is an organizational structure attempting to diffuse the inevitable and ever escalating filing and granting of patents in the mining space. b/c Little Dragon has offered up it's AB patent (pending) rights to any other miners joining BPDL, it is a strong incentive for other miners wanting to use AB in an unchallenged legal way to join while offering up their patents as well in a collaborative effort. specifically Bitmain, in regards to this serial power supply circuit layout to efficiently supply electricity to the mining chip.

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/there-bitcoin-patent-war-going-initiative-could-end-it/

 

[hodl]

i think that @Jihan should consider joining the BDPL as a way to decrease the resistance to other miners from mining BCH and core trolls from using BCH. since Segwit prevents AB from working on the BTC chain, it has been used by core trolls as an argument to stay away from the "Bitmain controlled BCH chain b/c AB". we all may have underestimated how effective this argument has been and is currently preventing usage of BCH. by joining BDPL, Bitmain joins Little Dragon (presumably owned by Timo Hanke and Sergio) in offering up it's China patent to competing miners. and why not, since Chinese miners are being forced to relocate outside of China anyways, the only place where Bitmain has been granted the patent afaik. and certainly Bitmain and Viabtc have mined alot of BCH whose price they would like to see rise. the incentive of gaining 20-30% more power efficiency should be a powerful force to get other miners to join BDPL while offering up their own patents to the mix, while maybe encouraging more of them to mine BCH on a more perceived even footing, even though there doesn't appear to be any evidence of Bitmain using AB on either chain. but none of us can be sure Bitmain isn't using AB b/c of the possibility of covert AB. as well, by joining BDPL, Bitmain won't have to deal with Little Dragon's AB patent worldwide (Canada, etc). and then there is the overarching general diffusion of the hardware patent wars that BDPL may afford. i think this is a smart move by Little Dragon to maintain the decentralization of Bitcoin in general.

 

[hodl]

https://news.bitcoin.com/wendy-mcelroy-silence-and-soul-in-the-crypto-cold-war-the-evolution-of-privacy/

 

[molecular]

https://cointelegraph.com/news/germany-wont-tax-cryptocurrencies-used-to-make-purchases/amp?__twitter_impression=true

from the article:

These guidelines distinguish Germany from the US where The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) treats Bitcoin like property, meaning that each purchase using Bitcoin is technically considered to be a sale of property and is, therefore, subject to capital gains tax.

The article gives the impression that using Bitcoin for payment in Germany incurred no taxes at all.

I think this is not correct. The referenced European Court decision regards sales tax. If you pay something with BCH, you 1.) still pay sales tax on the product value and you 2.) still pay "earnings tax" (or capital gains tax) that might be incurred depending on your jurisdiction (in case you held the BCH you used for payment for less than a year in germany, for example).

The way I see it, the decision was mainly about the case where a customer buys BCH from some vendor. That case was made sales-tax-exempt by the decision. That's good, but not as good as the cointelegraph writer naively interprets.

I may be misinterpreting this. If so, please let me know!

 

[hodl]

https://ebitnews.com/banking/bank-frick-introduces-first-crypto-banking-business-model/

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Looks like this is the new "malleability has a ton of use cases".

Sounds amazing, nice link to malleability. I have not even a vague clue how to imagine oblivious transactions ... Is this for real?

 

[rocks]

Someone has a clue on how to use Oblivious Transfer for privacy and fungibility?

Not a clue, if anyone knows how OT can be used to enhance privacy on blockchain transactions I'd love to hear it, sounds we might have to wait until the conference. OT is simply a blinding mechanism, Alice sends multiple messages to Bob, however Bob can only receive one message and Alice does not know which one was received. It's not clear how this is either useful for transactions or relevant with fungible tokens. When I first looked at zero knowledge proofs I remember feeling I understood the basics in a few hours (not necessarily all the math though), with OT I am stuck on how it is relevant.

From the (little) CSW has stated it sounds the concept he has in mind might be to build a mixer on top of OT somehow and have the "mixer" individual (Bob) be selected at random, the selected mixer would then know the transaction mix, but no one else. The theory would be security is created by the mixer being random and uncontrolled. If that is the case it seems weak since it is subject to Sybil attacks, what if the IRS creates millions of Bob's, it will be selected often in that case. Tor has similar issues BTW.

The above is a blind guess from googling for CSW comments and interpreting the very little I could find and then extrapolating. So it's probably a bunch of nonsense. If anyone has better thoughts on OT and privacy please share

 

[Tomothy]

I think this will all relate back to threshold signatures. But i'm just guessing, throwing random dice in a game I don't know the rules to.

 

[lunar]

This is going to be fun to watch.

 

[Tomothy]

Anyone want to speculate why Cobra and Heart have started/completed a 180?

 

[MarkBLundeberg]

Weird...

 

[Dusty]

Anyone want to speculate why Cobra and Heart have started/completed a 180?

Who is Heart?

 

[rocks]

A bigger question is if Cobra will now be censored as we all were, and if the original GCBU thread will be unlocked (not that I will waste my time there again).

Edit: They guy is a snake and I'll never trust him after the authoritative stuff he has pulled, but his conversion seems to be slowly happening. It is probably important to remember that for Bitcoin Cash to win, in the end we need many of the people we've been warring with to eventually come over.

 

[wrstuv31]

They'll act as the approved authorities on Bitcoin Cash for the Coreys. It's just more misinformation tactics. Snakes are stupid lizards.

 

[AdrianX]

Who is Heart?

He's a self-proclaimed Bitcoin thought leader who has a popular Bitcoin Youtube channel. very hard to watch. he also used to propagate email spam for a living https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/79y40b/scammer_alert_you_know_the_narcissist_guy_who/