Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[cypherdoc]

interesting perspectives on the anonymity, or lack thereof, in Bitcoin:

Law Enforcement and Regulators Agree: Bitcoin Not Useful for Terrorists, Already Regulated Appropriately

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/articles/law-enforcement-and-regulators-agree-bitcoin-not-useful-for-terrorists-already-regulated-appropriately-1448316076
[doublepost=1448322384][/doublepost]
that's easy.

1. character assasination
2. downvote brigading
3. massive ddos
4. ad hominems
5. "buy" core dev
6. sockpuppets
7. technical obfuscation
8. appeals to authority
9. link oneself to cypherpunks
10. censor dissenting opinion

did i miss any?

i did miss one!

11. pseudo-economics-->fee mkts!

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I think the small blockist concern isn't so much being able to broadcast tx anonymously, but being resistant to a government crackdown on running Bitcoin nodes.

 

[cypherdoc]

@albin

i do this.

i run 6 nodes in the clear simply to help the network. for most of my tx's i use Mycelium which has a Tor node option. Mycelium does route thru it's own servers for now but are working on developing a true SPV connection to the network like Breadwallet does. either way, Tor is a usable option.
[doublepost=1448331914][/doublepost]@Zangelbert Bingledack

their objections change daily.

 

[albin]

@cypherdoc

That sounds like exactly what I'm imagining, goddamnit! The tx transmitting software being a lightweight wallet is perfect.

 

[cypherdoc]

@albin

the whole "you gotta tx only thru your own personal node" hyperventilation by pwuille is overblown. i *never* tx thru my own node. like i said, i use Mycelium and depend on their servers and soon to be their connection to the network thru an SPV connection. i've never had a problem over all these years.

now if i were a merchant doing dozens if not hundreds of tx's per day, of course i would set up my own node. it's a fiscally responsible thing to do and a fiduciary responsibility. this is what i keep arguing about why bigger blocks will lead to MORE full nodes, not less, as miniblockists keep arguing. the greater the #users, the greater the #merchants, and therefore the greater the #full nodes; aka vested interests.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@cypherdoc

That's the core concern of small blockers likes Peter Todd, Paul Sztorc, and I think much of the Blockstream team. And it is trivially correct: if you can't run a node through TOR a complete worldwide government crackdown would kill Bitcoin. Their idea is apparently that in such a scenario, as true cypherpunks, Bitcoin would live on in the darknet and dark markets until finally the agora overwhelmed governments through things like prediction markets.

 

[cypherdoc]

In this situation, the only way to prevent people from running "random competing consensus algorithms" is through the means @cypherdoc listed! Is this what they really believe? That these tactics are necessary to save Bitcoin? If so it wouldn't give one much optimism for Blockstream's future!

ftfy

 

[albin]

@Zangelbert Bingledack

I feel like the irony is, if they cripple Bitcoin in anticipation of government attacks that never actually happen, then those entities that they're so afraid of have already won without having to lift a finger.

 

[cypherdoc]

@cypherdoc

That's the core concern of small blockers likes Peter Todd, Paul Sztorc, and I think much of the Blockstream team. And it is trivially correct: if you can't run a node through TOR a complete worldwide government crackdown would kill Bitcoin. Their idea is apparently that in such a scenario, as true cypherpunks, Bitcoin would live on in the darknet and dark markets until finally the agora overwhelmed governments through things like prediction markets toppling power structures.

but like with most concerns of Bitcoin skeptics, in general, that view is too extreme and unrealistic.

i strongly don't believe a worldwide crackdown on Bitcoin is possible. we've already debated and i thought accepted this idea years ago. as long as gvts disagree and are willing to go to war, they will never be able to agree to ban something as valuable and with the potential of Bitcoin. if you believe that, then you realize a minimum baseline requirement for Bitcoin to run behind Tor is unnecessary and therefore unreasonable.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

@albin, @cypherdoc

Yes, unrealistic but many have convinced themselves into it by circuitous arguments.

The other thing is that they feel, "The only node that matters is your own." (Peter Todd quote) Anything else they equate with proof-of-stake subjective "ask a friend" consensus. The difference is, I think, that with PoS when you query people they cannot be sure of the answer because it's "ask a friend" all the way down, whereas with Bitcoin the buck stops with anyone running a node since they have provably correct information.

I might wrong about how PoS works, though.

This is why the obsession with being able to run a full node, not actually doing it. They don't necessarily care about node count. They care if you can run a node if government starts closing some other nodes down. If you can't, theoretically gov could shut down all nodes and there's nothing you could do.

 

[theZerg]

@albin Yes we've been arguing that you only need to transmit your transactions through TOR from the very beginning of this scuffle. Its over in the BCT GCBU thread... don't feel badly about not thinking about it first -- its awesome that you are thinking creatively.

 

[cypherdoc]

the entire need Tor minimum idea is one of the negativity and pessimism crowd. in their paranoid delusions, miniblockists pump up their own importance/egos to the pt where they feel the only way for them to function is behind a Tor node or behind something like Confidential Transactions. if that were true, then you'd also believe that their is no way that Wall St will bring all their tx volume and investment dollars to Bitcoin b/c it just can't handle it given the miniblockists anonymity constraints.

the optimist and positive view is that the economic majority is who will carry Bitcoin forward thru their investment dollars/fiat. they are going to be the one's who drive Bitcoin future and development based on hope and greed for profit. in this model, we need to expand the functionality of Bitcoin itself to accomodate the most users and merchants worldwide. this long and most insightful view also sees that this is the most decentralized and most resilient economic model. once everyone is transacting with Bitcoin, no gvt could ever shut it down. we don't need no damn Tor to do this.

i remind everyone to listen to that linked podcast i put up yesterday where the finance guys states that the startups in fintech that will win are those who can distribute their product far and wide before the incumbent can innovate to catch up and block the startup. this is the Uber and AirBnB model (Silcoin Valley model) that Bitcoin should try to model.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

The other thing about relying on OPN (other people's nodes) is that you have to rely on a lot of things anyway, like other people's vouching for the software being secure unless you intend to verify every line and bug test it yourself. Certainly that seems a larger barrier than having the resources to run your own node!

 

[AdrianX]

I think the small blockist concern isn't so much being able to broadcast tx anonymously, but being resistant to a government crackdown on running Bitcoin nodes.

I'm always overwhelmed looking at https://bitnodes.21.co/ and zooming in a bit to see how politically distributed bitcoin is, nodes running in jurisdictions controlled by governments with conflicting financial interests, I can't see them all cooperating to crack down on digital currencies in a coordinated effort ever.

In effect Governments all over the would be all in agreement to crack down simultaneously with an Orwellian judgment that you can't have a distributed public ledger that is voluntarily agreed.

It seems like a week reason to limit money velocity and cripple network growth as a prevention for such an unlikely attack.

 

[cypherdoc]

@albin, @cypherdoc

Yes, unrealistic but many have convinced themselves into it by circuitous arguments.

The other thing is that they feel, "The only node that matters is your own." (Peter Todd quote) Anything else they equate with proof-of-stake subjective "ask a friend" consensus. The difference is, I think, that with PoS when you query people they cannot be sure of the answer because it's "ask a friend" all the way down, whereas with Bitcoin the buck stops with anyone running a node since they have provably correct information.

I might wrong about how PoS works, though.

This is why the obsession with being able to run a full node, not actually doing it. They don't necessarily care about node count. They care if you can run a node if government starts closing some other nodes down. If you can't, theoretically gov could shut down all nodes and there's nothing you could do.

POS suffers from the "nothing at stake" phenomenon. with POW, you have to incur real costs due to the expenditure of a real resource; elecricity. that makes attacking it exceedingly expensive and highly unlikely esp at this point of the hashrate curve which just hit a new high. with POS, the validator just signs everything (block) that comes across his desk b/c he has nothing to lose even if he's wrong. it's just a damn signature afterall.
[doublepost=1448334678][/doublepost]

The other thing about relying on OPN (other people's nodes) is that you have to rely on a lot of things anyway, like other people's vouching for the software being secure unless you intend to verify every line and bug test it yourself. Certainly that seems a larger barrier than having the resources to run your own node!

this just reminded me of another falsehood Joseph Poon was pushing in his LN gigglefest with Trace. he tried to say that a problem in Bitcoin is that "every node has to transmit every tx to every other node". that's just plain wrong. Bitcoin works on the principle of a flooding network where every node does not have to transmit every tx to every other node.

that guy is a continual bullshitter.
[doublepost=1448334916][/doublepost]

I'm always overwhelmed looking at https://bitnodes.21.co/ and zooming in a bit to see how politically distributed bitcoin is, nodes running in jurisdictions controlled by governments with conflicting financial interests, I can't see them all cooperating to crack down on digital currencies in a coordinated effort ever.

In effect Governments all over the would be all in agreement to crack down simultaneously with an Orwellian judgment that you can't have a distributed public ledger that is voluntarily agreed.

It seems like a week reason to limit money velocity and cripple network growth as a prevention for such an unlikely attack.

it's more than that.

China and Russia hate the USD hegemony. they'd do anything to supplant the USD as the world's reserve currency. and for good reason, our USD printing is what drives not only cyclical bubblefests/crashes, it is also what funds our 150 military bases all over the world many of which are on their doorsteps threatening to destroy them. why do you think they've been ill-advisably been buying gold all these recent years?

 

[cypherdoc]

as for the optimist view, we can gain a small clue from the price of gold.

it is going *down*. it peaked in 2011 and i believe will be heading much lower into triple digits. as we've talked about many times in this thread, gold is the Armageddon play. when everything goes down and goes to hell, including the internet. that would be the pessimistic view of the miniblockists. that's not gonna happen. if anything, Bitcoin is the solution to our problems. thru Sound Money, much of the world's financial woes can be solved. not in one night and not w/o pain. but in the end, Bitcoin can transform the financial system to one that brings everyone worldwide online into a new world economy that will be better for all.

 

[cypherdoc]

that looks pretty positive to me:

 

[sickpig]

so it seems that Bitpay and Circle are former Bitcoin company:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/nov/23/former-bitcoin-companies-cryptocurrency


and of course the "brief boom and bust" in November was due to a Chinese ponzi scheme.

I'm not closely following UK press but if memory serves the guardian was suppose to be a good newspaper, wasn't it?

 

[Bagatell]

@sickpig Did you see this?


https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/3tyxyb/bitpay_the_original_vision_for_bitcoin_was_the/

 

[awemany]

But BIP101 gets the job done.

This!

Also "before I evolved into a philosophically an anti-C++ person preferring C". Regardless of your personal opinion, everybody uses C++ now. And if you don't like the C++ philosophy (vs C), you are probably rejecting OOP in general since that was C++'s big feature. So this basically means you reject every major language in use today.

The people who wrote the GTK+ toolkit implemented some kind of (very ugly) object orientation on top of C, so that doesn't necessarily follow. I personally wouldn't want to do something like that and I actually think C++ has some decent strengths. I also think OOP has nice concepts, but personally prefer to think about problems in terms of languages needed to explain them

I think computer language is actually to a large extend a matter of personal preference and much more a psychological/cultural question than a technical one.

In any case, though I might want to introduce my strong opinions about certain languages into certain discussions, I wouldn't want to publicly brag about my language choices. That must be his way to try to please the 'masses' or something. Joiner indeed.

I think Satoshi is an intelligent being. The Block size cap is here for a reason, and it's an issue at this time to vaccinate against future attacks. I think if Satoshi has influence he may be egging the naive theymos on to help decentralize communication channels too.

I fully agree. Satoshi was genius enough to understand that Bitcoin needs to be a fully decentralized system and he painstakingly made sure that Bitcoin's 'centralized footprint' amounts to nothing more than temporary DNS seeds that can be overriden.

I am absolutely sure that he thought about (de)centralization of the development process, too. And I am also sure that he multiple levels of the issue: The day-to-day de-facto authority that he and Gavin had in terms of code - but also the long term issue of developers hijacking the software and thus protocol + ecosystem with it. (He might have mentioned something about decentralization and his fear for Bitcoin during the first Bitcoin Wikileaks donation drive?)

Rereading his old post about him introducing the blocksize cap, only a couple weeks later, caveden formulates his worry and foresight that this will grow into a serious problem.

Curiously, Satoshi doesn't answer this worry at all, but he surely had read caveden's worry. In hindsight, it does indeed look like Satoshi put the blocksize in place on purpose, as a designed breaking point.

It is a change that is so blatantly in the way of Bitcoin's sucess. Satoshi was talking about and answering questions about the scalability from early on. A significant fraction of his emails concern scalability. He must have known back then.

That all said, caveden was one of the people who was also somewhat active earlier in the blocksize debate. Maybe he'd be interested in joining BU?