Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[torusJKL]

Satoshi Doodles made my day.

Neat little links for big blogs
SymRe is a link shortener service on BSV. I use it frequently and can’t believe it took me this long to do a little doodle.

 

[trinoxol]

I don't think anyone would dispute that if the government can acquire an unencrypted wallet file they can take the coins. Nobody would dispute that exchanges can be compelled to hand over coins.

A few weeks ago there was a lot of talk about miners seizing coins on BSV. Can somebody explain what is meant by that? Transferring coins without satisfying the spending script amounts to a hard-fork.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

It was on all blockchains, and it was simply an observation that several court orders coordinated over several major mining jurisdictions can easily force the majority of hashpower to revert a transaction. Major miners cannot really hide their operations, and approximately zero of them would prefer to have their equipment seized and their officers arrested. Whether such a coordinated effort would ever actually gain steam remains to be seen.

I think more than a warning about what could happen, it's underscoring that Bitcoin executes international law provisionally, rather than operating outside it. Remember international law is essentially anarchic, so this isn't a statist thing.
[doublepost=1581609642][/doublepost]As for Monero, I agree with the points about learning curve, but government is also not monolithic. A legislator can easily be unaware of what the SEC or Fincen or Finra has in the hopper.

 

[trinoxol]

Then let's hope that there never will be such a court order which would undermine the very foundation of what makes a public blockchain so valuable.

Having individual nations decide about coins is not a workable model. What if there are conflicting orders? Blockchain is revolutionary in part because there is no need to agree. It simply is a physical means of recording transactions and data.

A court can compel someone to pay. It can order businesses to freeze coins. This makes sense because a nation has control over these things.

A court cannot compel miners worldwide to do something. It would be good to have a legal standard or a law to that effect. Public blockchains are a worldwide utility. They must be neutral.

 

[sgbett]

OK I think you need to rewind - you are, I think, implying that one of foundational aspects of blockchain is its immutable/censorship resistant nature.

But then you go on to cite "the problem" of mutability/censorship globally is that you would have to get multiple nation states to agree in order to deviate from the rules, or censor tx.

That is the whole point though, what you cite as a problem, is actually the solution to 'central authority'.

ZB already pointed it out...

international law is essentially anarchic

It is the very fact that there is no one world government, that imbues Bitcoin with the properties of immutability/censorship resistance through Nakamoto consensus.

 

[trinoxol]

> It is the very fact that there is no one world government, that imbues Bitcoin with the properties of immutability/censorship resistance through Nakamoto consensus.

I'm totally with you on that.

What happens when a US court orders miners to transfer a set of UTXOs or to orphan some transaction? What if Chinese miners don't feel bound by that? What if the Chinese make a law that prevents miners from censoring (like a public utility). Then we have a chain split at great cost. This is unworkable.

This is why the protocol must be frozen. And seizing coins or orphaning transactions amounts to modifying the protocol. And this at the whim of some court? Terrible.

 

[lunar]

Now we start to see why changing the protocol is bad from a legal perspective.

Personally, find the shifting sands argument much stronger - the fact that forever changing protocol code, kills stability, development, and investment.

Yet again we see how Satoshi thought of all these things years before Bitcoin was created. Every possible attack vector has been gamed out and two or more (incentive aligned), defences prepared.

This particular line of defence is going to upset the anarchist coders.

To them I say. This isn't code, IT'S MONEY.

https://craigwright.net/blog/law-regulation/forking-and-passing-off/

"Forking a software branch is allowed under the MIT License e.g LTC & ETH... BTC differs in the sense that it both copied the database and sought to pass off the new system as the old or original"

"As the sole creator of Bitcoin, I own full rights to the Bitcoin registry. People can fork my software and make alternative versions. But, they have no rights to change the protocol using the underlying database. I was explicit when I said so by putting forward reasons not to fork the database. Yet, both Bitcoin Core (Core) and Bitcoin ABC (ABC), global partnerships under law, have sought to use my database without authority. Rather than seeking licences, they have sought to attack my character and impugned me. This year, I am taking charge and control of my system"

 

[Norway]

Then we have a chain split at great cost.

Nope. 51% decides. Orphans are orphans.

 

[trinoxol]

> Nope. 51% decides. Orphans are orphans.

When the US demands by law a seizing and China demands by law that no seizing occurs then miners can either close their business or continue on different rule sets.

This is a rule change. It is a split.

 

[BldSwtTrs]

OK I think you need to rewind - you are, I think, implying that one of foundational aspects of blockchain is its immutable/censorship resistant nature.

But then you go on to cite "the problem" of mutability/censorship globally is that you would have to get multiple nation states to agree in order to deviate from the rules, or censor tx.

That is the whole point though, what you cite as a problem, is actually the solution to 'central authority'.

ZB already pointed it out...



It is the very fact that there is no one world government, that imbues Bitcoin with the properties of immutability/censorship resistance through Nakamoto consensus.

I could argue that is it the same reason I think Monero will not be banned: there is no one world governement.

States have competing interests, therefore coordination between them is hard (and this is good for freedom).

 

[Norway]

> Nope. 51% decides. Orphans are orphans.

When the US demands by law a seizing and China demands by law that no seizing occurs then miners can either close their business or continue on different rule sets.

This is a rule change. It is a split.

A rule change is a rule change. A chain split is a chain split. Not the same. (And I prefer to use the term persistent chain split to separate it from the short lived orphans that are a natural part of the system.)

It's not a split of the chain if the minority is not mining it's own chain. Anyone can start a minority chain, but it doesn't make it bitcoin.

Bitcoin was designed to work within law, according to Craig Wright. It will be interesting to see how this pans out.

 

[freetrader]

[doublepost=1581642025,1581640898][/doublepost]

 

[Zarathustra]

The freetrader account and Greg's zectro account left development (devaluation) because of other interests and still show no other interests than performing satan cult agitation.

 

[Zarathustra]

I could argue that is it the same reason I think Monero will not be banned: there is no one world governement.

States have competing interests, therefore coordination between them is hard (and this is good for freedom).

Yes, coordination is hard, but not impossible.

Liberty Reserve has been shut down, because there actually is a one world government.

Global society is a fractal organism. A municipality in Switzerland has its own law, but not independently of the higher cantonal law, because a Canton has more power (PoW) than a municipality.

A Canton in Switzerland has its own laws, but not independently of the higher federal law, because the Republic has more power (PoW) than a Canton.

The Republic Switzerland has its own laws, but not independently of the higher European law, because the European Continent has more power (PoW) than the Republic of Switzerland.

Europe has its own laws, but not independently of higher international laws such as the Vienna Convention/FATF etc., because the worldwide society has more power (PoW) than the European continent.

From the municipality, however, the fractal structure also goes downwards, to the clan, to the family, to the individual, to the organ, to the cell, to the molecule, to the atom, to the electron etc.

Unwriter says 'everything is a file'. I say, everything is an Organism.

 

[cbeast]

Thus Spake @Zarathustra:

From the municipality, however, the fractal structure also goes downwards, to the clan, to the family, to the individual, to the organ, to the cell, to the molecule, to the atom, to the electron etc.

So like we could be just atoms in a giant's thumbnail. I welcome our intergalactic Canton!

 

[freetrader]

Not only that, but BSV's financier is pleading with users not to create too many transactions.

The. Irony.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

What if there are conflicting orders?

Then nothing happens, the minority gets orphaned and that country decides whether to cut itself off from the global economy or change its high court's ruling...except this wouldn't generally happen in the first place because the courts would be looking to other court decisions and coordinating as they understand how Bitcoin works at this point.

This is why the protocol must be frozen. And seizing coins or orphaning transactions amounts to modifying the protocol.

It's not a protocol change. You bring up an important point and here's the paradigm shift: miners merely act as proxy enforcers of international law. If the world's high courts agree on something, miners probably are already enforcing it, because Bitcoin was designed to slot perfectly into established international money law, but it's crucial to understand that international law comes first.

International law is layer 0. Bitcoin is layer 1. Even if we wanted this not to be true, any system where this tries not to be true gets squelched.

Thus if international law says a signature is a valid Bitcoin signature, it is a valid Bitcoin signature - even if that signature is a joint paper signature by a bunch of high courts. It is a valid Bitcoin signature because Bitcoin - like all contracts - is merely a proxy for law enforcement. Satoshi is the offerer, the miners are the agents, the block reward is the consideration, and the jurisdiction of the contract is global.

To say Bitcoin signature by digital signing supersedes a joint majority international court signature would be putting the cart before the horse, both logically and practically. This is the significance of saying Bitcoin is a system in law.

It's the same as if you sign a contract. A court can overrule that signature. Bitcoin is just a more complex contract with jurisdictionally distributed parties that force international quorum. The advancement here is not to curcumvent law, but to force out individual government whim. Only what is universally abhorent ever has a hope of reaching a quorum, if anything. It is freedom from government whim through structure. This is Satoshi's brilliant achievement, in terms of libertarianism.

Legit criticism, and I made the same critique before Zectro did. No need to baby miners.

 

[Zarathustra]

@freetrader

Yes, the Bolshevik's free shit army doesn't like property rights. In the real world however, there are such rights, and I think the creator of the Bitcoin invention deserves this right. Deal with it.

 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

People will learn the difference between privacy and anonymity the easy way by listening to Satoshi, or the hard way:

https://www.coindesk.com/us-doj-calls-bitcoin-mixing-a-crime-in-arrest-of-software-developer
[doublepost=1581670770][/doublepost]Fortunately, although Satoshi (or rather his trust) is the lawful owner of the remaining coins in the 21 million, he is bound by law to distribute them to miners according to the immutable protocol rules. The practical effect is the Bitcoin we know; the legal machinery behind it is just what shape this happens to take in law. Bitcoin, like all contracts, binds its parties. The whitepaper is a shackling document.
[doublepost=1581671020][/doublepost]Learning law turns out NOT to be one of the optional aspects of understanding Bitcoin. Everything weaves into law. Many key terms in the whitepaper reference a body of law, an invocation invisible to those unfamiliar with the relevant legal structure around things like digital signing, privacy rights, tracing, and repudiation.

The fatal conceit here is that law is irrelevant and you can be blissfully ignorant of it while assuming it couldn't possibly matter for XYZ. Law is deeper and affects more things that those ignorant of it understand. It isn't just what lawmakers create; in fact it's barely that at all.

Bitcoin is a proxy law enforcement system with miners acting as provisional enforcers of international law. It weds law and economics in a global structure that fights government whim and forces competition.

 

[trinoxol]

> Then nothing happens, the minority gets orphaned and that country decides whether to cut itself off from the global economy or change its high court's ruling...

International politics decided through hash wars? No thanks.

> except this wouldn't generally happen in the first place because the courts would be looking to other court decisions and coordinating as they understand how Bitcoin works at this point.

Geopolitically, the world is very divided. The USA, Russa and China are true adversaries in many ways. Some issues are settled jointly, others are not. In particular, currencies are currently being used as a weapon among these players.

Bitcoin can only be adopted worldwide if it is neutral. If a country has to fear that it's monetary interests are affected they cannot allow Bitcoin to come to dominance.

For example, the US could never allow large parts of the US economy to start using Chinese money services. If that were to happen, the Chinese could shut down access or seize money at any moment. No money solution run by any single government can ever become the world currency. The world is not peaceful enough for that.

> It's not a protocol change.

Repossessing a UTXO is a rule change. I hope we can agree on this term. Different nodes with different rules diverge to different chains. That's a chain split and a hard fork.

It also is a protocol change. Previously, the protocol was that you can spend any UTXO if you can unlock it. Now the protocol is, you need to unlock except for this one special UTXO which is considered to be someone else's property.

If the outcome of laws and politics is that the world fractures into multiple Bitcoins that would be a terrible thing to happen.

But it is not necessary. Courts can require individuals and companies to pay. It's like cash. A court can require you to hand over a bag of cash and the police can raid your home and try to take the cash. But if you hide it in the woods no court in the world can take physical control. Bitcoin can be like that. The physical layer exists neutrally. Law can require entities to do things.