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> do we see no merit in a censorship resistant framework This is a loaded question... Cryptocurrencies are not "censorship resistant". If they were, maybe your

by hudon 8y ago

> do we see no merit in a censorship resistant framework This is a loaded question... Cryptocurrencies are not "censorship resistant". If they were, maybe your complaint about HN's "echo chamber" would be warranted. Here are some censorship examples: 1. BTC: OFAC has listed Bitcoin addresses that you cannot legally send money to. If you do, expect fines/jail/interrogation/etc. 2. ETH: If you exploit a vulnerability in a contract, your transaction will be invalidated. 3. BTC: If the devs decide to abandon the longest chain like they did in 2013, any transaction on the forgotten chain will be effectively erased from history. There are more, but admittedly they require a bit of thinking to realize that they are in fact censorship. Everything is obfuscated when it comes to blockchain, which is why it's managed to fool so many smart people into taking its claims as granted.

randaouser 8y ago
1) OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account (albeit it may not be in the best interest of the party) 2) Just as a logical proposition is written in law and exploited by persons (Check how often tax laws are updated), unaudited smart contracts will pose a risk. The state of auditing is improving daily 3) This is a disingenuous comparison; in 2018 One ASIC has a mining power of approximately 12 tera-hashes per second. For comparison, in 2013, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network on April 29, 2013, was 79.02 Th/s.
- hudon 8y ago
  > OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account Are you saying there is a difference between "censorship" and "technical censorship"? You are demonstrating the obfuscation I called out in my post. Suppressing content is suppressing content. If you believe that Bitcoin will allow you to freely send money to OFAC-sanctioned addresses, please prove it by sending a transaction there and providing us with a verified signature. Until then, my point stands.
  - berberous 8y ago
    There are big differences: how easy is it to censor a transaction, who can censor the transaction, on what basis, how far does the censor's power go, etc. If you rely on VISA/Mastercard, you could be "censored" for any number of arbitrary reasons -- go google the number of legitimate businesses that have had issues using those platforms. With Bitcoin, sure, a government can use its criminal laws to ban certain transactions, but keep in mind that: (1) they need to use valid legal process, (2) the reach of their laws only go so far, etc. Also, the OFAC banned addresses were easily tracked since they re-used addresses. Today, best practices dictate a new address for each transaction. You also have Monero, Zcash and others working on further privacy enhancements, as well as wallets like Wasabi that mix Bitcoin transactions.
whyte_mackay 8y ago
At least crypto is way more censorship resistant than oldschool money. That's why it is called "censorship resistant" not "censorship proof". Claim stands. Make a Jewish joke and Paypal will not be your friend. Piss of governments and Visa and Mastercard will make it impossible to donate to your cause.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  Ah bitcoin, standing up and providing a platform for all the racists, antisemites and bigots of the world. Don’t forget all the drug kingpins, terrorists, child pornographer peddlers, and crypto-ransomware makers too!
  - whyte_mackay 8y ago
    Yup, that is a hairy decision to make if you advocate for privacy and anonymity, and against censorship: What to do with the bad actors who will make use of it? From the Tor FAQ: > Some advocates of anonymity explain that it's just a tradeoff — accepting the bad uses for the good ones — but there's more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identity theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds. > So yes, criminals can use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. BTW: Those examples I gave are for Milo Yiannopoulos and WikiLeaks. I am not sure they fit into any category you mentioned. > If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
  - 8y ago
wan23 8y ago
> 1. BTC: OFAC has listed Bitcoin addresses that you cannot legally send money to. If you do, expect fines/jail/interrogation/etc. But can they stop you from sending money there? Can they reverse your transaction later? That's what they mean when they say it's censorship resistant.
- hudon 8y ago
  > But can they stop you from sending money there? It's an easy to verify claim, and as far as I'm concerned it's the people making extraordinary claims that have to provide proof. If you want to prove this "censorship resistance" that you claim, please sign a transaction to an OFAC-sanctioned address and let's see how many confirmations it gets.
  - berberous 8y ago
    Wait, is your claim that: 1) Any sensible HN-reader is not going to want to personally send money to an OFAC-sanctioned address; or 2) That if someone were to send money to it, the network would fail to confirm the transaction?
    - hudon 8y ago
      I don't have a claim. I'm waiting for proof. Someone claimed that with Bitcoin, transactions cannot be suppressed or prohibited. That sounds like an extraordinary claim, don't you think? So we should require proof! Let's see if someone can actually use Bitcoin to bypass OFAC sanctions. Or is science immoral?
      - berberous 8y ago
        Well, you implied the network wouldn't confirm the transactions. I don't think that's accurate. Here's your proof: November 28 press release announcing the two addresses added to the OFAC list: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556 Blockexplorer for address 1: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfMurTXinscVro9V https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfM... Blockexplorer for address 2: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmqNsXUzSStKeq8C https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmq... Note that both have confirmed transactions occurring after November 28. Now, I of course have no interested in sending a transaction myself since that's illegal under U.S. law, but that does not mean the network itself can be censored. (On a side note: how did you go from working at Coinbase to being such a crypto hater? I understand if you don't want to answer that, I was just genuinely curious.)
tfha 8y ago
3. the btc devs did not decide to abandon the longest chain, the miners voluntarily chose to stop mining the chain they were working on and begin building on a different chain. And, it's significantly less likely that this would happen again today. Bitcoin has matured a lot and the types of pressures that existed in 2013 to push changes onto the network have largely been eliminated today.
- hudon 8y ago
  > 3. the btc devs did not decide to abandon the longest chain See, now you're trying to censor history. Here's a refresher of what happened: >>> from https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-... Right away, developers start giving out advice to downgrade: 23:49 Luke Dashjr surge_: downgrade to 0.7 if you mine, or just wait 23:50 Pieter Wuille doublec: do you operate a pool? 23:50 doublec yes 23:50 Pieter Wuille doublec: then please downgrade now BTC Guild gets going immediately… 23:51 BTC Guild BTC Guild is going back to full default block settings and 0.7 soon. 00:01 BTC Guild Almost got one stratum node moved … even at significant monetary cost. 23:57 BTC Guild I've lost way too much money in the last 24 hours from 0.8
  - tfha 8y ago
    Yes, this was done with the consent of the miners, and not by pushing out a hardfork onto the network. The miners could have easily refused to perform the downgrade. The majority of nodes on the network stuck to following the longest chain rule and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.

by hudon 8y ago

randaouser 8y ago

1) OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account (albeit it may not be in the best interest of the party) 2) Just as a logical proposition is written in law and exploited by persons (Check how often tax laws are updated), unaudited smart contracts will pose a risk. The state of auditing is improving daily 3) This is a disingenuous comparison; in 2018 One ASIC has a mining power of approximately 12 tera-hashes per second. For comparison, in 2013, the total hash rate of the Bitcoin network on April 29, 2013, was 79.02 Th/s.

hudon 8y ago
> OFAC can say what they want, no one is technically barred from sending funds to that account Are you saying there is a difference between "censorship" and "technical censorship"? You are demonstrating the obfuscation I called out in my post. Suppressing content is suppressing content. If you believe that Bitcoin will allow you to freely send money to OFAC-sanctioned addresses, please prove it by sending a transaction there and providing us with a verified signature. Until then, my point stands.
- berberous 8y ago
  There are big differences: how easy is it to censor a transaction, who can censor the transaction, on what basis, how far does the censor's power go, etc. If you rely on VISA/Mastercard, you could be "censored" for any number of arbitrary reasons -- go google the number of legitimate businesses that have had issues using those platforms. With Bitcoin, sure, a government can use its criminal laws to ban certain transactions, but keep in mind that: (1) they need to use valid legal process, (2) the reach of their laws only go so far, etc. Also, the OFAC banned addresses were easily tracked since they re-used addresses. Today, best practices dictate a new address for each transaction. You also have Monero, Zcash and others working on further privacy enhancements, as well as wallets like Wasabi that mix Bitcoin transactions.

whyte_mackay 8y ago

At least crypto is way more censorship resistant than oldschool money. That's why it is called "censorship resistant" not "censorship proof". Claim stands. Make a Jewish joke and Paypal will not be your friend. Piss of governments and Visa and Mastercard will make it impossible to donate to your cause.

spookthesunset 8y ago
Ah bitcoin, standing up and providing a platform for all the racists, antisemites and bigots of the world. Don’t forget all the drug kingpins, terrorists, child pornographer peddlers, and crypto-ransomware makers too!
- whyte_mackay 8y ago
  Yup, that is a hairy decision to make if you advocate for privacy and anonymity, and against censorship: What to do with the bad actors who will make use of it? From the Tor FAQ: > Some advocates of anonymity explain that it's just a tradeoff — accepting the bad uses for the good ones — but there's more to it than that. Criminals and other bad people have the motivation to learn how to get good anonymity, and many have the motivation to pay well to achieve it. Being able to steal and reuse the identities of innocent victims (identity theft) makes it even easier. Normal people, on the other hand, don't have the time or money to spend figuring out how to get privacy online. This is the worst of all possible worlds. > So yes, criminals can use Tor, but they already have better options, and it seems unlikely that taking Tor away from the world will stop them from doing their bad things. At the same time, Tor and other privacy measures can fight identity theft, physical crimes like stalking, and so on. BTW: Those examples I gave are for Milo Yiannopoulos and WikiLeaks. I am not sure they fit into any category you mentioned. > If when you say whiskey you mean the devil's brew, the poison scourge, the bloody monster, that defiles innocence, dethrones reason, destroys the home, creates misery and poverty, yea, literally takes the bread from the mouths of little children; if you mean the evil drink that topples the Christian man and woman from the pinnacle of righteous, gracious living into the bottomless pit of degradation, and despair, and shame and helplessness, and hopelessness, then certainly I am against it.
- 8y ago

wan23 8y ago

> 1. BTC: OFAC has listed Bitcoin addresses that you cannot legally send money to. If you do, expect fines/jail/interrogation/etc. But can they stop you from sending money there? Can they reverse your transaction later? That's what they mean when they say it's censorship resistant.

hudon 8y ago
> But can they stop you from sending money there? It's an easy to verify claim, and as far as I'm concerned it's the people making extraordinary claims that have to provide proof. If you want to prove this "censorship resistance" that you claim, please sign a transaction to an OFAC-sanctioned address and let's see how many confirmations it gets.
- berberous 8y ago
  Wait, is your claim that: 1) Any sensible HN-reader is not going to want to personally send money to an OFAC-sanctioned address; or 2) That if someone were to send money to it, the network would fail to confirm the transaction?
  - hudon 8y ago
    I don't have a claim. I'm waiting for proof. Someone claimed that with Bitcoin, transactions cannot be suppressed or prohibited. That sounds like an extraordinary claim, don't you think? So we should require proof! Let's see if someone can actually use Bitcoin to bypass OFAC sanctions. Or is science immoral?
    - berberous 8y ago
      Well, you implied the network wouldn't confirm the transactions. I don't think that's accurate. Here's your proof: November 28 press release announcing the two addresses added to the OFAC list: https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556 https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sm556 Blockexplorer for address 1: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfMurTXinscVro9V https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/1AjZPMsnmpdK2Rv9KQNfM... Blockexplorer for address 2: https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmqNsXUzSStKeq8C https://www.blockchain.com/btc/address/149w62rY42aZBox8fGcmq... Note that both have confirmed transactions occurring after November 28. Now, I of course have no interested in sending a transaction myself since that's illegal under U.S. law, but that does not mean the network itself can be censored. (On a side note: how did you go from working at Coinbase to being such a crypto hater? I understand if you don't want to answer that, I was just genuinely curious.)

tfha 8y ago

3. the btc devs did not decide to abandon the longest chain, the miners voluntarily chose to stop mining the chain they were working on and begin building on a different chain. And, it's significantly less likely that this would happen again today. Bitcoin has matured a lot and the types of pressures that existed in 2013 to push changes onto the network have largely been eliminated today.

hudon 8y ago
> 3. the btc devs did not decide to abandon the longest chain See, now you're trying to censor history. Here's a refresher of what happened: >>> from https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-bitcoin-fork-centralized-decision-making-saved-the-day/ https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2015/07/28/analyzing-the-2013-... Right away, developers start giving out advice to downgrade: 23:49 Luke Dashjr surge_: downgrade to 0.7 if you mine, or just wait 23:50 Pieter Wuille doublec: do you operate a pool? 23:50 doublec yes 23:50 Pieter Wuille doublec: then please downgrade now BTC Guild gets going immediately… 23:51 BTC Guild BTC Guild is going back to full default block settings and 0.7 soon. 00:01 BTC Guild Almost got one stratum node moved … even at significant monetary cost. 23:57 BTC Guild I've lost way too much money in the last 24 hours from 0.8
- tfha 8y ago
  Yes, this was done with the consent of the miners, and not by pushing out a hardfork onto the network. The miners could have easily refused to perform the downgrade. The majority of nodes on the network stuck to following the longest chain rule and noticed nothing out of the ordinary.