5 ms·

Lead bitcoin developer invited into CIA headquarters

78 points by mike_esspe 16y ago

kiba 16y ago
Should be "Lead Bitcoin Developer Invited into CIA Headquarters"
koin 16y ago
into the belly of the beast
sgornick 16y ago
Good to see something happening. I hadn't seen anything regarding Bitcoin on HN for about 24 hours and was starting to get worried.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- trotsky 16y ago
  I hate to whine, but has an editor/admin looked at the volume of bitcoin submissions and any possible voting block behavior on the stories? A new bitcoin story seems to have shown up every few days for the past several months, with many of the same posters adding support in the comments every time. Let's take this story for example. Let's frame it in general terms. A leader of an open source project is going to be speaking in a few months at a meeting that isn't open to the public, and he doesn't suggest he'll be presenting anything new. Would this be newsworthy on HN for any normal project? Highly unlikely. Many of the bitcoin stories seem to be similar - press about bitcoin that offers nothing that hasn't been said here 100 times. If the voting and interest is organic, then fine, so be it. But maybe somebody could take a look and see. There is an obvious incentive to certain speculators holding bitcoin to hype it as much as possible in an attempt to fuel the already extreme fluctuations that occur in its trading.
  - ghshephard 16y ago
    I vote up a lot of the BitCoin Stories - wish there were more of them. While I hold 48.5 BTC, I don't believe I'm speculating/hyping it. The CIA story didn't have much in it - couldn't be bothered to upvote it, but I can understand why others might - The CIA is interested in BitCoins. How cool is that.
  - erikpukinskis 16y ago
    Would this be newsworthy on HN for any normal project? I think it would be newsworthy if Linus was invited to speak at the CIA, or Andy Rubin, so: yes. But maybe somebody could take a look and see. What sort of pattern would qualify as not organic to you? I didn't vote up this story, but I'm happy to see it on the front page because I think Bitcoin is probably the most fascinating hack I've seen in several years. Full disclosure: I own 154.74 BTC, although I couldn't care less about it as an investment. I just think it's cool technologically and politically.
    - trotsky 16y ago
      I think it would be newsworthy if Linus was invited to speak at the CIA, or Andy Rubin, so: yes. I find it pretty hard to believe that linus would either a) send a warning to a mailing list that he'd be speaking at Langley in a few months or b) that anyone would link to such a low content post on HN. What sort of pattern would qualify as not organic to you? First five to ten votes of each story mostly coming from different people/ips. Or whatever standard HN usually uses to break voting blocks or set a spammy url to auto-dead.
      - waterlesscloud 16y ago
        I was one of the early upvotes on this story. I don't vote up most bitcoin stories, though I read most of them. It's an interesting topic, an extra-governmental currency. I've been undecided about the prospects of bitcoin as anything more than a fringe activity. I have the software installed, but I never run it. I have like 0.05 bitcoin I got from some free source when I first came across it. In other words, I have no vested interest. But this story seemed to be the first early indication that people with actual influence on the world were giving bitcoin some interest. So I voted up for two reasons - 1. To see if anyone in this community of tech savvy people would have any commentary of value on it. 2. To flag it as an early warning sign of a disruptive tech to follow up on later. So. No bloc here, and I was in the first five.
T_S_ 16y ago
Don't waste your time on them. They just want to reduce the costs of carrying around cash in black satchels. Get feedback from the NSA instead.
- Retric 16y ago
  There have been some suggestions that the CIA backed Tor so they may be willing to support such systems. PS: According to Wikipedia Tor Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory,[10] so that's another group that's probably worth looking into.
pointillistic 16y ago
The elephant in the room is that in addition to the obvious upside these platforms are ripe for money laundering.
- tabsa 16y ago
  Current currencies "cash platform" already provides such services. Also offshoring, lobbying, loopholes in the law and creative accounting. There is no elephant here.
  - eli 16y ago
    Pretty tough to send cash anonymously over the internet.
    - tabsa 16y ago
      Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous. Everyone knows about all the transactions - they are kept in the block chain that all the clients have, you can only try to hide the real identities of the persons involved in transactions, and that is still quite hard, and anonymity could be attacked using different techniques (see Tor anonymity problems) It was a bit harder(more costly) before Bitcoin to send small sums "anonymously", but if you have millions or billions there is a whole industry of lawyers/accountants/bankers to help you out. So in that perspective Bitcoin brings anonymity to the common people, lowers the barriers to entry, or you can also say that it brings the era of financial democracy upon us :)
      - daeken 16y ago
        Tor type attacks won't work here. Why? Because transactions go to everyone. Bitcoin "addresses" are really key fingerprints -- it's impossible to know who has the key to decrypt a given Bitcoin. It's equivalent to sending everyone in the world an encrypted email; if you send it to everyone, how do you know who the intended recipient is?
        16y ago
mike_esspe 16y ago
Cached copy, if forum is unresponsive: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bitcoin.org%2Fsmf%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D6652.0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...
waterlesscloud 16y ago
My guess is that some of the best cryptographers and mathematicians you've never heard of will be in the audience for that presentation.
eof 16y ago
Have to imagine they are heavily mining bitcoin as well.
- calebmpeterson 16y ago
  To what end? Given that they're funded by the US govt. if they need more cash, they can just ask Uncle Sam to warm up the printer... Seriously though, why would mining bitcoins benefit them?
  - sliverstorm 16y ago
    Best way to control a currency you can't print is to own most of it.
  - eof 16y ago
    Let me answer your question with a question: Is it completely unlikely that having a large stash of bitcoin is going to be useful to them? I think the answer is a resounding 'no.' If it put myself in their shoes, with unlimited resources, I would be like "throw a couple teraflops at this ASAP."
danek 16y ago
"I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances. And I don't think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government." Aren't these goals are completely at odds with the goals of the government, or do I read too much Chomsky?
- sitkack 16y ago
  I don't think the government would deny either.
- bitwize 16y ago
  If the government doesn't have a backdoor in allowing them to track and/or tax every transaction, you bet your ass it's incompatible with the goals of government!
  - wladimir 16y ago
    With bitcoin, they do. No backdoor, but the entire transaction log is public. It's even easier for the tax man because they don't have to query data from banks. Bitcoin is not a tax avoidance scheme and never meant to be. The sooner they come up with a legal way to tax bitcoins, the better it is for business adoption, I guess...
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  More like, it's completely at odds with the BIS and their private reserve bank international monetary system. If bitcoin manages to disrupt that, hoo boy will we be living interesting times then.
mieses 16y ago
boring. this business model is well known. 1 create a popular encrypted system the CIA can't see inside of. 2 get invited into CIA headquarters. 3 [redacted] 4 retire.
- rms 16y ago
  3) is known as an offer you can't refuse.
richardw 16y ago
I'd say their primary interest is knowing how to watch payment flow. They'll develop ways to discover patterns in payment and deduce who is part of what network. Unlikely to disrupt, rather find ways to leverage it.
kurige 16y ago
... and he never came out. </obligatory-joke>

78 points by mike_esspe 16y ago

kiba 16y ago

Should be "Lead Bitcoin Developer Invited into CIA Headquarters"

koin 16y ago

into the belly of the beast

sgornick 16y ago

Good to see something happening. I hadn't seen anything regarding Bitcoin on HN for about 24 hours and was starting to get worried.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
trotsky 16y ago
I hate to whine, but has an editor/admin looked at the volume of bitcoin submissions and any possible voting block behavior on the stories? A new bitcoin story seems to have shown up every few days for the past several months, with many of the same posters adding support in the comments every time. Let's take this story for example. Let's frame it in general terms. A leader of an open source project is going to be speaking in a few months at a meeting that isn't open to the public, and he doesn't suggest he'll be presenting anything new. Would this be newsworthy on HN for any normal project? Highly unlikely. Many of the bitcoin stories seem to be similar - press about bitcoin that offers nothing that hasn't been said here 100 times. If the voting and interest is organic, then fine, so be it. But maybe somebody could take a look and see. There is an obvious incentive to certain speculators holding bitcoin to hype it as much as possible in an attempt to fuel the already extreme fluctuations that occur in its trading.
- ghshephard 16y ago
  I vote up a lot of the BitCoin Stories - wish there were more of them. While I hold 48.5 BTC, I don't believe I'm speculating/hyping it. The CIA story didn't have much in it - couldn't be bothered to upvote it, but I can understand why others might - The CIA is interested in BitCoins. How cool is that.
- erikpukinskis 16y ago
  Would this be newsworthy on HN for any normal project? I think it would be newsworthy if Linus was invited to speak at the CIA, or Andy Rubin, so: yes. But maybe somebody could take a look and see. What sort of pattern would qualify as not organic to you? I didn't vote up this story, but I'm happy to see it on the front page because I think Bitcoin is probably the most fascinating hack I've seen in several years. Full disclosure: I own 154.74 BTC, although I couldn't care less about it as an investment. I just think it's cool technologically and politically.
  - trotsky 16y ago
    I think it would be newsworthy if Linus was invited to speak at the CIA, or Andy Rubin, so: yes. I find it pretty hard to believe that linus would either a) send a warning to a mailing list that he'd be speaking at Langley in a few months or b) that anyone would link to such a low content post on HN. What sort of pattern would qualify as not organic to you? First five to ten votes of each story mostly coming from different people/ips. Or whatever standard HN usually uses to break voting blocks or set a spammy url to auto-dead.
    - waterlesscloud 16y ago
      I was one of the early upvotes on this story. I don't vote up most bitcoin stories, though I read most of them. It's an interesting topic, an extra-governmental currency. I've been undecided about the prospects of bitcoin as anything more than a fringe activity. I have the software installed, but I never run it. I have like 0.05 bitcoin I got from some free source when I first came across it. In other words, I have no vested interest. But this story seemed to be the first early indication that people with actual influence on the world were giving bitcoin some interest. So I voted up for two reasons - 1. To see if anyone in this community of tech savvy people would have any commentary of value on it. 2. To flag it as an early warning sign of a disruptive tech to follow up on later. So. No bloc here, and I was in the first five.

T_S_ 16y ago

Don't waste your time on them. They just want to reduce the costs of carrying around cash in black satchels. Get feedback from the NSA instead.

Retric 16y ago
There have been some suggestions that the CIA backed Tor so they may be willing to support such systems. PS: According to Wikipedia Tor Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research Laboratory,[10] so that's another group that's probably worth looking into.

pointillistic 16y ago

The elephant in the room is that in addition to the obvious upside these platforms are ripe for money laundering.

tabsa 16y ago
Current currencies "cash platform" already provides such services. Also offshoring, lobbying, loopholes in the law and creative accounting. There is no elephant here.
- eli 16y ago
  Pretty tough to send cash anonymously over the internet.
  - tabsa 16y ago
    Bitcoin is pseudo anonymous. Everyone knows about all the transactions - they are kept in the block chain that all the clients have, you can only try to hide the real identities of the persons involved in transactions, and that is still quite hard, and anonymity could be attacked using different techniques (see Tor anonymity problems) It was a bit harder(more costly) before Bitcoin to send small sums "anonymously", but if you have millions or billions there is a whole industry of lawyers/accountants/bankers to help you out. So in that perspective Bitcoin brings anonymity to the common people, lowers the barriers to entry, or you can also say that it brings the era of financial democracy upon us :)
    - daeken 16y ago
      Tor type attacks won't work here. Why? Because transactions go to everyone. Bitcoin "addresses" are really key fingerprints -- it's impossible to know who has the key to decrypt a given Bitcoin. It's equivalent to sending everyone in the world an encrypted email; if you send it to everyone, how do you know who the intended recipient is?
      - 16y ago

mike_esspe 16y ago

Cached copy, if forum is unresponsive: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bitcoin.org%2Fsmf%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D6652.0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...

waterlesscloud 16y ago

My guess is that some of the best cryptographers and mathematicians you've never heard of will be in the audience for that presentation.

eof 16y ago

Have to imagine they are heavily mining bitcoin as well.

calebmpeterson 16y ago
To what end? Given that they're funded by the US govt. if they need more cash, they can just ask Uncle Sam to warm up the printer... Seriously though, why would mining bitcoins benefit them?
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  Best way to control a currency you can't print is to own most of it.
- eof 16y ago
  Let me answer your question with a question: Is it completely unlikely that having a large stash of bitcoin is going to be useful to them? I think the answer is a resounding 'no.' If it put myself in their shoes, with unlimited resources, I would be like "throw a couple teraflops at this ASAP."

danek 16y ago

"I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people more direct control over their finances. And I don't think any of those goals are incompatible with the goals of government." Aren't these goals are completely at odds with the goals of the government, or do I read too much Chomsky?

sitkack 16y ago
I don't think the government would deny either.
bitwize 16y ago
If the government doesn't have a backdoor in allowing them to track and/or tax every transaction, you bet your ass it's incompatible with the goals of government!
- wladimir 16y ago
  With bitcoin, they do. No backdoor, but the entire transaction log is public. It's even easier for the tax man because they don't have to query data from banks. Bitcoin is not a tax avoidance scheme and never meant to be. The sooner they come up with a legal way to tax bitcoins, the better it is for business adoption, I guess...
SkyMarshal 16y ago
More like, it's completely at odds with the BIS and their private reserve bank international monetary system. If bitcoin manages to disrupt that, hoo boy will we be living interesting times then.

mieses 16y ago

boring. this business model is well known. 1 create a popular encrypted system the CIA can't see inside of. 2 get invited into CIA headquarters. 3 [redacted] 4 retire.

rms 16y ago
3) is known as an offer you can't refuse.

richardw 16y ago

I'd say their primary interest is knowing how to watch payment flow. They'll develop ways to discover patterns in payment and deduce who is part of what network. Unlikely to disrupt, rather find ways to leverage it.

kurige 16y ago

... and he never came out. </obligatory-joke>