6 ms·

That's the whole point of bitcoins. Anonymous, hard-to-trace payments. You can't get that kind of "freedom" without also being really attractive for illegal use

by lukev 15y ago

That's the whole point of bitcoins. Anonymous, hard-to-trace payments. You can't get that kind of "freedom" without also being really attractive for illegal uses. Bitcoin is designed to be subversive, and subversive means illegal as far as the government is concerned. This is the main/only reason I'm not making any long term investment in Bitcoin.

ahi 15y ago
That is the main/only reason I am making a long term investment in Bitcoin. Given the volatility I think the people speculating in Bitcoin purely for financial gain are nuts.
- zby 15y ago
  "Given the volatility I think the people speculating in Bitcoin purely for financial gain are nuts" - that's a strong statement mate. Any reasoning behind it or you just like insulting people?
  - ahi 15y ago
    http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ Today's exchange rate range is 16.45 to 19.23. That's pretty typical, and some days are a lot worse. In the forums, the consensus seems to be that any attempt at economic analysis is largely a waste of time due to there being way too many unknowns. The Bitcoin "investors" and "speculators" just look like gamblers to me. That qualifies as "nuts" to this coward. However, I do like insulting people.
    - weavejester 15y ago
      A lot of Bitcoin speculators have invested only what they can afford to lose. I don't think it's "nuts" to invest a few hundred dollars (for example) in something as technically interesting as Bitcoin. People probably lose more in a Vegas vacation.
      - ahi 15y ago
        Agreed, but then those people and the people gambling in Vegas aren't approaching it as though it were a rational investment strategy.
        weavejester 15y ago
        True. I don't think you should view it as an investment, and certainly not a reliable one. At best, it's like investing in a startup you think has promise and is undervalued.
weavejester 15y ago
I agree that's the perception, but the reality is that bitcoins are not inherently anonymous, in the same way that normal net traffic is not inherently anonymous. Sure, you can use Tor, launder your bitcoins, and effectively become untraceable, but how many people actually do this, and do this correctly? Even Lulz Security, who presumably have a reasonable degree of technical expertise, didn't bother to use Tor when talking over IRC. Also, Silk Road is kinda ridiculous anyway, because despite all that security and anonymising, in the end you have to give out a physical address that you'll visit in person.
- a1k0n 15y ago
  Bitcoins are much less anonymous than normal net traffic, even. If someone sends you some money, you get to know the address it came from, and plug it in on http://blockexplorer.com/ http://blockexplorer.com/ and you can see which addresses that address got its money from, and how much, and you can trace it all the way back through history to find out which block generated the money and how it got to that address. Depending on how people consolidate their wallets, you can even see how much money they have. I don't have to be routing packets for you to find all this out; every transaction goes to every node. There are "laundering" services which try to play a shell game with addresses, but I think they're probably easy to reverse-engineer, at least probabilistically if not completely. OTOH, unlike IPs, you can't pinpoint addresses to any location though or find out who owns what addresses for sure. I guess they're more pseudonymous than anonymous.
  - wmf 15y ago
    I wonder if Palantir has a Bitcoin plugin yet.
  - w01fe 15y ago
    Anonymizing bitcoins is not difficult. For example, you can deposit your coins in an online wallet service, and then withdraw some fraction of that amount to an anonymous address. Because the wallet provider can pool its coins, the coins coming out can have absolutely no relationship to the coins going in, outside the private records of the wallet provider. The wallet provider could, in principle, be subpoenaed / coerced /hacked / owned by the NSA. I imagine there will eventually be a Tor-like "onion" anonymization method, where bitcoins are routed through multiple such services, so that no single service need be trusted (except to not steal your money). The main challenge with these techniques is avoiding forms of traffic analysis, where I notice B$98.23 heading from A to B, and shortly thereafter, B$98.22 heading from C to D, and infer that these represent a single transaction chain despite being disconnected in the block chain record. Such attacks can be minimized by, e.g., settling on a fixed transaction amount for all transactions with a given service, and adding random delays commensurate with the transaction rate and degree of anonymity required.
mycroftiv 15y ago
I think it is entirely possible Bitcoin will provoke the mother-of-all battles for control over communication networks and how people use them. The outlines are very clear: Bitcoin allows nearly complete escape from the current financial regulatory systems that control currency movements and taxation. Trying to prevent people from moving money from one country to another or using Bitcoins for buying drugs, weapons, whatever is impossible without a truly draconian censorship and control regime in which private citizens are more or less forbidden from using encrypted communications. I see government control over money as basically an immovable object - I don't think so-called constitutional protections mean anything when it comes to governments doing what they feel is necessary to maintain control. Internet freedom and encryption are not as much of an irresistible force as net-romantics would like to think. If anything can force governments into legislating backdoors into all encryption systems and creating a clearly established set of "choke points" for control of data flows, it is the possibility of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies to render basic imperatives of the modern nation state impossible to enforce. It is more or less infinitely depressing to me, because as much as I would like to believe that the "good guys" are going to win, I doubt it. People generally don't realize how much we are already living in a dystopian panopticon, and Bitcoin is one of the rays of light shining through the cracks in the prison walls. What is even more depressing to me is my own cowardice. I am too scared of the US government to even try to resist in any way, no matter how trivial. I would like to participate in Bitcoin and other projects, but I don't want to end up in a federal prison for conspiracy to assist in money laundering and tax evasion, as I imagine that any participation in Bitcoin will be interpreted by government prosecutors of the near-future.
- wmf 15y ago
  It seems like it would be a lot easier to just shut down the USD-BTC exchanges. If people can't get money in or out of the system they don't need to worry about what happens inside the system. (I'm ignoring mining, since there's a serious limit on how large that can get.)
  - elliottcarlson 15y ago
    And yet, just yesterday I met with someone and sold him bitcoins for cash. Anyone can be an exchange.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Should they make Tor illegal too then because it helps you stay anonymous? Should they make it illegal for people to sign-up with a fake name to social networks, websites and commenting systems? Just because something is anonymous doesn't make it inherently bad. It's how you use it that can make it bad. If hackers can hack into sites anonymously, it doesn't mean we should ban all anonymity.
- oelewapperke 15y ago
  Of course it doesn't. But you must see the other end of the stick. With Bitcoin in operation ... all the bad of governments disappears ... and so does all the good. Just a few things truly anonymous money makes untouchable : you're reintroducing slavery, including child and sexual slavery and making it much more intractable to fight you're giving up the war on drugs. Not just soft drugs but every drug. you're making fraud, not just tax fraud, impossible to detect (especially for purely financial firms where money is both the input and the output) The control governments have is there for a reason. Do you think the freedom bitcoin provides (although bitcoin is not really anonymous enough I think) is worth causing the above mentioned problems ?
- redthrowaway 15y ago
  Tor is a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing, in that LEAs hate it but it was developed by navy intelligence, and a lot of people had to use it in order for it to be effective. When law enforcement goes up against the military, law enforcement loses. That's not the case with bitcoin.

by lukev 15y ago

ahi 15y ago

That is the main/only reason I am making a long term investment in Bitcoin. Given the volatility I think the people speculating in Bitcoin purely for financial gain are nuts.

zby 15y ago
"Given the volatility I think the people speculating in Bitcoin purely for financial gain are nuts" - that's a strong statement mate. Any reasoning behind it or you just like insulting people?
- ahi 15y ago
  http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/ Today's exchange rate range is 16.45 to 19.23. That's pretty typical, and some days are a lot worse. In the forums, the consensus seems to be that any attempt at economic analysis is largely a waste of time due to there being way too many unknowns. The Bitcoin "investors" and "speculators" just look like gamblers to me. That qualifies as "nuts" to this coward. However, I do like insulting people.
  - weavejester 15y ago
    A lot of Bitcoin speculators have invested only what they can afford to lose. I don't think it's "nuts" to invest a few hundred dollars (for example) in something as technically interesting as Bitcoin. People probably lose more in a Vegas vacation.
    - ahi 15y ago
      Agreed, but then those people and the people gambling in Vegas aren't approaching it as though it were a rational investment strategy.
      - weavejester 15y ago
        True. I don't think you should view it as an investment, and certainly not a reliable one. At best, it's like investing in a startup you think has promise and is undervalued.

weavejester 15y ago

I agree that's the perception, but the reality is that bitcoins are not inherently anonymous, in the same way that normal net traffic is not inherently anonymous. Sure, you can use Tor, launder your bitcoins, and effectively become untraceable, but how many people actually do this, and do this correctly? Even Lulz Security, who presumably have a reasonable degree of technical expertise, didn't bother to use Tor when talking over IRC. Also, Silk Road is kinda ridiculous anyway, because despite all that security and anonymising, in the end you have to give out a physical address that you'll visit in person.

a1k0n 15y ago
Bitcoins are much less anonymous than normal net traffic, even. If someone sends you some money, you get to know the address it came from, and plug it in on http://blockexplorer.com/ http://blockexplorer.com/ and you can see which addresses that address got its money from, and how much, and you can trace it all the way back through history to find out which block generated the money and how it got to that address. Depending on how people consolidate their wallets, you can even see how much money they have. I don't have to be routing packets for you to find all this out; every transaction goes to every node. There are "laundering" services which try to play a shell game with addresses, but I think they're probably easy to reverse-engineer, at least probabilistically if not completely. OTOH, unlike IPs, you can't pinpoint addresses to any location though or find out who owns what addresses for sure. I guess they're more pseudonymous than anonymous.
- wmf 15y ago
  I wonder if Palantir has a Bitcoin plugin yet.
- w01fe 15y ago
  Anonymizing bitcoins is not difficult. For example, you can deposit your coins in an online wallet service, and then withdraw some fraction of that amount to an anonymous address. Because the wallet provider can pool its coins, the coins coming out can have absolutely no relationship to the coins going in, outside the private records of the wallet provider. The wallet provider could, in principle, be subpoenaed / coerced /hacked / owned by the NSA. I imagine there will eventually be a Tor-like "onion" anonymization method, where bitcoins are routed through multiple such services, so that no single service need be trusted (except to not steal your money). The main challenge with these techniques is avoiding forms of traffic analysis, where I notice B$98.23 heading from A to B, and shortly thereafter, B$98.22 heading from C to D, and infer that these represent a single transaction chain despite being disconnected in the block chain record. Such attacks can be minimized by, e.g., settling on a fixed transaction amount for all transactions with a given service, and adding random delays commensurate with the transaction rate and degree of anonymity required.

mycroftiv 15y ago

I think it is entirely possible Bitcoin will provoke the mother-of-all battles for control over communication networks and how people use them. The outlines are very clear: Bitcoin allows nearly complete escape from the current financial regulatory systems that control currency movements and taxation. Trying to prevent people from moving money from one country to another or using Bitcoins for buying drugs, weapons, whatever is impossible without a truly draconian censorship and control regime in which private citizens are more or less forbidden from using encrypted communications. I see government control over money as basically an immovable object - I don't think so-called constitutional protections mean anything when it comes to governments doing what they feel is necessary to maintain control. Internet freedom and encryption are not as much of an irresistible force as net-romantics would like to think. If anything can force governments into legislating backdoors into all encryption systems and creating a clearly established set of "choke points" for control of data flows, it is the possibility of Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies to render basic imperatives of the modern nation state impossible to enforce. It is more or less infinitely depressing to me, because as much as I would like to believe that the "good guys" are going to win, I doubt it. People generally don't realize how much we are already living in a dystopian panopticon, and Bitcoin is one of the rays of light shining through the cracks in the prison walls. What is even more depressing to me is my own cowardice. I am too scared of the US government to even try to resist in any way, no matter how trivial. I would like to participate in Bitcoin and other projects, but I don't want to end up in a federal prison for conspiracy to assist in money laundering and tax evasion, as I imagine that any participation in Bitcoin will be interpreted by government prosecutors of the near-future.

wmf 15y ago
It seems like it would be a lot easier to just shut down the USD-BTC exchanges. If people can't get money in or out of the system they don't need to worry about what happens inside the system. (I'm ignoring mining, since there's a serious limit on how large that can get.)
- elliottcarlson 15y ago
  And yet, just yesterday I met with someone and sold him bitcoins for cash. Anyone can be an exchange.

nextparadigms 15y ago

Should they make Tor illegal too then because it helps you stay anonymous? Should they make it illegal for people to sign-up with a fake name to social networks, websites and commenting systems? Just because something is anonymous doesn't make it inherently bad. It's how you use it that can make it bad. If hackers can hack into sites anonymously, it doesn't mean we should ban all anonymity.

oelewapperke 15y ago
Of course it doesn't. But you must see the other end of the stick. With Bitcoin in operation ... all the bad of governments disappears ... and so does all the good. Just a few things truly anonymous money makes untouchable : you're reintroducing slavery, including child and sexual slavery and making it much more intractable to fight you're giving up the war on drugs. Not just soft drugs but every drug. you're making fraud, not just tax fraud, impossible to detect (especially for purely financial firms where money is both the input and the output) The control governments have is there for a reason. Do you think the freedom bitcoin provides (although bitcoin is not really anonymous enough I think) is worth causing the above mentioned problems ?
redthrowaway 15y ago
Tor is a case of one hand not knowing what the other was doing, in that LEAs hate it but it was developed by navy intelligence, and a lot of people had to use it in order for it to be effective. When law enforcement goes up against the military, law enforcement loses. That's not the case with bitcoin.