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Under the hood, I think that bitcoins, etc., are just blobs of text that can be saved in regular files. Probably ascii-armored, like a PGP key, correct ? So I
by rsync 5y ago
Under the hood, I think that bitcoins, etc., are just blobs of text that can be saved in regular files. Probably ascii-armored, like a PGP key, correct ?
So I think that an "unhosted wallet" just refers to a blob of text in a regular file ... which is exactly how I would store bitcoins if I had any.
In the United States, this is a clear-cut free speech / First Amendment issue. In the United States I can write, or say, any number I choose to.
There's a lot of hand waving reference to magic technology when discussing things like key escrow or "encryption" or "unhosted wallets". In the end, they are protected speech and cannot be limited under any interpretation of the First Amendment.
- ASalazarMX 5y ago>In the United States I can write, or say, any number I choose to. Nope, you can't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number Edit: About an unhosted wallet being a clear case of freedom of speech because it can be encoded as text; even if it was, what are you expressing? The intent to evade cryptotaxes?
- rsync 5y agoI am well aware of these, of course, and they have not been tested at the supreme court where they would fail. You'll note that one of the numbers in question[1] is published, in full, on the wikipedia page that you link to. [1] 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
- ASalazarMX 5y agoThat one was everywhere at the time, it's still a trade secret, but utterly unenforceable. As you say, it's one number, Wikipedia is not publishing all of them for a reason.
- karmicthreat 5y agoI think you are making a pretty big assumption that it would fail in the supreme court. It's not like the supreme court has abolished asset forfeiture either.
- brighton36 5y ago'intellectual property' is mostly post-modern nonsense. Yet, here we are. If these numbers are property, then, the government will duely regulate it as such.
- throwaway98797 5y agoproperty rights are man made constructs. intellectual property is a subset of property rights. they both exist only because society deems their existence necessary.
- lukifer 5y agoSociety reifies and adjudicates the specific rules surrounding "property rights", but they also derive from our cultural norms and biological instincts: everything from "Finders Keepers" to "Your Home Is Your Castle". And predictably, these root nodes of moral claims to property frequently conflict. I strongly recommend Heller & Salzman's "Mine!" [0] as a non-ideological and layperson-accessible exploration of the history and nature of property. [0] https://www.minethebook.com/ https://www.minethebook.com/
- testific8 5y agoregulating intellectual "property" will only become increasingly difficult to protect and regulate as the technology for recording, copying, and disseminating information improves. In order to regulate intellectual "property", you need to gimp information technology with DRM. I don't deem the existence of intellectual "property" necessary, in fact I predict its existance will become infeasable to uphold.
- brighton36 5y agoThat's about how I feel. I think it's worth noting that humans seem to go through cycles of securitization, that makes 'all the sense in the world' in their time. But, which becomes abhorrent, or nonsensical as the fashions change over time.
- bo1024 5y ago
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y agoNot text, but stored in a binary format in a Berkeley DB (Generally only version 4.8.30). There is documentation on the formats here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet Where it gets interesting is the so called Seed Phrase, https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Seed_phrase in which an unlimited number of private keys can be derived. A seed phrase can 'recreate' every key in a wallet, it could be considered a form of wallet backup. In the BIP39 standard, 12 words are used from a dictionary of 2048.
- rsync 5y agoGenuinely curious - can you export them to a pgp-like ascii-armored text blob for easy cut and paste, etc. ? I have never interacted with a bitcoin or other crypto-currency ...
- dannyw 5y agoYes. You can even turn them turn them a 12 or 24 word mnemonic, designed for pen and paper writing. The words come from a standardised wordlist, providing a rudimentary way of error checking and checksumming.
- CapriciousCptl 5y agoAt its core, a wallet is just a collection of private keys. So yes, these are easy to extract and, in the original client, there is a simple command to do just that. Or, as mentioned, you can access the BerkleyDB wallet.dat file directly. The "bitcoin" itself is never really stored anywhere in terms of state-- the chain simply stores the series of transactions between public keys up to right now and you calculate the btc state from that. The wallet.dat also typically stores cached transaction data, but it's only a local cache and not authoritative.
- rfd4sgmk8u 5y agoA bitcoin private key is an elliptic curve private key on the secp256k1 curve. OpenSSL will let you encode a valid bitcoin private key as a PEM if you wish for easy copy paste -- you would have to convert them into another format for direct usage however. eg: openssl genpkey -algorithm EC -outform PEM -pkeyopt ec_paramgen_curve:secp256k1 -pkeyopt ec_param_enc:named_curve There is a native format known as WIF (wallet import format) that uses ascii encoding for private keys, allowing easy migration/copy paste: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Wallet_import_format
- tgsovlerkhgsel 5y agoBitcoins are entries on a ledger, which you can transfer by signing a message with a key. The keys are typically a master key encoded as a 12 or 24 word seed phrase, from which the actual keys are then derived. What this regulation is targeting isn't the holding or sharing of the keys itself, but the use of exchanges to convert between cryptocurrency and fiat (regular) money. They want to restrict/regulate (mostly monitor for now, but more regulation is likely to follow) a) the ability to send Bitcoin that you bought on an exchange to your own wallet, i.e. your ability to get Bitcoin that you actually control yourself with said text file b) the ability to send Bitcoin from such a wallet to an exchange to turn them into "regular money".
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- maxerickson 5y agoThey aren't gonna crack down on them in the sense of speech, they are gonna tell exchanges not to give people dollars in exchange for bitcoin associated with them.
- seattle_spring 5y agoBy your argument, piracy of digital media and software should be 100% legal because it's just exercising first amendment rights to share text in a file (which is ultimately what any software boils down to)? Come. On.
- ripply 5y agoI don’t think that’s analogous, with cryptocurrency you generate the text file from a random number generator or rolling dice, there is no issue with copyright for private keys. The courts have already ruled that copying DVD decryption keys is allowed under free speech.
- c01n 5y agoThis is a deeply philosophical issue. Ideas can be encoded in text there are laws that protect ideas, but then there is rights such as free speech which are meant to protect what we say and how we express ourselves. From a socialism perspective ideas should belong to everyone, capitalism would say an individual has the right to own an idea from the set of all ideas if they discovered it, or own some text (code) from the set of all possible text.
- nybble41 5y ago> capitalism would say an individual has the right to own an idea "Capitalism" says no such thing. Property under capitalism is a consequence of scarcity; property rights exist specifically because a particular good cannot be expended for two different purposes at the same time. As such, someone must decide how the property will be used, and the entity with the right to make that decision is designated the owner. Ideas lack scarcity—the same idea can be used for any number of purposes simultaneously without being used up—and consequently are outside the capitalist definition of property. Assigning fake "ownership" privileges to ideas infringes on the exercise of actual property rights, effectively seizing private property (including capital) for public use to to implement a policy of subsidizing the creation of new copyrightable works or patentable inventions, which is an inherently socialist exercise of government power.
- jVinc 5y ago> First Amendment issue. In the United States I can write, or say, any number I choose to. That is complete and utter nonsense. A child pornography video is just a blob of text, essentially a big number. And you certainly can be prosecuted both for distribution and for storing child pornography. just because you have the imagination to boil everything down through bits to a number does not mean the First amendment becomes a shield for anything. A tweet stating you want to assassinate the president is equally "just a number" and also not protected by the first Amendment.
- syrrim 5y agoPorn is covered under an exception. A tweet saying you merely want to assassinate the president is fine, what's illegal is inciting others to commit crimes.
- pmontra 5y agoBitcoins are stored in the blockchain. The wallet stores the private key to use (spend) the bitcoin at an address.
- omginternets 5y ago>In the United States I can write, or say, any number I choose to. Images of sexually exploited toddlers are "just numbers" too, but it doesn't seem like the DOJ buys the free speech argument.