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Bitcoin is a technology that improves individual freedoms. No institution can prevent you from holding or transferring bitcoin. When you buy a bitcoin you can r

by nprz 5y ago

Bitcoin is a technology that improves individual freedoms. No institution can prevent you from holding or transferring bitcoin. When you buy a bitcoin you can remain confident there will never be more than 21 million btc minted, btc will never become diluted. Claiming the BTC protocol is without utility is completely disingenuous.

goatmeal 5y ago
a big chunk of the population believes that the government should have a total monopoly over the issuance of currency and they should be able to control every aspect of how it gets accounted for and who should facilitate transactions, in order to prevent crime. these people have a complete disregard for individuals who are treated unfairly by the financial system. when some people are shut out of their access to banking and payment processing despite not doing anything illegal, and when others are unable to do business due to too much administrative overhead imposed by financial regulation, their suffering is excusable because crime is being prevented.
acdha 5y ago
> Bitcoin is a technology that improves individual freedoms. No institution can prevent you from holding or transferring bitcoin. This is a common sales pitch but it's relying on the listener not thinking about the problem. Any government can prevent you from using Bitcoin by blocking your transactions: every transaction requires a network exchange and the same infrastructure which is used for things like the Great Firewall can trivially stop that as well. More importantly, however, that's a hypothetical situation for most people here. The realistic threats to think about stem from the difference between you being able to _make_ a transaction and not have any consequences for doing so. Bitcoin requires you to publish a full log of your transactions for your government to see — if you don't report transactions, skip paying taxes, or conduct a transfer with someone on a blacklist, they can use the public ledger as a signed confession. Every transaction you make can be used to deanonymize you, and that sharply limits the use of Bitcoin because there's no demand for random numbers — only real things you can do with them, which require physical presences which governments control. If your goal is to transfer money and flee the country, never coming back and writing off any friends or family left behind, Bitcoin might help. If your usage is anything else, you're just counting down until you or someone you interact with has their data compromised. Now, maybe you've also heard the marketing claims about mixers. Think about that a bit more carefully and you'll also realize the problems which make those unsafe in practice: beyond the expense, you're trusting the mixer operator not to be compromised, simply having any transaction linked to one is evidence that you're doing something illegal, and you have to worry about other users of the service using it for crimes which are serious enough to get more investigation than you personally are worth and proving that you were not knowingly helping those people. If you were running the secret police somewhere, one of the best things you could do would be set up Bitcoin exchange and mixer services and promote them in your country so you'd have people giving you signed evidence of things you probably weren't even aware of.
- gruez 5y ago
  >which is used for things like the Great Firewall can trivially stop that as well. I don't know how effective you think the great firewall is, but it's definitely not effective enough to "trivially stop" 500 bytes of banned data from being transferred.
  - acdha 5y ago
    It's an always-on network transferring non-trivial amounts of data. Do you really think it's that hard to block port 8333 and a list of known hosts? No, it won't be perfect but if it's not easy to use with standard clients few people are going to deal with it — especially with the knowledge that less than perfect attempts to do so is publishing a clear sign of intent. For a repressive government, that means that most people will steer clear which makes it easier to filter since you don't have a large volume of innocent traffic complicating analysis and by creating a great mechanism to get people to install spyware by circulating news underground of a great client which is preconfigured to evade the filter. If this is your threat model, cash is much safer.
    - gruez 5y ago
      >It's an always-on network you only need to be "on" to make transactions. In the case of sending transactions, you only need to broadcast the transaction itself (500 bytes), with no further traffic needed. The blockchain data is also broadcast via a satellite: https://www.blockstream.com/satellite/ https://www.blockstream.com/satellite/ >transferring non-trivial amounts of data SPV clients require very little traffic, on the order of tens of kilobytes. Full nodes only need to download under 2MB worth every 10 minutes, or 3.33 KB/s. That's very easy to sneak under the radar if need be. >Do you really think it's that hard to block port 8333 and a list of known hosts good thing you can run bitcoin as a tor hidden service. >If this is your threat model, cash is much safer. Except you need to be in-person to make transactions.
- nprz 5y ago
  You say all this, but where are all the thousands of silk road/DNM vendor/ransomware arrests? The gov has the tech to deanonymize these transactions, but fails to make any arrests?

by nprz 5y ago

goatmeal 5y ago

a big chunk of the population believes that the government should have a total monopoly over the issuance of currency and they should be able to control every aspect of how it gets accounted for and who should facilitate transactions, in order to prevent crime. these people have a complete disregard for individuals who are treated unfairly by the financial system. when some people are shut out of their access to banking and payment processing despite not doing anything illegal, and when others are unable to do business due to too much administrative overhead imposed by financial regulation, their suffering is excusable because crime is being prevented.

acdha 5y ago

> Bitcoin is a technology that improves individual freedoms. No institution can prevent you from holding or transferring bitcoin. This is a common sales pitch but it's relying on the listener not thinking about the problem. Any government can prevent you from using Bitcoin by blocking your transactions: every transaction requires a network exchange and the same infrastructure which is used for things like the Great Firewall can trivially stop that as well. More importantly, however, that's a hypothetical situation for most people here. The realistic threats to think about stem from the difference between you being able to _make_ a transaction and not have any consequences for doing so. Bitcoin requires you to publish a full log of your transactions for your government to see — if you don't report transactions, skip paying taxes, or conduct a transfer with someone on a blacklist, they can use the public ledger as a signed confession. Every transaction you make can be used to deanonymize you, and that sharply limits the use of Bitcoin because there's no demand for random numbers — only real things you can do with them, which require physical presences which governments control. If your goal is to transfer money and flee the country, never coming back and writing off any friends or family left behind, Bitcoin might help. If your usage is anything else, you're just counting down until you or someone you interact with has their data compromised. Now, maybe you've also heard the marketing claims about mixers. Think about that a bit more carefully and you'll also realize the problems which make those unsafe in practice: beyond the expense, you're trusting the mixer operator not to be compromised, simply having any transaction linked to one is evidence that you're doing something illegal, and you have to worry about other users of the service using it for crimes which are serious enough to get more investigation than you personally are worth and proving that you were not knowingly helping those people. If you were running the secret police somewhere, one of the best things you could do would be set up Bitcoin exchange and mixer services and promote them in your country so you'd have people giving you signed evidence of things you probably weren't even aware of.

gruez 5y ago
>which is used for things like the Great Firewall can trivially stop that as well. I don't know how effective you think the great firewall is, but it's definitely not effective enough to "trivially stop" 500 bytes of banned data from being transferred.
- acdha 5y ago
  It's an always-on network transferring non-trivial amounts of data. Do you really think it's that hard to block port 8333 and a list of known hosts? No, it won't be perfect but if it's not easy to use with standard clients few people are going to deal with it — especially with the knowledge that less than perfect attempts to do so is publishing a clear sign of intent. For a repressive government, that means that most people will steer clear which makes it easier to filter since you don't have a large volume of innocent traffic complicating analysis and by creating a great mechanism to get people to install spyware by circulating news underground of a great client which is preconfigured to evade the filter. If this is your threat model, cash is much safer.
  - gruez 5y ago
    >It's an always-on network you only need to be "on" to make transactions. In the case of sending transactions, you only need to broadcast the transaction itself (500 bytes), with no further traffic needed. The blockchain data is also broadcast via a satellite: https://www.blockstream.com/satellite/ https://www.blockstream.com/satellite/ >transferring non-trivial amounts of data SPV clients require very little traffic, on the order of tens of kilobytes. Full nodes only need to download under 2MB worth every 10 minutes, or 3.33 KB/s. That's very easy to sneak under the radar if need be. >Do you really think it's that hard to block port 8333 and a list of known hosts good thing you can run bitcoin as a tor hidden service. >If this is your threat model, cash is much safer. Except you need to be in-person to make transactions.
nprz 5y ago
You say all this, but where are all the thousands of silk road/DNM vendor/ransomware arrests? The gov has the tech to deanonymize these transactions, but fails to make any arrests?