5 ms·

Uncensorability, mostly. Stripe is an American company. Why should Iranians be bared from participating in the decentralized web?

by leppr 5y ago

acdha 5y ago
Blockchains are easily censored. It sounds like you want cash. Things to think about: how does this prevent embargos? If you’re in the US, any means of doing business with someone on the watchlist is a legal hazard. If you’re in a country which doesn’t follow that, you have other options. Changing the tech doesn’t change the law. As for alleged censor-resistance, consider what happens when major exchanges are required to follow the laws. Coins become tainted once they’ve been used for illegal transactions, reducing both the number of potential buyers dramatically and how much they’re willing to pay. Miners in countries party to international agreements may even refuse to process them. The fact that the first transaction couldn’t be blocked doesn’t mean everyone’s just giving up.
- leppr 5y ago
  They aren't. Try to find a single case of censorship in Bitcoin or Ethereum to substantiate your claim.
  - bccdee 5y ago
    Here's one example. This guy was arrested for laundering money using Bitcoin. He was arrested for his transactions on the Bitcoin network. If you consider payments as the sort of thing that can be censored, then this certainly counts as censorship. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/press-releases/darknet-vendor-arrested-distribution-and-money-laundering-charges https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
    - Throwaway197401 5y ago
      That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about being able to cancel the activity "onChain" which you can't.
      - bccdee 5y ago
        That's exactly my point, though. What happens on-chain doesn't really matter when you can circumvent it in real life. If I start sending people to jail for using blockchain, nobody's going to want your bitcoin, no matter how irreversible the transactions are.
    - leppr 5y ago
      He was punished but not censored. In many cases the distinction matters. The US can't prevent Wikileaks from receiving Bitcoin donations, for instance. They can punish one of their citizen who sent Wikileaks money, but not take the money back.
      - acdha 5y ago
        You're trying to be pedantic about a line which doesn't exist. No form of censorship has ever been perfect at preventing all activity — the likelihood of punishment is what makes it effective. Newspapers won't cover a story which they expect to be punished for, people will say things in private rather than in the street, etc. all despite technically having the option to shout something on the street. It turns out that being able to say “this is punishment, not censorship!” afterwards while the police are getting out the electrodes isn't very appealing to most people. In this case, you need to think more carefully about the various ways in which activity can be deterred or prevented: 1. Blockchains give a permanent, public record. That has a chilling effect on anything potentially censorable because while the government might need a witness to know that you dropped $50 in the Wikileaks jar, they can at their leisure tell that you did so with cryptocurrency. 2. “But it's [pseudo-]anonymous!” — if any part of your transaction network becomes known to them, they can link that wallet to you. Better hope that you, your friends, and every business you interact with have perfect opsec and all of your software is flawless about masking its network traffic. 3. Most people use exchanges and buy from businesses which have a legal presence in a country which is part of international agreements. That means that when, say, the US puts someone on a sanctions list transactions might be blocked outright for people using a bank which checks the blacklist and refuses to take on liability for prohibited activity, but if successful those coins have less value because fewer people are going to buy them in return and they'll pay less. You can probably get Bitcoin to Wikileaks, for example, but that Wikileaks wallet holder is going to have a hard time turning it into useful currency which will be accepted by legitimate businesses in most of the world. Paying to launder it is possible but unreliable and you'll be running afoul of the same infrastructure used to track organized crime, and presumably paying similar rates to do so.
      - bccdee 5y ago
        sure they can take the money back. they just make wikileaks pay them, or else they press charges against wikileaks for holding onto the proceeds of crime or whatever. even if you're insisting that censorship has to be preemptive, then the chilling effect from these arrests still counts.
  - larrysalibra 5y ago
    The original DAO “hack” was reversed by censorship: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao I put “hack” in quotes because at the time the community loudly was proclaiming “code is law” and if you accept that the person accused of hacking didn’t break any “laws” of the DAO…he simply used it according to the code published in the smart contract. The community decided to hard fork, change the rules and censor his transaction. You could make the same argument that was censorship in bitcoin had a transaction been made that exploited the inflation bug before the fix was pushed out: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/
    - leppr 5y ago
      Good point. Those instances weren't "easy" though, they needed the support of the whole community, and in Ethereum's case the "uncensored" version still exists (Ethereum Classic). It also likely would not be possible today, see the Parity hack in 2017, which lost people close to the Ethereum foundation a 9 figures amount, but didn't get forked away even though they tried.
- prohobo 5y ago
  The files are uncensorable, not the stupid coins...
  - acdha 5y ago
    How do you think that works? The content is tracked by hash — as soon as something is identified, the network helps the authorities find everyone sharing it.
  - leppr 5y ago
    It's the other way around in this case.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

Uncensorability, mostly. Stripe is an American company. Why should Iranians be bared from participating in the decentralized web?

by leppr 5y ago

Uncensorability, mostly. Stripe is an American company. Why should Iranians be bared from participating in the decentralized web?

acdha 5y ago

Blockchains are easily censored. It sounds like you want cash. Things to think about: how does this prevent embargos? If you’re in the US, any means of doing business with someone on the watchlist is a legal hazard. If you’re in a country which doesn’t follow that, you have other options. Changing the tech doesn’t change the law. As for alleged censor-resistance, consider what happens when major exchanges are required to follow the laws. Coins become tainted once they’ve been used for illegal transactions, reducing both the number of potential buyers dramatically and how much they’re willing to pay. Miners in countries party to international agreements may even refuse to process them. The fact that the first transaction couldn’t be blocked doesn’t mean everyone’s just giving up.

leppr 5y ago
They aren't. Try to find a single case of censorship in Bitcoin or Ethereum to substantiate your claim.
- bccdee 5y ago
  Here's one example. This guy was arrested for laundering money using Bitcoin. He was arrested for his transactions on the Bitcoin network. If you consider payments as the sort of thing that can be censored, then this certainly counts as censorship. https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-criminal-investigations/press-releases/darknet-vendor-arrested-distribution-and-money-laundering-charges https://www.fda.gov/inspections-compliance-enforcement-and-c...
  - Throwaway197401 5y ago
    That's not what we are talking about. We are talking about being able to cancel the activity "onChain" which you can't.
    - bccdee 5y ago
      That's exactly my point, though. What happens on-chain doesn't really matter when you can circumvent it in real life. If I start sending people to jail for using blockchain, nobody's going to want your bitcoin, no matter how irreversible the transactions are.
  - leppr 5y ago
    He was punished but not censored. In many cases the distinction matters. The US can't prevent Wikileaks from receiving Bitcoin donations, for instance. They can punish one of their citizen who sent Wikileaks money, but not take the money back.
    - acdha 5y ago
      You're trying to be pedantic about a line which doesn't exist. No form of censorship has ever been perfect at preventing all activity — the likelihood of punishment is what makes it effective. Newspapers won't cover a story which they expect to be punished for, people will say things in private rather than in the street, etc. all despite technically having the option to shout something on the street. It turns out that being able to say “this is punishment, not censorship!” afterwards while the police are getting out the electrodes isn't very appealing to most people. In this case, you need to think more carefully about the various ways in which activity can be deterred or prevented: 1. Blockchains give a permanent, public record. That has a chilling effect on anything potentially censorable because while the government might need a witness to know that you dropped $50 in the Wikileaks jar, they can at their leisure tell that you did so with cryptocurrency. 2. “But it's [pseudo-]anonymous!” — if any part of your transaction network becomes known to them, they can link that wallet to you. Better hope that you, your friends, and every business you interact with have perfect opsec and all of your software is flawless about masking its network traffic. 3. Most people use exchanges and buy from businesses which have a legal presence in a country which is part of international agreements. That means that when, say, the US puts someone on a sanctions list transactions might be blocked outright for people using a bank which checks the blacklist and refuses to take on liability for prohibited activity, but if successful those coins have less value because fewer people are going to buy them in return and they'll pay less. You can probably get Bitcoin to Wikileaks, for example, but that Wikileaks wallet holder is going to have a hard time turning it into useful currency which will be accepted by legitimate businesses in most of the world. Paying to launder it is possible but unreliable and you'll be running afoul of the same infrastructure used to track organized crime, and presumably paying similar rates to do so.
    - bccdee 5y ago
      sure they can take the money back. they just make wikileaks pay them, or else they press charges against wikileaks for holding onto the proceeds of crime or whatever. even if you're insisting that censorship has to be preemptive, then the chilling effect from these arrests still counts.
- larrysalibra 5y ago
  The original DAO “hack” was reversed by censorship: https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao https://www.gemini.com/cryptopedia/the-dao-hack-makerdao I put “hack” in quotes because at the time the community loudly was proclaiming “code is law” and if you accept that the person accused of hacking didn’t break any “laws” of the DAO…he simply used it according to the code published in the smart contract. The community decided to hard fork, change the rules and censor his transaction. You could make the same argument that was censorship in bitcoin had a transaction been made that exploited the inflation bug before the fix was pushed out: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/ https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/
  - leppr 5y ago
    Good point. Those instances weren't "easy" though, they needed the support of the whole community, and in Ethereum's case the "uncensored" version still exists (Ethereum Classic). It also likely would not be possible today, see the Parity hack in 2017, which lost people close to the Ethereum foundation a 9 figures amount, but didn't get forked away even though they tried.
prohobo 5y ago
The files are uncensorable, not the stupid coins...
- acdha 5y ago
  How do you think that works? The content is tracked by hash — as soon as something is identified, the network helps the authorities find everyone sharing it.
- leppr 5y ago
  It's the other way around in this case.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]