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Since the ledgers are public, how difficult is it to black list individual bitcoins? E.g, have the feds do a public list of blacklisted coin ids and simply say

Since the ledgers are public, how difficult is it to black list individual bitcoins? E.g, have the feds do a public list of blacklisted coin ids and simply say that accepting these coins is against whatever compliance is necessary for a business to operate crypto in the USA and Europe. Then when some realestate agency is about to sell an apartment in Dubai for bitcoins they’re gonna be “no, not those. We can add them to our coin base” or whatever. I get that all countries that don’t care about the black list can continue trading, but those coins still have smaller demand and thus smaller value.

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago
anyone with the capability to deploy this would presumably have a conflict of interest due to the overall value dropping due to inability to use it as a crime currency.
posting_mess 3y ago
I could be off, its been a while since ive been in crypto - take with a pinch of salt; Bitcoins dont really exist, they aren't a row with a "uuid" that we can just say "block bitcoin X". Its a ledger so you are worth the sum of transactions on the ledger against "wallet x" at any particular time. Blocks are really just "diffs" and if you sum those diffs you get to a "balance" that the network can verify and allow you to spend. So when you want to block "some bitcoins" you have to "follow the money", which will get you to wallet address. It's easy to block a single wallet address but the the criminals just split that one bitcoin into 10K addresses, now you have to follow that set of transactions and block 10K addresses. The implications / problem gets worse as you consider finical crimes like in the UK, gangs will transfer £1K/£2k to some young persons bank and ask them to with draw 90% of it. Should we permanently remove a young person from the network cause of 1 mistake? Should we force them to go through the risk of setting up a new address? Then of course the mixers / LN / complicated transaction tree's (blockchian hoping, ETC) - its a bit of nightmare. Its not unsolvable, but I cant imagine its an easy task by any metric.
capableweb 3y ago
Bitcoins aren't individual. You just have addresses with an associated sum, once two different addresses send 1 Bitcoin each to that address, those are equal and if you send 1 Bitcoin from the address who just received it, it's not one of Bitcoins that was received that got sent, it's just two values being updated at the same time (sender's amount decremented, receivers amount incremented). What you can do, is blacklist specific addresses, and deny receiving/sending to anything that been "in contact" with that address. But you will for sure end up blocking more than you want with this approach, although that might not be a huge issue for the ones who are trying to block things.
- ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
  This is just wrong, sorry. You're describing the account model, but bitcoin follows the UTXO model. If you received coins from multiple transactions, those coins are not equal and retain their individual histories. To spend from an address with multiple UTXOs, you (or your wallet software) must choose which specific coins to send using coin control. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utxo.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utxo.asp https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/what-is-coin-control/ https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/what-is-coin-control/

hsbauauvhabzb 3y ago

anyone with the capability to deploy this would presumably have a conflict of interest due to the overall value dropping due to inability to use it as a crime currency.

posting_mess 3y ago

I could be off, its been a while since ive been in crypto - take with a pinch of salt; Bitcoins dont really exist, they aren't a row with a "uuid" that we can just say "block bitcoin X". Its a ledger so you are worth the sum of transactions on the ledger against "wallet x" at any particular time. Blocks are really just "diffs" and if you sum those diffs you get to a "balance" that the network can verify and allow you to spend. So when you want to block "some bitcoins" you have to "follow the money", which will get you to wallet address. It's easy to block a single wallet address but the the criminals just split that one bitcoin into 10K addresses, now you have to follow that set of transactions and block 10K addresses. The implications / problem gets worse as you consider finical crimes like in the UK, gangs will transfer £1K/£2k to some young persons bank and ask them to with draw 90% of it. Should we permanently remove a young person from the network cause of 1 mistake? Should we force them to go through the risk of setting up a new address? Then of course the mixers / LN / complicated transaction tree's (blockchian hoping, ETC) - its a bit of nightmare. Its not unsolvable, but I cant imagine its an easy task by any metric.

capableweb 3y ago

Bitcoins aren't individual. You just have addresses with an associated sum, once two different addresses send 1 Bitcoin each to that address, those are equal and if you send 1 Bitcoin from the address who just received it, it's not one of Bitcoins that was received that got sent, it's just two values being updated at the same time (sender's amount decremented, receivers amount incremented). What you can do, is blacklist specific addresses, and deny receiving/sending to anything that been "in contact" with that address. But you will for sure end up blocking more than you want with this approach, although that might not be a huge issue for the ones who are trying to block things.

ForkMeOnTinder 3y ago
This is just wrong, sorry. You're describing the account model, but bitcoin follows the UTXO model. If you received coins from multiple transactions, those coins are not equal and retain their individual histories. To spend from an address with multiple UTXOs, you (or your wallet software) must choose which specific coins to send using coin control. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utxo.asp https://www.investopedia.com/terms/u/utxo.asp https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/what-is-coin-control/ https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/what-is-coin-control/