7 ms·

Do you trust the Bitcoin Foundation?

73 points by thinkcomp 13y ago

nctalaviya 13y ago
Yes & there is no doubt about it...
- yeukhon 13y ago
  Why are you so sure there is no doubt about it. Not saying you can't just think that's a strong statement.
frankensauce 13y ago
I don't know about others in the bitcoin foundation, but Peter Vessenes has left a trail of destruction behind him. I'm based in Europe but personally know over 5 people who he has defrauded and he has cost me a lot of money and several days of headaches.
- Hermel 13y ago
  Yes, and Shrem and Karpeles are not exactly an asset either to the foundation.
- fabulist 13y ago
  Just curious, were you and your friends burned by CoinBase?
  - pmorici 13y ago
    Do you mean CoinLab? Coinbase is an an unrelated YC backed company in California not involved with Vessenes at all as far as I know.
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
mcv 13y ago
So what role does the Bitcoin Foundation play in the Bitcoin world? Is this a threat to Bitcoin itself, or is this just some people who thought it'd be a nice name to give themselves some superficial credibility?
- thinkcomp 13y ago
  They help set national policy for regulation of virtual currency, which is pretty important. They've testified before Congress twice and have had a number of closed-door meetings with federal agencies.
- facepalm 13y ago
  Nobody owns Bitcoin. So I guess anybody could create an organization like that. Then it depends on how much influence you can gather. For example I think in Germany there are organizations who represent IT freelancers (or businesses, not sure). Their opinions are completely opposite to mine (supporting Copyright, Google taxes and what not), but if somebody wants the opinion of "the IT industry", they tend to go to those organizations. Who else would they go to? They presumably have authority by having some amount of members.
  - lifthrasiir 13y ago
    Technically speaking, the persons and/or organizations that develop the major Bitcoin softwares own Bitcoin though. It is much like the ownership of World Wide Web: nobody owns WWW in the traditional sense, but the browser vendors and (sometimes) web developers can acts as the owner of WWW in the limited but profound way. That's why the independent implementation and verification is important even when everything is open, and Bitcoin is no exception. (Not that the OP is correct about its claim though.)
    - facepalm 13y ago
      Sure atm they have the most influence. But there are a lot of wallet implementations for Bitcoin already. Not sure about the nodes - anyway, if the developers were to do something extreme, I think forks would emerge quickly.
Fasebook 13y ago
Considering that their entire goal is to supplant all currency, No. But I don't really trust any forms of control.
VMG 13y ago
Thankfully I don't really need to.
aosmith 13y ago
Their creditability is completely shot IMHO. Shrem et al should have been shown the door the second charges were filed.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- vbuterin 13y ago
  Shrem is out the door. But if you're saying the foundation should have fired him the moment he got arrested, absolutely no. He's still innocent before proven guilty, and knee jerk reactions like that are counterproductive more often than not.
  - aosmith 13y ago
    I'm not saying there should be knee jerk reactions but they should make sure their members / managers / advisor are squeaky clean. It's bad for the community when these people turn out greasy.
    - vbuterin 13y ago
      Easier said than done. I had dismissed cshrem as a playboy half a year ago when he completely failed at getting Bitcoin Wireless off the ground and let BitInstant just die, but I had absolutely no idea he was doing anything illegal.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
jokoon 13y ago
I trust it because it's open source, but I don't trust it because it's not regulated in any manner. I still have to be convinced about bitcoin about a peer reviewed research on the subject. I'd trust it to make a transaction, but not to keep a wallet with many bitcoin on it.
- yetfeo 13y ago
  The question is not "Do you trust bitcoin", it's "Do you trust the Bitcoin Foundation". The latter is an organization set up recently and is not involved with the original bitcoin creator.
  - jokoon 13y ago
    Why would you trust a foundation anyway ? and trust it on what or to do what exactly ? I don't think users or investors have anything to do with the foundation, the foundation is just an entity that is there to communicate on some stuff about bitcoin. The foundation is free to promote anything it wants, and people are free to criticize or to believe it to their own risk.
- josephagoss 13y ago
  The question has not a lot to-do with Bitcoin itself, it's mainly aimed at us believers who have a lot invested in these crypto currencies. I'm personally wary of the foundation because some of the central members promote coin blocking and tracking, and I see this as opposite to Bitcoin's intended purpose.
  - jokoon 13y ago
    Believers ? I don't think you should rely on belief.
    - icebraining 13y ago
      Belief is no the same as faith.
terranstyler 13y ago
Frankly, my moral and ethical code is quite different to what is legal. "State money transmission laws" belong to a set of legal rules that I don't care about as long as nobody gets harmed (physically or w.r.t. his property). Also, one person being arrested doesn't imply that he has done something bad (unfortunately). These days there are even people that did something bad and wander freely the earth. Please base you story on immoral or unethical behavior and not on infringement of arbitrary laws. I have no problem with trusting your judgement but I do know that I don't trust your lawmaker.
- fabulist 13y ago
  I'm an avid anarchist, and no fan of the law, but do you not think its immoral for a company to misrepresent itself in order to get preferential treatment under the law? Doesn't that hurt us all by weakening the systems that (attempt to) keep organizations like CLI Holdings from running amok? As US taxpayers (forgive the presumption), don't court room shams like this expend our collective treasure? While I must confess that I do not fully understand the motives at play, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty, I'm struggling to find a reason for a profitable company to file for bankruptcy which isn't fraudulent.
  - terranstyler 13y ago
    That looks fraudulent, no doubt! I just wanted to criticize that many of the arguments in the original article refer to activities like violating the "state money transmission laws" or "money laundering" and "suspicious transactions" (http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=5618295 http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=5618295)
- vbuterin 13y ago
  They're _a lobbying group_. They don't release educational materials, they don't write code, the main thing that they do is lobby. I too agree that Charlie Shrem is 100% morally innocent (with the exception of other alleged sins like borrowing a huge pile of btc and not paying it back), but the fact is that if you're going to have a lobbying group you should be damn well sure that everyone involved is squeaky clean.
Hermel 13y ago
Yesterday, at Bitcoin Berlin, the Global Bitcoin Alliance was announced. It is an umbrella organization for national Bitcoin associations. This bottom-up approach sounds much more promising to me than the top-down attempt of the Foundation at creating local chapters.
viach 13y ago
Do I trust my government? No. Do I use local currency? Yes.
- oleganza 13y ago
  Except, govt is the one enforcing use of its currency, while Bitcoin Foundation is a just a club of enthusiasts like you or me. They have no special power over Bitcoin. (Except, Gavin has private key to alerts in BitcoinQT, but this does not affect me and my transactions in the slightest.)
  - viach 13y ago
    -- They have no special power over Bitcoin -- one enforcing use of its currency Interesting. From my point of view Bitcoin - is an agreement on protocol. We trust the idea and protocol to be secure. What if someone changes this protocol and you won't be happy with these changes (and you can't control these changes now) - does it mean you were enforced to use it?
    - maxerickson 13y ago
      Protocol changes will only ever be forced when the majority of mining power sees them as beneficial.
      - andypants 13y ago
        Assuming the majority of mining power evaluates protocol changes to decide if they're beneficial or not. Is that assumption true? Or do people just blindly update whenever there's an update?
        maxerickson 13y ago
        Well, you don't regularly see contentious protocol changes. I agree that miners are mostly following the technical leadership, I'm not sure it is 100 years true.
TelmoMenezes 13y ago
Knowing nothing about them, I automatically distrust them. The beauty of bitcoin is that it does not need this sort of thing. The less of this shit exists -- associated with the term "bitcoin" -- the smaller the attack vector for state interference.
dscrd 13y ago
I don't think I had heard of them before the quite aggressive attacks against MtGox just recently. Which were day later shown to be quite hasty, given that Bitstamp suffered from the very same problem. Criminal charges don't matter that much to me. An entity that's a potential danger for the global banking world would certainly get into legal trouble even they weren't doing anything wrong. So no, not much trust.
dobbsbob 13y ago
The only reason they exist was to organize and pay developers a salary for working on Bitcoin F/T. Then they had the stupid idea of lobbying the US fed essentially begging to be regulated while everybody else preferred Bitcoin remain a commodity, and unregulated for as long as possible. They operate in secret as well which is strange for an open source project.
eudox 13y ago
The whole idea of a "Foundation" is just trying to apply a future-shocked paradigm to something that fundamentally does not need it.
ceejayoz 13y ago
"It refuses to take part in relevant legal challenges to state money transmission laws." No, it refused to participate in one court case filed by the Don Quixote of money transmission.
pmorici 13y ago
For people that have been watching the Bitcoin Foundation for a while the possibly shady nature of some of it's members isn't news. There have been complaints about it since its formation when some of it's members supported a company coinvalidation that wants the government to essentially require the registration of all BTC addresses so potentially illegal acquired coins can be blacklisted. I think what we will see in the Bitcoin Foundation is the same thing we see happening in Bitcoin as it grows; a shake out of the less ethical players. So far Shrem is out if things don't go well at MtGox their CEO is next and hopefully this Vessenes guy as well if it turns out he really is up to this nonsense.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

73 points by thinkcomp 13y ago

nctalaviya 13y ago

Yes & there is no doubt about it...

yeukhon 13y ago
Why are you so sure there is no doubt about it. Not saying you can't just think that's a strong statement.

frankensauce 13y ago

I don't know about others in the bitcoin foundation, but Peter Vessenes has left a trail of destruction behind him. I'm based in Europe but personally know over 5 people who he has defrauded and he has cost me a lot of money and several days of headaches.

Hermel 13y ago
Yes, and Shrem and Karpeles are not exactly an asset either to the foundation.
fabulist 13y ago
Just curious, were you and your friends burned by CoinBase?
- pmorici 13y ago
  Do you mean CoinLab? Coinbase is an an unrelated YC backed company in California not involved with Vessenes at all as far as I know.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

mcv 13y ago

So what role does the Bitcoin Foundation play in the Bitcoin world? Is this a threat to Bitcoin itself, or is this just some people who thought it'd be a nice name to give themselves some superficial credibility?

thinkcomp 13y ago
They help set national policy for regulation of virtual currency, which is pretty important. They've testified before Congress twice and have had a number of closed-door meetings with federal agencies.
facepalm 13y ago
Nobody owns Bitcoin. So I guess anybody could create an organization like that. Then it depends on how much influence you can gather. For example I think in Germany there are organizations who represent IT freelancers (or businesses, not sure). Their opinions are completely opposite to mine (supporting Copyright, Google taxes and what not), but if somebody wants the opinion of "the IT industry", they tend to go to those organizations. Who else would they go to? They presumably have authority by having some amount of members.
- lifthrasiir 13y ago
  Technically speaking, the persons and/or organizations that develop the major Bitcoin softwares own Bitcoin though. It is much like the ownership of World Wide Web: nobody owns WWW in the traditional sense, but the browser vendors and (sometimes) web developers can acts as the owner of WWW in the limited but profound way. That's why the independent implementation and verification is important even when everything is open, and Bitcoin is no exception. (Not that the OP is correct about its claim though.)
  - facepalm 13y ago
    Sure atm they have the most influence. But there are a lot of wallet implementations for Bitcoin already. Not sure about the nodes - anyway, if the developers were to do something extreme, I think forks would emerge quickly.

Fasebook 13y ago

Considering that their entire goal is to supplant all currency, No. But I don't really trust any forms of control.

VMG 13y ago

Thankfully I don't really need to.

aosmith 13y ago

Their creditability is completely shot IMHO. Shrem et al should have been shown the door the second charges were filed.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
vbuterin 13y ago
Shrem is out the door. But if you're saying the foundation should have fired him the moment he got arrested, absolutely no. He's still innocent before proven guilty, and knee jerk reactions like that are counterproductive more often than not.
- aosmith 13y ago
  I'm not saying there should be knee jerk reactions but they should make sure their members / managers / advisor are squeaky clean. It's bad for the community when these people turn out greasy.
  - vbuterin 13y ago
    Easier said than done. I had dismissed cshrem as a playboy half a year ago when he completely failed at getting Bitcoin Wireless off the ground and let BitInstant just die, but I had absolutely no idea he was doing anything illegal.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

jokoon 13y ago

I trust it because it's open source, but I don't trust it because it's not regulated in any manner. I still have to be convinced about bitcoin about a peer reviewed research on the subject. I'd trust it to make a transaction, but not to keep a wallet with many bitcoin on it.

yetfeo 13y ago
The question is not "Do you trust bitcoin", it's "Do you trust the Bitcoin Foundation". The latter is an organization set up recently and is not involved with the original bitcoin creator.
- jokoon 13y ago
  Why would you trust a foundation anyway ? and trust it on what or to do what exactly ? I don't think users or investors have anything to do with the foundation, the foundation is just an entity that is there to communicate on some stuff about bitcoin. The foundation is free to promote anything it wants, and people are free to criticize or to believe it to their own risk.
josephagoss 13y ago
The question has not a lot to-do with Bitcoin itself, it's mainly aimed at us believers who have a lot invested in these crypto currencies. I'm personally wary of the foundation because some of the central members promote coin blocking and tracking, and I see this as opposite to Bitcoin's intended purpose.
- jokoon 13y ago
  Believers ? I don't think you should rely on belief.
  - icebraining 13y ago
    Belief is no the same as faith.

terranstyler 13y ago

Frankly, my moral and ethical code is quite different to what is legal. "State money transmission laws" belong to a set of legal rules that I don't care about as long as nobody gets harmed (physically or w.r.t. his property). Also, one person being arrested doesn't imply that he has done something bad (unfortunately). These days there are even people that did something bad and wander freely the earth. Please base you story on immoral or unethical behavior and not on infringement of arbitrary laws. I have no problem with trusting your judgement but I do know that I don't trust your lawmaker.

fabulist 13y ago
I'm an avid anarchist, and no fan of the law, but do you not think its immoral for a company to misrepresent itself in order to get preferential treatment under the law? Doesn't that hurt us all by weakening the systems that (attempt to) keep organizations like CLI Holdings from running amok? As US taxpayers (forgive the presumption), don't court room shams like this expend our collective treasure? While I must confess that I do not fully understand the motives at play, and everyone is innocent until proven guilty, I'm struggling to find a reason for a profitable company to file for bankruptcy which isn't fraudulent.
- terranstyler 13y ago
  That looks fraudulent, no doubt! I just wanted to criticize that many of the arguments in the original article refer to activities like violating the "state money transmission laws" or "money laundering" and "suspicious transactions" (http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=5618295 http://www.plainsite.org/dockets/index.html?id=5618295)
vbuterin 13y ago
They're _a lobbying group_. They don't release educational materials, they don't write code, the main thing that they do is lobby. I too agree that Charlie Shrem is 100% morally innocent (with the exception of other alleged sins like borrowing a huge pile of btc and not paying it back), but the fact is that if you're going to have a lobbying group you should be damn well sure that everyone involved is squeaky clean.

Hermel 13y ago

Yesterday, at Bitcoin Berlin, the Global Bitcoin Alliance was announced. It is an umbrella organization for national Bitcoin associations. This bottom-up approach sounds much more promising to me than the top-down attempt of the Foundation at creating local chapters.

viach 13y ago

Do I trust my government? No. Do I use local currency? Yes.

oleganza 13y ago
Except, govt is the one enforcing use of its currency, while Bitcoin Foundation is a just a club of enthusiasts like you or me. They have no special power over Bitcoin. (Except, Gavin has private key to alerts in BitcoinQT, but this does not affect me and my transactions in the slightest.)
- viach 13y ago
  -- They have no special power over Bitcoin -- one enforcing use of its currency Interesting. From my point of view Bitcoin - is an agreement on protocol. We trust the idea and protocol to be secure. What if someone changes this protocol and you won't be happy with these changes (and you can't control these changes now) - does it mean you were enforced to use it?
  - maxerickson 13y ago
    Protocol changes will only ever be forced when the majority of mining power sees them as beneficial.
    - andypants 13y ago
      Assuming the majority of mining power evaluates protocol changes to decide if they're beneficial or not. Is that assumption true? Or do people just blindly update whenever there's an update?
      - maxerickson 13y ago
        Well, you don't regularly see contentious protocol changes. I agree that miners are mostly following the technical leadership, I'm not sure it is 100 years true.

TelmoMenezes 13y ago

Knowing nothing about them, I automatically distrust them. The beauty of bitcoin is that it does not need this sort of thing. The less of this shit exists -- associated with the term "bitcoin" -- the smaller the attack vector for state interference.

dscrd 13y ago

I don't think I had heard of them before the quite aggressive attacks against MtGox just recently. Which were day later shown to be quite hasty, given that Bitstamp suffered from the very same problem. Criminal charges don't matter that much to me. An entity that's a potential danger for the global banking world would certainly get into legal trouble even they weren't doing anything wrong. So no, not much trust.

dobbsbob 13y ago

The only reason they exist was to organize and pay developers a salary for working on Bitcoin F/T. Then they had the stupid idea of lobbying the US fed essentially begging to be regulated while everybody else preferred Bitcoin remain a commodity, and unregulated for as long as possible. They operate in secret as well which is strange for an open source project.

eudox 13y ago

The whole idea of a "Foundation" is just trying to apply a future-shocked paradigm to something that fundamentally does not need it.

ceejayoz 13y ago

"It refuses to take part in relevant legal challenges to state money transmission laws." No, it refused to participate in one court case filed by the Don Quixote of money transmission.

pmorici 13y ago

For people that have been watching the Bitcoin Foundation for a while the possibly shady nature of some of it's members isn't news. There have been complaints about it since its formation when some of it's members supported a company coinvalidation that wants the government to essentially require the registration of all BTC addresses so potentially illegal acquired coins can be blacklisted. I think what we will see in the Bitcoin Foundation is the same thing we see happening in Bitcoin as it grows; a shake out of the less ethical players. So far Shrem is out if things don't go well at MtGox their CEO is next and hopefully this Vessenes guy as well if it turns out he really is up to this nonsense.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]