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It's a very interesting development as it shows that stolen bitcoins can be tracked indefinitely unlike FIAT. Now, what you propose though, is against the free
by atmosx 13y ago
It's a very interesting development as it shows that stolen bitcoins can be tracked indefinitely unlike FIAT.
Now, what you propose though, is against the freedom bitcoins is assumed to stand for (on the ethics side).
On the technical side that's very possible, as of today, if everyone plays along and I mean literally everyone, especially mixers.
How could one track down bitcoins flushed into public mixers? I guess they could do this as well, if the BTC were tagged and thus refused by the mixers or even worst hold captives and resend them to original issuer. However, you only need 1 TOR hosted mixer to lose track of the wallets.
On the other side imagine the practical chaos: I make a huge transaction of non-tangible goods in a situation where you can't prove that the service/product was delivered. Then I just tag these bitcoin that once belonged to my wallet as stolen if the other party doesn't give them back :-) you see where this is going right? :-)
- gutnor 13y ago> unlike FIAT. Actually, unlike any commodity or any currency with a physical representation. What makes other currency not traceable is the notes and coins, not the fact that they are fiat or not. side note: has "fiat" now become synonymous with non-crypto currency the same way hacker has become a swear word ?
- baddox 13y agoHe doesn't say that fiat is the only untraceable form of currency.
- Klinky 13y agoYes fiat has become a word of derision amongst the cryptocoin community, completely ignoring the fact that cryptocoins are essentially a form of fiat currency. Many crypto fans sidestep the fact that cryptos also don't have intrinsic value, and the networks aren't as a decentralized as one would think(handfuls of devs, early adopters, and pool and exchange operators hold a large sway over the networks and future of the coins).
- atmosx 13y agoI can't speak for others, but I have nothing against FIAT :-)
- TophWells 13y ago>It's a very interesting development as it shows that stolen bitcoins can be tracked indefinitely unlike FIAT. You can track dollar bills by their serial number. It's basically the same thing as what's going on here, except that few people record the serial numbers of their bills.
- atmosx 13y agoHmm, not in real life. I can write a script that parses the blockchain and keeps track of the transactions. How many people/authorities can do that with FIAT? Not to count the impossibility of actually tracking down FIAT that has not been used by a bank or authority that CAN actually control the unique number :-) So in case 1 it's very easy to do, in second case is almost impossible outside very well defined scenarios (police trying to frame drug dealers, etc.)
- bjourne 13y agoAren't "mixers" basically acting as money launderers in that scenario? In the real world that is illegal and frowned upon so it should be in the bitcoin world too. Suppose I'm running Honest Business Inc. Since all transactions are public info, I can easily refuse transactions from mixer addresses. I can even decide to refuse transactions from address which are < N nodes separated from mixers and so on. If everyone in bitcoin land decided to freeze out blackmarket addresses it would make it very hard for crooks to use their stolen coins.
- JamesArgo 13y agoMixers maintain fungibility. If fungibility is lost, I don't see much future for Bitcoin.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]