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Innovation in Crypto Gambling and the Potential Legislation Nightmare
by jim bell 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

https://coincentral.com/crypto-gambling-legislation-nightmare/ Digital currencies and their underlying blockchain technology have created new possibilities in a world where almost all online trends have become potential monetization ventures. And now, crypto gambling has enabled gamblers to participate in markets never realized before, such as placing assassination bets on celebrities and political candidates. Such is the level of potential and democratization offered by Augur, a market prediction platform that utilizes cryptocurrencies and runs on the blockchain. It enables users to place bets on an infinite range of betting outcomes only limited by one’s imagination. It also places no geographical restrictions and provides the added value of anonymity. Right now, Jeff Bezos, Donald Trump, and Warren Buffett are three individuals who already have assassination bets placed on them on the Augur platform. The Trump assassination wager, for example, reads, “Will Donald Trump (President of The USA) be killed at any point during 2018?” Developed by the Forecast Foundation, Augur allows you to create an event to predict, build a market for it, and then trade shares based on the outcome. The events range from election predictions to natural disasters to market crashes. Once a user wins an outcome, he can create a report based on the bet, and other users can agree or disagree with it. Winning bets are paid out after the market is resolved. The gambling platform uses the Ethereum cryptocurrency for trading. Of course, there is the real fear that bets on outcomes such as assassinations could trigger related events in reality. However, these types of wagers have garnered insignificant funding, and offer little incentive for someone to get inspiration from the bets.Legislative Issues That said, the prediction platform does cause another problem. It blurs the difference between online gambling and prediction markets. The former is particularly popular on Augur and based on event predictions, but is prohibited by numerous countries such as China, the United Arab Emirates, Brunei, Japan, Cyprus, and others. The problem lies in the fact that even if Augur is found to have broken the law by facilitating gambling, or other illegal activities, there are few ways to enforce it. There are also fears based on the platform’s highly unregulated nature, given that Forecast Foundation, its developer, has actually distanced itself from ownership of the protocol, which it describes as open-source software. Its developers also highlight that they have no control of the peer to peer platform, and have no access to user private keys or personally identifying information. This includes legal names, national ID numbers, email addresses, and wallet balances. The situation highlights the jurisdictional powerlessness that can be brought on by such a platform in the face of a burgeoning gambling market, catalyzed by popular events like the World Cup. In regard to the United States, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating whether Augur’s activities fall under its jurisdiction. STAY IN THE KNOW The Crypto Gambling World The crypto gambling world has been growing steadily over the years, as more and more people become acquainted with cryptocurrencies. In 2013, 50 percent of all bitcoin transactions involved gambling, and since 2014 over 3.7 million BTC valued at $26 billion have been used on betting platforms. And during the months of June and July this year, there was a significant uptick in crypto gambling activity. This was especially true in countries where online gambling is illegal, spurred on by the World Cup. However, the trend also revealed the potential for abuse given cryptocurrencies’ and their blockchain technology’s unregulated nature. In China, authorities arrested six suspects suspected of running a World Cup gambling ring based in Guangdong province that had about $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency bets. This is according to a statement released by Chinese authorities. The scheme, based on the dark web, had been accepting Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Litecoin for 8 months before its operators were nabbed. It lured in more than 300,000 players from different countries and had about 8,000 affiliate marketers to support the network. The growth of such an operation is an indicator of just how huge a platform such as Augur can become, based on the marginalized market it targets. In countries such as China, for example, both cryptocurrency trading and gambling are illegal. As such, a decentralized betting platform such as Augur requires a regulator. However, it markets itself as a ‘prediction market’, which is a grey area for many countries where gambling is deemed illegal, and so a few legislative issues related to this are bound to crop up. Moreover, it allows a user to create an event, bet on it, and build a market for it. As such, the user can be a creator, marketer and potential beneficiary as the gambler, all at the same time. This requires a whole new set of complex legislation. In Britain, for example, the U.K. Gambling Commission (UKGC) classifies a peer-to-peer protocol such as Augur as a remote betting intermediary. However, the classification is not comprehensive enough to conclusively categorize it as such. This is considering the evolved nature of user participation, its underpinning technology, and when the regulations were first set, which was in 2013. Crowd Wisdom Potential According to Nolan Bauerle, Director of Research at Coindesk, prediction markets have the potential to tap crowd wisdom in a way few platforms can and have been largely been misunderstood. According to the executive, they would be an invaluable resource if they were allowed to grow to a global scale, and could potentially provide rare insight on industry trends.

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Re: [Cryptography] Krugman blockchain currency skepticism
by grarpamp 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 4:11 PM, Benjamin Kreuter <brk7bx(a)virginia.edu> wrote: > On Mon, 2018-08-06 at 14:11 +0800, jamesd(a)echeque.com wrote: > As others have asked, what is the problem we want to solve? The > beginning of this thread was a proposal that the problem is that the > government might target an activist group's finances. Now it sounds > like you are talking about the government trying to attack the entire > payment system. That is indeed a valid problem. Among many others in many sectors and applications. >> A crypto currency needs to be centerless - it needs to able to >> survive the seizure of key servers by a hostile powerful party. True, a properly decentralized cryptocurrency has no such seizable / sueable servers. Decentralization is under attack in more ways than most people realize, not just by the purposeful noise deluge of junk / centralized coins, tokens, ico's... but also by very insidious methods. As an example... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYHFrf5ci_g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BZoKH-hX_o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKYEQVPklLI https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=bitcoin+censorship https://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinMarkets/comments/6rxw7k/informative_btc_vs_… Whether you're a user, code / crypto developer, business, whatever... you need to understand these things and be able to spot them, call them out, and exchange and adopt away from them once they happen. In the cryptocurrency space, there is no birthright, let alone against treason, or any other lesser offense. A bit more from the series... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOZaLbUUZUs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgts1qb0hLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGrUOLsC9cw > Get back to me when the Internet itself cannot be shut down by the > government. For so long as free speech, encryption, and overlay networks exist, cryptocurrency and the internet cannot be shutdown. If you accept, either personally or as a populace, the shutting of your connection and or the disablement of your crypto, for mere agnostic tool use, and for no provable reason otherwise, then you're fucked. If the Four Hoursemen of the Infocalypse didn't do it already, then the only thing left is a bonafide threat to the existance of government itself... to its taxes collected by force. Once people worldwide start to figure out they can bypass the redundancy, inefficiency, non choice, war, etc of governments by moving their transactions onto the encrypted blockchain networks... that's the last game... you either sheeple out forever into a questionable existance, or make your stand. Don't be a sheeple.. https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=banks+fear+bitcoin https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=governments+fear+bitcoin [bcc cypherpunks]

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Re: [Cryptography] threat models, was Krugman blockchain currency skepticism
by grarpamp 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

On Mon, Aug 6, 2018 at 6:05 PM, John Levine <johnl(a)iecc.com> wrote: > In article <CAD2Ti29oru2WUyQ01gr+UL1M-cAAvj0ZuVraPGeULnYz7TqtvQ(a)mail.gmail.com>, > grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: >> Cryptocurrency value moved every month is 30x paypal's and growing. >> Ten more years and those 200 million users will be on cryptocurrency. > > Paypal's current transaction volume is about $40 billion/month, > growing at a modest rate. Can you tell us where you get your number > of $1.2 trillion/month for cryptocurrencies? > https://www.statista.com/statistics/277841/paypals-total-payment-volume/ That should have been ~3x (2.7x) coming from just the BTC value volume moved, and ~385B$/mo for the entire cryptocurrency space, both using today's coinmarketcap rates. Paypal is also doing ~295 tx/s, which might just be eclipsed by even early iterations of below stress work with a single cryptocurrency (even more when summing the current capabilities of top 10 decentralized cryptos for example representing and carrying the market space for tx / tps)... https://stresstestbitcoin.cash/ ~25.6M tx/d will beat Paypal, with perhaps only 33% of that needed to make news waves. Paypal claims ~245M "active" users, or 3.2% of world pop, which smells a little fishy. BTC alone has ~55M utxo's, consolidated down into owned wallets at recent oppurtunity from peak of ~68M, some study estimates try taking that down further to approx body count. Cryptocurrency has no worries there either, and again, starts making waves before then. And Paypal has never made the world's daily syndicated TV and print news like cryptocurrency has. Regardless of which sources you choose, cryptocurrency is close at the heels of Paypal, already biting off chunks in some areas, including philosophical ones. Expect Paypal to be completely eclipsed by cryptocurrency in five years or less. >>> If an issuer doesn't redeem a bill >>> what recourse do you have other than to denounce him? >> Cryptocurrency... you either have the keys and value or you don't. > I don't want a wallet hash That's smart, because whoever told you you could spend such a construct is a fraud. > these were bills redeemable in real assets. > I want my kilo of platinum or whatever. > What's my recourse when the platinum doesn't show up? Precisely, such bills are a risk with variable recourse. "Bills of exchange by different issuers" The blockchain takes care of issues with "issuers" "bills" and reputation, you either have the confirmed spend or you don't, and you're stupid if you walk off before you do. And the market takes care what other "assets" one can get in "exchange" for the UTXO's you're about to spend. You're of course free to make and sign whatever other contracts / bills you want, call them private pegs / tethers if it makes you happy, and accept all their risks. This is basically arguing volatility again, and what cryptocurrency is saying, Neo, is that you won't need to. [1] Those who argue volatility against decentralized cryptocurrency shouldn't do so as what they're saying is they... - really want centralized regulated fiat equivalents - clearly don't get that *of course* by their very nature decentralized cryptocurrencies are *expected* to be "volatile" early on. This is an innate feature, not a bug. But hey while people are on the "volatility" tip, look at all the other *volatile* central regulated fiats out there both new and old... https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_by_date_of_formation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_currencies And lots of other reasons you might not want them... https://wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_sovereign_states https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_historical_geopolitical_changes All that pegging, tethering, backing, and government guns people say gives [nonvolatile] value... doesn't seem to be doing a very good job of it. Perhaps it's time the world, and you, tries something truly different, for once, in like thousands of years, of not doing so, lol. It's out there, and could be in your wallet today, and spent in some equitable trade tomorrow. # other > Obviously, you can be cut off by governments, payment processors, > exchanges, [etc list of formal entities] Nowhere in those blurbs was the direct P2P functionality of decentralized cryptocurrencies mentioned... much harder to cut that off without nuking the underlying [sneaker] nets, the difficulty of that mentioned in another thread. > Reputation is entirely based upon non-repudiation, and liability (provably > having sufficient real assets to cover their outstanding balance). > Blockchain currency doesn't have either of those properties. Neither does fiat. Try and invent them on top of them if you want. > Manafort is also learning About decentralized cryptocurrencies, and the gold watch, along with the rest of the world's people. [bcc cypherpunks]

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Re: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP
by weroh＠Safe-mail.net 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

I want to add that this improvement works because who put the money isn't probably interested on who should die first, every politics should die, the order isn't really important. Another good thing about this way it is that if some politicians have some money shared on their heads, everyone of them will be incentived to kill himself the others, his colleagues, by hoping to lower the money on his own head. -------- Original Message -------- From: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net Apparently from: cypherpunks-bounces(a)lists.cpunks.org To: cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org Subject: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2018 20:26:32 -0400 > I thought about a way to make an "improvement" on the Jim Bell AP. > > I think that this will make it "cheaper", faster and so more effective. > > It starts from the part that as there could be more assassins competing for the prize. > > Some of them can be uncertain that the prize could be too much low for the risk of killing the politician. > > But at the same time, because of the possible competing killers, everyone of them can even be afraid that another assassin could be brave, skilled or just lucky to being able to kill the politician for a lower prize. > > So this is already a good incentive to push all the killers to try to kill the politician for a lower prize. > > What I thought is a way to make this incentive even more effective. > > > "Shared money" > > Everyone should be able (if they want) to put their money on more politicians "contemporary", even on every politicians on the service or others that they can add later. > > Those shared money should be pubblic visible to everyone, so even killers should be able to see them at any time. > > On the possible interface of the service, it should be possible, by clicking on a politician, to see how much money on him are shared with other politicians. > > So what happen when if one of the politicians that has some shared money on him gets killed? > > Those shared money will obviously get removed by all the prize of all the other selected politicians (chosen before by the users that have put their own money) and will go to the winning killer. > > With this, I think that all killers will then know that while they are thinking about killing "Politician A", if the money on his prize is shared with other 4/5 politicians, they will be now even worried that another killer will terminate one of the other politicians, and so then lowering the prize of their selected politician as a possible target. > > Users will still be happy because another politician has been killed anyway. > > Users will then be able to put even 1$ contemporary on every politician of their country (or the entire world), waiting that the first one of them gets killed. > > Then again, 1$ over all the remaining politicians and so on ... > > > What do you think about this idea/improvement? > > Is it clear enough?

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Democracy Going Sideways in Sweden, AT&T Surveillance FirstNet, Project Veritas
by grarpamp 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

https://www.thelocal.se/20180807/support-for-democracy-weak-among-swedens-y… https://old.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/95c3tq/support_for_democracy_we… https://theintercept.com/2018/07/23/project-veritas-lawsuit-american-federa… https://theintercept.com/2018/07/29/firstnet-att-surveillance/ "it’s more important that that network shut down every citizen" FirstNet has its own “app store.” These applications will incorporate facial recognition, real-time video For decades, local newsrooms and citizen watchdogs have relied on police scanners to monitor first responders and track natural disasters, protests, and emergencies. The migration to data-based communications cuts down on what is communicated over these public frequencies. As FirstNet and its competitors transition voice communications to their encrypted broadband networks in the coming years, even more will be kept from public oversight. FirstNet is already the subject of a transparency lawsuit by two Vermont men who claim that the U.S. government is legally required to perform a Privacy Impact Assessment on the program, since the FirstNet network will presumably be used to transmit personal information about American citizens. The government has argued that this requirement does not apply since the network itself is owned by AT&T, rather than the government. The program’s status as a public-private partnership has created other transparency roadblocks as well: The federal government’s contract with AT&T has not been made public. FirstNet’s most lasting achievement may be the infrastructure it provides for state-of-the-art surveillance technologies to be deployed by law enforcement at every level.

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Cryptocurrency: Critical Thinking re Decentral vs Rest
by grarpamp 08 Aug '18

08 Aug '18

Ultimate Cheat Sheet for Critical Thinking https://i.redd.it/k5fyetg8ooe11.jpg

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I only ordered a hand rolled maduro
by Steven Schear 07 Aug '18

07 Aug '18

Did I miss the Augur wager? https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-08-04/explosions-during-maduro-speech-s…

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Great bet for Forecast Foundation Ethereum/Augur betting system:
by jim bell 07 Aug '18

07 Aug '18

"Will this prediction be false?" Jim Bell

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Re: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP
by weroh＠Safe-mail.net 07 Aug '18

07 Aug '18

This can be a good way to develop it: 1 - The AP service will list all the names of the politicians in the concress/parlament/government, as they are already well known. Users will be able to put money on some of them, or all of them (shared money). This is the usual AP with the improvement. 2 - The AP service will also allow users to create bounties to get a leak of name lists of all the local policemen, or local politicians or bureaucrats in a city, or region, or district, or country or the entire state. 3 - After the AP service receives a list, the service staff will make a first check internally, and if they think that the list can be a good confirmed one, they will put it on "public debate", from the users of the service. The list should be visible to anyone, even guest users. This step is important, because all the global news will talk about the name list, and so all the state employees (even the ones that aren't on the current list) will become completely crazy. If they aren't on the current list, they will be afraid of being on the next one. 4 - If the list is confirmed even from the public debate (the service staff has the last word), the names on the list will be added, and users will now be able to put money also on them. The user that gave the now confirmed name list to the AP service will now get the money from the dedicated bounty created at step 2. I think that if the panic from the state employees is enough, everything will just stop at step 3. The state will already disappear. So no deaths at all. Many of them will leave their jobs. They will probably put their confirmation of dismissal on their facebook profile in the hope of being removed from the service. Even if someone of their colleagues will die for natural reasons, or even for a car accident, they will still think that someone has killed him/her. I guess that they will be in complete panic. -------- Original Message -------- From: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net To: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net Cc: cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org Subject: Re: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2018 20:16:39 -0400 > One last thing. > > I think that this way is also less violent than the original AP, because after adding on list the name of all the politicians, all the policemen, all burocrats, after few deaths, no one will ever want to continue to work for the state, at least no one of the low grade state employees. > > No one of them is paid enough to risk their life daily. > > So every authority will find himself powerless, without anyone available to get his orders. > > The state will probably disappears after few deaths. > > > -------- Original Message -------- > From: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net > To: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net > Cc: cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org > Subject: Re: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP > Date: Mon, 6 Aug 2018 19:48:39 -0400 > > > I want to add that this improvement works because who put the money isn't probably interested on who should die first, every politics should die, the order isn't really important. > > > > Another good thing about this way it is that if some politicians have some money shared on their heads, everyone of them will be incentived to kill himself the others, his colleagues, by hoping to lower the money on his own head. > > > > > > -------- Original Message -------- > > From: weroh(a)Safe-mail.net > > Apparently from: cypherpunks-bounces(a)lists.cpunks.org > > To: cypherpunks(a)lists.cpunks.org > > Subject: Improvement on the Jim Bell AP > > Date: Sun, 5 Aug 2018 20:26:32 -0400 > > > > > I thought about a way to make an "improvement" on the Jim Bell AP. > > > > > > I think that this will make it "cheaper", faster and so more effective. > > > > > > It starts from the part that as there could be more assassins competing for the prize. > > > > > > Some of them can be uncertain that the prize could be too much low for the risk of killing the politician. > > > > > > But at the same time, because of the possible competing killers, everyone of them can even be afraid that another assassin could be brave, skilled or just lucky to being able to kill the politician for a lower prize. > > > > > > So this is already a good incentive to push all the killers to try to kill the politician for a lower prize. > > > > > > What I thought is a way to make this incentive even more effective. > > > > > > > > > "Shared money" > > > > > > Everyone should be able (if they want) to put their money on more politicians "contemporary", even on every politicians on the service or others that they can add later. > > > > > > Those shared money should be pubblic visible to everyone, so even killers should be able to see them at any time. > > > > > > On the possible interface of the service, it should be possible, by clicking on a politician, to see how much money on him are shared with other politicians. > > > > > > So what happen when if one of the politicians that has some shared money on him gets killed? > > > > > > Those shared money will obviously get removed by all the prize of all the other selected politicians (chosen before by the users that have put their own money) and will go to the winning killer. > > > > > > With this, I think that all killers will then know that while they are thinking about killing "Politician A", if the money on his prize is shared with other 4/5 politicians, they will be now even worried that another killer will terminate one of the other politicians, and so then lowering the prize of their selected politician as a possible target. > > > > > > Users will still be happy because another politician has been killed anyway. > > > > > > Users will then be able to put even 1$ contemporary on every politician of their country (or the entire world), waiting that the first one of them gets killed. > > > > > > Then again, 1$ over all the remaining politicians and so on ... > > > > > > > > > What do you think about this idea/improvement? > > > > > > Is it clear enough?

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Improvement on the Jim Bell AP
by weroh＠Safe-mail.net 07 Aug '18

07 Aug '18

I thought about a way to make an "improvement" on the Jim Bell AP. I think that this will make it "cheaper", faster and so more effective. It starts from the part that as there could be more assassins competing for the prize. Some of them can be uncertain that the prize could be too much low for the risk of killing the politician. But at the same time, because of the possible competing killers, everyone of them can even be afraid that another assassin could be brave, skilled or just lucky to being able to kill the politician for a lower prize. So this is already a good incentive to push all the killers to try to kill the politician for a lower prize. What I thought is a way to make this incentive even more effective. "Shared money" Everyone should be able (if they want) to put their money on more politicians "contemporary", even on every politicians on the service or others that they can add later. Those shared money should be pubblic visible to everyone, so even killers should be able to see them at any time. On the possible interface of the service, it should be possible, by clicking on a politician, to see how much money on him are shared with other politicians. So what happen when if one of the politicians that has some shared money on him gets killed? Those shared money will obviously get removed by all the prize of all the other selected politicians (chosen before by the users that have put their own money) and will go to the winning killer. With this, I think that all killers will then know that while they are thinking about killing "Politician A", if the money on his prize is shared with other 4/5 politicians, they will be now even worried that another killer will terminate one of the other politicians, and so then lowering the prize of their selected politician as a possible target. Users will still be happy because another politician has been killed anyway. Users will then be able to put even 1$ contemporary on every politician of their country (or the entire world), waiting that the first one of them gets killed. Then again, 1$ over all the remaining politicians and so on ... What do you think about this idea/improvement? Is it clear enough?

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