On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:02 PM Juan wrote:

On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400 grarpamp wrote:

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Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai

What? Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries especially the US can become even richer. So far it worked pretty well.

Really? What rich person has gotten richer through Bitcoin so far? Remittances seem like the biggest use of Bitcoin at the moment. Sure, there's plenty of speculation, but your claim that Bitcoin's purpose is to make the rich richer is also speculation. And FUD.

Bitcoin hasn't led to any meaningful political/economic change yet, apart from possibly triggering the demise of government cash, which would be a complete disaster. Talk about 'unintended consequences' (unintended?)

I can't imagine you've read a single thing written by the people who influenced the creation of Bitcoin if you think that the collapse of fiat currencies is an unintended consequence. Any fiat currency that is so bad that its users prefer to use Bitcoin deserves to collapse. Of course, so far, while Bitcoin has become popular in places like Argentina and Venezuela, the US dollar remains by far the more popular alternative currency in those places. And if Greece exits the Euro and starts printing Drachmas there, they will have to worry about people trading their Drachmas for Euros, not for Bitcoin.

A likely scenario exists in which there wouldn't be any independent crypto-currency. There would be fully 'traceable' electronic currencies controlled as always by the state and the banking mafia.

By what evidence do you estimate that this is a "likely" scenario? You may be right that many nation-states and banks will be loathe to accept an untraceable and uncontrollable crypto-currency, but that's the whole point; they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies don't have to be legal to be disruptive. The main problem that they've run up against before now is the lack of healthy underground markets to take advantage of them. Given time, governments' and banks' opinions and policies about cryptocurrencies will become irrelevant.

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:50 PM Lodewijk andré de la porte wrote:

2015-07-08 7:27 GMT+09:00 Sean Lynch :

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What? Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries

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especially the US can become even richer. So far it worked pretty well.

Really? What rich person has gotten richer through Bitcoin so far? Remittances seem like the biggest use of Bitcoin at the moment. Sure, there's plenty of speculation, but your claim that Bitcoin's purpose is to make the rich richer is also speculation. And FUD.

Yours would the Uncertainty and Doubt, I see.

Bitcoin is cold hard money - therefore benefiting those that can exploit it best. The most capital you have, the better you can exploit it. Therefore, the wealthy stand more to benefit from Bitcoin than anyone else. Any other effect would indicate softness of Bitcoin or some human issue. It does prevent (certain forms of) suppression; it's very hard to censor financial transactions on the Bitcoin network. It also provides a great deal of financial and administrative utility to all in similar quantity, it levels the playing field of the poor/rich somewhat.

Perhaps my response was a bit hyperbolic, but that is a very different claim than "Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries especially the US can become even richer."

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 22:27:01 +0000 Sean Lynch wrote:

On Tue, Jul 7, 2015 at 3:02 PM Juan wrote:

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On Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400 grarpamp wrote:

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Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai

What? Bitcoin exists so that rich people in western countries especially the US can become even richer. So far it worked pretty well.

Really? What rich person has gotten richer through Bitcoin so far?

It seems kinda obvious that virtually all bitcoin developers and users *in the west* are richer than people in Africa and India. That's what I was getting at. Bitcoin devs - *already rich by 'third world' standards* - are richer now. Millionaires even (notice that grarpamp was talking about impoverished wages...and people)

Remittances seem like the biggest use of Bitcoin at the moment. Sure, there's plenty of speculation, but your claim that Bitcoin's purpose is to make the rich richer is also speculation. And FUD.

So what amount of btc is being used to make payments between Botswana and Mumbai? What amount of btc is being used to speculate/gamble in a few big, centralized and fully NSA-AML-monitored exchanges?

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Bitcoin hasn't led to any meaningful political/economic change yet, apart from possibly triggering the demise of government cash, which would be a complete disaster. Talk about 'unintended consequences' (unintended?)

I can't imagine you've read a single thing written by the people who influenced the creation of Bitcoin if you think that the collapse of fiat currencies is an unintended consequence.

But I said *cash* not fiat. And the collapse of relatively untraceable *cash* is *bad*. What we may end up with is FIAT currencies and NO CASH option* for those fiat currencies. Bad. Pretty bad. *aka credit cards.

Any fiat currency that is so bad that its users prefer to use Bitcoin deserves to collapse. Of course, so far, while Bitcoin has become popular in places like Argentina

Do you know where I live? Of course you don't have to know where I live. But you'll know it in a second anyway. I live in argentina - and let me tell you, bitcoin isnt exactly 'popular' here.

and Venezuela, the US dollar remains by far the more popular alternative currency in those places.

Yep, that's quite correct as far as argentina goes. I suspect it's true regarding venezuela as well.

And if Greece exits the Euro and starts printing Drachmas there, they will have to worry about people trading their Drachmas for Euros, not for Bitcoin.

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A likely scenario exists in which there wouldn't be any independent crypto-currency. There would be fully 'traceable' electronic currencies controlled as always by the state and the banking mafia.

By what evidence do you estimate that this is a "likely" scenario?

The evidence is called 'history'. That, and the nature of government and its business 'partners' - or accomplices.

You may be right that many nation-states and banks will be loathe to accept an untraceable and uncontrollable crypto-currency, but that's the whole point;

You seem to be assuming that an uncontrollable and untraceable crypto-currency exist? I'm not seeing anything of the sort.

they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies don't have to be legal to be disruptive.

And yet there seems to be a fair amount of people in the bitcoin 'community' who are quite eager (or desperate) to have bitcoin 'regulated' so that it becomes 'respectable', 'legal'...and usable. Of course, this isn't a shortcoming that only affects btc. Anything that the government 'outlaws' becomes harder to transact.

The main problem that they've run up against before now is the lack of healthy underground markets to take advantage of them. Given time, governments' and banks' opinions and policies about cryptocurrencies will become irrelevant.

I do wish that was actually the case, but I think that view doesn't fully take into account the capabilities of the 'enemy'. J.

2015-07-08 9:08 GMT+09:00 Sean Lynch :

A "litmus test" issue might be whether you think the NSA's expressed surprise over Snowden's leaks was genuine. I tend to think it was, and that his documents are genuine. I see no reason for the NSA to be substantially more competent than, say, the OPM.

There's absolutely no reason to think the NSA doesn't have a layered/multi-cell operation wherein a mere contractor is not given access to nation-essential secrets. If there's a foreign spy you want him to penetrate what seems like a complete organisation. Why not give them what they want? There's lots of "more secure than FBI/CIA, less secure than 'we broke enigma' " work to be done, just put it in the public-facing independently operating organisation. Would you publish "we broke enigma" in a memo to the intranet? NSA didn't. NSA wouldn't get worse at what they do. The real headbreaker is when this is a problem. It's basically not a problem until you're a threat to the absolute fundamentals of what the NSA is designed to protect. And what's that? Is it personal freedom, the advancement of the human race, and the minimization of suffering? Is it the maximization of some abstract profit? The concentration of power? Do the latter two pretty much amount to the first? Intelligence laundering is a serious issue, of course, but running a clean organization would make the laundering exceedingly hard. They're each large organizations with no bottom line that attract people of

flexible moral character who are attracted to power and/or job security.

I'm in Korea, I talked to a bunch of US soldiers stationed here. They're exceedingly good-hearted, well-intentioned, high-spirited guys. Many love their work, the tension, the seriousness and hone their performance for sport and need. The balance between trigger-happy and accident-adverse is delicate and they seem extensively coached to preserve the balance properly. I've talked to some that like their state, but hate the FED. I've talked to some that think the US is bad but it's enemies are worse. I've talked to some that have doubts about parts of the US, about corruption, but believe in democracy such that they believe the US is a fundamental force of good. The lesson is: very moral people still do very immoral things for many, sometimes excellent, reasons.

I don't think those traits tend to lead to effective organizations, as much as a number of Hollywood movies would like us to believe.

I think there's not much difference between organisations. Make sure people's motivations are sincere and that they put in the effort. There's apparently a serious issue with "human resource rot" where worse people get brought into orgs or people get unfocused or demotivated. Without a bottom line there's less penalty for it. Doesn't mean it will happen. Snowden sure shows a certain amount of rot in NSA_Public. The recent Trident leak shows that the UK's nuclear deterrent program is rotten to a ridiculous point, but seems to indicate the US does much better. Who knows! ;)

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 My thoughts on that... On 07/07/2015 08:07 PM, Juan wrote:

On Wed, 08 Jul 2015 00:08:40 +0000 Sean Lynch wrote:

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This is not what most people mean when they say "rich get richer." They're talking about 1%ers or whatever. In any case, you still seem to be making unfounded claims about the intent behind Bitcoin,

Let's say I was being cynical =)

Let's say you were.

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when we have statements of intent in the creator's own words.

I know.

"A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution."

(Come to think of it, I wouldn't say btc is cash, but that's yet another philosophical discussion)

"Online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution" is indeed what Satoshi intended, and so you could ask, "but what about all the fiat and how do you deal with 'the bank problem?'" Well and good... Satoshi was apparently thinking about that same issue, of a decentralized market within bitcoin, but it just didn't get finished. And in February of 2010, it was stripped out of bitcoin. (Insert ripping sound here.) https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/5253d1ab77fab1995ede03fb934edd 67f1359ba8 Go OpenBazaar, etc. They (and some other similar projects) are carrying the torch of decentralized marketplaces that don't require legacy institutions to operate.

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Many believe Satoshi is also rich, Bitcoin-wise, but we don't even know for sure that they have the key to the account or that they will ever spend that Bitcoin. Personally, I hope they do. The creator of Bitcoin deserves to be rewarded.

Yes. Anyway, grarpamp comment sounded to me like "We're doing it for the poor children of africa" which struck me as somewhat hollow. But nevermind, I'll drop the subject.

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My apologies. I was confused by your use of the phrase "government cash." Government cash is fiat, but not all fiat is cash. But the cashless societies already being proposed and implemented are fully centralized and much easier to trace than Bitcoin, because they require bank accounts with their concomitant "know your customer" regulations. Bitcoin doesn't make this situation worse,

True. My comment or observation is that bitcoin may have catalyzed the move towards a cashless society. Whether a cpunk-like currency will be used, or a goldman-sachs-like currency will be used remains to be seen, I think.

But so be it I guess. If governments are forced to show their true totalitarian colors to an even larger extent than they do now, there will be some good in that.

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and by enabling other applications on top of it, including untraceable e-cash, will only make it better.

I pledge the "wait and see" amendment =P I hope you're right.

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Can you elaborate? Does your use of quotes around the word "popular" indicate sarcasm? My understanding was that a number of merchants had started using a payment system that used dollars from foreign credit cards to buy Bitcoin so that they did not have to accept the government-imposed exchange rate.

Actually, there are some people who use credit cards to buy btc (or other stuff abroad) using a government subsidized exchange rate.

The are a couple of official exchange rates. One is set at ~8 pesos = 1 dollar. The other is at ~10 pesos = 1 dollar. If you buy stuff using an international credit card, you get the 10:1 exchange rate.

Finally there's the real or black market exchange rate at ~13.5 pesos = 1 dollar.

So, some people can buy btc (or, say, pay travel expenses abroad) using the 10:1 rate. The benefit you get doesn't really come from btc but from the distortions created by govt. By the way, the subsidy is, of course, financed with more inflation. And yes, the poorest people here are subsidizing people who travel to disneyland.

If on the other hand you want to buy btc in a local exchange the price you will be asked in pesos is something like the price at bitstamp multiplied by the $:US$ black market exchange rate.

https://www.unisend.com/

I'm seeing 1 btc = 3800 pesos. And 1 btc = us$ 265. So, that gives a price of 14.3 pesos per dollar (hm - even more expensive than black market)

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I think there's a service here that allows you to pay utility bills using btc. I'm not sure what's the point because they (obviously) charge fees so you end up paying more than if you used pesos directly. I guess it's handy for people who already had btc but I doubt that number of people is significant.

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And then there are a few bars and stores that accept btc, in argentina's capital (~10 million population). Where I live (rosario) I don't think there's a single store that accepts btc.

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Now, there probably are people who use btc to move money in and out of the country although btc's exchange risk and spread arent't small.

I know that if you want to move fiat accross borders using black market services, doing so isn't too expensive. So btc has to face efficient competitioni in that area.

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I'm definitely interested in your insights on this, since I've never visited a country that was experiencing rampant inflation, unless you count the US in the late '70s, about the time I was entering grade school.

There was hyperinflation in argentina in 1989-90 - I was 19 at that time and I don't really recall much of what happened in everyday life. I know the prices of stuff in the supermarket changed each day but I didn't pay much attention. I wasn't really interested in political economy at that time.

Then after that 1990 'crisis', the peso was pegged 1:1 to the dollar for ~10 years, until 2001 when the gov't defaulted and the banking system blew up.

Since 2001, the a$/us$ rate went from 1:1 to 13:1 and you can use that as a relatively good proxy for inflation, although interestingly, the prices of things like food are at something like 20:1, prolly reflecting both the inflation of the peso AND the dollar, plus the fact that the local economy is a fucking mess ran by fucking protectionists.

Anyway, the current inflation rate, by argentine standards, isn't too high, as crazy as that may sound.

Usually the government cycles in argentina last 10 years or less, but these shitbags are somehow still clinging to power.

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I think you overestimate the government's ability to exert control, something many of the participants in this list have devoted their lives to reducing. It's the whole point of Bitcoin, so it seems like you're basically just saying "Bitcoin will fail at its mission and instead just get coopted by the powers that be."

Yes, that is what I'm saying. Furthermore, I think that is already happening.

https://blog.xapo.com/announcing-xapos-advisory-board/

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Or maybe you think that Bitcoin is just a reckless toy created by greedy first worlders?

No. I don't consider it a toy. I don't know how robust (or scalable...) it actually is (apart from hashing power haha), but it's not a toy.

As to motivations, I always assumed that the cypherpunk bunch was composed of *at least* anarchists, although what I see in this list is a sizable amount of self-parody (dan geer and accomplices for instance).

However, the bitcoin phenomenom is complex, there's a lot of people involed the vast majority of whom I don't know at all, so I can't hardly known their motivations. Greed can certainly play a part here.

(and notice that absent government we wouldn't need something like bitcoin to protect us from government attacks)

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they're not going to have a choice. Cryptocurrencies don't have to be legal to be disruptive.

And yet there seems to be a fair amount of people in the bitcoin 'community' who are quite eager (or desperate) to have bitcoin 'regulated' so that it becomes 'respectable', 'legal'...and usable.

Indeed, something I have repeatedly ranted against. So far the regulation has not had much impact on Bitcoin itself. No legally "tainted" or "whitelisted" coins yet.

True. Regulation hasn't affected the technical/protocol side of bitcoin.

Since you mention so called colored coins, wasn't that an idea of that guy mike hearn, ex member of the google mafia? You think that kind of people are to be trusted? <---rhetorical question...

The thing is, regulation will affect how bitcoin is used, and that's not necessarily related to any technical issue. Whether you'll need 20 licenses to use bitcoin, or none. That kind of thing.

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Perhaps, but that actually seems to be the crux of what we're arguing about here, and of many arguments on this list. What are the actual capabilities of the adversary? You don't want to underestimate, but at the same time, if you overestimate, you may miss a potential solution.

Maybe. Or you waste some resources.

But if the actions of government were relatively easy to counter I think we would be looking at a political system rather different from the one that exists now.

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Some are probably living as hermits because they think they're being monitored and/or given cancer by the smart meter mesh network. Personally, I tend to doubt that the government's capabilities significantly exceed what's available to the general public, except in terms of the money they're able to bring to bear,

Yeah, well. That might make a little difference, perhaps? =P

But actually, the main issue is not even that they have access to lots of resources. What makes the difference is

1) guns 2) willingess to use them 3) better organization*

*military organization - it doesn't matter if even the majority of government bureaucrats cant put 2 and 2 together.

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which is blunted somewhat by the extreme inefficiency of government contracting/spending/operations/etc.

You know, I'm rather familiar with libertarian theory if that's where you're coming from. I don't think that the fact that government organization in some areas is inefficient means anything.

Government is (very) efficient at its core criminal businesses.

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A "litmus test" issue might be whether you think the NSA's expressed surprise over Snowden's leaks was genuine. I tend to think it was, and that his documents are genuine.

Which documents? =) The very few that have been published? =) (....)

Yes, they may be genuine, but surely you realize that we don't have access to the vast majority of them. You think that's because of government incompetence...?

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I see no reason for the NSA to be substantially more competent than, say, the OPM. They're each large organizations with no bottom line that attract people of flexible moral character who are attracted to power and/or job security.

Yes. So, they are good in those two areas, especially in the wielding of power.

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I don't think those traits tend to lead to effective organizations, as much as a number of Hollywood movies would like us to believe.

I don't really watch hollywood movies =P.

And I don't think hollywood movies mention this kind of thing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate

Do you think a government that efficiently kidnaps millions of its own subjects for fun and profit is not an exceedinly efficient criminal organization?

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A kind of fun book on the OTHER side of the spectrum from what I believe about government's capabilities is Daniel Suarez's book Influx, about a government agency tasked with keeping technologies out of the hands of the public.

I don't think they necessarily have any magical secret weapon. They don't really need them anyway. All they need is ordinary lead bullets.

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I think you'd need a pretty substantial head start before technological advantages can overcome organizational and general human disadvantages, though. I.e. leaks, infiltration, etc.

See above...

(ufff - sorry about the really long message)

J.

- -- http://abis.io ~ "a protocol concept to enable decentralization and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good" https://keybase.io/odinn -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJVnJ6UAAoJEGxwq/inSG8CLFIH/12h4KF4FsAUsMghqHHc4Btl diGlICkENXCkTpvPCh7VOM91C8JWJOFfxsndrvRfQFMQJ284wBqjdhIXvPUhWJ/s s1varQdC1N9vPdLn2ga4Hi7JcZioEhKKTAS+DvXCQYcGs2y0ZNG86l8kcVYdIVUC R7IPCjNLK1KAyxjBA/ghPlA2V6a888U41OcVxJ9ok3vTauTMweY+ociAFu/YNdHa Z/PLf0uus1Tqg+UFvgCoKVMhzdhzARItZ+6dgiZCCQr413QPyHbbVO84kCrAqx8L rpxEROieU4ZTSrCac3KGLwSQ9Dw+B0xwe3QdLxR7U705mkItCn513FCCbbrcKec= =YJSO -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Wed, Jul 08, 2015 at 01:33:33AM -0300, Juan wrote:

On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 20:52:52 -0700 odinn wrote:

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Satoshi was apparently thinking about that same issue, of a decentralized market within bitcoin, but it just didn't get finished.

And in February of 2010, it was stripped out of bitcoin.

(Insert ripping sound here.)

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/5253d1ab77fab1995ede03fb934edd 67f1359ba8

Go OpenBazaar, etc. They (and some other similar projects) are carrying the torch of decentralized marketplaces that don't require legacy institutions to operate.

Thanks. I wasn't aware that the decentralized marketplace problem was being worked on at that time and by Satoshi. Interesting.

So what do we need to put that back in to a working cryptocoin? I see all this nonsense about putting stuff 'on top of' bitcoin, but it seems like it really ought to be integrated, or if not integrated, at least follow the unix philosphy of individual tools you can compose together. Libbitcoin seems to have had that 'tools' approach, but it appears to have no use case, and can you even mine an altchain with it?