BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bytemaster on August 31, 2015, 12:54:31 pm
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Everyone in the crypto currency space presumes that Bitcoin and other P2P protocols create a censorship resistant finanical platform.
It is my opinion, that any PUBLIC P2P network can easily be censored by ISPs. If you can join the network, then you can discover the IP and PORT of every publicly accessible node and then block all packets to/from those nodes on those ports.
Furthermore, every website that hosts content (binaries, source, and seed node IPs) can be shut down in a similar manner.
Even MaidSafe and Tor are not able to prevent this kind of censorship.
Now clearly, it would be difficult to engage in this kind of censorship on a global scale. The end result would be for people to move to VPN systems, which would in turn come under attack because they are "publicly known".
At the end of the day, the great Firewall of China can be applied to any country at any time.
If that were to happen then consensus would have to move to dark networks, on an invite-only basis and the utility of crypto-currencies in general would be dramatically undercut.
In other words, crypto-currencies currently depend upon free speech.
We live in a world where despite the government's best efforts illegal music, movies, and other content manages to survive. What does this tell us? How can centralized services provide us magnet links to torrents with public IPs and those hosts are not shut down?
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This is an old article, but one that highlights some of the reasons why the government has a hard time shutting down crypto.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/01/us-government-calls-censor-twitter-threaten-free-speech
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This is a sad statement. I always saw cypto proliferation has having the chance to thrwat censorship in other nations.
It's far ahead now-- but technology may prove to undercuts governments censorship tools (eg. SpaceX and satellite internet and Google Blimps and Pcell). Is there any forecoming developments in the sophistication of the local access networks? What would allow the necessities of the current ISPs structures to be reduced...?
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I would like to see Mesh Networks begin to proliferate as a solution to ISP censorship. Here's a cool article about how FireChat was used during the protests in Hong Kong.
http://berkeleytechreview.com/firechat-and-activism/
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I would like to see Mesh Networks begin to proliferate as a solution to ISP censorship. Here's a cool article about how FireChat was used during the protests in Hong Kong.
http://berkeleytechreview.com/firechat-and-activism/
^^^ This. I just updated the firmware in my router to DD-WRT which has features with mesh networks specifically in mind. WE NEED TO DECENTRALIZE CONTROL OF THE INTERNET YESTERDAY!
BM, your question prompts me to ask, given how well I KNOW you understand the issue of censorship through DNS / ICANN, why you decided to shift focus away from this, away from your team's efforts to decentralize DNS, an effort I saw as a foundational aspect of the early BitShares vision - how did it loose importance in your eyes relative to other competing efforts like VOTE, just to name one? What this a significant factor in toast deciding to move on?
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
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Doh! I knew I should have posted those questions separately!
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If blockchains could operate on something like a mesh network , it has a chance of being completely distributed.
I have stated here and over on BTT over the past years that bitcoin and the likes are not decentralized as they are beholden to the laws of the land. Either through control of the ISP's or downright outlawing exchange and possession.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
Someone mentioned it in a random comment here about a month ago, he is also working for MAKER
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yep
https://www.reddit.com/r/ethereum/comments/3ixw1s/bitshares_ethereum_mkrcoin_uia_and_sharedrop/
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"We live in a world where despite the government's best efforts illegal music, movies, and other content manages to survive."... But we constantly hear this drum beat that we need to sensor the Internet. If it's not terrorism, it's patent infringement etc.
I see the Internet becoming less free. That said, why allow crypto? I think the cost savings to banking are huge. In a world of far too much debt, these cost savings may be too good to ignore. It also gives govt control if cash goes away and digital currencies proceed.
I think the biggest issue is govt is banks want absolutely control over a currency. I'm not sure how we can have a free Internet for some and not others.
My 2 cents
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Everyone in the crypto currency space presumes that Bitcoin and other P2P protocols create a censorship resistant finanical platform.
Most idealists are naive. Bitcoin and any protocol running on civilian hardware can be interfered with by cyber operations. It's more that at this time the Bitcoin protocol and it's users do not represent a threat which requires that certain capabilities be used.
I don't think Tor, Linux, or any software is "censorship resistant" because based on my knowledge of security I don't think any hardware or software can be fully trusted. I do think that it's more expensive, more difficult, and probably effective against certain specific governments but not against the technologically sophisticated governments capable of advanced persistent attacks.
It is my opinion, that any PUBLIC P2P network can easily be censored by ISPs. If you can join the network, then you can discover the IP and PORT of every publicly accessible node and then block all packets to/from those nodes on those ports.
This isn't the case. ISPs don't have the ability to detect the traffic if it's masked. I would say most people don't know how to mask their traffic though, and currently Bitcoin isn't anywhere near anonymous or masked. The idea that Bitcoin or any of these coins are anonymous is giving people a false sense of security in my opinion.
That isn't to say that you couldn't upgrade it or use it in a way so that it is anonymous but it takes a level of expertise that most people don't have which means relatively few people would be capable of doing it, and the government could simply monitor the few people they know who would be capable or the people who they believe have the desire to do so, which would probably include people searching for anonymous currencies on Google.
Browsers can be tagged so when people use their browser their surfing habits are known. So unless a person really knows what they are doing they wont even be able to download these sorts of apps without the government and law enforcement knowing they went to the site and this is assuming there aren't any bugs or zero day exploits like the recent one which effects 99% of Android users or the one which effects all versions of Windows.
Furthermore, every website that hosts content (binaries, source, and seed node IPs) can be shut down in a similar manner.
Worse than that, they can be honeypot traps set up by the government to sneak a bug into the binaries. Silk Road was shut down but it was reborn and most likely that was an example of a honeypot. Any website and a lot of altcoins claiming to offer methods which could easily help people commit crimes, at least one or some of them could be a virus. Malware hidden inside the binaries would probably be something a government would do, or the hidden rootkit.
If governments wanted to attack the industry they would simply put the rootkits in the binaries. Since most people install binaries and don't compile source code it would mean most people are vulnerable. Even the most paranoid individuals who want to compile their own code could fall for the backdoor which could be hidden in popular Linux compilers.
Even MaidSafe and Tor are not able to prevent this kind of censorship.
They aren't and I told the Maidsafe team that there will be some difficulties but at this point in time they are confident they'll be able to overcome it. But in general I would say while Maidsafe is much more secure than Dropbox, it's not something I would bet my life on or commit crimes with.
Now clearly, it would be difficult to engage in this kind of censorship on a global scale. The end result would be for people to move to VPN systems, which would in turn come under attack because they are "publicly known".
VPNs are actually one of the most secure ways for a person to defend themselves and some VPNs accept Bitcoin. I would say go the VPN route as a counter-measure against ISP surveillance but that doesn't stop people from tracking your IP address around the web with or without VPN, or from tracking your GPU.
At the end of the day, the great Firewall of China can be applied to any country at any time.
True but the only thing we can do is make it more expensive to apply it. If it costs a lot it means less countries can do it. So I suppose the idea of making it expensive so that only perhaps the rich nations can do it, because the alternative would be worse.
If that were to happen then consensus would have to move to dark networks, on an invite-only basis and the utility of crypto-currencies in general would be dramatically undercut.
In other words, crypto-currencies currently depend upon free speech.
They don't depend on it but they assume it. I would say crypto-currencies is better than the world without it though because the pros outweigh the cons, but I don't think that crypto-currencies are anonymous. This is why I'm focused more on promoting adoption than anonymity because you attract different people when you promote anonymity than when you promote mainstream adoption.
I think anonymity is a lot harder, but I do think we need some of it because privacy is necessary. It might not be impossible to track people, it might require the NSA and military capabilities, but that is in my opinion probably necessary or you could have political abuses which outweigh whatever benefit that law enforcement claims you gain from being able to see every transaction all the time.
If a person is a terrorist suspect then there are intelligence agencies with authority to use the equipment and resources necessary to track them. So for example that teenager who tried to help ISIS get into using Bitcoin? That kid was likely under surveillance but that is a different thing from putting every transaction in the public for everyone to see. If it's only to stop terrorism then it has to be expensive to see it.
We live in a world where despite the government's best efforts illegal music, movies, and other content manages to survive. What does this tell us? How can centralized services provide us magnet links to torrents with public IPs and those hosts are not shut down?
Illegal content, illegal activities, is a different concern from terrorism and national security. When lives are at stake then it isn't politically controversial to use everything we have to protect life. "Crime" in the vague open ended flexible since of the word could mean anything they say it means, and law enforcers enforce the law, which can be interpreted in different ways at different times. Considering the United States has way too many prisoners I don't have as much sympathy for the "crime" argument as I do for the terrorism argument.
For crime, if the crime involves a threat to people's lives then I would say it rises in importance to be worth spending the necessary resources to de-anonymize whomever is behind it. Also if it's a huge scam with billions of dollars stolen then also I would say you might be able to make a case to spend many millions to recover billions. On the other hand it doesn't make much economic sense to arrest file sharers, drug users, or people who do victimless crimes to make ends meet.
That is where the political controversy is. It's in whether or not law enforcement needs the power to have all transactions under surveillance all the time to enforce all types of laws instead of just a very narrow set of laws.
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I suggest we find a balance. We need to preserve privacy not because it's "privacy vs security" but in order to protect security. People who have more privacy in their transactions are more secure from certain kinds of adversaries, this may include political but it may also include organized crime.
At the same time while I endorse the idea of making transactions private, I don't think it's realistic to believe that the people who want to abuse privacy to hide from the IRS will somehow not ever have to pay taxes because of some advanced cryptography. The IRS does not have a history of ever giving up and isn't going to run out of resources.
So we have to make a clear distinction when we discuss privacy to explain the use cases for it and that it's being promoted not to help bad actors, but to help good actors. We also have to understand that good and bad actors can be anywhere, including in the government, or in law enforcement, so we cannot side with any organization or institution or state in my opinion, but instead side with the individual civilians who are trying to keep themselves safe from abuse from the top down authority or from the bottom up mob.
I'm sorry if anyone was looking for well stated arguments for why the government can't censor crypto. The only argument I can offer is that crypto doesn't make things immune from censorship in particular but it does make it more expensive. It's the same theory behind Proof of Work, where ultimately the security is in the expense, the costs, which act as a deterrent.
Certain kinds of surveillance probably shouldn't be so cheap. If the surveillance is being abused politically, then it's too cheap.
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Shadow economies account for around 23% percent of world GDP and 1.8 billion people earn their living in the black market. (A black market or underground economy is a market in which goods or services are traded illegally. The key distinction of a black market trade is that the transaction itself is illegal.) Even in countries like the US, the size of the black market is considerable -
Estimates are that underground activity in the US last year totalled as much as $2 trillion...
"Businesses are not angels, and they exist to make a profit," Padilla said. "They are going to do everything they can to keep costs down.."
http://www.cnbc.com/id/100668336
So while governments & law enforcement could potentially limit mainstream adoption, it is clear that they are unable to stop the supply of any products & services that are in high demand. Crypto-currencies are arguably superior than existing options for multiple use cases & are becoming more & more user friendly. So there is at the very least, little Governments as a whole can do to stop crypto-currencies capturing their rightful share of at least 23% of global GDP.
Black markets are also counter-cyclical in that they increase during recessions. Given that banks are over-leveraged and indebted governments are moving to policies such as higher taxes, capital controls, ZIRP & a war on cash, we will see more people seeking out financial alternatives like crypto-currencies regardless of the law.
Bitcoin ATMs could spring up across Greece as soon as October as citizens and businesses become increasingly desperate to move their money despite capital controls.
http://www.cnbc.com/2015/08/19/greece-could-soon-get-1000-bitcoin-atms.html
At the end of the day, the great Firewall of China can be applied to any country at any time.
Gambling is illegal in China however some of the UK's largest gambling businesses do tens of billions in business there every year.
• Bet365 frequently changes its website addresses in China, thereby side-stepping attempts by local regulators to close sites down.
• The company has constructed a complex payments system that allows it to take bets placed using China’s currency, the renminbi.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2014/oct/03/bet365-profit-china-online-gambling
If one the world's leading centralised gambling companies can bypass the great firewall of China to do tens of billions in gambling business annually, how can decentralised companies be curtailed in countries where the general public are also unlikely to allow that level of internet censorship?
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In order to become truely decentralised we would need decentralised energy production/distribution and a decentralised Internet.
In the meantime, the only way to limit interference is via cost. The expense being political or financial.
Can the network grow and evolve fast and widely enough that the cost outweighs the benefit? We are clearly in a race to boil the proverbial frog.
Given that currently there are unlimited funds available, there is presumably no financial cost. The political costs are all based around what level of tyranny the populous are prepared to accept.
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While many of the technologies that crypto relies upon can be censored by the state. We can design our systems to require massive expense and overreach to prevent their use.
According to https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0 (https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0) all states rely upon the consent of the governed, and can only get away with what we let them.
Masking our traffic within a system that would be political suicide to block should give us the ability to not be censored.
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While many of the technologies that crypto relies upon can be censored by the state. We can design our systems to require massive expense and overreach to prevent their use.
According to https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0 (https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0) all states rely upon the consent of the governed, and can only get away with what we let them.
Masking our traffic within a system that would be political suicide to block should give us the ability to not be censored.
That is naive. I highly doubt all those countries in the middle east are agreeing to let the CIA do what it does.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
Are you a nay or yay Bitshares 2.0? Fan or not a fan of Bitshares still?
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While many of the technologies that crypto relies upon can be censored by the state. We can design our systems to require massive expense and overreach to prevent their use.
According to https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0 (https://mises.org/library/politics-obedience-discourse-voluntary-servitude-0/0) all states rely upon the consent of the governed, and can only get away with what we let them.
Masking our traffic within a system that would be political suicide to block should give us the ability to not be censored.
That is naive. I highly doubt all those countries in the middle east are agreeing to let the CIA do what it does.
You're not disagreeing with me. I am not 100% sold on the argument, which is why I worded it as such. You are disagreeing with Ettiene de La boetie (spelling?) It is specifically speaking of actions of their own state, and I would suggest you read it or listen to the audio book I posted. Even the parts I am not sold on are interesting. It was written in the 16th century, and I always find how much things are the same, even though they have changed so much.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
Forgive me @toast if I am misinterpreting your words, but did you say that Google threatened to blacklist you because you didn't accept their original job offer? Why the hell would you want to work for a company assholes like that?
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
Are you a nay or yay Bitshares 2.0? Fan or not a fan of Bitshares still?
I like BTS2 and graphene, still have lots of BTS.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
Forgive me @toast if I am misinterpreting your words, but did you say that Google threatened to blacklist you because you didn't accept their original job offer? Why the hell would you want to work for a company assholes like that?
I accepted and then reneged, also it was never threatening more like pointing out how expensive it is to recruit and how the offer might not be there forever etc which others advised means blacklist
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I thought he burned the google bridge by choosing to work for BTS.
Nope, he is currently working at google.
Really? :o Since when?
It's complicated. I went back briefly (the vague blacklisting threats were apparently a buff as they called back 8 mo later) then went onto unpaid leave. Between now and leaving BTS I have worked on 4 projects that I intend to help see through completion one way or another...
Forgive me @toast if I am misinterpreting your words, but did you say that Google threatened to blacklist you because you didn't accept their original job offer? Why the hell would you want to work for a company assholes like that?
I accepted and then reneged, also it was never threatening more like pointing out how expensive it is to recruit and how the offer might not be there forever etc which others advised means blacklist
Ah, ok that makes more sense. Well, I sure hope we are successful at turning 2.0 into a profitable DAC - BitShares would be much better off if we could afford to pay more people like you. I'm think you would find voter support pretty quickly should you choose to return - even for freelance jobs.
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I accepted and then reneged, also it was never threatening more like pointing out how expensive it is to recruit and how the offer might not be there forever etc which others advised means blacklist
It's not quite a blacklist as it doesn't span the industry - just one company. In corporate speak we say, "It is against our policy to pursue an individual for employment that was previously retained yet failed to report."
:P
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"[bitcoin-dev] AT&T has effectively banned Bitcoin nodes by closing port 8333 via a hidden firewall in the cable box"
https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-September/010798.html
I thought this might be of interest. After further reading, I'm not sure if OP is qualified to make this determination. I'll let you decide.
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There are huge potentials with blockchain technologies, specially its transparency and preventing double spending. I believe governments are just waiting, and see its evolution. It can help both governments and banks alike, because implemented correctly will remove their huge expenses on regulation.
Of course this can be seen as very naive, but this is the selling point. The transparency. Identabit is a good offering, why? There is no moral issue with it, it cannot be shutdown as it can help both banks, government and anybody.
Cryptocurrency can simplify dramatically normal global commerce transactions, and governments like China will have to support it.
There is only one issue, that all the effort could go to waste (ie.. governments forked and created their own Bitshares), hence I like the new licencing, at least the people that build it will get some reward. I don't think they would ever create their own chain, they need something that can be trusted and worked for a long time, if they tried it will take at least 10 years due to red tape.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I just wanted to clarify that my statement was not meant to be negative toward Toast and his decisions. In fact, to the extent that he is earning money and investing in BTS he is doing more to help BTS than if he stayed and worked for below market rates.
That statement was intended to be directed toward those who would demand the devs work for BTS worth a fraction of the market rate of a developer.
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Toast is just following the money. When his paycheck ran out, he went to work for music, and then went to google. It is better for him to earn $$$ and invest than to work for BTS.
I just wanted to clarify that my statement was not meant to be negative toward Toast and his decisions. In fact, to the extent that he is earning money and investing in BTS he is doing more to help BTS than if he stayed and worked for below market rates.
That statement was intended to be directed toward those who would demand the devs work for BTS worth a fraction of the market rate of a developer.
Our plan has always been to seed the ecosystem with independent free-lance developers. Check it out going back over a year.
The Origin of BitShares, Part 10 (https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,14019.msg182310.html#msg182310)
Denny and Toast were just the first grant award winners to take flight from the I3 incubator. Cryptonomex itself is another example and there are more. Anyone willing to take the risk of joining I3 is likely going to want to quickly move out on his own as a free agent. (Especially with even a tiny bit of support from the blockchain.)
This is what happens when you draft the best.
You won't wait long for an empty nest.
Worries about centralization are clearly moot.
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As always, the government cannot overpower people who want to be sovereign because those people are too large in number and they are so few. The blockchain simply leverages the power of it to empower us, like with all technology, to the ends toward which they are applied.
Governments, therefore cannot censor this movement...we have to willingly do so.
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As always, the government cannot overpower people who want to be sovereign because those people are too large in number and they are so few. The blockchain simply leverages the power of it to empower us, like with all technology, to the ends toward which they are applied.
Governments, therefore cannot censor this movement...we have to willingly do so.
Did you see Colin Powell's former chief of staff recently said that U.S. Policy is controlled by 400 people who have a combined net worth of trillions.
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As always, the government cannot overpower people who want to be sovereign because those people are too large in number and they are so few. The blockchain simply leverages the power of it to empower us, like with all technology, to the ends toward which they are applied.
Governments, therefore cannot censor this movement...we have to willingly do so.
Did you see Colin Powell's former chief of staff recently said that U.S. Policy is controlled by 400 people who have a combined net worth of trillions.
At least you guys try to hide it :) In England the current prime-minister (president), Finance Minister and the Mayor of London we're all members of the impossibly exclusive Bullingdon Club at Oxford University. Nathan Rothschild for example was also a recent member. One of their initiation rituals is burning a £50 note in front of a beggar.
The club was recently dramatised in the 2014 film The Riot Club https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZwv6h-LhTw
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Certain kinds of surveillance probably shouldn't be so cheap. If the surveillance is being abused politically, then it's too cheap.
cheap surveillance allows little bro to spy on big bro. when surveillance was expensive this was not possible before. i welcome a world where everyone can see what everyone else is doing. control is derived from scarcity of something u want and only i have
Cheap surveillance allows the illusion that the little bro is able to spy on the big bro. Big bro will always out spend, out man, out innovate the little bro before little bro ever smells what's going on. Your statement suggests that you don't respect or care for privacy and look forward to a world where complete transparency rules all.
With that said....
Can I have the passwords to everyone of your personal email addresses? I promise I won't use it, I'll only browse. If you welcome transparency and got nothing to hide, I don't see what your hold up would be. Someone's gotta be the first. Why not ye who encourages this brave new world? I intend to search you personal correspondences, any financial statements that are sent, see all the email lists you belong to, who sends you messages on FB etc. etc. etc.
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I've always maintained that it will go one of two ways:
1) cryptocurrencies are outlawed by all governments
2) cryptocurrencies completely replace fiat
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I've always maintained that it will go one of two ways:
1) cryptocurrencies are outlawed by all governments
2) cryptocurrencies completely replace fiat
Is there nothing in between? Paypal is legal and hasn't replaced fiat even though it could have (technically)
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Is there nothing in between? Paypal is legal and hasn't replaced fiat even though it could have (technically)
The reason I think it'll go either way is that you cannot really regulate crypto, all attempts to do so will be like trying to stop peer to peer file sharing services. Given this fact, if it becomes big enough to pose a real tax 'problem' to governments, they will outlaw it.
There is no other version of true digital cash in existance, paypal is just convenient banking, you never truly own the money, only an IOU. That is what is truly unique about crypto and why it is superior to all existing attempts at digital money.
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Certain kinds of surveillance probably shouldn't be so cheap. If the surveillance is being abused politically, then it's too cheap.
cheap surveillance allows little bro to spy on big bro. when surveillance was expensive this was not possible before. i welcome a world where everyone can see what everyone else is doing. control is derived from scarcity of something u want and only i have
Cheap surveillance allows the illusion that the little bro is able to spy on the big bro. Big bro will always out spend, out man, out innovate the little bro before little bro ever smells what's going on. Your statement suggests that you don't respect or care for privacy and look forward to a world where complete transparency rules all.
With that said....
Can I have the passwords to everyone of your personal email addresses? I promise I won't use it, I'll only browse. If you welcome transparency and got nothing to hide, I don't see what your hold up would be. Someone's gotta be the first. Why not ye who encourages this brave new world? I intend to search you personal correspondences, any financial statements that are sent, see all the email lists you belong to, who sends you messages on FB etc. etc. etc.
+5% for the last paragraph, but your not accurate about the illusion. I'll agree that little bro's spying capabilities are much more limited than big bro's, but think of all the cops caught in the act of abusing their authority. That's brought about by cheap, ubiquitous cell phone tech. Cameras in the hands of almost every little bro is not an illusion of the power individuals have to spy on The Man.
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I would like to see Mesh Networks begin to proliferate as a solution to ISP censorship. Here's a cool article about how FireChat was used during the protests in Hong Kong.
http://berkeleytechreview.com/firechat-and-activism/
^^^ This. I just updated the firmware in my router to DD-WRT which has features with mesh networks specifically in mind. WE NEED TO DECENTRALIZE CONTROL OF THE INTERNET YESTERDAY!
BM, your question prompts me to ask, given how well I KNOW you understand the issue of censorship through DNS / ICANN, why you decided to shift focus away from this, away from your team's efforts to decentralize DNS, an effort I saw as a foundational aspect of the early BitShares vision - how did it loose importance in your eyes relative to other competing efforts like VOTE, just to name one? What this a significant factor in toast deciding to move on?
http://www.infoq.com/news/2015/07/FCC-Blocks-Open-Source
Funny, DD-WRT and such will be impossible going forward.
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I suggest we find a balance. We need to preserve privacy not because it's "privacy vs security" but in order to protect security. People who have more privacy in their transactions are more secure from certain kinds of adversaries, this may include political but it may also include organized crime.
At the same time while I endorse the idea of making transactions private, I don't think it's realistic to believe that the people who want to abuse privacy to hide from the IRS will somehow not ever have to pay taxes because of some advanced cryptography. The IRS does not have a history of ever giving up and isn't going to run out of resources.
So we have to make a clear distinction when we discuss privacy to explain the use cases for it and that it's being promoted not to help bad actors, but to help good actors. We also have to understand that good and bad actors can be anywhere, including in the government, or in law enforcement, so we cannot side with any organization or institution or state in my opinion, but instead side with the individual civilians who are trying to keep themselves safe from abuse from the top down authority or from the bottom up mob.
I'm sorry if anyone was looking for well stated arguments for why the government can't censor crypto. The only argument I can offer is that crypto doesn't make things immune from censorship in particular but it does make it more expensive. It's the same theory behind Proof of Work, where ultimately the security is in the expense, the costs, which act as a deterrent.
Certain kinds of surveillance probably shouldn't be so cheap. If the surveillance is being abused politically, then it's too cheap.
There has been a lot said and I am just quoting @luckybit because he appeared to fire most cylinders on all the issues surrounding.
At the end of the day, you are attempting to create decentralization on a centralized network. That is the crux of it all. The Internet is 'open' to the extend that ISPs allow it to be. Remember that it was born out of needing a military solution for communication. :) They like stuff locked down.
Anyhow, a few cursory mentions of mesh network have been made, something that I am very familiar with in creating solutions for harsh environments to bring Internet access there. There is some merit to it, the problem is you are essentially creating a whole new infrastructure. Anybody got a few trillion in their back pocket connect several billion people?
It would only work with wirless connectivity of communities. ISPs own the hard lines, and those ISPs have upstreams that are owned by the handful of companies that provide the backbone to the internet.
So short of creating a whole other internet (if we do.. PLEASE make it with a better protocol than IP), I guess to answer the OPs question is to respond with the question of why it would be good for governments to censor crypto?
If crypto suddenly is accounting for some % of GDP to a government, would it be in their best interest to censor it? Politicians are dumb, they would either ignore it, or would want to find a way to tax it and or make it grow for more tax. Why censor it?
I could be wrong, maybe someone will put in a worker proposal to spend a few trillion on building out nodes worldwide to connect everyone and have it all owned by the blockchain in the end. At that stage though.. we might need worker proposals for tanks, missiles, and drones to defend them from governments. :-X
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It is my opinion, that any PUBLIC P2P network can easily be censored by ISPs. If you can join the network, then you can discover the IP and PORT of every publicly accessible node and then block all packets to/from those nodes on those ports.
Furthermore, every website that hosts content (binaries, source, and seed node IPs) can be shut down in a similar manner.
Even MaidSafe and Tor are not able to prevent this kind of censorship.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/isps-intentionally-blocking-bitcoin/
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Cameras in the hands of almost every little bro is not an illusion of the power individuals have to spy on The Man.
what you can do with Peertracks: (we r on the same team)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_wMTrVfv8c#t=40s
Plus a trillion
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Isn't this exactly what Monero is trying to do: become invisible if needed. They have (or work on) I2P, etc... technology. I'm not an expert here, just reading the web.
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At the end of the day, you are attempting to create decentralization on a centralized network. That is the crux of it all. The Internet is 'open' to the extend that ISPs allow it to be. Remember that it was born out of needing a military solution for communication. :) They like stuff locked down.
Politicians want centralization. The military actually doesn't want centralization. The concept of decentralized networks originate from the military particularly because they actually work.
Centralization benefits politicians, not necessarily always national security. The military specifically has an entire study of warfare based on leaderless networks. The military pioneered the study of asymmetric warfare, UAVs, all of the encryption we talk about, all comes from and was used to support military operations. So I would say the government isn't monolithic, and you have people in the government who genuinely care about winning wars more than politics, and who genuinely care more about operational security than politics, and if you can produce a technology which can help them win and improve operational security then it will be accepted.
The Internet was necessary in the context of a Cold War.
Anyhow, a few cursory mentions of mesh network have been made, something that I am very familiar with in creating solutions for harsh environments to bring Internet access there.
The US government has a technology called disruption tolerent networks, these are unique military grade mesh networks for use in emergency situations. To this date the US government and US military are on the forefront.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking
Anonymous currency doesn't intrigue them as much because they never had a problem transferring value anonymously, but there could be situations where if a currency were truly anonymous (not the stuff we have now), then maybe it would become something militarily interesting. On the other hand I'm not sure that is a development we would want because interesting in the military context often isn't good for civilian safety.
There is some merit to it, the problem is you are essentially creating a whole new infrastructure. Anybody got a few trillion in their back pocket connect several billion people?
We have many trillions actually. The amount of wealth we have which goes untapped is primarily due to the fact that 1) we aren't currently able to sell our unused computation resources, 2) we aren't currently able to sell our unused storage resources, 3) we aren't currently able to sell our unused bandwidth, 4) we aren't currently able to auction our attention.
The interesting development is all of this is changing as we speak. A year from now we will have DACs which take full advantage of micropayments and once you bring micropayments operational, combined with the other elements I mentioned, there are easily trillions of dollars of wealth there. So I don't think there is any sort of wealth shortage, just the misdirection and centralization of that wealth, or in some cases people don't even recognize that what they have is a form of wealth. Attention is wealth, spare computing resources are wealth, knowledge is wealth, all can be turned into cryptocurrency.
It would only work with wirless connectivity of communities. ISPs own the hard lines, and those ISPs have upstreams that are owned by the handful of companies that provide the backbone to the internet.
Drones, UAVs, blimps, all can provide access to satellite Internet. DTN can also create a mesh network on the ground. It might not be as fast but it would be good enough to do stuff. You also have the wireless spectrum which isn't even being used.
If crypto suddenly is accounting for some % of GDP to a government, would it be in their best interest to censor it? Politicians are dumb, they would either ignore it, or would want to find a way to tax it and or make it grow for more tax. Why censor it?
I could be wrong, maybe someone will put in a worker proposal to spend a few trillion on building out nodes worldwide to connect everyone and have it all owned by the blockchain in the end. At that stage though.. we might need worker proposals for tanks, missiles, and drones to defend them from governments. :-X
Here is how it seems to work, you have the political side of the government which cares a lot about societal stability. They are the side which is most concerned about Bitcoin and anything else which could be disruptive or have negative social impacts. Then you have sides of the government which cares about science, or military operations, and they are focused on their objectives which might not even be domestic.
The side of the government most concerned about social instability is obviously the FBI. The FBI is also very concerned about encryption, because their mission is to enforce laws and stop crimes. The NSA and military on the other hand could care less because it's not their mission to concern themselves with domestic politics.
In order to be successful in growing a technology you at least have to know the stakeholders, and you have to know what each has to lose or gain from your technology. The entire US government isn't a single entity, and there are different groups which gain or lose with different technologies. Encryption is very popular with certain parts of the government and then hated by other parts. Law enforcement in particular hates encryption because their mission forces them to hate it, while the NSA loves encryption when it's American citizens using it but hates it when anyone else is using it.
The NSA by their mission is not supposed to spy on American citizens. Most of the time they don't, and they follow their mission.
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It is my opinion, that any PUBLIC P2P network can easily be censored by ISPs. If you can join the network, then you can discover the IP and PORT of every publicly accessible node and then block all packets to/from those nodes on those ports.
Furthermore, every website that hosts content (binaries, source, and seed node IPs) can be shut down in a similar manner.
Even MaidSafe and Tor are not able to prevent this kind of censorship.
https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/isps-intentionally-blocking-bitcoin/
I don't think censorship is realistic in the long term but that isn't the issue. The issue is could they censor it in a way so that only hardcore hackers can access it? Yes they can and it would be a lot like what happens in China.
The point is, no you cannot censor Bitcoin but you can make it inconvenient for people to use it uncensored. Bitcoin transactions don't have to be transmitted through the Internet but most people don't have a clue about software defined radio, don't have a clue about the other ways to use Bitcoin, and just want it on their smart phone.
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The Internet was necessary in the context of a Cold War.
What exactly is this reference too?
We have many trillions actually. The amount of wealth we have which goes untapped is primarily due to the fact that 1) we aren't currently able to sell our unused computation resources, 2) we aren't currently able to sell our unused storage resources, 3) we aren't currently able to sell our unused bandwidth, 4) we aren't currently able to auction our attention
The interesting development is all of this is changing as we speak. A year from now we will have DACs which take full advantage of micropayments and once you bring micropayments operational, combined with the other elements I mentioned, there are easily trillions of dollars of wealth there. So I don't think there is any sort of wealth shortage, just the misdirection and centralization of that wealth, or in some cases people don't even recognize that what they have is a form of wealth. Attention is wealth, spare computing resources are wealth, knowledge is wealth, all can be turned into cryptocurrency.
This really amounts to trillions? If sold, to who exactly? In the context of my statement I suggested that trillions going towards a whole new physical infrastructure. At what point does it become worth trillions? So far we only had the biggest boy grow to $3 billion.. and where all that wealth has gone certainly doesn't appear to be of any major good.. especially if you agree with John Underwoods assessment of all Bitcoin is used for.
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The Internet was necessary in the context of a Cold War.
What exactly is this reference too?
We have many trillions actually. The amount of wealth we have which goes untapped is primarily due to the fact that 1) we aren't currently able to sell our unused computation resources, 2) we aren't currently able to sell our unused storage resources, 3) we aren't currently able to sell our unused bandwidth, 4) we aren't currently able to auction our attention
The interesting development is all of this is changing as we speak. A year from now we will have DACs which take full advantage of micropayments and once you bring micropayments operational, combined with the other elements I mentioned, there are easily trillions of dollars of wealth there. So I don't think there is any sort of wealth shortage, just the misdirection and centralization of that wealth, or in some cases people don't even recognize that what they have is a form of wealth. Attention is wealth, spare computing resources are wealth, knowledge is wealth, all can be turned into cryptocurrency.
This really amounts to trillions? If sold, to who exactly? In the context of my statement I suggested that trillions going towards a whole new physical infrastructure. At what point does it become worth trillions? So far we only had the biggest boy grow to $3 billion.. and where all that wealth has gone certainly doesn't appear to be of any major good.. especially if you agree with John Underwoods assessment of all Bitcoin is used for.
Computation is a commodity and is immensely valuable. Easily worth trillions when you think about the fact that all businesses and all people rely on it. HPC is immensely valuable as well.
Protein folding? Searching for aliens? Decentralized search engines? All possible. Google's market cap alone is almost 400 billion. Yes there are trillions of dollars available in untapped resources.
The attention economy? Micropayments? That is completely untapped, it's hundreds of billions or perhaps trillions of dollars of monetization. Attention was enough to give people free TV, to power the entire advertising industry, Google and Facebook are advertising companies. Auctioning your attention gives you the money.
Honestly it's not easy to calculate exactly how much money but considering there would be billions of people involved, and considering the US economy alone is over 10 trillion, and global economy over 100 trillion? I would say trillions is reasonable.
That doesn't mean it's a guarantee. During the dot com bubble a lot of people made money and lost money, and many people avoided using the web entirely. I would say what we are talking about here is the birth of a different kind of blockchain web which can decentralize everything, computation, storage, and bandwidth.
The money earned from automation, from attention, from computation, from storage, can be used by each person to pay for bandwidth. So if you easily get say $400 a year just for your attention, that is easily enough money to pay for bandwidth for the whole year. 400 times 500 million? 20,000,000,000 a year.
1% of the world economy is around 1 trillion. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy