Silk road days are gone. Ulbrich got disproportionately punished + convicted on very very dubious hired gun charges. Since then a similar approach was applied on almost every darknet marketplace around, resulting in that these days with BTC at ATH the darknet marketplaces are at an all-time crisis (even though legacy media is still pushing the "criminal's money" narrative :/). Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

Let's hope it is just a side-step given that BTC with censorship/regulation is just a breaking of a glass-wall away from perfectly free monetary unit.

P.S. If you are looking to get no-KYC truly anonymous BTC you'd better live in a top-10 city (e.g. Prague), because in a top-100 city (e.g. Sofia) it is not quite straight-forward and takes tons of waiting/selecting.

> Ulbrich got [...] convicted on very very dubious hired gun charges.

No, he didn't. He got convicted of money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. Evidence related to the alleged murder for hire scheme was presented at trial and was weighed in the sentencing phase in terms of what sentence he got within the range authorized for the crimes he was convicted of, but he was not tried, convicted, or sentenced for “hired gun charges”.

Ulbrich was never convicted of a violent crime. (Though plenty of evidence did show he tried to commit murder-for-hire.) He was convicted of money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics.[1] For this he was sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years.

> Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

What do you mean by this?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial

Sure, here is a great article by Juraj Bednar (close the slushpool people): https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu...

BTW Juraj is a great source on anything crypto-related. And from what I now there has been no resistance from the pools so far (at least the EU/US-based ones, though in China it is probably even more difficult.)

That post explains how it might be possible for someone with 10% of mining power (and 100% of legal power) to block certain transactions. Nowhere in that post does it claim that such an attack has succeeded or that mining pools are collaborating with governments.

It is not an attack since by current market conditions there wouldn't be the need for an attack. The owners of the mining pools are not stupid and BTC is not an anonymous (and FREEEEEE whatever this means) currency these days. I hope we can agree on at least this fact.

I haven't heard about the mining pools collaborating on censorship. Do you have any sources I can read up on?

Sure, here is a great article by Juraj Bednar (close the slushpool people): https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu...

BTW Juraj is a great source on anything crypto-related. And from what I now there has been no resistance from the pools so far (at least the EU/US-based ones, though in Chine it is probably even more difficult.)

This seems to nicely lay out how the censorship may happen and be implemented. But it only briefly touches on one small example of censorship currently taking place. Is there anything else to support this portion of your previous post?

> Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

Bitcoin is an awful currency for illegal transactions. A permanent public ledger waiting for eventual de-anonymization sounds like a prosecutors dream.

I never understood why people described Bitcoin as an anonymous currency, it really isn’t. Arguably physical currency is much, much more anonymous than Bitcoin.

A valid point and definitely something people should be aware of. It's disingenuous to call Bitcoin anonymous.

On the other hand, "anonymous" is to some degree like computer "security". Secure against what threat? Anonymous to who?

Paper money is certainly traceable to some degree. Plus it almost requires you to meet in person, where the other person in the transaction can see your physical appearance (or your proxy/accomplice's).

Both mediums of exchange have similar risk profiles, but they are a little bit different. Not sure that I'd argue one is better than the other, generally. Depends on the use case.

It's anonymous in the sense that I an use a craigslist-laptop bought with cash at coffeeshop wifi -- paying for that coffee in cash too -- and not have it traced back to me, John Doe.

Plus there isn't any way to order 500 hits of acid from 3 timezones away in-person without a lot of issues. Lotta ID checks at the airport, and lots of cameras on highways.

If something goes weird with the darknet shipment I walk, feign ignorance, burn the laptop. If I'm carrying drugs on a plane and get busted then it's on me, no question.

But yeah, if you didn't pull good OpSec in 2014 it's possible the feds might link it to you in 2023, or whenever they get around to it.

Maybe we can focus on crypto that doesn't have such high electricity demands for that purpose.

Given that the current world exchange currency requires 43 aircraft carriers and 6,185 nuclear warheads (+ all the support they need, thousands of very worhtwhile human lives a year, etc), any electricity consumption seems a small problem. Not to mention that the oil-to-electricity transition would require ridiculous investments anyway.

Is the hypothesis that the U.S. switching to Bitcoin as legal tender would let it liquidate its military?

It is not a hypothesis and it is not about the US. It is a fact that the current global currency is USD and it is enforced thanks to the role of the global policeman and unquestionable military might. However over the (many) years it has caused growing problems both inside and outside the US.

P.S. I think that the US was playing this role very well over the past 76 years and am perfectly happy with 90% of what has been done.

The US would never switch to BTC as legal tender because they can't control the supply of BTC.

BTC is "clean" money in that it doesn't have the blood of millions and an imperialistic army powering it.

The energy usage by BTC is a drop in the bucket compared to the ecological damage wreaked by the US military.

> US would never switch to BTC as legal tender because they can't control the supply of BTC

Most evidence shows the U.S. no longer benefits from the dollar as a global reserve currency. And lots of governments have currency boards or currencies they don’t control.

This is a quite dubious claim:

1. The currency board countries are very small players, mostly beaten to blue and also not all currency boards are tied to USD.

2. The bulk (I guess 90%+) of global lending is still in USD - a currency which the Fed can debase at will - as has been happening since 2008 and happened at a grande scale in 2020.

This brings only frustration and bitterness - the last two things you want in international relations, especially in the post-nuclear age soft-power days.

Maybe we can focus on crypto that requires democratically elected consensus - save regulatory capture - which would then allow us to focus on crypto that doesn't unnecessarily transfer wealth from later adopters weighted toward earlier adopters.

Yea it's called every western government which is already a democracy. USD is the democratic coin. Bitcoin isn't democracy. It's the opposite. Absolute property rights removed from the state

Why does this bother you? Most of the mining is done inside the Big Red wall anyways.

Maybe when someone invents a “free” consensus scheme that actually competes with PoW’s security properties. There are plenty of reasons to suspect this isn’t possible.

If proof of work is necessary, how much work does proof of work need to do fundamentally? Is there any reason a cryptocurrency can’t be made that uses very little energy?

The structure of your comment suggests you don't grasp the fundamental point of proof-of-work, which is precisely to prove that a certain amount of (physical) resources were expended.

> Is there any reason a cryptocurrency can’t be made that uses very little energy?

As far as proof-of-work is concerned, if you don't use enough energy, you are vulnerable to 51% attacks.

As far as other schemes (e.g. proof-of-stake) are concerned - none of them have the same desirable security properties as PoW.

Not a chance. On the anonymous use. Pirate dread would be shaking his head in admonishment at your misguided utterances if he were on HN.

Monero solves this problem currently.

I’m far more selfish, I would just like to hear amateur investors stop talking about it. I’d really like for people to stop suggesting a database (blockchain) will fix any problem, even when problems are explicitly not database issues. I think we’re well past either of those things being possibilities though.

cryptocurrency proponents often discuss how manipulated and encumbered with politics normal fiat currencies are, but they don't seem to mind the obvious nation-state-level manipulation of BTC's price shrug

If Silicon Valley was filmed today, their disrupt parody would include “we’re making a world a better place by using blockchain for database”, instead of Paxos (https://youtu.be/B8C5sjjhsso)

> I’d really like for people to stop suggesting a database (blockchain) will fix any problem

I'm developing a blockchain to block these people using sustainable AI. Want to get in on the initial coin offering?

It's primary purpose is a store of value that can't be manipulated by the government. It's succeeding wildly at this.

There's a lot of extreme Bitcoin hate on this site, but BTC is helping a ton of people right now, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing demand and money flowing into Bitcoin investment.

> BTC is helping a ton of people right now, as evidenced by the rapidly increasing demand and money flowing into Bitcoin investment.

Not making a judgement either way on BTC's success but what you've highlighted there isn't evidence. An artificially inflated market based on speculation would show the exact same signs.

It was never meant to be a value store. First sentence of the whitepaper: "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".

I'm talking about what Bitcoin is, not what the white paper speculated it could become. Descriptive vs. prescriptive.

> a lot of extreme Bitcoin hate on this site

I don't think this is the case, it feels more like people here are no longer as easily charmed by the whole buzzword catalogue surrounding bitcoin. This switch from everyone starting a new cryptocurrency and "X, but on blockchain" dominating the discourse towards a more critical view probably just feels more extreme than it really is.

I don't think there's a community on the internet that is as anti-crypto as HN. At least I've never seen one.

Instead it's being manipulated by a few large whales.

For a decade?

There really is no alternative for where to park your money in 2021 unless you want to buy real-estate or stocks both of which come with their own massive set of problems.

So virtual asset, with multiple price swings, much wider than real estate during housing crisis, is the place to park money?

The trend has very consistently been for BTC to increase in value (helped by USD decreasing in value). There are only "wide" price swings at very high resolution.

What's the major downside of parking 1% of your money in a volatile asset that may or may not yield great returns? (Am long BTC)