For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins

Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by sschueller on Friday June 13, 2014 @04:45AM (#7887896)

These coins should be removed from the blockchain in a protocol update agreed upon by everyone.

No government should be making money this way.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by steven777400 on Friday June 13, 2014 @10:32AM (#7889021)

This has been proposed before in other situations. For example, the Mt. Gox coins were proposed to either be "destroyed" or sent back to their purchasers with a blockchain update.

This introduces serious problems with the question of "who is everyone" (when you say, agreed upon by everyone). In other words, is the community going to set up a centralized board to hear complaints and reverse transactions? Does this turn into "I bought a trinket on ebay and the guy didn't send me the thing, reverse the transaction"?

Part of the strength of bitcoin is a permanent historical record. There's been some suggestion that the true long-term benefit of bitcoin is not in the "money" part, but the blockchain itself. As soon as the blockchain becomes mutable, then this value becomes suspect, and the line for "how bad does it have to be before we edit the blockchain" might get weaker and weaker.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by artursapek on Friday June 13, 2014 @07:53AM (#7888301)

    // TODO: remove after FBI auction

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by baq on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:06AM (#7887934)

so it's perfectly fair to profit from selling drugs that kill people, but when the profits from illegal activity are seized, the public shouldn't be able to reuse them?

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by rplnt on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:23AM (#7887959)

Please entertain me how drugs sold on SR kill people.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by scrollaway on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:25AM (#7887964)

Pretty sure OP meant tobacco and alcohol. The government doesn't tax SR.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by scrollaway on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:15AM (#7887949)

Brilliant precendent you're trying to set here Einstein.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by sschueller on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:25AM (#7887963)

What's with the hostile response and name calling? If you don't agree with me you can write a constructive response.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by scrollaway on Friday June 13, 2014 @05:30AM (#7887975)

I can see how you would take it as hostile but it was not meant to be. However, trying to set a precedent on "Let's agree that this money should vanish because we all don't like where it currently is" turns into "I'm a core developer and my wife just left me so I'm just going to ruin her" in relatively few steps.

What you are suggesting would be a centralized backdoor in a decentralized protocol.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by thesimpsons1022 on Friday June 13, 2014 @08:38AM (#7888463)

honestly, that would make me lose all trust in bitcoin as well. if they can just retroactively delete coins that certain people have. (not to mention for political reasons). imagine the implications of a government gaining tang type of power.

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Re:For Sale: 29,656.51306529 Bitcoins by pron on Friday June 13, 2014 @08:17AM (#7888388)

Here's a constructive response: We come together as a society and agree on some rules. Some people break the rules, (and they also withhold money that rightly belong to the community), so the rules say that in that event we take their money and dispense it for the greater good.

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