I for one am glad people are keeping an eye on things. The time is surely
coming where there will be a fork between NSAcoin and DarknetCoin. One path
is horrifying and we are well on our way to it.


On Sun, Apr 27, 2014 at 11:01 PM, Bill Patterson USA <
bill.patterson@???> wrote:

> Amir, you are far more sentient and cognizant than you realize! Keep up
> your good works and grow Daily in Knowledge and Power. Remember that
> Knowledge is Power only when applied skilfully and with right care....
>
> --
> Bill
> Orlando, Florida
> USA
> Telephone: 407-255-7693 and 407-286-7007
> SKYPE: williamp910
>
>
> *"KNOWLEDGE IS* *POWER!!!"*
>
>
>
>
>
> 26.04.2014, 15:43, "Amir Taaki" <genjix@???>:
>
> Sorry but Bitcoin doesn't work like that.
>
> Bitcoin is not a fixed thing gifted to us by Satoshi.
>
> Bitcoin is a consensus of the parties involved inside it, involving
> developers, users, miners and infrastructure.
>
> Technologies that are developed and used affect the operation of Bitcoin,
> and our freedom to utilise the tool in different ways.
>
> This kind of complacency is just choosing to ignore the real impact of our
> actions. It's not so simple as Bitcoin is here so lets do everything to
> get everyone using it and the world will be free. It's deeper.
>
> The real situation is Bitcoin is here, and it can evolve in a million
> different directions. Are we going to place our trust and infrastructure
> into gatekeepers who betray us? Are we going to choose & empower the
> development decisions which gain greater convenience at the cost of highly
> centralised mining? Are we going to put our resources as an industry into
> more tools for tracking, surveilling and censoring users while a small
> group of overworked individuals works to undo the damage from those tools?
> Or are we going to instead put our resources towards developing the real
> next generation of technology that will enable new forms of human
> association and trade to flourish on the internet.
>
> It's a very naive viewpoint and level 1 thinking to understand Bitcoin as
> a big family where rainbows and rabbits flourish in a big united utopia of
> payments innovation. Bitcoin is more complex, and our actions are feeding
> how it mutates (which it is).
>
> It's an incredible tool with massive potential and possibilities. Our
> actions simply decide how much of that potential we decide to unleash or
> suppress.
>
> Remember, when faced between A and B where A benefits free trade and B
> benefits consumer convenience, which choice will we take. And how about
> 1000 of these small choices on an everyday individual level. What kind of
> Bitcoin businesses do we want to build? Innovative flourishing enterprises
> that truly exploit this technology to its fullest, or companies that push
> a united front, exert control and push Bitcoin where they want it.
>
> Question: what happens when The Foundation starts paying large numbers of
> Bitcoin developers financed by industry heads? What are the kinds of
> things they want to see in Bitcoin?
>
> If you still don't believe that features can be developed that are against
> small business, p2p transfers and the blackmarket, but pro consumers and
> corporations then see Mike Hearn's last proposal for improving the
> security of 0conf payments with the unfortunate side effect of enabling
> miner blacklists.
>
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/23r9n2/lets_use_mike_hearns_coinbase_reallocation_to/
>
> And this is just the most malicious and prescient example. The vast
> majority of proposals are non-controversial and non-noticeable to most
> people. But don't forget, it's the sum of those decisions that affects
> Bitcoin. And it's not enough that Bitcoin is opensource. We actually need
> participating developers who understand these issues deeply. That's why
> I'm so glad we have people like Peter Todd, who really see things deep and
> understand the true social, political and technical ramifications of our
> decisions that the 99% majority of developers (myself included) don't see.
>
> The beauty of Bitcoin is not that it is libertarian or anarchist. The
> beautiful thing about Bitcoin is that it can unite together democrats,
> republicans, socialists, anarchists, libertarians, entrepreneurs, venture
> capitalists, people in Botswana <http://youtu.be/HmtDsvO407Y>, and people
> all over the world. The most important thing about Bitcoin is not the
> speed
> of transactions or even inexpensive payments - these are great features
> but
> the critical thing is that Bitcoin is decentralised. An entrepreneur
> running a VC backed firm (like myself) can create a proprietary, closed,
> walled-garden type system and try to get regulators to do certain things -
> but Bitcoin simply will press onwards. A programmer can try to change the
> protocol to enable infinite amounts of coins to be created, but Bitcoin
> will simply press onwards. If government regulators, VC-backed
> entrepreneurs and closed systems being involved in Bitcoin and trying to
> further the community and adoption is a bad thing - then we clearly are
> afraid that Bitcoin is not decentralised. If Bitcoin really is what we
> believe it is - then we have nothing to fear from anyone joining the
> community. If that is the case then we should welcome involvement from as
> wide and as diverse an audience as possible and not worry about the
> potentially.
>
> Unless these "suited men" and "false doctrines" can somehow push changes
> into the core bitcoin software that can get past all the core developers,
> let us welcome their efforts. Unless they can fool the minds of the
> brilliant and diligent people here on this list and elsewhere, let us
> welcome their efforts. Unless they can successfully sneak a change in
> which
> is accepted by the majority of nodes and miners, let us welcome their
> efforts. Let's not seek to find enemies where none exist. Jeremy Allaire
> may speak different words than you Amir, but you might find that he is
> working towards the same goal (furthering Bitcoin), albeit through
> different means.
>
> If Bitcoin is truly decentralised - we have nothing to fear and everything
> to be excited about.
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 7:34 PM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
>
> Luke, I also respect your contributions and have advocated your work
> because I believe you come from the heart and your ideals.
>
> Our ideals are not this political affiliation or that ideological dogma.
> Our ideals are a shared set of values around openness, fairness,
> empowerment of the common user and freedom of information. These values
> are the basis for the internet and why it's a success story. They are
> also the reasons why the printing press was able to reform Europe taking
> power away from corrupt catholic churches who had institutionalised
> their religion and turned it into a tool against actual followers of god
> who were being misled into following fake rules that were added in by
> men.
>
> Today we now follow suited men who sell us false doctrine and have
> elevated themselves up as beyond mortal men with the mirage that they
> hold a secret knowledge or power that we as people don't possess. When
> Christ kicked the money changers from the temple and washed the feet of
> the poor, it was a statement about who we as people should stand with.
> They are thieving from us, the people, everyday and now Bitcoin as tool
> is going to bring back technology into our hands. And I'm glad for that.
>
> So tell me, why should I embrace these white knights coming to
> legitimise Bitcoin with their surveillance and censorship palming it off
> with their gibberish newspeak. These people are real motherfuckers and
> what motivates them primarily is greed at your expense.
>
> They don't see Bitcoin as empowerment. They see Bitcoin as convenience,
> and are willing to compromise the empowerment aspect for more
> convenience. Bitcoin will grow, but the question is in which direction.
>
> I'm confident that Bitcoin will play an established and central role in
> our future financial infrastructure. My objective now is to maintain the
> integrity long enough for Bitcoin's empowerment aspect to play out, and
> grow it in the right directions that give us the power. Just like the
> struggles now to keep the internet uncensored and neutral, so too must
> we struggle to keep Bitcoin uncensored and neutral.
>
> And it's funny because all this talk of Bitcoin as being
> politically-neutral is a way of downplaying the values I've been talking
> about above. You can never be politically neutral. That's a fantasy.
> Technology embodies values. Satoshi had values.
>
> On 26/04/14 13:11, Luke-Jr wrote:
>
> Amir, I think you contribute much to bitcoin, and I value that. But
>
> Bitcoin is
>
> *not* libertarianism. Bitcoin is *not* anarchism. Bitcoin is *not*
> "volunteerism". Bitcoin is *not* a movement for financial freedom - or
>
> any
>
> political movement at all. Bitcoin is a technology, which can and
>
> should
> be
>
> embraced by people of any political affiliation. Adoption by people
>
> with
> views
>
> contrary to your own is not an attack on Bitcoin, it is growth.
>
> On Saturday, April 26, 2014 5:33:48 PM Amir Taaki wrote:
>
> I get what you're doing, but we both know that really isn't the case.
> Allaire speaks from his heart, and they hired Mike Hearn.
> I don't think we'll ever know the whole truth as that's not how these
> proprietary cultures work.
> Check this quote by him:
>
> "A lot of the safeguards that businesses and consumers take for
>
> granted
>
> in their everyday interactions and payments don’t exist in bitcoin
>
> [...]"
>
> or
>
> "if your goal is to ensure widespread adoption of bitcoin, there
>
> needs
>
> to be rules around its use, he says, arguing that it’s not good
>
> enough
>
> to imagine bitcoin can exist above society."
>
> This doesn't sound like descriptions of systems that empower users to
> self-regulate. This is the exact speech used behind many surveillance
> and censorship tools to push them on us. Things like "anti-fraud"
> blacklists or researching correlation techniques on consumer
>
> activity.
>
> If this tech is developed it will be deployed or pushed upon places
>
> like
>
> Coinbase. Coinbase is the only business (or US?) in the valley with a
> banking relationship which they have due to a special relationship
>
> with
>
> JP Morgan and one of their bankers on their board.
> And that's where these products that work against their users will
>
> come
>
> into play. Maybe the industry doesn't have enough balls, and big
>
> Bitcoin
>
> businesses with a large following (CoinBase, BitPay, ... whoever)
>
> start
>
> "self-regulating" by spying, tracking and censoring their users.
>
> On 26/04/14 06:31, Peter Todd wrote:
>
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 10:37:11AM +0100, Amir Taaki wrote:
>
> reducing the risk is newspeak for censorship
>
> protection against fraud is codeword for surveillance.
>
> Maybe it is; maybe it isn't.
>
> I hope Circle is just implementing all the decentralized
>
> technologies
>
> we've been talking about for ages that let people chose on their own
> terms how to reduce the risks involved in their transactions; best
>
> case
>
> is all this talk about moving Bitcoin away from its libertarian
>
> roots
> is
>
> just PR material. After all, Dark Market is an example of that
>
> approach,
>
> yet could also be marketted as "bringing Bitcoin into the mainstream
> with anti-fraud, lower costs, greater privacy safeguard, and
>
> protection
>
> against identity theft".
>
> I'm not very hopeful that's the case, but lets hold off on the
>
> torches
>
> and tar until they publish hard details on what exactly they are
>
> doing.
>
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