Very good. Posted on my page. Thank you for the detail that went into the
presentation...100% agreed.


On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 6:05 PM, Michael Goldstein <michael@???>wrote:

> "Technology embodies values. Satoshi had values."
>
> I thought Peter Todd summarized it quite nicely during the radio
> discussion in Austin a couple weeks ago. Bitcoin as a technology does not
> have political values, but its qualities are such that to value Bitcoin to
> any degree (including not at all) is voicing a political opinion. If
> Satoshi valued anything but individual freedom of speech and association,
> he was really bad at voicing that by creating a protocol like Bitcoin.
>
> I have argued here that as it stands, valuing Bitcoin is valuing
> anarchism, regardless of how you want to label or rationalize it:
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPY-5SR-jPQ
>
>
> On Sat, Apr 26, 2014 at 1:34 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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