Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
I think that you are mostly right except that it's not uninteresting at all for normal people to evade the banks dictatorship, delays and fees (what are you buying with this? what for? wiretransfer will take one week + absurd taxes not even knowing where it's coming from, etc, etc) and except that an interesting part of bitcoin-like networks are contracts, now how can normal people set contracts remains very mysterious and does not appear to be a priority, as well as what kind of contracts can be set finally, I was thinking to create some specific contracts but this is not possible (at least with btc) For the part you describe you are even too nice, the blockchain networks, as they are today, are everything but decentralized, even smaller than the centralized Tor network, it's funny too see how the community thinks necessary each time they mention those networks to say "the P2P network", they are not P2P networks at all, with some exaggeration we could say that they are just networks controlled by a dozen of miners and a dozen of devs, the ensemble being surrounded by many conflicts of interest, until the full nodes can really be decentralized, which is certainly not the current trend And they are wasteful, maybe a good combination would be to create a new proof of something that would use the existing resources (disk space, cpu, etc on existing machins for example) in order to motivate people to host the blockchain or part of it (among others) instead of accumulating new hw and energy to mine with rewards and fees only going to miners, unfortunately a very few care about this kind of proposals Le 31/08/2017 à 13:07, carlo von lynX a écrit : > Would the "darknet" be a better place if there was > no Bitcoin? Are any of the ethical uses of Bitcoin > actually necessary to be done using Bitcoin? Should > society make blockchain finance tools illegal? > Should Tor activists combat criminal uses of the > onion space by impeding its anti-social finance trail? > > Let's discuss it: http://my.pages.de/illegalblockchains > > -- Zcash wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/zcash-wallets Bitcoin wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/bitcoin-wallets Get the torrent dynamic blocklist: http://peersm.com/getblocklist Check the 10 M passwords list: http://peersm.com/findmyass Anti-spies and private torrents, dynamic blocklist: http://torrent-live.org Peersm : http://www.peersm.com torrent-live: https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live node-Tor : https://www.github.com/Ayms/node-Tor GitHub : https://www.github.com/Ayms -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
On Mon, Sep 04, 2017 at 01:40:39PM +0200, Aymeric Vitte wrote: > I think that you are mostly right except that it's not uninteresting at > all for normal people to evade the banks dictatorship, delays and fees > (what are you buying with this? what for? wiretransfer will take one > week + absurd taxes not even knowing where it's coming from, etc, etc) Indeed I entirely left out individual perspectives and legitimate reasons to escape certain banking systems. I was focusing on the long-term societal perspective which makes blockchain currencies even worse than centralized banking: instead of having a certain amount of corruption that could be addressed with better governance or revolution where necessary, those out-of-societal-control money systems make everyone an idiot who pays taxes - thus allowing the gap between rich and poor to skyrocket even faster than the exponential speed we are at today - because capitalism without taxation means poverty for the masses. But I did mention TALER, the free re-implementation of digicash, which allows for anonymous micropayments without dismissing the need for a redistribution system (which is broken, but removing it entirely would not be a good repair technique). Both banking and social services can be fixed with better governance. > contracts, now how can normal people set contracts remains very > mysterious and does not appear to be a priority, as well as what kind of > contracts can be set finally, I was thinking to create some specific > contracts but this is not possible (at least with btc) Those ethereum contracts work with a non-social digital currency. If programmable blockchains were combined with a taxable currency, that could be interesting - it would cut out the networking operator from the banking networks. Not sure if that actually changes much. > For the part you describe you are even too nice, the blockchain > networks, as they are today, are everything but decentralized, even > smaller than the centralized Tor network, it's funny too see how the > community thinks necessary each time they mention those networks to say > "the P2P network", they are not P2P networks at all, with some > exaggeration we could say that they are just networks controlled by a > dozen of miners and a dozen of devs, the ensemble being surrounded by > many conflicts of interest, until the full nodes can really be > decentralized, which is certainly not the current trend Which is all due to proof-of-work. > And they are wasteful, maybe a good combination would be to create a new > proof of something that would use the existing resources (disk space, > cpu, etc on existing machins for example) in order to motivate people to > host the blockchain or part of it (among others) instead of accumulating > new hw and energy to mine with rewards and fees only going to miners, > unfortunately a very few care about this kind of proposals I expect if the worldwide banking network adopts a blockchain system it will be establishing consensus among the participating banks without anyone else in it. Transactions would be more like git commits. None of them are anonymous, all of them are accountable to respective authorities. Essentially it would be just using Merkle trees instead of central brokers, and dropping all other "features" of blockchains. I don't think it will even make a big difference to the economy, let alone to end users. But I didn't even consider this kind of use of financial blockchains in my post, as it has hardly anything to do with bitcoin and co. And certainly nothing with Tor. > Le 31/08/2017 à 13:07, carlo von lynX a écrit : > > Let's discuss it: http://my.pages.de/illegalblockchains -- E-mail is public! Talk to me in private using encryption: http://loupsycedyglgamf.onion/LynX/ irc://loupsycedyglgamf.onion:67/lynX https://psyced.org:34443/LynX/ -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
On 4 September 2017 at 13:40, Aymeric Vitte wrote: > > I think that you are mostly right except that it's not uninteresting at > all for normal people to evade the banks dictatorship, delays and fees > (what are you buying with this? what for? wiretransfer will take one > week + absurd taxes not even knowing where it's coming from, etc, etc) As it happens, I just recently transferred funds internationally. It took 36 hours to clear, at a guaranteed rate. My local bank charged about $8 in fees (mostly for the overhead of liaising with the local receiver of revenue - there's a bunch of paperwork, so I can't really object to the fee). My point is that if you're paying absurd taxes and taking a week, you might be able to find a better option. By contrast BTC, in the same timeframe, dropped more than 10%. If I'd been using it to transfer the same funds, I'd have been massively out of pocket. There are strong arguments for disintermediating financial systems, but we don't need to overhype the problem space, and let's not kid ourselves that Bitcoin is a silver bullet either. -J -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 17:04:10 +0200 Jon Tullett wrote: > As it happens, I just recently transferred funds internationally. It > took 36 hours to clear, at a guaranteed rate. My local bank charged > about $8 in fees But that's still within Europe or the like? Internationally on a wider scale SWIFT transfers tend to cost quite a bit more, around $50 to be expected, and there's basically a $25 minimum charge due to the way that system is set up. See the rightmost column: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/banking/wire-transfers-what-banks-charge/ Also there are horror stories like this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=186594.0 > By contrast BTC, in the same timeframe, dropped more than 10%. If I'd > been using it to transfer the same funds, I'd have been massively out > of pocket. BTC wouldn't require "same timeframe" of 36 hours to transfer, it can be done within less than an hour. And with the recent developments in the BTC world, both transaction speed and cost per transaction will continue to improve. -- With respect, Roman -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
> As it happens, I just recently transferred funds internationally. It > took 36 hours to clear, at a guaranteed rate. My local bank charged > about $8 in fees (mostly for the overhead of liaising with the local > receiver of revenue - there's a bunch of paperwork, so I can't really > object to the fee). My point is that if you're paying absurd taxes and > taking a week, you might be able to find a better option. > By contrast BTC, in the same timeframe, dropped more than 10%. If I'd > been using it to transfer the same funds, I'd have been massively out > of pocket. > There are strong arguments for disintermediating financial systems, > but we don't need to overhype the problem space, and let's not kid > ourselves that Bitcoin is a silver bullet either. Except that Bitcoin takes roughly 10 minutes to clear the first block, so that's invalid comparison. There is zero paperwork with cryptos, so that's better. Other users gain more than 10% at times, so that's invalid. And fees are almost universally both less and flat... better. Instead of whining about volatility, understand that cryptos are not centrally manipulated like fiat, and right now are quite thin compared to fiat... so volatility is expected there as perfectly normal price and market discovery mechanism. Want less volatility, hold and use more cryptos with more people. Long term they'll be better and won't go to shit when your country of choice flips upside down. As far as tor goes, many cryptocurrencies can run over tor... pick a few and run some of their nodes as onions or i2p's. zensystem.io has perhaps gone farthest with work therein. You can send all the clearing time and former fees saved to this address in the form of golden bullets... btc:141nbtnunoix7kKjbAspmZVCPamP9rgJST -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
Le 04/09/2017 à 18:04, grarpamp a écrit : >> As it happens, I just recently transferred funds internationally. It >> took 36 hours to clear, at a guaranteed rate. My local bank charged >> about $8 in fees (mostly for the overhead of liaising with the local >> receiver of revenue - there's a bunch of paperwork, so I can't really >> object to the fee). My point is that if you're paying absurd taxes and >> taking a week, you might be able to find a better option. >> By contrast BTC, in the same timeframe, dropped more than 10%. If I'd >> been using it to transfer the same funds, I'd have been massively out >> of pocket. >> There are strong arguments for disintermediating financial systems, >> but we don't need to overhype the problem space, and let's not kid >> ourselves that Bitcoin is a silver bullet either. > Except that Bitcoin takes roughly 10 minutes to > clear the first block, so that's invalid comparison. > There is zero paperwork with cryptos, so that's better. > Other users gain more than 10% at times, so that's invalid. > And fees are almost universally both less and flat... better. Indeed and replacing swift is anyway more the job of Stellar or Ripple than bitcoin > Instead of whining about volatility, understand that > cryptos are not centrally manipulated like fiat Unfortunately I think they are for now, for reasons already explained and I believe that prices are manipulated too, maybe this is linked to http://www.peersm.com/fractals/, "Then we can now easily forecast the price of Bitcoin and become rich", this if for fun right now and I should continue it but the answer at the end is that the very same thing did reproduce again, and does reproduce whatever external event occurs, always the same thing... > , and right now > are quite thin compared to fiat... so volatility is expected there > as perfectly normal price and market discovery mechanism. > Want less volatility, hold and use more cryptos with > more people. Long term they'll be better Yes, this does not contradict my previous argument but we can see that volatility is evaporating with time > and won't go > to shit when your country of choice flips upside down. > > As far as tor goes, many cryptocurrencies can run over tor... > pick a few and run some of their nodes as onions or i2p's. > zensystem.io has perhaps gone farthest with work therein. > > You can send all the clearing time and former fees saved > to this address in the form of golden bullets... > btc:141nbtnunoix7kKjbAspmZVCPamP9rgJST -- Zcash wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/zcash-wallets Bitcoin wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/bitcoin-wallets Get the torrent dynamic blocklist: http://peersm.com/getblocklist Check the 10 M passwords list: http://peersm.com/findmyass Anti-spies and private torrents, dynamic blocklist: http://torrent-live.org Peersm : http://www.peersm.com torrent-live: https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live node-Tor : https://www.github.com/Ayms/node-Tor GitHub : https://www.github.com/Ayms -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
I don't really see people use Taler in Africa, as mentioned in my previous email can't Stellar or Ripple do what you want? I was talking about bitcoin contracts too, not only ethereum, contracts don't have to be necessarily linked to money For me the non societal aspect for btc is more due to the proof of nothing for everybody (except miners) Probably we will be told soon that we are going off topic for this list... Le 04/09/2017 à 15:07, carlo von lynX a écrit : > On Mon, Sep 04, 2017 at 01:40:39PM +0200, Aymeric Vitte wrote: >> I think that you are mostly right except that it's not uninteresting at >> all for normal people to evade the banks dictatorship, delays and fees >> (what are you buying with this? what for? wiretransfer will take one >> week + absurd taxes not even knowing where it's coming from, etc, etc) > Indeed I entirely left out individual perspectives and legitimate > reasons to escape certain banking systems. I was focusing on the > long-term societal perspective which makes blockchain currencies > even worse than centralized banking: instead of having a certain > amount of corruption that could be addressed with better governance > or revolution where necessary, those out-of-societal-control money > systems make everyone an idiot who pays taxes - thus allowing the > gap between rich and poor to skyrocket even faster than the > exponential speed we are at today - because capitalism without > taxation means poverty for the masses. > > But I did mention TALER, the free re-implementation of digicash, > which allows for anonymous micropayments without dismissing the > need for a redistribution system (which is broken, but removing > it entirely would not be a good repair technique). Both banking > and social services can be fixed with better governance. > >> contracts, now how can normal people set contracts remains very >> mysterious and does not appear to be a priority, as well as what kind of >> contracts can be set finally, I was thinking to create some specific >> contracts but this is not possible (at least with btc) > Those ethereum contracts work with a non-social digital currency. > If programmable blockchains were combined with a taxable currency, > that could be interesting - it would cut out the networking operator > from the banking networks. Not sure if that actually changes much. > >> For the part you describe you are even too nice, the blockchain >> networks, as they are today, are everything but decentralized, even >> smaller than the centralized Tor network, it's funny too see how the >> community thinks necessary each time they mention those networks to say >> "the P2P network", they are not P2P networks at all, with some >> exaggeration we could say that they are just networks controlled by a >> dozen of miners and a dozen of devs, the ensemble being surrounded by >> many conflicts of interest, until the full nodes can really be >> decentralized, which is certainly not the current trend > Which is all due to proof-of-work. > >> And they are wasteful, maybe a good combination would be to create a new >> proof of something that would use the existing resources (disk space, >> cpu, etc on existing machins for example) in order to motivate people to >> host the blockchain or part of it (among others) instead of accumulating >> new hw and energy to mine with rewards and fees only going to miners, >> unfortunately a very few care about this kind of proposals > I expect if the worldwide banking network adopts a blockchain system > it will be establishing consensus among the participating banks without > anyone else in it. Transactions would be more like git commits. None > of them are anonymous, all of them are accountable to respective > authorities. Essentially it would be just using Merkle trees instead > of central brokers, and dropping all other "features" of blockchains. > I don't think it will even make a big difference to the economy, > let alone to end users. But I didn't even consider this kind of use > of financial blockchains in my post, as it has hardly anything to do > with bitcoin and co. And certainly nothing with Tor. > >> Le 31/08/2017 à 13:07, carlo von lynX a écrit : >>> Let's discuss it: http://my.pages.de/illegalblockchains -- Zcash wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/zcash-wallets Bitcoin wallets made simple: https://github.com/Ayms/bitcoin-wallets Get the torrent dynamic blocklist: http://peersm.com/getblocklist Check the 10 M passwords list: http://peersm.com/findmyass Anti-spies and private torrents, dynamic blocklist: http://torrent-live.org Peersm : http://www.peersm.com torrent-live: https://github.com/Ayms/torrent-live node-Tor : https://www.github.com/Ayms/node-Tor GitHub : https://www.github.com/Ayms -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
On Mon, Sep 04, 2017 at 08:35:17PM +0500, Roman Mamedov wrote: > BTC wouldn't require "same timeframe" of 36 hours to transfer, it can be done > within less than an hour. And with the recent developments in the BTC world, > both transaction speed and cost per transaction will continue to improve. I think I repeatedly mentioned TALER which isn't just ethically healthy compared to BTC, it also does transactions in milliseconds. Not only is BTC burning up the amount of electricity that an average household consumes in a day, just for one transaction. I was argueing that there really is no ethical use case left that can't be solved in a better way, and for the good of Tor I wonder if we should actively welcome regulatory measures against Bitcoin. What I didn't expect was that what I had been saying for a year or two suddenly became Chinese gov policy on the day I wrote it down... -- E-mail is public! Talk to me in private using encryption: http://loupsycedyglgamf.onion/LynX/ irc://loupsycedyglgamf.onion:67/lynX https://psyced.org:34443/LynX/ -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
Re: [tor-talk] Is there any societal use in Bitcoin?
On 5 September 2017 at 08:25, carlo von lynX wrote: > On Mon, Sep 04, 2017 at 08:35:17PM +0500, Roman Mamedov wrote: >> BTC wouldn't require "same timeframe" of 36 hours to transfer, it can be done >> within less than an hour. And with the recent developments in the BTC world, >> both transaction speed and cost per transaction will continue to improve. > > I think I repeatedly mentioned TALER You did indeed. Couple of issues with Taler. First, it doesn't show up on Google. You have to know that it's "GNU Taler". Sure, RMS would probably argue that's a feature not a bug, but it's something of a barrier to awareness. Second, release notes from this June [1] paraphrase thusly: > This is still an alpha release > * Exchange implements the full Taler protocol, but does not integrate with > traditional banking systems > * No integration with "real" banks, so only toy currencies are available for > now. > * Documentation, testing, error handling and performance still need to be > improved. That has NOPE NOPE NOPE written all over it for me, I'm afraid. I'm sure it's very clever, but until one of the release notes says "You can now safely transfer funds from one bank to another", I'll stick with established options (which include BTC, just not for spot forex xfers). -J [1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/info-gnu/2017-06/msg5.html -- tor-talk mailing list - tor-talk@lists.torproject.org To unsubscribe or change other settings go to https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-talk
