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In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

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Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#801

Post by tenuousemphasis »

pepesza wrote: post #657
MithrilTuxedo wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought cashlessness without a trusted third party was a solved problem. https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

Bitcoin the network is fully transparent, which makes BTC not really fungible - it can and is traced, which creates better/worse BTC. This is why coinbase (small c) BTC is sold at premium. Bitcoin should and will die, but in its place a thousand flowers will bloom. FYI, you can have BTC asset without Bitcoin network in trust-less manner TODAY. See recent paper by Leona Hioki on the way to do it using Witness Encrypti…

Lightning solves both scalability and privacy of the base layer of bitcoin.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#802

Post by sangnoir »

NhanH wrote: post #660
ladallada wrote: post #625

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if I claim that they can’t use physical force because they (the government) didn’t have the popular support and risk facing overwhelming violence escalation, what is your response to that? I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? This doesn't really makes sense to me in a liberal democracy…

> I'm not sure I'm following 100% your question, but I think you mean what if the government is so unpopular that the country is close to a revolution from its citizens? I meant that they didn’t have the popular support to shut down the protest (I was not talking about the general popular support to the government as a whole, but just this specific issue). In the previous post, you were assuming that the protest does…

> you were assuming that the protest does not have popular support and I wonder if that assumption is correct

The was a poll and it showed that the majority did not support the protest, by a landslide. IIRC, 72% of responses selected "Protestors have made their point, it's time they went home" (paraphrasing), a minority supported continuation.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#803

Post by tenuousemphasis »

heavyset_go wrote: post #564
ArchD wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You did not mention the Lightning Network, where fees are negligible. You cannot seriously research on bitcoin without coming across the Lightning Network.

Off-chain solutions to the inherent inefficiencies of blockchain applications also sidestep the advantages that cryptocurrency proponents promise blockchains will bring.

Not really. Lightning is build on top of Bitcoin, every Lightning payment is a real Bitcoin transaction that can be settled to the network if necessary. It has all of the benefits of Bitcoin, plus higher throughput, enhanced privacy, lower fees, and faster settlement.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#804

Post by tenuousemphasis »

bugbuddy wrote: post #117
neb_b wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As long as bitcoin exists, the battle is not lost.

So does bitcoin work without the internet? Otherwise, does everyone have internet and the devices to access it? How is bitcoin any better than other digital payments/assets?

Without any internet at all, or without the payment device having constant internet access? Because you can transmit a bitcoin transaction over NFC, Bluetooth, QR codes, etc to the receiver, who can then broadcast it at their leisure.

Yeah with no internet at all, Bitcoin along with all modern financial infrastructure breaks down.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#805

Post by 14 »

JPKab wrote: post #786
telephone2 wrote: post #769

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's important that we draw a line in the sand about what is acceptable behaviour in society. Protesting is a right. Shutting down a city, while being fueled by disinformation networks controlled by foreign state actors, and being funded by foreign political interests, is a threat to national security. The problem is that it is very difficult to pinpoint where to draw that line of distinction... but it is som…

Would you have supported the US government applying the metrics for when protests should be shut down, and all financial supporters have their accounts frozen without due process. for the BLM protests in summer 2020? I am glad that didn't happen. The protests were mostly peaceful, but the fringe actors in the protest were dramatically more destructive and violent than anything in these protests. There aren't videos o…

Well said

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#806

Post by s1artibartfast »

adriand wrote: post #792
s1artibartfast wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The correct solution to Illegal behavior in a healthy democracy is to arrest someone and try them in court. We shouldn't be denying that to to anybody no matter how wrong they are.

Banks were instructed to unfreeze accounts on Monday, Feb 21 ( https://www.wsj.com/articles/canada-instructs-banks-to-unfre... ). The Emergencies Act that kicked off the account freezes was enacted a week earlier, on Monday, Feb 15. If you were involved in an illegal blockade/occupation, would you honestly choose being arrested and charged with one or more crimes and run the risk of a prison sentence/criminal record,…

Yes, I think the truckers should be charged for their crimes. No, I don't think their assets should be frozen without an court process.

This is because don't support extra judicial asset seizure as a valid policing tool.

You posed your question as an either/or, but I haven't seen any pardon claim that the truckers will never be charged (not that it would Change my position)

Using a legal system to enforce laws is the line that separates legitimate governments from racketeers. I believe that it should not be crossed outside of active warzones.

Separating people from their money is an extremely powerful tool. People capitulate quickly if you threaten to starve their family and children. It should never be used simply because you don't want to go to the effort of charging someone with a crime and arresting them.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#807

Post by yellowapple »

erichocean wrote: post #682
yellowapple wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Governments can make it a felony (jail time, fines) to interact with your wallet, effectively freezing it. Governments already make it a felony to possess various illicit substances above a certain quantity. That hasn't done much to curtail the drug trade. More to the point: if a government attempted this, it would open up every other Bitcoin user to a DoS attack; I would just need to send some money around to well…

> I would just need to send some money around to well-known addresses to "freeze" those wallets, too. Easily solved by sending illicitly obtained bitcoins to the government—which they can trivially ask you to do, or automate on the exchange that you're on. Note: people can already deposit illicit funds into your regular bank account without your permission, and it causes no difficulties. > They would need to control…

> Easily solved by sending illicitly obtained bitcoins to the government—which they can trivially ask you to do, or automate on the exchange that you're on.

Which means I can easily launder my own money by claiming that "someone" sent frozen cryptocurrency to me "maliciously".

> The government has no need to confiscate bitcoins when it can prevent their legal use without confiscation.

The government has no more ability to prevent use of Bitcoins than it does to prevent use of cash or gold. Again, making something illegal doesn't prevent it from happening anyway.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#808

Post by dheera »

smcl wrote: post #668
fortuna86 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to pay for a beer in China using cash (Yuan) and they refused. Credit card, no way. They just gave me the beer for free.

I wonder how this would impact tourism. Like, if I'm at the beginning stage of planning a trip and I'm choosing where I want to go then "weirdly requires setting up a payment app" is one of the criteria that puts a country quite far down my list.

It used to be worse than that, until only VERY recently you need a China bank account to set up WeChat payments, and you need a China +86 mobile number to set up a bank account.

Granted, if you are fluent in local language you can get a mobile number and bank account in less than an hour if you go first thing in the morning to beat the lines, but for tourists who do not speak Chinese it is basically damn near impossible to navigate setting all that up.

That said, international tourism isn't a big revenue generator, they care FAR more about the domestic tourism market, which is many times bigger. Foreign tourists are largely an afterthought.

Even now, domestic tourists can just tap their national ID card to board trains but tourists usually have to stand in line to buy paper tickets, or even if you get your bank account and all set up to buy tickets online, you'll still need to stand in line to print out the ticket because the electronic readers at train boarding gates don't support reading passports or foreign IDs of any sort.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#809

Post by webXL »

agentultra wrote: post #790
romaniv wrote: post #164

> The government’s action is troubling enough, but what should really disturb us is the ease and invisibility with which it is being done. This is such a great point. I'm not sure why it needs to be made over and over again, but it seems that's the only way it doesn't get buried. Let's play a game. I will be the institution, you will be the person. You will get ability to record me with your cellphone and post stuff…

This is literally not what happened in Canada. The Emergencies Act does not allow the government to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It must also be agreed to by the provinces. It's use has a fixed duration and scope of action. It was designed to prevent executive over-reach while still allowing the government, at the federal level, to respond to unprecedented situations that require it. Everyone who was a…

> It's use has a fixed duration and scope of action.

Sounds like "15 days to flatten the curve".

> Everyone who was arrested at the illegal occupation is being given the same rights and freedoms everyone gets in this country. The accounts and crypto wallets being frozen and seized are those that belong to people organizing and funding the occupation.

"occupation" is an interesting word choice. Others might describe it as a protest against an unwarranted violation of their rights and freedoms. The "occupation" was a response to new (rash) government policies, undertaken to make them reverse those rash policies. This is what healthy democracies do.

Re: In our cashless society, we need to take digital jail seriously

#810

Post by dang »

busymom0 wrote: post #455
defaultname wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Quoted post unavailable.

Would you please stop doing political/ideological flamewar on HN? It's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for. We ban accounts that do it, regardless of what ideology they favor or disfavor, so please don't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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