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I'm starting to get sick of these Bitcoin posts.

shadowOfShadow 13y ago
Starting, eh? The author basically says the bitcoin handler at the coffee shop will know how much you have unless you go through a massive scheme (which is probably borderline illegal for decent reasons) to gain back any sense of normalcy. This is what happens when people take their own ball to go play in their own yard. If it's going to take the amount of time, energy, and expertise to barely make bitcoin usable, how does the cognitive dissonance not overwhelm the coinbugs?
- nwh 13y ago
  That's generally not the case. You might be able to see some of my funds, but certainly not the entire contents of my wallet unless you're using very broken ones. I've hundreds of different inputs in my wallet, and you'd only be seeing one of them.
  - epscylonb 13y ago
    I think the danger of the public nature of the blockchain is way overstated. It's fairly trivial to introduce reasonable doubt into your transaction history, blockchain analysis is nowhere near as useful to law enforcement as some people think. The situation I worry about more is when someone is operating outside of the law, for example if you legitimately but unknowingly end up with some coins that were previously stolen, and then some guys with baseball bats turn up at your house.
    - oleganza 13y ago
      That's why you split the coins repeatedly as you mix them. You don't want more than 0.1% of someone's "dirty" history. Client-side statistical analysis allows each node to decide which coins are good for them personally. (So that all coins are "far" away from each other.)
- oleganza 13y ago
  Bitcoin is not so bad at privacy as you say. But it's certainly can be made better with fully automated solution deployed on massive scale individually, without major agreement or protocol changes. It's just an evolution of the technology. Ajax apps also did not appear overnight on the web.
VMG 13y ago
Get used to it. This now is a bigger part of the tech world than NodeJS and friends.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- fat0wl 13y ago
  then the tech world just got 1000x more boring. I thought people got into the startup world because they wanted to AVOID wall street.... best thing the author said lol -- I recommend governments to shut down the entire network to prevent people from doing nasty things with Bitcoin. amen Btw VMG this is the last you'll hear from me! I'm trying to resolve to not read/comment on any more Bitcoin posts. It's fueling the fire of boredom. I gotta code somethin cool in the next few months so we can have a new headline on this site finally.
  - VMG 13y ago
    Well, something so dangerous that must be shut down by the government can't be boring in my eyes. Sad to see you go, Bitcoin needs critics and contrarians.
    - fat0wl 13y ago
      Heh so you just find poker too banal, eh? Lol if you want to code something better than Bitcoin (I think it's trivially easy using libcoin but involves putting a couple of legal/economic advisors on the payroll, which I can't afford yet) you may well count me in, but I'm tired of this same old block chain. FYI gov't still hasn't shut down Amway & they are obviously a pyramid scheme. That's why I'm not interested, it seems like a clear failure to me that is just festering -- why wait for the official word? It may take a while. I'd want to build a cryptocurrency that stabilizes much faster. All the best
- Helianthus 13y ago
  I'm on fat0wl's train out of here. Previously I gave you guys the respect of honest antagonism. The quackery of bitcoin is so obviously ludicrous I can no longer justify my time spent pointing it out. People throwing money around does not make a thing important. Don't you dare say no one warned you when the whole thing comes crashing down. And yes, fine, whatever, you can say "toldya so" all you like when Bitcoin fulfills your fantastic greed and you lot join the 1% of your new capitalist utopia. Real moral high ground you'll have, then.
fat0wl 13y ago
HN needs a downvote button for articles. I think that would solve this quickly.
- maaku 13y ago
  It's that little up arrow next to every other article.
- bmelton 13y ago
  It has a 'flag' function if you've got enough karma to see it.
na85 13y ago
Honestly, I'd rather read about bitcoin than the app someone wrote in X lines of *.js
josephagoss 13y ago
Yeah I can actually understand where you are coming from. I spend a lot of time with Bitcoin but never come to HN for Bitcoin information, I prefer my HN being startups and programming/algorithm stuff. I think one of the reasons Bitcoin is becoming more popular on HN is that a lot of us are interested in fun/challenging tech ways to make a decent living or even make a million bucks. At the moment Bitcoin is making a bunch of nerds millionaires and we are all interested in making sure Bitcoin overcomes all the hurdles ahead.
- jafaku 13y ago
  Bitcoin is programmable money, so I don't understand how there can be programmers who find it boring.
- alandarev 13y ago
  Hi josephagoss, could you please share with us your source of Bitcoin information? In case you want to keep it private, I have an email provided.
  - josephagoss 13y ago
    Haha nowhere special, everything I know originates from Bitcointalk. A lot of information about the people, code, economy is there. However you do have to spend sometime searching and sifting through the noise. Apart from the massive signal to noise ratio any site or related information ends up on that forum one way or another, it is a fantastic central hub. Just be warned, 99% of the stuff there is absolute rubbish. A lot of the code has been explained over the years on the forum and a lot of discussion takes place about how certain things might be better off different. (At the moment a big area of interest is Coinjoin and Zerocoin is discussed quite a bit too.) Also the inventor of hashcash frequents the forum sometimes and offers good insight.

Starting, eh? The author basically says the bitcoin handler at the coffee shop will know how much you have unless you go through a massive scheme (which is probably borderline illegal for decent reasons) to gain back any sense of normalcy. This is what happens when people take their own ball to go play in their own yard. If it's going to take the amount of time, energy, and expertise to barely make bitcoin usable, how does the cognitive dissonance not overwhelm the coinbugs?

nwh 13y ago
That's generally not the case. You might be able to see some of my funds, but certainly not the entire contents of my wallet unless you're using very broken ones. I've hundreds of different inputs in my wallet, and you'd only be seeing one of them.
- epscylonb 13y ago
  I think the danger of the public nature of the blockchain is way overstated. It's fairly trivial to introduce reasonable doubt into your transaction history, blockchain analysis is nowhere near as useful to law enforcement as some people think. The situation I worry about more is when someone is operating outside of the law, for example if you legitimately but unknowingly end up with some coins that were previously stolen, and then some guys with baseball bats turn up at your house.
  - oleganza 13y ago
    That's why you split the coins repeatedly as you mix them. You don't want more than 0.1% of someone's "dirty" history. Client-side statistical analysis allows each node to decide which coins are good for them personally. (So that all coins are "far" away from each other.)
oleganza 13y ago
Bitcoin is not so bad at privacy as you say. But it's certainly can be made better with fully automated solution deployed on massive scale individually, without major agreement or protocol changes. It's just an evolution of the technology. Ajax apps also did not appear overnight on the web.

VMG 13y ago

Get used to it. This now is a bigger part of the tech world than NodeJS and friends.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
fat0wl 13y ago
then the tech world just got 1000x more boring. I thought people got into the startup world because they wanted to AVOID wall street.... best thing the author said lol -- I recommend governments to shut down the entire network to prevent people from doing nasty things with Bitcoin. amen Btw VMG this is the last you'll hear from me! I'm trying to resolve to not read/comment on any more Bitcoin posts. It's fueling the fire of boredom. I gotta code somethin cool in the next few months so we can have a new headline on this site finally.
- VMG 13y ago
  Well, something so dangerous that must be shut down by the government can't be boring in my eyes. Sad to see you go, Bitcoin needs critics and contrarians.
  - fat0wl 13y ago
    Heh so you just find poker too banal, eh? Lol if you want to code something better than Bitcoin (I think it's trivially easy using libcoin but involves putting a couple of legal/economic advisors on the payroll, which I can't afford yet) you may well count me in, but I'm tired of this same old block chain. FYI gov't still hasn't shut down Amway & they are obviously a pyramid scheme. That's why I'm not interested, it seems like a clear failure to me that is just festering -- why wait for the official word? It may take a while. I'd want to build a cryptocurrency that stabilizes much faster. All the best
Helianthus 13y ago
I'm on fat0wl's train out of here. Previously I gave you guys the respect of honest antagonism. The quackery of bitcoin is so obviously ludicrous I can no longer justify my time spent pointing it out. People throwing money around does not make a thing important. Don't you dare say no one warned you when the whole thing comes crashing down. And yes, fine, whatever, you can say "toldya so" all you like when Bitcoin fulfills your fantastic greed and you lot join the 1% of your new capitalist utopia. Real moral high ground you'll have, then.

fat0wl 13y ago

HN needs a downvote button for articles. I think that would solve this quickly.

maaku 13y ago
It's that little up arrow next to every other article.
bmelton 13y ago
It has a 'flag' function if you've got enough karma to see it.

na85 13y ago

Honestly, I'd rather read about bitcoin than the app someone wrote in X lines of *.js

josephagoss 13y ago

Yeah I can actually understand where you are coming from. I spend a lot of time with Bitcoin but never come to HN for Bitcoin information, I prefer my HN being startups and programming/algorithm stuff. I think one of the reasons Bitcoin is becoming more popular on HN is that a lot of us are interested in fun/challenging tech ways to make a decent living or even make a million bucks. At the moment Bitcoin is making a bunch of nerds millionaires and we are all interested in making sure Bitcoin overcomes all the hurdles ahead.

jafaku 13y ago
Bitcoin is programmable money, so I don't understand how there can be programmers who find it boring.
alandarev 13y ago
Hi josephagoss, could you please share with us your source of Bitcoin information? In case you want to keep it private, I have an email provided.
- josephagoss 13y ago
  Haha nowhere special, everything I know originates from Bitcointalk. A lot of information about the people, code, economy is there. However you do have to spend sometime searching and sifting through the noise. Apart from the massive signal to noise ratio any site or related information ends up on that forum one way or another, it is a fantastic central hub. Just be warned, 99% of the stuff there is absolute rubbish. A lot of the code has been explained over the years on the forum and a lot of discussion takes place about how certain things might be better off different. (At the moment a big area of interest is Coinjoin and Zerocoin is discussed quite a bit too.) Also the inventor of hashcash frequents the forum sometimes and offers good insight.