What are the stupid things you used to say about Bitcoin? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

What are the stupid things you used to say about Bitcoin?

2870 sats \ 47 comments \ @birdeye21 23 Sep 2023 bitcoin

"Blockchain not Bitcoin"

227 sats \ 0 replies \ @343pg 23 Sep 2023

I wrote this on a WhatsApp group in 2017… Of course I knew next to nothing about Bitcoin

“Can I just say for the record, the whole thing is nuts. It’s a giant Ponzi scheme and our friend X has no more idea when the crash (and I mean the big crash) will come any more than the rest of us. It makes the price of tulips in the 17th century look stable.”

191 sats \ 0 replies \ @nicosey 23 Sep 2023

10 minutes is too slow...

149 sats \ 2 replies \ @fred 23 Sep 2023

Onecoin is better than Bitcoin 😂 circa 2016

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 23 Sep 2023

LOL seriously?

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @fred 23 Sep 2023

Yes, I got to know of cryptocurrency through onecoin, lost my investment then took the initiative to undergo a 3 month diploma course in digital currency with university of Nicosia taught by Andreas Antonopolous

144 sats \ 9 replies \ @0330830bf9 23 Sep 2023

I used to think it was inadequately private, and thus fussed around with privacy shitcoins.

It took a long time to appreciate how private it actually is, and that most "privacy advocates" are spooks trying to attack it and steer people to shitcoins with smaller anonsets or a premine.

All the chainanalysis stuff, KYC choke-points, honeypots like scamourai... all of it is a desperate and failing attempt to deanonymize it. But, at the end of the day, they are a complete and total LARP.

Therefore, you may be able to trace a specific coin throughout its lifetime, but until it's deposited to a KYC'd account, a snoop can't achieve an undeniable link to ownership. It's off-chain intel that is the privacy vector, not Bitcoin... and no shitcoin can fix that.

THEN you consider Lightning, which is basically perfect privacy. Take your dirty KYC'd UTXO and dilute it into the network. Lightning is a giant coinjoin in effect.

Sovereign level size, to the tune of billions, the shit that causes national security concerns via Iran and North Korea and so on will probably still be traceable with high-confidence with orgs that have NSA-level resources, just because the size stands out...

There is no one that has ever written or discussed Bitcoin's inadequate privacy that simultaneously knew wtf they were talking about AND honest about the needs vs its capabilities.

42 sats \ 3 replies \ @nullcount 23 Sep 2023

You admit to once thinking that BTC has inadequate privacy, then you call EVERYONE who thinks this way, a spook. You're admitting you were once a spook. Jk.

I haven't found a Darknet market that accepts LN yet. It doesn't help that receiving nodes have less privacy than senders. I'm hopeful that LN will oneday be useful to Darknets.

But until then, using a privacy shitcoin with strong privacy BY DEFAULT is going to be continue to be the recommended way for most people to transact with Darknets. I say this because its a fact, not because I want people to buy shitcoins, and not because I want people to "have a lower anonymity set".

Anonymity set means nothing when you risk having no anonymity whatsoever.

Agree that Bitcoin CAN be private. But the cost to achieve privacy is high, and so are the number of mistakes that can undo that privacy later. Someone looking to buy shooms online is already struggling with how to sign a PGP message correctly, they cannot also be relied upon to make every BTC transaction private with no mistakes.

BTC has a bad reputation in Darknets for getting people locked up when they "use it wrong". Just because there isn't always "undeniable proof of ownership" doesn't mean that public onchain flows aren't incriminating in other ways. They can reveal related addresses for LE to snoop until someone inevitably makes a mistake that results in an arrest, interrogation, and plea deal where someone snitches and results in more arrests.

This article is 10 years old and the state of BTC privacy is largely unchanged since then.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/09/05/follow-the-bitcoins-how-we-got-busted-buying-drugs-on-silk-roads-black-market/?sh=24f988e1adf7

42 sats \ 2 replies \ @0330830bf9 23 Sep 2023

I said fussed with privacy shitcoins, I never recommended them to anyone, contributed to the ecosystem, spoke at conferences, wrote an article, did a podcast or vlog.

Simply believing disinformation doesn't make one a spook, pushing that information psuedo-professionally does.

I haven't found a Darknet market that accepts LN yet. It doesn't help that receiving nodes have less privacy than senders. I'm hopeful that LN will oneday be useful to Darknets.

Using a DNM in the first place implies dick-all knowledge of privacy.

Why would someone doing something illicit use a honeypot like that? phone a CIA hotline by using Tor? Correlate a payment with a listing? Correlate a userbase?

DNM's are a terrible idea if your goal is to hide your commerce, and their not using Lightning is a great signal. The real dark markets are clearnet encrypted messengers and offline comms, using cash, favors, Bitcoin, and countless other means of exchange.

People getting locked up for using it wrong are using other things wrong too if their goal is privacy, because Bitcoin alone can't incriminate you. It's a rope long enough to hang yourself with, like any good tool.

Shitcoins doesn't fix that. They do the opposite. Per the DNM example, shitcoins makes people even more careless, because with a false sense a security they do something stupid like use a DNM.

EDIT: and on LN receiver privacy... thats bolt12 disinformation pushed by spooks working for blockstream and grant money. Privacy oriented LN shops have been using randomized scids for a few years now.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nullcount 23 Sep 2023

DNMs exist for reputation and escrow. It also tends to have lower prices because suppliers list there directly, whereas your private chat vendor may be a reseller.

Also, when vendors compete alongside each other's listings on the same platform it holds them accountable somewhat to providing good quality (lest they get a bad review)

If you already trust a supplier, then private chat apps are great! But if that supplier ever tries to fleece you, there is no recourse other than to stop ordering from them.

Agree that darknets are greatly flawed in many ways. They are always being raided and taken down, for starters.

However, each market that falls is a lesson in a new way NOT to build and operate a market.

People clearly want free markets and it is only a matter time before there exists an architecture that enables a DNM that cannot be taken down and protects all users, all while providing better UX than eBay.

When such a market does emerge, I just really hope they allow BTC/LN. And the fact that currently, BTC use is trending down on DNMs and none accept LN is not a good signal.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @0330830bf9 23 Sep 2023

Your arguments for use of a DNM are still not an endorsement of their privacy, and so we can't conclude that their lack of BTC/LN use is an indictment of it's privacy.

Reality is the dark market is all around us, and BTC/LN is trending up.

31 sats \ 2 replies \ @DarthCoin 23 Sep 2023

Lightning is a giant coinjoin in effect.

few...

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @0330830bf9 23 Sep 2023

Have you noticed the overlap in who spreads Lightning FUD and promote centralized Coinjoin implementations that track xpubs?

The spooks are so desperate, it'd be funny if there weren't so many people that fell for it.

33 sats \ 0 replies \ @DarthCoin 23 Sep 2023

ssshhhh let them break their neck. More sats for us...

21 sats \ 1 reply \ @knorozov 23 Sep 2023

Can you easily coinjoin 10 btc via LN?

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @0330830bf9 23 Sep 2023

People will argue over the definition of easily, but yes.

128 sats \ 0 replies \ @carlosfandango 23 Sep 2023

‘That’s only for geeks and criminals’

139 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 23 Sep 2023

When I first heard about bitcoin iirc on HN in 2012, I’m pretty sure I said to @jason “these mfers made internet money. The government is going to shut it down.”

I didn’t realize there was nothing to shut down.

71 sats \ 2 replies \ @patrick1 23 Sep 2023

I used to say that the only scaling solution we need is lightning. We obviously need something better.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @orthwyrm 23 Sep 2023

I am not sure about "something better" as there are always trade-offs, but this post resonates with me nonetheless.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @birdeye21 OP 23 Sep 2023

Layered money!

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @quark 23 Sep 2023

I said it was incredible that its price in dollars reached $1.0 so fast and that it would probably crash back to 0.1 😂

43 sats \ 0 replies \ @OC 23 Sep 2023

"Fake internet money"

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @fernandoporazzi 23 Sep 2023

"I am in it for the technology"

31 sats \ 1 reply \ @DarthCoin 23 Sep 2023

nice meme! Not bragging or anything else like that, but I never said stupid things about Bitcoin. Was like first see, first love, forever. Never FUD. When I didn't know something about Bitcoin is simply STFU and listen to others, read. I didn't talk about Bitcoin from my ass.

122 sats \ 0 replies \ @nemo 23 Sep 2023

deleted by author

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @TomK 23 Sep 2023

2014, classics: "Mafia-money laundering scheme, useless, if anybody can make these coins it's super-inflationary''...

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @lightwalker 23 Sep 2023

I used to think Blockchain was developed to enable anyone to use it anyhow. That was the worst thing to think about Blockchain. Blockchain is solely for Bitcoin.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @0232cf2253 23 Sep 2023

I used to consider Bitcoin much closer to gold than it was and was briefly in the camp that Litecoin would be the "silver" to Bitcoin. This was before LN was even a discussion.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 23 Sep 2023

Probably the same as everyone else ponzi scheme, tulips, going to zero.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @knorozov 23 Sep 2023

For a brief period I believed we should go with bigger blocks.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @ceife 23 Sep 2023

"It's only used by tech-savvy criminals" 😂

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @CoSatoshi 23 Sep 2023

I thought the 21 Million cap was a problem because I didn't know it was divisible by 100 million, and could be extended later if needed. Also, I hadn't finished my econ degree so my understanding of monetary theory was el zilcho.

21 sats \ 0 replies \ @Bitcoiner1 23 Sep 2023

Just being worried about the price

21 sats \ 2 replies \ @kriptan 23 Sep 2023

I recently heard on YouTube that when the last Bitcoin is mined, it will switch to the POS algorithm Then even in the comments under someone’s video to questions like these. I left the same comment that it will move to pos. To which I immediately received a question about proofs, which I, of course, could not find, I no longer say what I don’t know, I realize I’m ashamed. I hope you won't scold me too much for this))

33 sats \ 1 reply \ @0232cf2253 23 Sep 2023

I can see opportunity for misinformation to be spread here, which is what it sounds like what happened. You are just as vulnerable to propaganda and misinformation as everyone else. For clarity when all the Bitcoin is mined, miners will make 100% of their revenue off transaction fees alone. There will be no fundamental change to the network or its rules.