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47 sats \ 8 replies \ @windward 25 Apr \ on: Does bitcoin have any value if Russian oligarchs can't use it? bitcoin
even though they weren't in charge of customer funds, I'm pretty sure that the feds are going to argue that the centralized coordinator situation is going to be the 'inaction' that they're looking for.
I'm certain the semantics didn't help.
it's one thing to market 'privacy for everyone' - criminals 'might' use it, but if everyone has privacy that's ultimately good (and harder to convince a jury the devs are doing something illegal /morally wrong)
it's another to straight up say in your marketing material (according to the DOJ) 'our revenue model is based on crime and those evading taxes' - to a jury that's a different set of implications altogether
the State is always expanding. on a long enough timeline, sure.
I don't actually think they've fully realized it's the money, yet.
I am afraid that we are all getting distracted by Samourai's loudmouth online persona and missing the reality that a mining pool providing a block template or an ecash mint with a lightning gateway are not so different.
If we accept that coinjoins are only okay if they aren't intentionally used for bad things is it different than accepting that bitcoin transactions from someone in North Korea should not get mined?
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I am afraid that we are all getting distracted by Samourai's loudmouth online persona
their online persona is separate from what I'm describing - in the DOJ release they post what looks like a picture from what they claim is Samourai marketing for investors that their revenue for their add-on would come from 'online gamblers, dark/greymarket participants, high net worth individuals, and asset protection/capital flight'
The stated or heavily implied intent of your product matters to the government in its ability to pursue charges against you.
Explicitly stating that you want to raise money from investors to hide darkmarket money / people under sanction puts a target on your back.
If we accept that coinjoins are only okay if they aren't intentionally used for bad things?
I think that coinjoins are ok, actually. If they could be conducted in a way that didn't require a central coordinator that'd probably be alright.
However, if you decide to run a business whose sole purpose is to help users do coinjoins and you collect revenue from it, while advertising it as a way to facilitate crime, I expect the State to eventually come on the offense.
If Samourai didn't have that marketing material for investors, and did not collect fees + used some decentralized coordination, the feds would find it much more difficult to prosecute.
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This is a good argument for the "they made a semantic mistake" side. I hope it's true.
Do we end up with Bitcoin can be censorship resistant money as long as we don't brag about it?
When I next have a couple hours, I wonder how easy it would be to compare the btc addresses on the ofac list with recent blocks. How many sanctioned addresses have made it into blocks in the last 365 days?
(I guess it's possible that none of the owners of those sanctioned addresses have wanted to move their btc, but surely some have...)
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separate post:
ecash mint with a lightning gateway are not so different
it is actually - because ecash / lightning is peer to peer routing, where Whirlpool was a centralized router.
whirlpool does not run without the centralized coordinator and they collect a fee from it
anyone can spin up a cashu mint + mints are interchangeable + no fee collected by mint = not as straightforward to target
on a large enough scale though, the State will find a reason.
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lightning is peer to peer routing
What do we think of LSPs? The way Phoenix does it where a wallet only has one channel and that is with ACINQ?
Boltz might be another example of this. A centralized coordinator taking a fee.
As to mints, if I spin up a mint, the people who mint tokens park their btc with me. And if they want to redeem those tokens, someone has to bring them to me (the mint) to do it.
If there is a third party offering a lightning gateway, the tokens still have to come back to the mint to get redeemed even if it is the gateway operator who brings them back.
Also: isn't every ecash transaction actually reported back to the mint with the "sent" tokens being burned and the "received" tokens being newly issued? Sounds like a centralized coordinator to me ...
Are we just hoping that all these services talk politely and don't piss off any government agency?
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What do we think of LSPs?
An LSP is just a big node that actively states they want to trade liquidity for connections.
The way Phoenix does it where a wallet only has one channel and that is with ACINQ?
This is a separate thing.
I don't like the idea that I can't create my own channels to the nodes that I want and it's harder to argue that they're not in a similar situation as users of Phoenix cannot from what I understand.
Boltz might be another example of this. A centralized coordinator taking a fee.
Boltz is an example - but they advertise more like a public service than a business - and not one attempting to cater directly to "enemies of the state" (note - the state will never understand money)
As to mints, if I spin up a mint, the people who mint tokens park their btc with me. And if they want to redeem those tokens, someone has to bring them to me (the mint) to do it. If there is a third party offering a lightning gateway, the tokens still have to come back to the mint to get redeemed.
They don't ever have to come back to the gateway if people really didn't want them to, & really trusted the mint.
Cashu itself is not centralized - anyone can spin up their own mint, and the token holder can almost always move to a new mint provided they aren't actively being rugged, or have enough notice before the mint closes down.
When Samourai got caught up, Whirlpool stopped, and without someone starting up the central coordination software for elsewhere, it won't start up again.
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If I have a mint and my server gets seized by the govt, the people holding tokens from my mint will have a very hard time exchanging them for tokens from any other mint or for btc.
Cashu is not centralized, but my Cashu mint is centralized.
provided they aren't actively being rugged, or have enough notice before the mint closes down.
Isn't this the problem though? They dont give you warning. You just suddenly hear that the mint is down.
They don't ever have to come back to the gateway if people really didn't want them to
But whoever is running the gateway won't run it for long if it's a one way trade. If all they do is hand over btc and receive that particular mint's ecash, they will run out of btc. How do they turn the ecash back into btc? They go to that particular mint which created the ecash.
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Cashu is not centralized, but my Cashu mint is centralized.
yes. cashu mints are centralized.
You just suddenly hear that the mint is down.
this is why most cashu wallets allow you to melt between mints - that way you can 'distribute' risk as a holder. You are also only affected if you had tokens from that specific mint.
cashu would still exist.
you can't spin Whirlpool back up without Samourai, as of right now.
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