if bitcoin became illegal by law (part two) \ stacker news ~Personal

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if bitcoin became illegal by law (part two)

1318 sats \ 71 comments \ @Hamstr 1 May Personal_Finance freebie

I posted up a poll here #519382. If you haven't voted, please vote there first, then come back to this post.

Because I'm seriously curious of the die-hards here. In the previous post, I asked if Bitcoin became illegal, what would be your plan. I put the second option, forget seed phrase until forced by guns --so far only 12.5% would give up your bitcoin + the 2.1% that wouldn't put up a fight. That's a lot of you. But the majority of everyone voted to be a criminal by 81.3%. (This is subject to change in the next 16 days)

Now for this poll, The feds have caught up to your one or more of your neighbors, friend(s), family members and people you know and are completely positive that they have Bitcoin and are transacting in BTC. [Your neighbor, friend(s), family members and the people you know have been detained for now.] They see it on the public ledger, and it was confirmed by their IP which the ISP gave out to the government. Plus ,chain analysis also confirmed it. So now, they aren't f**king around. They have to fund the war in Ukraine, Israel, Russia, China, and extreme right-wing politicians. And realize that Guns aren't as good as a currency as it once was.

it's only a matter of time they come for you. They haven't caught you yet.

These are your options:

Move to Monero? Private money by default10.4%

Forget seed phrase unless forced w guns16.7%

Be a criminal until caught50.0%

Peaceful Protest22.9%

Give up your Sats/Bitcoin0.0%

48 votes \ poll ended

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1121 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined 1 May

Nice try, fed.

1628 sats \ 5 replies \ @nerd2ninja 1 May

and extreme right-wing politicians

lol.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DneWZIAU0AE6aRd.jpg

lmao

You STILL have fucking monero in this poll? You act like Monero is the simple solution to this problem. It isn't. At all. supertestnet Evaluating my bitcoin privacy techniques against three surveillance attacks

Also, why is "Flee the country/Sell Bitcoin now, buy back when rehomed" not in the option list? That's a sane answer.

Let me put it this way, if the state said you weren't allowed to own money, what would you do? They find out you've been doing capitalist shit like buying eggs from your neighbors, are you just gonna up and die?

Also, what the hell is the difference between peaceful protest and be a criminal until caught?

The real answer to this is to observe your surroundings. In your scenario, neighbors, friends, and family members were arrested why is that? If that means they were all transacting in Bitcoin, and you're saying my network is in jail, then that's a lot better than what the default imagination would conjure which would be the idea that you're ALONE. If you're the only one, your neighbors will turn on you if for no other reason than to be left alone.

So my network is in jail. If there's a possibility they'd have multiple levels of multi-sig and maybe I'm one of their key holders, but it might be up to a year until the timelock on my key allows me to spend (in conjunction with other members) for them. Or not, maybe knowing if they just remember their seed phrase, they'll be rich as hell when they get out is enough for them who knows. Lots of people have lots of different setups depending on what purpose the sack of sats serves and what they believe their threat model to be.

The reality of this scenario, is that this will ultimately result in the formation of violent gangs because its the only way to sustainably resist a state while living within their jurisdiction. Prison gangs have actually taken over prisons and cans of mackerel are their money.

If the continued use of Bitcoin for people in prison is desired, it would require further discussion. Creating digital signatures by hand isn't exactly easy. I saw a prison laptop once, but it was in a video about hacking it and the guide on how to boot a custom BIOS and OS to it was the reason they were actually removed from prison (idk if they reintroduced them later or something) so not have an automatic math machine makes it a bit difficult. I know @supertestnet made hedgehog, but I'd have to hear his input on how easy he might think it would be to do that protocol with pen and paper.

Anyway, a discussion on how to transact Bitcoin while in prison is where I would take this whole discussion lol. However, the sane answer to your question, is to "Flee the country/Sell Bitcoin now, buy back when rehomed/illegally migrate out of the country (aka be a refugee) without selling the Bitcoin".

And yeah if I'm not allowed to run then it is true that I value my freedom more than my life so.

James 14:4 "Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes."

90 sats \ 1 reply \ @supertestnet 1 May

I'd have to hear his input on how easy he might think it would be to do that protocol with pen and paper

not easy

for hedgehog to work you have to create a preimage & hash in every transaction, as well as two bitcoin signatures. A guy in this video shows how to create a preimage & hash with pen and paper. It looks like it would take about 8 hours of full time work and you'd probably make a mistake somewhere, so you'd likely need a team of three people to check your work. It is my understanding that creating a signature manually is about twice as difficult as creating a hash manually, and you need two of those per transaction so it's about four times as much work to make the signatures. So you're looking at five days of 8 hours of work for a team of four people -- per transaction.

But why do this with pen and paper? In this hypothetical scenario, did the USA also confiscate and ban all graphing calculators? It only takes a graphing calculator about a second to calculate a hash or a signature, so you'd simply have to program it for that -- and I'm sure such programs would be released as shareware. (There's one for gameboy already, so start with that and modify it for a ti-86, which should be easy because they are both 8bit processors with Assembly support. Or literally use a gameboy.)

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nerd2ninja 1 May

But why do this with pen and paper? In this hypothetical scenario, did the USA also confiscate and ban all graphing calculators?

Well idk maybe.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21052724

and especially if they found out you were basically able to earn money from within the prison using the calculator lmao.

I mean look, there's always other stuff we can look at. I've seen math machines made with plumbing, kinetics (the non-electronic toy) and all kinds of stuff so who knows.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

Also, why is "Flee the country/Sell Bitcoin now, buy back when rehomed" not in the option list? That's a sane answer.

how is this a sane answer? what makes you think you can flee the country and keep whatever gold, cash you have?

congress passed a bill: you cannot protest against Israel.(due to student protesting) Rights are taken at an accelerating rate, don't you think?

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/house-vote-antisemitism-awareness-act/index.html

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @nerd2ninja 2 May

I include illegally migrate aka refugee status.

Its sane because once its over you can live a peaceful life. If you stay, you stay through hell.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

yah. I like "go where you're treated best" by nomad cap

55 sats \ 2 replies \ @frostdragon 1 May

Flee the country / "lose" my bitcoin (aka, hodl, probably via multisig, until I'm safe) is the clear answer here.

Because the government simply can't afford to crack down on bitcoin like this and stay in power. See my post here: #484114

TL;DR - the US government criminalizing bitcoin would instantly weaken the country and strengthen every other country that decides to capitalize on the moment. It would be the end of its global dominance.

So It's just a matter of getting tf out.

PS - In no way is monero a scalable solution in this scenario, or any scenario. Increasing "security" is decreasing usability and scalability, which is why monero can't work as global layer 1.

136 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

Bitcoin and Lightning aren't scalable either

At least Monero can actually upgrade to more efficient tech like ~80% reduction in transaction size that happened moving to bulletproofs

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

They're increasingly making it hard to renounce and leave the country. They want to collect your income, wherever the F*k you live.

55 sats \ 34 replies \ @kristapsk 1 May freebie

How Monero will help you here? It will be illegal then too. You can be private with Bitcoin if you know what you are doing. Seed phrases for both can be forcefully taken from you with guns equally.

10 sats \ 32 replies \ @Hamstr OP 1 May freebie

BTC-public ledger, everyone can see your funds. If you buy coffee, they can trace it back and see you hold x amount of BTC XMR- doesn't show any funds. When you convert to XMR- you literally disappear. your funds are safely stored in the blockchain. Chain analysis will never be able to know who, what, amount of funds to track XMR.

in this extreme case, they're looking for BTC holders. They don't know whose holding XMR because the ledger isn't public

21 sats \ 20 replies \ @HardRich 1 May

As I mention elsewhere, the problem is KYC in the first place. If you trade $100,000 USD for Monero (or Bitcoin) and its KYC then you’re toast either way - it doesn’t matter if your account “disappears”.

If you can buy non-KYC then either Bitcoin or Monero is safe from government. The only issue would be when purchasing stuff with your crypto. With Monero no one would know your balance. However, with some legwork you can get the same privacy with Bitcoin.

KYC is the issue. It’s an issue for Bitcoin and it’s just as big of an issue for Monero or any other privacy coin.

31 sats \ 0 replies \ @BenAllenG 1 May

Also, while you could theoretically use monero with tor on darknet markets and remain more anonymous I certainly couldn't spend it in meat space without getting handcuffed at the cash register. Monero is equally of no use if you can't spend it.

0 sats \ 17 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

All that is external to keeping transactions private on a blockchain.

So yes, Monero or Bitcoin can't help with that. But even in a world without KYC you still don't want third parties or counter parties snooping on your transaction history and balances.

0 sats \ 16 replies \ @HardRich 8 May

Can Monero scale way better than Bitcoin? If not, and it requires Layer 2 tech then it's a bit moot since Bitcoin is building out Layer 2 pretty quickly and privacy is coming with it. It's already pretty close to grandma level. My young kiddo is already pretty good at Layer 2 tech.

If Monero can scale WAY better than Bitcoin and if privacy becomes WAY more important to people vs gains then perhaps Monero will take the lead. Sadly, though, people care more about growth than privacy - at least right now. And again, if bitcoin has enough time to mature Layer 2 tech then it's highly possible privacy and growth will be better with Bitcoin.

Personally, I think to have a global ledger that could be the world reserve currency we SHOULD have an open ledger like Bitcoin so as to keep bankers, countries, politicians, etc honest. The privacy could be done at smaller, Layer 2-3 levels for average citizens. But, who knows what the future holds.

10 sats \ 12 replies \ @kristapsk 8 May

Can Monero scale way better than Bitcoin?

It can't. Monero transactions consume more blockspace and takes more CPU time to verify.

10 sats \ 5 replies \ @Hamstr OP 8 May

please stop, everyone has different opinions. I think we forget the most important aspect of all, both bitcoin and monero want freedom. One is not against the other. I consider Eth valuable too, like silver. XMR for copper. Both are distinctly different but have different purposes. Can you put a smart contract on bitcoin? Each crypto is different but ultimately have the same goal. Instead of fighting off each other- come up with ideas to push other countries to adopt crypto to get off this sh*t fiat system.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @kristapsk 8 May

It's not opinion, it's a fact, Monero is worse at scaling than Bitcoin.

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38 sats \ 2 replies \ @HardRich 9 May

Agreed, folks should be open minded. It is sad to see some folks that are rather bull -headed about just having a discussion. I'm a pretty hardcore bitcoiner and have studied it pretty well - I therefore have confidence in my opinion and can be open-minded. Folks that fight against an open discussion seem less secure to me.

That being said, @kristapsk may know what he's talking about (I don't think he's being closed minded like some folks in this thread). Otherwise, @Hamstr, do you know if Monero can scale as well or better than Bitcoin?

I think the question of scaling is relevant because IF layer 2 becomes the norm in the future and IF layer 2 can have privacy then that seems like a win for bitcoin. Or, said another way, at that point, what value does Monero have over bitcoin?

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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @yo2xncv0 9 May freebie

Can Bitcoin scale to 100s millions? billions? No. Not even close. Not even lightning does. Then it is kind of moot. Both would collapse well before this kind of adoption. Neither scales right now (over time they may)

Tech isn't static, efficiency improvements occur, and better protocols can be adopted. Monero has a long history of this.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @yo2xncv0 9 May

How is it moot? Lightning and Bitcoin both don't scale. Even for Lightning to kind of scale it needs more than 100MB blocksize and that is being conservative. ~95% of lightning users don't use it sovereignly (without custodians or permission) and even the tiny bit that do arent completely private. All these L2s so far gut the sovereignty of on chain transactions.

Technology is not static. It's always getting better and cheaper. Monero won't need to scale for awhile and when it does we can just make it more efficient as we did with bulletproofs or upgrade the protocol like what is coming down the road with Jamtis and Seraphis.

I always find your last argument to be fairly weak. Bankers, political crooks, and tyrants will never use a transparent currency. If they wanted to be upfront and honest they would be doing that now. And even if you can see what they do...what are you going to do about it? Right now they are sending billions of our money to foreign nations and no one is doing a thing about it.

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @HardRich 9 May

It's moot if layer 2 bitcoin gets privacy. As in, if both Monero and Bitcion require Layer 2 or Layer 3 to scale to the world AND if privacy can be had in Layers 2 or 3 then I'm not sure I see the benefit of Monero in the long run.

I think the argument about bankers and countries is far from weak. Look at the gold standard back when it was a thing. It was huge. Countries were using it all the time. If Bitcoin (or Monero, or any other) become a world reserve currency then nations, bankers, etc will be using it - they will either want to or have to. If there is a far superior money/asset then everyone will want to use it. Now, I suppose you could argue that fiat will never die and crypto will always be a second-class citizen. If that's the case, then my argument is weak.

Anyway, I appreciate your replies. I do like Monero and keep an eye on it. I, personally, think bitcoin will get privacy on layer 2 or 3 and that it'll become the common way to use it. I could be totally wrong, though. In the meantime, I'd be more than happy if Monero got way bigger and was accepted in way more places. I see no reason why I wouldn't trade my bitcoin for Monero to have privacy when buying stuff (assuming I can't get it with layer 2/3 bitcoin). I like that folks are building out multiple solutions - and Monero may very well be the one that tops the list.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 10 May freebie

The problem is the base layer will always be the weak spot for any upper layers of privacy exactly like it is now for lightning closing/opening. And it breaks fungibility of Bitcoin as a whole. I agree that neither Monero or Bitcoin will necessarily be around in the long run. Could be something else.

Yea, but look at where gold got us. Who uses actual gold? They IOU'd the shit out of it and relegated it to an impotent pet rock which seems to be the path Bitcoin is on.

Maybe you are right we will see. Let's see if Bitcoin layers can have strong privacy without sacrificing sovereignty of on chain. That would make both camps happy I think.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

with legwork, is grandma going to go through that when she's having a hard time just using QR codes?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @jgbtc 1 May

The 1st, 3rd, and 5th options are all the same.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @kristapsk 1 May freebie

Have you ever heard of coinjoins, Lightning Network and OTC non-KYC P2P Bitcoin vs fiat markets? You should read more about Bitcoin privacy. Bitcoin is not perfectly traceable and has never been. Chainanal companies are often selling snake oil.

Chain analysis will never be able to know who, what, amount of funds to track XMR.

Actually, not true. XMR has good onchain privacy, but it's also not perfectly private. Ledger is public, just ring signatures creates a lot of potential possibilities by default and confidential transactions make amounts private. Also, your total crowd where to hide is smaller for XMT compared to BTC, because total number of Monero users is a lot smaller than total number of Bitcoin users.

22 sats \ 4 replies \ @Darthcoin_Cash 2 May outlawed

stackers have outlawed this. turn on wild west mode in your /settings to see outlawed content.

2 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

You can't be private with Bitcoin ever it's a transparent public blockchain

Maybe you meant you can be sort of pseudonymous

https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

10 sats \ 1 reply \ @94f66a6138 1 May

Your prejudice is showing

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DeltaClimbs 2 May

just a scammer shilling while pretending to write a real post, I downzapped the total amount

16 sats \ 18 replies \ @HardRich 1 May

I think Monero may be a good idea - though, with trade offs. The problem, however, is getting the Monero in the first place.

If the Government knows that you bought $100,000 of Bitcoin then they’d also know you bought that much Monero. Aka, once you move out of fiat they’d know where you went next.

On the other hand, if you could buy Bitcoin or Monero without KYC then either is fine since you’d have privacy in the first place.

It’s KYC that is the problem - which Monero has, too.

Otherwise, tell me where I’m wrong. If you can get Monero without anyone knowing you got it then that’d be cool (but then I’d argue that the same thing could be done with Bitcoin).

Monero’s main benefit seems to be when you spend it. But the Government cares more about when you buy it, as far as I can tell.

25 sats \ 9 replies \ @DeltaClimbs 2 May

Learn about bitcoin, you fucking moron, sockpuppet sociopath scum!

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @HardRich 2 May

I think you replied to the wrong person. I’m arguing for why Bitcoin is good.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

just mute him. Let him fill my reply board with cussing. He's imposing tyranny that I should only like eggs and only eggs. But I like eggs and cheese and tells me to f off. Because I like two things and not just one.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @DeltaClimbs 2 May

What if the eggs you liked were child porn, you sick fuck? Or Biden, or forcing people to be vaxxed, or any other number of things.

Totally inane comment to say "I like TWO things" and 1 + 1 is why I am immune to criticism. Fucking retard shitcoiners, no wonder the shitcoiners can fool you.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @DeltaClimbs 2 May

eh, maybe a bit too vociferous, but no, you are saying nonsense. Monero doesn't work in the way you think it does

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

Enlighten us

How does Monero work? 🍿

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @DeltaClimbs 8 May

That's the neat part, it doesn't.jpg

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @yo2xncv0 9 May

Show us.

Let us know what amounts have been moved for any transaction you find and to what address. Goodluck!

82wexBfoRpw4NPe1mUh1TVL8RrnK3d2LqAq2MSQnMDwkR3Gdw2ne7Y7QwuEEjroeZdaXyHkRVEtPciRCW2rS4JFRMhuXVa6

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @DeltaClimbs 9 May

Have fun staying poor, retard 🤡

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10 sats \ 2 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May freebie

you can buy monero, kyc free.. that's the point buy you can also buy non-kyc free BTC as well. The problem is the ledger

22 sats \ 1 reply \ @HardRich 2 May

Why is the ledger a problem if you bought bitcoin KYC free? I’ll concede that if I buy something and I am ID’d then the buyer could know the size of my stack. If the buyer squeals on me to the government then that is a problem. There are solutions to that, though. Sure, lightning, ecash, fedi’s, etc aren’t built out perfectly yet but the government also isn’t full evil yet, either.

I could see Monero being a good coin for buying stuff but two things would need to be true: (1) no Bitcoin solution existing for privacy, and (2) more people accept Monero than Bitcoin.

30 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

It's a problem because third parties and counter parties can view your transaction history and follow it going forward. Not only bad for security and personal safety, but bad for fungibility in general.

Another side affect is that targeted mining censorship becomes possible, while if Bitcoin were private, to censor a single transaction they would have to censor them all indefinitely. Much more difficult and expensive to do.

2 sats \ 2 replies \ @yo2xncv0 8 May

Bitcoin can never offer you on chain privacy as it is transparent. You're confusing privacy (hiding actions) with anonymity (hiding identity - and a weaker form at that: pseudonymity) which is obscuring your identity. All amounts and transactions are visible to anyone in the world.

Buying non-KYC wouldn't solve lack of on chain privacy part

Ideal to have both anonymity and privacy as missing one can be used to unravel the other over time

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @HardRich 8 May

So what are the tradeoffs of Monero? Is it just small in market cap due to it coming out later? I thought you can't buy it on most exchanges? It's going to be hard for it to grow at any reasonable rate if hardly anyone can buy it. :(

Can it scale better than Bitcoin? If not, and everyone has to use Layer 2 tech on Monero then how is that any diff/better than using Layer 2 bitcoin (assuming privacy could be had in Layer 2, which it seems like it maybe can, though, I'm no pro).

Let's figure another scenario. Let's say Monero becomes the world reserve currency. No one can track anyone. Is that a good thing? Though maybe not possible and maybe it'll never happen, but I like the idea (and maybe it's only an idea) that bigger institutions (countries, banks, etc) have money that's traceable (bitcoin) but then normal citizens have some privacy (Layer 2). If countries and bankers use Monero is it a good thing that everything is hidden by default?

108 sats \ 0 replies \ @yo2xncv0 9 May

Trade offs off the top of my head

Not directly auditable circulating supply. Although in practice no one does this with Bitcoin, they just trust their node to audit (if they even run a node in the first place) like any Monero node runner. Monero uses complex cryptography and math to make sure there is no Monero that was created out of thing air (pedersen commitments). https://www.getmonero.org/resources/moneropedia/pedersen-commitment.html
Limitless supply. No hard cap. Has a tail emission. Although inflation is less than gold, and a constant (not a percent of supply), so in terms of % it is always falling closer and closer to 0%. And the bad part of fiat is that supply issuance is centralized, unpredictable, and arbitrary - all the opposite of Monero mining
You have to sync your wallet which can be annoying, but some wallets have background sync features. Or you can use a light wallet that connects to your own node that runs at home.

I don't think countries, institutions, banks will ever use Bitcoin like that. Maybe between themselves, but they won't allow their citizens the same privilege. Monero is not trying to be a reserve currency. It is just p2p digital cash.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @HardRich 1 May

The “Move to Monero” isn’t great since if you bought the bitcoin with KYC and the government knows you bought $100,000 and then you moved to Monero then that’s really no diff than saying “boating accident.”

In other words, simply moving over to Monero does nothing for you, accept maybe privacy when purchasing. The government will treat you as if you have $100,000 of “illegal” money.

My guess is the government will say, convert your crypto to fiat or you’re going to jail. You’d have to sell your Monero.

In fact, one could argue Monero is worse in the above situation. With bitcoin you could prove that you sold some of your bitcoin elsewhere and no longer have access to $100,000. With Monero you either cough up $100,000 or go to jail - doesn’t matter if you spent/sold it.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @Hamstr OP 2 May

yes if you're KYC buying BTC then buying XMR then yes it's no different. But if you used that money to buy xmr you skip the kyc process unless you're going through an exchange.

12 sats \ 1 reply \ @Fabs 1 May freebie

A bitcoiner will become an outlaw, point.

That's the whole point of Bitcoin, to oppose the current financial system and power's that be.