Dark Wallet Will Make Bitcoin Accessible For All — Except the Feds 206
Daniel_Stuckey writes "The group, called UnSystem, are self-proclaimed crypto-anarchists led by Cody Wilson—who you may remember as the creator of the controversial 3D-printed gun. After getting himself in hot water with the government for making the digital files to print an unregulated weapon freely available on the internet, Wilson's now endeavoring to bring Bitcoin back to its anarchist roots. Like other Bitcoin wallets, you'll be able to store, send, and receive coins, and interact with block chain, the Bitcoin public ledger. But Dark Wallet will include extra protections to make sure transactions are secure, anonymous, and hard to trace—including a protocol called "trustless mixing" that combines users' coins together before encoding it into the ledger."
Re:Ignorant and Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, such a disposition on the part of the NSA is reasonable
I don't think government thugs harassing people is at all "reasonable."
Unless you use your real e-mail address (Score:5, Insightful)
Or use your real name in the Word file metadata that you attach... I love it when smart people do dumb things.
Re:Deceased owners (Score:3, Insightful)
This dividing in ever smaller units is not a solution, it doesn't increase the number of bitcoins in existence. It just means that the bitcoins that are still there increase in value - possibly rapidly - making it more interesting for people to hold them instead of spending them, amplifying the problem.
This until so many bitcoins are lost and being hoarded that there is not enough liquidity left to make it a viable currency.
Money for the State (Score:2, Insightful)
It looks like many of the slashdotters have a problem with the federal state or states in general. They are seen as an unnecessary obstacle to freedom. They seek freedom as in anarchy where there is no government and of course no rules. You could state that people could still agree on rules, but in any case these rules deteriorate over time, as some people do not follow them. Furthermore, rules are not really part of an anarchy. Therefore, losing them is not a problem. But the end would be very unorganized.
We, therefore, invented the state. In history it was pushed on us buy kings and other sorts of dictators, but since the enlightenment, we developed democracy (which really needs more progress). In a real democracy the common rules are defined together and enforced by the state. Furthermore, the state is an organization formed by the people of that state to guarantee human rights. These common interests need funds, therefore the state must be able to collect taxes. A totally untraceable currency would hinder this resulting in a poor state. A poor state cannot protect people and cannot guarantee that common rules are followed, resulting in no rights for people with no money and all the rights for those who can pay for it.
However, I understand that there is a lot of mistrust towards the state. IMHO the solution is not to hide the money from this state, but change it. A good state is controlled by the public. Therefore, the state must guarantee free access to information and it has to ask the people on many key decisions. Switzerland is somewhat a good example for that. Also the Scandinavian countries and to some extend the rest of Western Europe. In reality not the state is the problem, but its corruption. Therefore you have to fight corruption.
Re:Deceased owners (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I think Bitcoin has conclusively disproven this myth about deflation: even when Bitcoins were gaining hundreds of percents the economy get going as usual.
The concept of a deflationary spiral is based on a false assumption: specifically, that people prefer long-term gain over short-term one. That's simply not true. And it's pretty obviously untrue, since otherwise no one would buy a computer, pad or smartphone today since you can get a better one tomorrow - technology has a constant deflation, yet that doesn't seem to result in a halt to sales.
Mind you, this has a lot of implications outside of Bitcoin economy, too.