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Transcript of Edward Snowden's comments regarding Bitcoin at the IETF 93 meeting in Prague (gist.github.com)

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[–]phieziu 57ポイント58ポイント  (76子コメント)

"Edward Snowden: So, the Bitcoin thing is – I mean this is – nobody really likes to talk about Bitcoin anymore. There are informed concepts there. Obviously, Bitcoin by itself is flawed. The protocol has a lot of weaknesses in transaction size, and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth."

Ouch Edward! Just ouch! Can we send a core dev to educate him or something?

[–]cflag 28ポイント29ポイント  (37子コメント)

vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth

So we finally have a decentralized notarization network that is practically sybil resistant. But it is flawed because it requires a constant expenditure of millions of dollars per day to even begin to censor.

So on and so forth...

Namecoin is not catching on because of this same attitude. We have solutions NOW to the problems we are having NOW, but people are not utilizing them because they are merely "good enough", not perfect.

[–]anyone4apint 6ポイント7ポイント  (28子コメント)

But it is flawed because it requires a constant expenditure of millions of dollars per day to even begin to censor.

Precisely. I think some folk underestimate how little 'millions of dollars per day' really is to those who may wish to bring it down. A single Tomohawk missile is $1.5m, this is nothing in the global scheme of things.

[–]thieflar 16ポイント17ポイント  (17子コメント)

As soon as those millions of dollars start pouring in, though, the network becomes correspondingly more attractive to other powers-that-be who would rather not lose their foothold on power.

Then the figure shifts up to tens or hundreds of millions of dollars per day...

[–]anyone4apint 19ポイント20ポイント  (14子コメント)

The point is that if a powerfull enough group want to cause massive disruption, they can...and right now it wont even cost that much money. If that group happens to be a government, then its game over for a while at least. Snowdon is bang on the money with this one. People might not like to hear it, but he has a valid point.

[–]squarepush3r 5ポイント6ポイント  (6子コメント)

yeah, if a few governments teamed up, to crack down on the mega miners (say China + USA + Europe), or imprisoned/kidnap the leaders, they could easily have 70% hash power control pretty quickly.

[–]john1443 2ポイント3ポイント  (5子コメント)

If China+USA+Europe teamed up, they could also bring down Visa and Mastercard. What's your point?

[–]svener 2ポイント3ポイント  (4子コメント)

Visa and Mastercard aren't trying to bring down the government-controlled fiat system.

[–]notreddingit 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Neither is Bitcoin in my opinion. But I realize I might be the minority here thinking that.

[–]darrenturn90 -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

The government does not control fiat. Banks do

[–]john1443 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

The government the entity that for all practical purposes brings fiat into the economy, so no.

[–]AManBeatenByJacks 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

So its a nascent technology that a government can cripple if it for some reason suddently devoted millions to the task. Im not sure thats a flaw with bitcoin unless we expect total invincibility to unexpected attacks with unclear motives. Besides a government who would spend millions to do this? A bank? At this point it makes more sense to ignore bitcoin.

[–]tsontar 4ポイント5ポイント  (5子コメント)

The same can be said for the whole internet.

[–]crimsonscarf 12ポイント13ポイント  (4子コメント)

I don't get this argument. Just because your right, doesn't mean he is wrong.

[–]AngryWriter 12ポイント13ポイント  (2子コメント)

I think it sort of does though.

The internet could be disrupted by a company spending millions and doing some disruptive illegal things, sure. But it doesn't happen because A) such an act would be suicidal to the company, B) there is no real gain, and the internet would bounce back in a day, and C) after one such attack, it would be exponentially harder to repeat the process because of fixes and improvements made in light of the disaster.

And so, much of the same is true of bitcoin. Super evil mega-corporation could spend millions to do a couple double-spends and reduce trust in bitcoin, but in the process they out themselves, don't actually gain anything (the double spends offer a lot less profit than the cost of controlling the network), and quickly encourage a more competitive bitcoin. In addition, in the process of buying up hashing power to commit this evil 50% attack, that simple process itself pushes profit into the mining hardware devs, making bitcoin bigger.

[–]mr-hire 4ポイント5ポイント  (1子コメント)

How would you disrupt the internet with a couple million dollars?

[–]AngryWriter 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Hire many cheap criminals to dig and break fiber lines in a few key locations. Probably can be done really cheaply if you can find the desperate sort who would do the work for little pay, but you would need to know locations where fiber lines pass. The get broken accidentally often enough by construction crews, so it can certainly be done- luckily there aren't really very many strong malicious organizations willing to blatantly break the law in such a way.

[–]tsontar 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Didn't say he was wrong.

[–]SoundMake -3ポイント-2ポイント  (1子コメント)

Better to do a "soft take over" and back XT with an AstroTurf campaign.

[–]MrMadden 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

AstroTurf? There is no investment money pushing XT, although the majority support it. There is money behind groups who want to keep the blocksize small.

[–]cflag 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Think of it this way. We currently don't have any ideas about how to build something that can resist a frontal attack by a massively publicly funded power without opposition, other than these existing systems being massively utilized by the same public. You can think of it as increasing the political cost of the attack, while also increasing the investment that secures the network and making the system important enough for more diverse interest groups.

Compare this to considering these systems flawed and waiting for better ones to emerge, which will almost certainly have similar requirements. Or is there a better approach?

[–]PhyllisWheatenhousen 8ポイント9ポイント  (8子コメント)

CoinGecok estimates nearly $900 million in mining hardware cost. The "millions a day" would just be the cost of electricity. I don't know which agency would go to work on it but 1 billion dollars would be very significant portion of most federal agency’s budgets.

Also can you imagine the public backlash over the government spending that much on it? "The government is spending a billion dollars on internet funny money while there are children that don't know where they'll get their next meal."

[–]king-six 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

You don't need a billion dollars, you only need to start a subsidized mining pool. Or a few, to not raise suspicion.

[–]anyone4apint 4ポイント5ポイント  (3子コメント)

Hypothetical scenario: As various world economies fail, people start to put their savings into 'internet funny money' as a method to protect their savings in the short-mid term. This has a knock-on effect of impacting the value of the USD and other FIAT currency. It starts to gain more traction, it becomes a concern. Governments decide that this is a huge risk. Agencies such as the NSA say that it is starting to cause a threat to national security, that it is currency used by terrorist groups and that these groups are behind the devaluing and destabilization of the USD. An agency such as the NSA is tasked with sorting it out. They could throw a billion at that overnight if they wanted, and the very next day the value of BTC is massively undermined potentially forever. Mission accomplished. America is saved, the dirty terrorists have lost all their 'internet funny money' and the USD goes back up in value. Normal order is restored.

Not saying that this particular scenario will play out, but it is one of many which may seem far fetched but is potentially possible. If you do not think that the powers that be are going through various 'What If' scenarios right now relating to things such as crypto currency getting 'out of control' then you are foolish. To ignore the threat of a 50% attack is foolish. It is a very real threat, and this kind of money to governments is small change compared to the potential consequences in some scenarios. If anyone knows what the NSA would potentially do, its probably Edward Snowdon. Its all very easy to say that he has no clue what he is talking about, but perhaps he does...

[–]AngryWriter 4ポイント5ポイント  (2子コメント)

If your "what if" scenario occurred, bitcoin value would skyrocket and mining interest would increase exponentially, so the cost of a 50% attack would also be exponentially higher. It eventually gets to a point where investing the necessary trillions into mining hardware just to try a 50% attack is so much money that it will trigger a serious economic collapse before it pays for enough hardware.

[–]donotshitme 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Why do you think this?

[–]notreddingit 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

That sounds more like something that would happen if there was a robust PoS system[1] rather than the current one. I don't see how your scenario results in everyone suddenly wanting to buy mining equipment and pushing the cost of 50% of the hashrate in to the trillions. But that math sounds plausible at least if we're talking about the government trying to buy 50% of the total supply of a currency itself.

[1] Note I'm not necessarily claiming this exists today. Not interested in derailing here for any specific discussion other than the economic scenario here.

[–]squarepush3r 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The US Govt spends 1 Billion a year just on army music bands.

[–]lifeboatz 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

CoinGecok? lol. CoinGecko. I had to check - I didn't believe that it was actually Gecok.

[–]ToroArrr 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

1 billion is a lot? I believe a Trillion (with a T) went missing from pentagon's books in 2001.. and nobody gave a rat's ass.

[–]Polycephal_Lee 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yeah, people are not realizing the strict superiority of this money tool. It will take a crisis of legacy money for most people to lose faith in that system and start to look to alternatives.

One good thing for bitcoin is that a legacy money crisis is happening right now. Even the NYT acknowledged the currency war that's currently taking place, as China devalues Yuan after increasing gold reserves by 57% in the last 6 years.

[–]buttsbuttsbutts112 -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

No, we are not utilizing them because they are inconvenient, unreliable and too expensive.

[–]cflag 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

They may be inconvenient. They are not unreliable or expensive.

[–]buttsbuttsbutts112 -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sure, using as much electricity as Ireland to secure a tiny number of transactions is not expensive at all. Not at all. What was I thinking.

[–]GalliumArsenide 0ポイント1ポイント  (3子コメント)

But it is flawed because it requires a constant expenditure of millions of dollars per day to even begin to function.

FTFY

[–]cflag 7ポイント8ポイント  (2子コメント)

Am I too naive to assume that any such system does and will have expenditure proportional to the power of a potential attacker? Skipping to the ultimate, do we not have armies with constant cost to protect our respective economic structures? Aren't all these wasteful in the same sense?

I suspect the difference in opinion is not about respective technical flaws, but rather the eventualities we seek.

[–]GalliumArsenide 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Funny how that is very apt of a comparison in may ways.

The same errors (and agent-principal problems) in risk estimation that lead to wasteful military spending and overkill wars with dubious outcomes even when they are "mission accomplished", are present in estimating how much risk there is in an attack on Bitcoin's security.

[–]cflag 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Well, I don't think anyone claims we have a philosophical advancement on that front (at least I hope so).

The obvious benefit here is the lack of requirement of participation, and the ability of these decentralized systems to run in parallel.

[–]bluelightzero 2ポイント3ポイント  (3子コメント)

Just a hint, you can use reddit's quoting feature like so:

> Just a hint, you can use reddit's quoting feature like so:

[–]phieziu 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

How did you get the second style?

[–]bluelightzero 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

4 spaces before each line like so:
    4 spaces before each line like so:

[–]zdroj 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

Since when is Snowden an authority on these matters. I keep reading these Snowden says posts. He's a young guy who leaked a lot of information way above his comprehension.

[–]hellobitcoinworld 2ポイント3ポイント  (17子コメント)

The protocol has a lot of weaknesses in transaction size and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth.

It seems like Snowden doesn't fully understand Bitcoin, which is hard to believe given who he is. It sounds like he is dismissing bitcoin because of the idea of a 51% attack.

http://BitcoinAnswered.com/22/what-is-a-51-percent-attack

[–]ex0du5 3ポイント4ポイント  (15子コメント)

But... that's not at all how it would happen. The only identifiers that could be "worked around" in the manner he speaks of are the miner reward wallets (which are pseudonymous and can change every mined block) and IP addresses (which may be proxied anywhere). No nation state is going to be "blocked" by efforts to protect the protocol - the protocol itself ensure 50% + epsilon owns the blockchain.

And it would not be "1 doublespend". That's not what 50%+epsilon allows. With greater compute, you can rewrite the entire blockchain from the beginning. The only protection is greatest chain. The results could be anywhere from subtle to complete. And the only "fixes" that block that is incorporating a canonical history - saying the only "legitimate" blockchain is one that includes a given list of blocks. But that doesn't prevent every block mined from then on being empty by the choice of the nation state. And if you ensure no empty blocks, and all transaction seen by X, etc. you've just centralized the decentralized protocol and given it a point of corruption and failure.

In other words, laughing about a 50%+epsilon attack and most of his comments really shows a lack of understanding of the actual nature and consequences of the protocol, which is quite surprising for someone considered a leading dev.

[–]sebaceous_horsley -2ポイント-1ポイント  (14子コメント)

With greater compute, you can rewrite the entire blockchain from the beginning.

HAHAHA! Good luck. You would need more computing power than has ever existed on earth, and a way to slow down time. You would need to take the world's top 500 supercomputers and make like 1,000,000,000,000 of them. For that money you could just give every human being on earth a million dollar contract and a truck full of precious metals to stop using Bitcoin.

And besides... who the fuck would use your fork of the chain afterwards?

[–]ex0du5 2ポイント3ポイント  (12子コメント)

???

No, you need any value greater than 50% + epsilon. You will always catch up and exceed. This is not hard to understand here, this is simple mining facts. How fast you exceed depends on the size of epsilon, but it always happens if you have that amount of hash.

By very simple numbers you obviously don't need more compute than on Earth. You only need more compute than has been dedicated to Bitcoin, which is a small fraction of total compute.

[–]samurai321 -1ポイント0ポイント  (2子コメント)

F2pool owns more than 60% of the namecoin network (it's the only big pool mining it alongside bitcoin) and everything looks fine because there are incentives for a miner to follow the rules, if you don't the value of the underlying token crashes.

Also if you check https://blockchain.info/pools there has never been more decentralization.

[–]kd0ocr 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Also if you check https://blockchain.info/pools there has never been more decentralization.

There was more decentralization before people started mining in pools.

[–]darrenturn90 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I think the cost to modify the client to mitigate such an attack worked be scales of magnitude less

[–]sebaceous_horsley -1ポイント0ポイント  (7子コメント)

You need 51% for one block. You can't just go backwards with the same amount of hashing power, because time doesn't stand still. And do you not think the 'consensus' would notice?

[–]ex0du5 2ポイント3ポイント  (5子コメント)

It seems you have a completely mistaken understanding of what a 50% + epsilon attack is. Let me explain:

  • If you have greater compute than the rest of the network, you will on average beat the rest of the network to mining a block.
  • The greater the epsilon, the greater the chance of winning a given block. At equality it is 50/50, and it approaches 100% (without ever equaling) the greater the ratio.
  • However, this means that your velocity of block production will be greater than others.
  • Which means block withholding attacks approach certainty. If you keep a hidden block chain and build, you will eventually exceed the public chain with certainty.
  • The choice of which block to start with is arbitrary. You can start with the genesis block. Your percentage chance to exceed public block chain size approaches certainty over time.

I'm really not even certain how you believe only one block can be compromised. I don't know what misconception gives that. It's not like the same computing wouldn't then be applied to the subsequent block. Mining is simply finding a number to put in the block header that allows the block hash to have a specified number of leading zeroes. The block headers are linked by a previous hash in the header. If you build a chain yourself and are faster, you win.

To be clear, it already happens that there are these types of forks all the time. They call them orphaned blocks when a block previously thought by some as being the legitimate one is overtaken by a different chain.

[–]lifeboatz 3ポイント4ポイント  (2子コメント)

The choice of which block to start with is arbitrary. You can start with the genesis block.

You were pretty close... but you got this one wrong, because there are checkpoints. So you really can only start with the last checkpoint, unless you can convince the world to install your software that ignores the checkpoints.

And if you can convince the world to install your software, then really you don't even need the 51% power.

[–]kd0ocr 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

You were pretty close... but you got this one wrong, because there are checkpoints. So you really can only start with the last checkpoint, unless you can convince the world to install your software that ignores the checkpoints.

Many people use software that doesn't enforce checkpoints. Electrum, for example, only considers blockchain height.

[–]ex0du5 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Except that I did mention that you can try to enforce a canonical chain, but this is centralisation of the protocol and opens point-of-failure and point-of-corruption issues. The "who decides canonicity" question is actually very controversial in the community, and different clients already make different choices. In particular, this is one approach that has been used to force larger block sizes.

The protocol itself doesn't enforce checkpoints, though the reference client does.

[–]darrenturn90 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

And would need to maintain this superior hash until you reach far enough back which could take a long time. In the mean time every other person in the world could be working against you

[–]notreddingit 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's much worse than you seem to think it is: http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/06/16/how-a-mining-monopoly-can-attack-bitcoin/

[–]sebaceous_horsley -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Beautiful answer. I hope Snowden sees it.

[–]SpaceTire -1ポイント0ポイント  (4子コメント)

from hero to traitor in one paragraph...

[–]redhawk989 6ポイント7ポイント  (2子コメント)

lmao, butthurt because he said bad things about Bitcoin.

[–]readyou 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That happens constantly here. People are heroes if they talk positive about Bitcoin, if they critique it and mention some negative aspects, they become enemies.The Bitcoin community is not able to take criticism. I generalize because the majority of people here denies even the slightest problems of Bitcoin.

[–]SpaceTire -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

lmao

[–]darrenturn90 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

No. Don't be an idiot. Snowden is a massive hero. Even if he talks crap. It's probably not his area of expertise

[–]kalkamata 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

He needs to educate himself better before discussing such things in public. I did not expect this "explanation"

[–]redhawk989 6ポイント7ポイント  (1子コメント)

You're right, anyone who says anything bad about Bitcoin simply needs to be "educated"

[–]readyou 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Remember, the majority of people in the Bitcoin community is not able to take criticism and never was.

[–]protestor 17ポイント18ポイント  (3子コメント)

He later tells

Edward Snowden: So, I agree with you and I mean this is what's important about the IETF. Just because I say it, doesn't mean it's gospel. I can be wrong about an incredible amount of things. Nobody should trust me. Nobody should grant any sort of outsized weight to what I say.

It's unfortunate that he made some unfounded comments about Bitcoin, but yeah, he knows he's often wrong. It's also unfortunate that people were asking stuff outside his technical expertise.

Now, what he could have talked about is how Bitcoin is traceable if you aren't very careful, and use mixing. A point about some of his answers is how much you can be de-anonymized by statistically improbable connections you have with other agents, and other side channels. Bitcoins leaks a lot of data about you.. and if you are careless, it will leak data about people you're doing business with, too.

As far as privacy is concerned, those are protocol issues, and there are Bitcoin alternatives that could, in theory, provide better anonymity. The trouble is that without a giant proof-of-work network running, they don't offer, in practice, the same robustness against attacks that Bitcoin does. Right now, Bitcoin is the best we can have.

[–]brainwithnopurpose 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's also unfortunate that people were asking stuff outside his technical expertise.

This, exactly. There's only so much time in the days to learn things, and we can't be experts in everything.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

It's unfortunate that he made some unfounded comments about Bitcoin, but yeah, he knows he's often wrong. It's also unfortunate that people were asking stuff outside his technical expertise.

Did you want to counter the points you disagree with? I can accept you disagree with sentiment, but it doesn't make him wrong or outside his area of expertise. It just means you disagree

[–]errydaymofo -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

So the controlled opposition (Snowden) doesn't like Bitcoin? Nothing surprising here. Just further evidence that he works for the establishment. And before you criticize me, watch this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DawLf8AEj44

[–]randy-lawnmole 7ポイント8ポイント  (0子コメント)

for those too lazy to read, direct link youtube

[–]ringsignature 8ポイント9ポイント  (1子コメント)

Thats disappointing.

[–]Cryptolution 8ポイント9ポイント  (0子コメント)

Thats disappointing.

It would probably be more disappointing if I could actually read it. I know its a transcript, but if this was a direct translation from voice to text, it sounds like they are talking in tounges. The grammar is all fucked up and things are just not making any sense in my head.

I gave up trying to read it.

[–]BobAlison 4ポイント5ポイント  (0子コメント)

The transcripts I've seen are wrong on this point.

The protocol has a lot of weaknesses in transaction size [not sides] ...

Transaction size is a problem if you're running an all-or-nothing fundraiser (Lighthouse) and want more than a few hundred individual contributions. Otherwise transaction size is not one of the things most folks worry about.

Block size, maybe, but not transaction size.

[–]Nightshdr 6ポイント7ポイント  (0子コメント)

Some get it, some don't

[–]bluelightzero 7ポイント8ポイント  (1子コメント)

The only thing i don't like about his response is he is to busy pointing out the supposed flaws and failed to produce an example of a system that doesn't have those same flaws.

Compared to pretty much everything out there, bitcoin is clearly the strongest in terms of anonymity and usefulness, otherwise ransomware owners wouldn't accept it.

But focusing too much on Bitcoin, I think, is a mistake. The real solution is again, how do we get to a point where you don't have to have a direct link between your identity all of the time?

There is no direct link. It is indirect.

[–]Thorbinator 5ポイント6ポイント  (0子コメント)

Yep, always bet on black. What are the darknet markets and extortionists using?

[–]earthtrader 2ポイント3ポイント  (0子コメント)

Sounds like he read some internal memo

[–]d4d5c4e5 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

One possible explanation for this seemingly-bizarre evaluation is that there could very well be a classified government document that he's aware of expressing these opinions in his stash handed to Greenwald, but hasn't yet been leaked. At the very minimum, Gavin's presentation for In-Q-Tel had to have generated some classified paper-trail as far as some amount of reports, so it's almost certain there are some Bitcoin-related documents in his collection.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

One possible explanation for this seemingly-bizarre evaluation is that there could very well be a classified government document that he's aware of expressing these opinions in his stash handed to Greenwald, but hasn't yet been leaked.

He left the States in early 2013. What could possibly stop him sharing the document you're proposing?

[–]ToroArrr 4ポイント5ポイント  (10子コメント)

The simplest way for the government to shut down bitcoin would be to declare it absolutly illegal. Anyone who has any and whoever uses it will be locked up. This will not kill bitcoin but it will shut down all the gateways from and into fiat essentially. This will cripple bitcoin to obsucrity. It will literaly become child porn.

[–]mxisaac 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

It will literally become child porn?!

[–]bitmegalomaniac 2ポイント3ポイント  (5子コメント)

The simplest way for the government to shut down bitcoin would be to declare it absolutly illegal.

What government are you talking about, you know there is more than one right?

[–]ToroArrr 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Someone big. US/UK/EU/China/Japan you name it. It will trigger a snowball effect.

[–]bitmegalomaniac 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

The US does something China will go in the other direction (and vise versa).

The whole premise of the world governments getting together to do anything is ridiculous. We cannot even agree as to why the world average temperature is rising let alone monetary policy.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The US does something China will go in the other direction (and vise versa).

You know, not everything is binary. It doesn't always work that way and you know it

[–]filmassholesreturn -1ポイント0ポイント  (1子コメント)

Interpol.

[–]bitmegalomaniac 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

Interpol.

They are not even a government, their charter even prohibits them from getting involved in politics.

[–]readyou 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

This. Bitcoin would become worthless again in this case, unless you mean trading through forums would be the future.... always if I mentioned that, people would answer "Well, then we can still trade through forums"... that is hilarious.

[–]usrn 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

What government? Are you aware that there a lot of governments on the planet? :)

Bitcoin can be shut down only if the internet and infrastructure goes down.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Bitcoin can be shut down only if the internet and infrastructure goes down.

Right, but if it's illegal to exchange it for fiat it's essentially shut down, because it's not useful

[–]HammerSandwich 3ポイント4ポイント  (1子コメント)

The only thing keeping Snowden breathing right now is the Kremlin. Russia hates Bitcoin. It's no surprise he's not trumpeting cypto in public.

[–]hellobitcoinworld 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

The protocol has a lot of weaknesses in transaction size and a lot of weaknesses that structurally make it vulnerable to people who are trying to own 50 percent of the network and so on and so forth.

It seems like Snowden doesn't fully understand Bitcoin, which is hard to believe given who he is. It sounds like he is dismissing bitcoin because of the idea of a 51% attack.

http://BitcoinAnswered.com/22/what-is-a-51-percent-attack

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

It seems like Snowden doesn't fully understand Bitcoin, which is hard to believe given who he is.

Wow, add "sorry for your loss" and this is possibly the most cringeworthy comment ever

[–]mongopi 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

TL;DR PLEASE

[–]grrrgrrr 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

I'm pretty confident that the 50% attack bar can be raised to very, very high by somehow asking multiple miners to sign or encrypt the same block. These deficits will be solved.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

I'm pretty confident that the 50% attack bar can be raised to very, very high by somehow asking multiple miners to sign or encrypt the same block. These deficits will be solved.

Can you clarify what you mean?

[–]darrenturn90 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

Incredibly short sighted analysis

[–]Natalia_AnatolioPAMM 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

But anyway I like it

[–]darrenturn90 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

The rest of it is as expected. He doesn't really touch on bitcoin much though I get the sense he would be a bigger fan of monero

[–]Pampyz -1ポイント0ポイント  (6子コメント)

Wow, really embarrassing by Snowden... I don't know why I (and many others from the looks of it) made the erroneous assumption of thinking he was an authority in these matters just because he likes to reveal secret information...

[–]theswapman 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

he's still a genius in matters of cryptography and systems security. he just doesn't appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears bitcoin went through to gain trust and adoption. just because there are flaws to the protocol (obviously), there's so much value in the tried and tested network that no random shitcoin can just come along and replace it because it may be written a bit better. when the basic conditions are met, this ends being a really minor point.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

he's still a genius in matters of cryptography and systems security. he just doesn't appreciate the blood, sweat, and tears bitcoin went through to gain trust and adoption.

How do you know that? He knows a lot about it, so clearly he's read up on it.

Ya know, people that point out Bitcoin weaknesses can still be informed. People always seem to counter naysayers with "they don't understand Bitcoin", it's tiresome.

[–]11ty 2ポイント3ポイント  (1子コメント)

Exactly this. He's a guy with some intelligence who had access to classified information. Nothing more.

[–]AussieCryptoCurrency 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Exactly this. He's a guy with some intelligence who had access to classified information. Nothing more.

Unless he praised Bitcoin, then he'd be the foremost authority

[–]readyou 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

So, you are an authority in this matter? I prefer his opinion over yours... you are just a random internet stranger acting smart... you didn't do anything, what makes your knowledge more valuable than the knowledge and opinion of Snowden?

[–]usrn -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

he was an authority in these matters

never follow anyone blindly

[–]HCthegreat -2ポイント-1ポイント  (1子コメント)

Wow, going full retard.

[–]readyou 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

As same as your comment that is not contributing anything meaningful to the discussion.

[–]atleticofa -1ポイント0ポイント  (4子コメント)

"But focusing too much on Bitcoin, I think, is a mistake. The real solution is again, how do we get to a point where you don't have to have a direct link between your identity all of the time? You have personas. You have tokens that authenticate each person and when you want to be able to interact with people as your persona in your true name, you can do so. When you want to be able to switch to a persona - a common persona, an anonymous persona, a shared persona, you can do that. When you want to move to pseudonymous persona, you can do that."

That's exactly what SAFE Network do (Maidsafe). Someone should tell him about SAFE.

[–]IGETSHIVERSWHENIP 3ポイント4ポイント  (3子コメント)

If only there was some sort of digital token that could allow you to do all those things....

[–]atleticofa 0ポイント1ポイント  (2子コメント)

In this old paper, David Irvine describes how SAFE achieve what Edward would like to have: http://node1.metadisk.org/api/download/65c1bf104dde399c7a70db7c389efe0ff222c2a3f5c35ebbe0e4e5772c98dcab?key=431a559e433fe1a774a01991c82ac785c3a5fc34b362853ee41dee812e863360&token=Pm0JMfTYSGEGgTUb

[–]FlailingBorg 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

It's not clear to me how SAFE's coin is supposed to work. That paper didn't really have any information on it either. I read the system docs but those are either incomplete or wrong or I'm misunderstanding what is written there or it won't work.

[–]atleticofa 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

That paper is from 2006, updated in 2009. This paper is focused on the network, not in Safecoin, Safecoin is just the token of the network, the really important thing is how SAFE manage data, no the coin, that is secundary.

The coin is very simple. Money is data, a token is data, the SAFE network store data in a decentralized, perpetual, private and safe way. So Safecoin is just a special kind of inmutable data chunks in which each part can be owned only by one person at the same time, so it's not possible double spend, if you send this data, it's sent forever, it's gone.

There is a paper of Safecoin, but it's outdated and it's not very techinical: http://maidsafe.net/docs/Safecoin.pdf

It's outdated because SAFE doesn't need Transactions Managers anymore and have been removed: https://forum.safenetwork.io/t/rfc-remove-transaction-managers/4195

I know, maybe is not well explained yet, the devs are focusing on simplify the source code, they have changed all the code from C++ to Rust, at the begining that sounds like a crazy thing for me, but they were totally right, it was an awesome decision, Rust is a great language in develop by Mozilla. With the transport from C++ to Rust, the code have beeen simplified from 1million lines to something like 100k lines. After the next sprint, the devs will develop extensive documentation.

For me it tooks 2 months to understand each part of the networkter you could understand how. If you really want to understand SAFE, learn how the network works, la safecoin works. If you try to understand first how safecoin works, it's going to be really hard.

The forum is the best source of knowledge for now: https://forum.safenetwork.io/ You can search every topic in the search dialog, and you will find your answer, if not you can ask, David Irvine and many devs are very active in the forum and will be happy to solve your doubts.

Of course, the source code is also a great source for knowledge: https://github.com/maidsafe

[–]elruary -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

You kno nuthun Edward snow - den.

[–][削除されました]  (3子コメント)

[deleted]

    [–]majorpaynei86 8ポイント9ポイント  (1子コメント)

    This is just a retarded comment. He may be ignorant of the matter, but that is no reason to berate him.

    [–]sgornick -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    He just dropped to being maybe citizen seven or so now.

    [–]holytransaction -2ポイント-1ポイント  (1子コメント)

    He has had bigger things to worry about but he should take some time to read up on the blockchain.

    [–]readyou -1ポイント0ポイント  (0子コメント)

    You too. It seems he understands more than you.

    [–]Sugar_Daddy_Peter -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Welp, he's not an economist. Maybe he can at least vouch for the security of the network?

    [–]hendrixski -2ポイント-1ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Does he know something I don't know?

    He's talking about personas as a solution, but bitcoin is advertised as being pseudonymous. He says it's structure is weak against a 50% attack, but bitcoin is advertised as making a 50% attack prohibitively expensive. Does he know anything I haven't heard of?

    [–]jrm2007 -3ポイント-2ポイント  (0子コメント)

    Is Snowden a technologist?