Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] Proposal: Encrypt bitcoin messages

From: Troy Benjegerdes <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 12:50:38 -0500

On Sat, Aug 23, 2014 at 04:50:30PM +0000, Justus Ranvier wrote:
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> On 08/23/2014 04:17 PM, xor wrote:
> > On Tuesday, August 19, 2014 07:40:39 PM Jeff Garzik wrote:
> >> Encryption is of little value if you may deduce the same
> >> information by observing packet sizes and timings.
> > 
> > Instead of spawning a discussion whether this aspect is a reason to
> > NOT encrypt, you should do the obvious:
> > 
> > Fix that as well. X being broken is not a reason for not fixing Y. 
> > Pad the then encrypted packets with random bytes. The fact that
> > they are encrypted makes them look like random data already, so the
> > padding will not be distinguishable from the rest. Also, add some
> > random bias to their timing.
> 
> The packet size and timing issue will become less of an issue as the
> network grows anyway.
> 
> One transaction inserted into a 3 transaction-per-second encrypted
> stream is more obvious than the same transaction inserted into a 100
> or 1000 TPS stream.

The requirement for anonymity and privacy is lawyers and a Bitlicense.

If you want privacy and anonymity, then do high-frequency trading on
a centralized exchange, and if you want to go over-the-top, run some
arbitrage bots as well, and hide in the millions of transactions per
second that go on.

But make sure you get a Bitlicense and have a good securities lawyer.

Trying to solve a legal/legislative/social problem with more crypto is
only going to serve the people who created the legal/legislative/social
problem in the first place, because they can hire a hacker who will 
find a misplaced (} in your crypto code, and all the work you did to
encrypt wire protocols becomes silently worthless.