Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] The legal risks of auto-updating wallet software; custodial relationships

From: odinn <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2015 21:33:53 +0000

Um ~ "jurisdiction of wallet provider?"

If that's the (perhaps ot) bit you want to run on this thread then my
comments are:

Get out of web wallet businesses now.  It's not a jurisdictional
question anymore, although I think there used to be very valid long
running debates on where it would be best to do business.  Now it just
feels like you will be bouncing from one place to another -
determining where your exit is as soon as you establish a (physical)
presence, because jurisdictions sense a serious threat from the
advancement of financial cryptography as it will evolve in the next
several years. So you have to be mobile, or do something like what
they are establishing at blueseed (see http://blueseed.com which is
just off coast of San Francisco).  Please perk up and don't just swipe
to delete, read the whole e-mail.  There are some configurations (e.g.
the zero knowledge bit) you can do to mitigate the issues but if you
are asking users to log in and log out of a service that relies on a
web site then in the end you doom them (and any service you provide)
to mandatory storage of customer data and ultimately loss of customer
resources due to identification of the customer.

I think you need to stop quibbling about the details and just get over
it and understand that the problem of web wallet users and
corporations that serve web wallet customers being forced to give up
information constantly to governments means that web wallets are
certainly no longer a viable solution.  And post-cromnibus with the
extra financial surveillance provisions now passed on 3rd party
matters, it's even worse.  This is not subject to debate, it's just a
fact.  Period.  Web wallet corps exist now only on a model that exists
to burn the users.  Convenient?  Yes.  But is it good for the users in
the long haul?  Absolutely not.  Do alternative to the web wallets
exist? Absolutely.

Back off.. Go to p2p.  Stop advocating for webby solutions.  In fact,
I don't think that anyone working for coinbase or bitpay should be,
anymore.  I think that on principle you should withdraw and end your
employment from such services.

Core?  Good.  Electrum Wallet?  good.  Mycelium? Local Trader? Open
Bazaar?  Could be better, but great.  These are the kind of things we
need.  No signups, avoids centralizations, no grabbing your data, no
ID collection and requirements.

As to the issue of auto-updating itself... I think the simplest answer
to this question (personally) is that (go ahead and attack me here)
there shouldn't be auto-updates... but that there should be
auto-notifications for update when (a) update is available, but that
(b) this notification should never "push" the user to update (e.g. the
notification should never say "oh hey user if you don't update by such
and such a date, your wallet will not work or satoshis will die
because of your inaction"
(stays quiet while likely 100-e-mail thread is spawned from this)

- -O

Tamas Blummer:
> Justus,
> 
> In contrary.
> 
> Not being in the jurisdiction of the wallet provider makes it
> harder for the user to reclaim funds taken by the wallet provider. 
> The legal hurdle to force confiscation through a wallet provider
> might also be lower if the target user is not domestic.
> 
> Tamas Blummer
> 
> 
> 
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>
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- -- 
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and expansion of a giving economy, and a new social good"
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