Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Scaling Bitcoin conference micro-report

From: Eric Voskuil <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Sep 2015 01:52:43 -0700

On 09/19/2015 12:57 AM, NxtChg wrote:>
>> Your vision of censorship resistance is to become such a strong
>> central authority that you can resist it in direct physical
>> confrontation. If you succeed at this, you are the threat.
>
> My vision is a strong _decentralized_ system, which is:
>
>   a) too important to close,

Your argument is that the state is not a threat to a system designed to
deprive the state of seigniorage, because the state will see that system
as too important?

Bitcoin cannot be both decentralized and reliant on being, "too
important to close". If it can be closed there is insufficient
decentralization.

I was concerned that this was going off topic for a technical forum.
However this is the central technical issue of Bitcoin. If one does not
understand the threat then one cannot model it or design systems to
defend against it. On the other hand, this is unfortunately not new
territory, so I'll leave it at this, which is also not news to most of us...

>   b) able to provide adequate response to governments, like EFF or
Google do.

"The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the
costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance
program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were
unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian.

The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google..."

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/aug/23/nsa-prism-costs-tech-companies-paid

e