I don't get it: Bitcoin and privacy are by definition orthoginally separated. Bitcoin transactions are not anonymous, they're public and can be traced quickly and easily. You're one public key leak away from having your entire banking history leak to the public. You can work around this problem by having different wallets for every transaction, but getting the coins in there would be a huge hassle if you have to buy them physically, with cash, every time you want to pay.
Bitcoin is uncontrollable by the government but that doesn't mean the government isn't following your every step on the blockchain. They'll let you play with your internet coins as long as you behave but if they've got it out for you, either because you're a criminal or because they're oppressive, you can't rely on the blockchain to protect you. Physical money in your wallet is far more private than any other common form of blockchain currency (which is why many countries are trying to limit how much physical cash you can have on you).
This is a pseudointellectual treatise that advocates for financial privacy by effectively taking all your transactions, publishing them online under a pseudonym, emailing them to every global law enforcement agency and saying "bet you can't figure out who I am!"
Bet you they can.
The idea that a glacial L1, so slow that it would require 75 years to onboard everyone onto the L2 (and the better part of a trillion dollars of electricity), that publicly publishes all transactions for the FBI and the PRC to feed into their automated de-anonmyization tooling is somehow a panacea for privacy - because the author is three punchbowls deep in the Koolaid - I mean I have no idea where to even begin. It beggars belief.
Then they have the gall to mention Hong Kong as though every bit of traffic in and out of the island isn't going through the microscope of the PRC. If you think you can transact under the nose of the PRC on Bitcoin and they'll have no idea what's happening, I've got tokenized ownership of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge [1] to sell you. Those transactions are prosecution futures. They know exactly what they were for, they were letting you make them, and if you're a dissident, look out.
Physical, offline cash is the only true decentralized, censorship resistant peer-to-peer payment method that's difficult to trace. If you believe in privacy, let's throw some weight behind Rohan Grey's ecash. [2]
> The layer that was—and still is—responsible for standardized text transfer on top of TCP/IP: HTTP
Um, wait. HTTP is for transferring documents. There are other text-based protocols that run over TCP, that long pre-date HTTP. And I for one deplore the use of HTTP for everything; I'm afraid the common firewall practice of blocking everything outbound except port 80 is probably largely responsible.
> The similarities between the Hypertext Transfer Protocol and the Bitcoin Protocol are almost too perfect.
Except maybe for the fact that HTTP was not looking for an actual, legal, constructive use-case that it solved better than existing technologies say... more than a decade after its creation?
[+] [-] jeroenhd|3 years ago|reply
Bitcoin is uncontrollable by the government but that doesn't mean the government isn't following your every step on the blockchain. They'll let you play with your internet coins as long as you behave but if they've got it out for you, either because you're a criminal or because they're oppressive, you can't rely on the blockchain to protect you. Physical money in your wallet is far more private than any other common form of blockchain currency (which is why many countries are trying to limit how much physical cash you can have on you).
[+] [-] tromp|3 years ago|reply
They're arguing that Lightning transactions offer substantially more privacy.
[+] [-] tchalla|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] responsible|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arcticbull|3 years ago|reply
Bet you they can.
The idea that a glacial L1, so slow that it would require 75 years to onboard everyone onto the L2 (and the better part of a trillion dollars of electricity), that publicly publishes all transactions for the FBI and the PRC to feed into their automated de-anonmyization tooling is somehow a panacea for privacy - because the author is three punchbowls deep in the Koolaid - I mean I have no idea where to even begin. It beggars belief.
Then they have the gall to mention Hong Kong as though every bit of traffic in and out of the island isn't going through the microscope of the PRC. If you think you can transact under the nose of the PRC on Bitcoin and they'll have no idea what's happening, I've got tokenized ownership of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge [1] to sell you. Those transactions are prosecution futures. They know exactly what they were for, they were letting you make them, and if you're a dissident, look out.
Physical, offline cash is the only true decentralized, censorship resistant peer-to-peer payment method that's difficult to trace. If you believe in privacy, let's throw some weight behind Rohan Grey's ecash. [2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Kong–Zhuhai–Macau_Bridge
[2] https://ecashact.us
[+] [-] denton-scratch|3 years ago|reply
Um, wait. HTTP is for transferring documents. There are other text-based protocols that run over TCP, that long pre-date HTTP. And I for one deplore the use of HTTP for everything; I'm afraid the common firewall practice of blocking everything outbound except port 80 is probably largely responsible.
[+] [-] plebianRube|3 years ago|reply
It is literally in the name of the specification.
If it were meant to be a document transfer protocol, HDTP would have been a better acronym.
[+] [-] eterps|3 years ago|reply
> Lightning Network Protocol (LNP) and the Bitcoin Protocol (BP) are often compared to TCP/IP.
Apparently LNP/BP is determined to be the be-all and end-all without further consideration?
[1] https://cryptofees.info
[+] [-] nnx|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drdrey|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Geee|3 years ago|reply
Just like TCP/IP, there will be only a single winning protocol for money and value transfer.
[+] [-] bmazed|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] palata|3 years ago|reply
Except maybe for the fact that HTTP was not looking for an actual, legal, constructive use-case that it solved better than existing technologies say... more than a decade after its creation?
[+] [-] cloudhead|3 years ago|reply