
Lead bitcoin developer invited into CIA headquarters - mike_esspe
http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=6652.0
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sgornick
Good to see something happening. I hadn't seen anything regarding Bitcoin on
HN for about 24 hours and was starting to get worried.

~~~
trotsky
I hate to whine, but has an editor/admin looked at the volume of bitcoin
submissions and any possible voting block behavior on the stories? A new
bitcoin story seems to have shown up every few days for the past several
months, with many of the same posters adding support in the comments every
time.

Let's take this story for example. Let's frame it in general terms. A leader
of an open source project is going to be speaking in a few months at a meeting
that isn't open to the public, and he doesn't suggest he'll be presenting
anything new.

Would this be newsworthy on HN for any normal project? Highly unlikely. Many
of the bitcoin stories seem to be similar - press about bitcoin that offers
nothing that hasn't been said here 100 times.

If the voting and interest is organic, then fine, so be it. But maybe somebody
could take a look and see. There is an obvious incentive to certain
speculators holding bitcoin to hype it as much as possible in an attempt to
fuel the already extreme fluctuations that occur in its trading.

~~~
mrb
Imagine HackerNews existed in 1992, as an NNTP newsgroup, and reported stories
about this new thing called the World Wide Web being developped by Berners-
Lee. I wasn't there at the time, but I imagine that only a fraction of the
people at the time understood the revolutionary capabilities of this
technology, while most were indifferent, and perhaps, like you, a little
annoyed if the WWW was repeatedly mentioned to you in a short timespan.

Of course we all know how significant the WWW turned out to be to human
society in the next decade and later.

Well, IMHO, what is happening today in 2011 with Bitcoin is the same thing.
When I first read about Bitcoin, I skimmed over it, thought it was a scam.
Then it was mentioned to me again, and again, became curious, stumbled upon
the white paper by accident (<http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf>), read it,
and was amazed by the concepts, the design, the suprising capabilities offered
by its clever use of cryptography. This is so different and so far ahead from
any monetary system that exists today that I, for one, believe that Bitcoin is
potentially as revolutionary as the WWW. The very fact we see so many
submissions from _different people_ about Bitcoin (the top 8 submission at
<http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:ycombinator.com+bitcoin> are from 7
different HN accounts, so it is not like there is a core group of fanboys
spamming HN), and the fact that HN is a community with a high concentration of
smart folks, shows that Bitcoin is certainly onto something... In fact, a
seemingly overabundance of submissions for a specific technology is exactly
one thing I would recognize as a sign of the potentially next WWW-level
revolutionary tech...

Mark my words. Come back to this post 10 years from now :-)

~~~
trotsky
The problem with that analogy is that the world wide web wasn't some sort of
tradeable commodity with thin exchange markets that people were being widely
encouraged to use to trade US dollars for - in ways that would most likely be
considered illegal if we were talking about an OTC stock. That is to say, it's
entirely different.

 _Mark my words. Come back to this post 10 years from now :-)_

It's a rather cheap prediction - because of course if the bitcoin market
collapses in the next few years it's pretty remote possibility that you'll
ever have to revisit it.

~~~
mrb
True, some greedy people are almost certainly looking to profit by speculating
on Bitcoin and generating buzz about it.

But, foremost, I can assure you there is a real, vibrant, and quickly growing
community of users and merchants:
<http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?board=5.0>
<https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade>

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waterlesscloud
My guess is that some of the best cryptographers and mathematicians you've
never heard of will be in the audience for that presentation.

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mike_esspe
Cached copy, if forum is unresponsive:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.bitcoin.org%2Fsmf%2Findex.php%3Ftopic%3D6652.0)

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mieses
boring. this business model is well known.

1 create a popular encrypted system the CIA can't see inside of. 2 get invited
into CIA headquarters. 3 [redacted] 4 retire.

~~~
rms
3) is known as an offer you can't refuse.

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richardw
I'd say their primary interest is knowing how to watch payment flow. They'll
develop ways to discover patterns in payment and deduce who is part of what
network. Unlikely to disrupt, rather find ways to leverage it.

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danek
"I think the goals of this project are to create a better currency, create a
more competitive and efficient international payment system, and give people
more direct control over their finances. And I don't think any of those goals
are incompatible with the goals of government."

Aren't these goals are completely at odds with the goals of the government, or
do I read too much Chomsky?

~~~
bitwize
If the government doesn't have a backdoor in allowing them to track and/or tax
every transaction, you bet your ass it's incompatible with the goals of
government!

~~~
wladimir
With bitcoin, they do. No backdoor, but the entire transaction log is public.
It's even easier for the tax man because they don't have to query data from
banks. Bitcoin is not a tax avoidance scheme and never meant to be.

The sooner they come up with a legal way to tax bitcoins, the better it is for
business adoption, I guess...

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pointillistic
The elephant in the room is that in addition to the obvious upside these
platforms are ripe for money laundering.

~~~
rhizome
History tells us that the CIA doesn't necessarily mind.

~~~
ww520
CIA would be a big user of bitcoins. There are a few operations that they
don't want the money to be traced.

~~~
michaelchisari
Which is the interesting push and pull of our government. While the CIA would
love to be able to launder money through a system such as this, the FBI are
probably fuming over how much more difficult their job will become because of
it.

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kiba
Should be "Lead Bitcoin Developer Invited into CIA Headquarters"

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T_S_
Don't waste your time on them. They just want to reduce the costs of carrying
around cash in black satchels. Get feedback from the NSA instead.

~~~
Retric
There have been some suggestions that the CIA backed Tor so they may be
willing to support such systems.

PS: According to Wikipedia _Tor Originally sponsored by the US Naval Research
Laboratory,[10]_ so that's another group that's probably worth looking into.

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kurige
... and he never came out. </obligatory-joke>

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koin
into the belly of the beast

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eof
Have to imagine they are heavily mining bitcoin as well.

~~~
calebmpeterson
To what end? Given that they're funded by the US govt. if they need more cash,
they can just ask Uncle Sam to warm up the printer...

Seriously though, why would mining bitcoins benefit them?

~~~
sliverstorm
Best way to control a currency you can't print is to own most of it.

