For those who don't know, Ray Dillinger is one of the first people to review the Bitcoin source. He collaborated with Satoshi prior to the first release:
> In November of 2008, I did a code review and security audit for the block chain portion of the Bitcoin source code. The late Hal Finney did code review and audit for the scripting language, and we both looked at the accounting code. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous architect and author of the code, alternated between answering questions and asking them.
> The pseudonymity of coins being owned by the bearer of some
cryptographic key is a failure; People have been eavesdropping and aggressively analyzing the block chain from day 1. And the block chain will always be there, it will always be public, and it will always be subject to further analysis. And we are learning that analysis of that record is sufficient to destroy any pretense of anonymity or pseudonymity.
The public nature of the Bitcoin block chain, and its privacy implications, were discussed in the white paper and have been known since the beginning. So it's odd to be labeling Bitcoin a failure now, given that nothing new has developed within Bitcoin itself on that front.
What has happened since 2009 is that exchanges have fallen under the influence of the US government and its perpetual wars on terror and drugs. The on/off ramps are where most of the privacy loss is happening. Bitcoin users do the rest to themselves by lax opsec, including address reuse and address publication.
The rest of the points are not that clearly laid out. To take the very next one:
> The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every
last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping.
Including debt brokering (lightning network) ...
The lightning network isn't debt brokering because no debt is involved. It's a consensus-enforced contract over bearer instruments.
The critique on mining centralization has been around for many years now, and Dillenger's analysis doesn't bring anything new to the table.
> In November of 2008, I did a code review and security audit for the block chain portion of the Bitcoin source code. The late Hal Finney did code review and audit for the scripting language, and we both looked at the accounting code. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous architect and author of the code, alternated between answering questions and asking them.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/id-known-what-we-were-startin...
To pick the first point of his critique:
> The pseudonymity of coins being owned by the bearer of some cryptographic key is a failure; People have been eavesdropping and aggressively analyzing the block chain from day 1. And the block chain will always be there, it will always be public, and it will always be subject to further analysis. And we are learning that analysis of that record is sufficient to destroy any pretense of anonymity or pseudonymity.
The public nature of the Bitcoin block chain, and its privacy implications, were discussed in the white paper and have been known since the beginning. So it's odd to be labeling Bitcoin a failure now, given that nothing new has developed within Bitcoin itself on that front.
What has happened since 2009 is that exchanges have fallen under the influence of the US government and its perpetual wars on terror and drugs. The on/off ramps are where most of the privacy loss is happening. Bitcoin users do the rest to themselves by lax opsec, including address reuse and address publication.
The rest of the points are not that clearly laid out. To take the very next one:
> The scarcity of block chain space has led people to re-invent every last feature of the banks they thought they were going to be escaping. Including debt brokering (lightning network) ...
The lightning network isn't debt brokering because no debt is involved. It's a consensus-enforced contract over bearer instruments.
The critique on mining centralization has been around for many years now, and Dillenger's analysis doesn't bring anything new to the table.