Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: Interviewing Bitcoin Foundation Ex. Director Jon Matonis - Any Questions?
by
malevolent
on 12/07/2013, 15:08:19 UTC
I would like to know how Matonis plans to appease the forces that want to "regulate" (control, neuter) bitcoin while at the same time protecting those aspects that make bitcoin extraordinary.
Also, since the Foundation appears to have attracted people with statist, regulatory inclinations what does it say about the organization that it has now installed him as its director?
Also, given that there are many prominent people in the bitcoin community that are pro-regulation as well as very many who are rabidly anti-regulation what future paths does he see?  No problem it will take care of itself?  Blockchain fork?  New darkhorse technology like zerocoin?

+1
The crony capitalist crowd is a huge issue.

I am not 100% up-to-date on what's going on in the Bitcoin Foundation but I would like to hear Jon Matonis elaborate on this:

The Bitcoin Foundation itself is in a difficult position: we all know who it's funded by, and everyone involved is publicly known. This can be a problem: in the last round of grant proposals at one point Gavin suggested someone submit a grant for a trust-free mixer service to help people make the coins in their wallet more anonymous by mixing them with a large pool of other users. I asked Gavin about that later, and he said the foundation lawyers nixed the idea because efforts to make Bitcoin users more anonymous could be seen to be aiding money laundering, especially if the foundation itself was paying for development and to run the servers.

I believe the Foundation should learn from the TOR Project:
https://www.torproject.org/docs/faq-abuse.html.en