Post
Topic
Board Bitcoin Discussion
Re: [PROPOSAL] - lock the apparent Mt. Gox coins for now
by
repentance
on 04/03/2014, 02:53:00 UTC

There is nothing wrong with the Bitcoin community, as a consensus, saying they want to be just and support law enforcement in such cases. In fact, I would argue it is using available information and the capabilities of new crypto-currencies in a freedom supporting way.

According to statements by MtGox, they have 127,000 creditors.  You might have noticed that people who are owed money by MtGox cannot come to a consensus about how the situation should be best approached, and those people have the possibility of invoking varying levels of actual authority.

Do you really believe that "the Bitcoin community" - a diverse group with widely varying agendas - would reach a consensus on this?  Even if they did, they have no authority over miners.  How would you even know that a consensus had been reached?  "The Bitcoin community" includes far more people than those who post here and on reddit.  Are miners supposed to just listen to the loudest voices?

You talk about "supporting law enforcement", but you're really talking about taking an action without even consulting them.  Do you think they're not capable of asking the devs whether or not it's possible for Bitcoin addresses to be "frozen" if they believe that's a desirable option?  It takes legal authority to freeze bank accounts, but what your proposing is freezing funds with no legal authority whatsoever based on no evidence whatsoever - the kind of thing this community would be outraged by if it was done by a conventional financial service.

Seriously, many of the proposals to "help law enforcement" I've seen over the last few days seem far more likely to hinder any investigation than anything else.  Y'all need to step back and let investigators do their thing working within the law because if one of you idiots fucks up the legal cases against MtGox in your quest to play Ellery Queen, nobody is going to give a shit that you had "good intentions".