Is there a way for the mixer to issue a cryptographic, physical receipt to the inputter (like on a smartchip), good for crypto on redemption at a later date? That way we can have physical cash! This would aid in anonymity and help adoption of crypto as a medium of exchange in general.

That is true.
I just saw these a little bit ago:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=200952
and
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=150681.0

This is all kind of over my head here and possibly off topic, but to aid in anonymity in any mixer no matter the number of inputs/outputs and no matter who inputs the coins, what about the possibility of instead of immediately crediting the outputs, the mixer could issue a "receipt" that could be cryptographically printed on a smartchip or something. This "receipt" can be used just like physical cash and passed around in transactions with no record in the blockchain until it is redeemed to the mixer later, which adds anonymity and the convenience of physical cash. 

Alrighty well anyway it occurs to me that this idea is pretty much exactly like a coin mixer that gives out a physical receipt in between accepting coins and giving back out the anonymous coins. The physical receipt can be used as cash indefinitely in the meantime which is worth some amount of anonymized coins at the mixer later. The mixer needs a way to identify counterfeits, which i guess can be done if the receipts are smartchips.

The problems are:
How to make the mixer trustless as far as redeeming coin
How to make the mixer trustless as far as minting a receipt that it can't duplicate

Well, this idea is totally bitchin' though!!

Erm, no. You might want to read it again.

My bad, you can't have regular people create these because they can know what the private key is.

You would have to make some kind of decentralized machine create it for you.

However, you could still redeem it privately.

If this gets enough action, I'll edit the OP

I got a kickass idea maybe which will make it so anybody will be able to mint their own physical amount of crypto, and it will be redeemable back to crypto anywhere, both tasks even in his/her own house. In between, this cash can be verfied by anybody.

This idea has a giant, seemingly impossible hole in it, but if it can be figured out maybe this could work.

Ok the idea uses these things:
1. A decentralized network with a database, decentralized control of its own crypto accounts
2. Smartchips, as in a chip you can store a private key on that can't be read, but can sign, etc
3. A networked gizmo to interact with the smartchip

To make a piece of "cash", somebody does this:
1. Decides how much crypto the cash is to be worth
2. Generates a random key pair (having nothing to do with crypto addresses or anything)
3. Puts the private key on the smartchip
4. Makes a crypto transaction to an address owned by the decentralized network
5. The number denoting the amount of crypto that was given to the decentralized network address is stored in the database along with the public key.

The smartchip is now "worth" that amount of crypto because to redeem it, all one needs to do would be something like:
1. Tell the network an address to pay crypto to
2. The decentralized network gives the smartchip something to sign.
3. It uses the signature to lookup how much crypto to pay.
4. Maybe further confirms by encrypting random data with pubkey in database and see if smartchip can decrypt
5. Pays the crypto address in crypto, and deletes record of public key and amount

In the meantime, cash can be verified at any time much like the procedure for redeeming, but without the last step of actually paying crypto for it and deleting it.

There's probably holes all in this idea, but the big glaring one for me is how to give decentralized control of crypto addresses to a network, which is essentially a decentralized bank or wallet.

What the hell are you talking about? When did I ever even imply in the slightest that card payments today in any way preserve any anonymity at all? When did I even mention any feature of current card payments? I fully agree with what you just said about them, but are you actually trying to say that i said otherwise, or even raised any issue about it at all?


All currencies, state fiat, crypto, even gold to a large extent, are "digital" today. The fact that a currency is "digital" doesn't subtract from any real demand that they have a useful physical or virtual representation. I disagree that a physical or virtual representation of crypto is unrealistic or completely unnecessary, especially if the only reasoning is just because it is "digital". I go so far to say that physicality or a virtual representation of physicality is a sorely missed component of any purely digitial currency.

I use the term "virtual" to mean accounting entries of notes or receipts issued on reserves.

If you can't be convinced that the historical usefulness of physical and virtual money and the current usefulness of physical and virtual money is not an indicator of the future usefulness of physical and virtual money, then I'm not sure what else to say, but I will try one last way.

Think of crypto as any other reserve specie of value such as precious metal or grain for example. If it is in any way difficult or even slightly inconvenient to transfer or exchange the value stored in these things with other things, then a market will spring up to make it easier, because an easier way will be in demand. Notes issued on reserves comes from this exact market, no matter what the reserve type. Crypto is no different than gold or grain in the respect that transacting in receipts issued on the reserve affords more conveniences (and anonymity in the case of crypto) that transacting in the specie itself. The market will produce this.

The 75% of transactions that you speak of being done on cards are simply digital transactions of receipts issued on reserves. They are the incrementing and decrementing of digital accounting entries of these notes. This digital accounting still can afford the benefits that transacting in the crypto specie itself can not, even anonymity if done correctly. Transactions of receipts, virtual or physical, is not being replaced, nor will it be replaced.



Honestly, i'm not sure about how "off-chain transactions" work. I've heard them being referred to before, but i'm not sure how they work exactly. Some details would be great. I can't understand how they are done without requiring an external instrument such as a note, or in this case, a virtual note.

wheatstone im totally open to alternatives that will make the reasons for receipts on crypto reserves being used as money be obsolete, because it would be better that way for everybody. Note issuing leads to fractional reserve lending which exposes some degree of risk to an economy.

However, that being said, I don't think it can be avoided, so therefore maybe a decentral thing can be invented to do this instead of private bankers.

To move on (although I don't mind still trying to convince people that the need is there and will be met one way or another), how about this initial idea:

Make an ATM machine (or many). Instead of filling it government fiat notes, fill it with blank tokens with a smart chip on each one.

When somebody wants to make a withdrawal, they use some gizmo like maybe their phone app to sign a transaction of crypto in the amount they want in "cash" over to the network's crypto reserves. The networked ATM creates a random asymmetric key pair (having nothing at all to do with crypto addresses), puts the private one on the smart chip and stores the public one in its decentralized database. The plastic that this chip is mounted on can be printed with the correct denominations or amount of the withdrawal, for convenience.

This plastic thing with a private key on a smart chip is the cash that can be used to transact with indefinitely, locally, person to person, over and over again. If this existed right now, we could each probably talk 10 merchants in our area into accepting them if they knew what bitcoin (or crypto in genral) was and how it worked, what the exchange rates were, where to find out, etc. We could more easily convince regular people to receive and spend them who would have normally have never even tried to get their first piece of crypto.

When somebody has a piece of this cash, and they want crypto in the blockchain, they can go to one of these ATMs with their phone app, present their crypto address they want to be paid, insert the plastic thing with the smart chip and check its signature against the public keys in its decentralized database to verify it, then pays the crypto address.

This is basically the gist of it. It surely can be optimized greatly. It obviously doesn't address accounting entries of these things that can be stored digitally. Counterfeiting must be addressed.

The reason im bringing this up is because i think it is unavoidable that private banks will perform this function, as they always have in the past, unless a decentral one is there already to compete with them.

I see where you might be getting confused. I should be more explicit and say that it is mandatory now because it exists now in the existing, widely adopted, current fiat system. I wasn't meaning that it exists already in crypto

Mandatory meaning required features of a medium of exchange. Mandatory right now as in they exist right now because there is a demand for these features and there always has been and probably always will be. Not sure how to explain it further. I feel like we're wasting time with the obvious.


I would have to say that the choice has always been made to carry around a receipt on a chicken or gold or grain or whatever. Furthermore that still is the case today as in your example, all credit card purchases, electronic transfers, etc, not just physical cash, are exchanges in notes by way of increasing or decreasing accounting entries of them. The reserves today is "monetized government debt".


C'mon now please, I almost think you are being purposefully thick as you wildly miss the point that it is not the anonymity between transactors that is important, but rather preserving anonomity of the parties in regards to outside parties such as the government, employers, spouses, friends, enemies, strangers, etc.


I have to totally disagree. This issue is much broader than your narrow example and has been discussed in numerous places in this forum and there are many articles on the interwebz about it.


These things you describe are going to have to compete against the simple issuance, use, and guaranteed redemption of inert receipts on crypto reserves and accounting entries thereof, which is much simpler and more widely adoptable by the masses. I hear the word "masses" as in "mass adoption" and i think "simple" and "throughout history". This is just my opinion, which i believe is fairly logical. In any case the premise of this topic is that these notes are a foregone conclusion although i don't mind the side debate of whether they will be in demand enough to spring into existence, like we are having.


Again, it's almost as if you are being obtuse on purpose. I'm talking about the adoption of cryptocurrency in general. The use of notes on crypto reserves is something that will foster adoption of crypto as a medium of exchange in general for a much wider range of people. I'm not trying to say that we need to use notes to foster the use of notes. Gimme a break.

Is this not transacting in accounting entries of receipts issued on crypto reserves? Sounds exactly like it, unless I am missing something. You didn't give enough details.


As you said, this still requires trust and is not nearly as simple for a broad range of people as some entity flat out guaranteeing to give you a bonafide crypto amount in the blockchain for an inert piece of paper or coin wherever you got it from, or vice versa, no questions asked.

I figured the fact that they are mandatory right now was obvious enough to not go into it too much. Historically, receipts have almost always been issued on reserves, with the receipts being adopted as "money". I think in reality, this will be unavoidable with crypto whether we like it or not.
The bankers will see the light and offer all the benefits of receipts to us, unless we can make a decentral system to do it ourselves first.


Physical notes, as in cash, are for every practical purpose, totally anonymous. I'm not sure how you can at all say that thay aren't. On the other hand, the forever in its entirety public blockchain/NSA/criminal botnet data mining/ISP traffic analysis/corporate controlled routing/subpoena risk combination is definitely not anonymous. Even if you succeed in being completely anonymous with bitcoin, your anonymity is forever at risk as soon as you transact with somebody who doesn't care or has slipped up.


I'm not sure how that's circular or anything but straightforward. We're talking about the masses here, not the techno crowd hoarding bitcoins currently. Not everybody is going to appreciate the mandate for an internet connection and some electronic gizmo to buy every last little cheap thing at the corner store. While it is true that merchants need an internet connection today for credit cards, the customers can get by with an inert piece of plastic, and cash is widely used. Many people do not use credit cards, especially person to person.


This is true. I can give you this one partially, but physically handing over cash is way quicker than waiting for a block or two to be mined. And there is the matter of transaction fees that would have to be paid both ways to a miner for this manual reversal in the blockchain. Furthermore, although i didn't state it in the OP, it should be implicit that there would be banks or "wallets" coming into existence storing accounting entries of these notes, much like checking accounts, and these accounting entries can be reversed asymmetrically. I'm not saying I'm an advocate of this, I'm just saying it can be done, and the masses might mandate this in cases of fraud, non delivery, etc.


This doesn't solve all the problems that inert receipts on crypto reserve solves, although it does somewhat solve the local, face to face transaction problem somewhat conveniently, except for the gizmo part of it. And at least somebody has to have an internet connection. This is like the smart card wallet on the wiki. I like this a lot, although it doesn't get us all the way there and the demand for inert notes will still exist.



The casascius coin, windowed envelope thing unfortunately can't work i don't think, because i don't think there is ultimately a way you can get around having to trust the maker of the thing to not know what the priv key is, and hence not spend the coin, like wheatstone pointed out. I don't think you can create a private key and truly prove you don't know what it is. I've tried to think my out of this exact problem for awhile and it's been on a thread or two with no good solutions (that I saw). Maybe with zero knowledge proofs or creative multi sigs or escrowing, but even leveraging all these features, i still don't see how you can achieve it.

But what keeps it stabilized after the crash? If they had huge sums of money, they could rise the price again almost immediately. The current USD amount of the entire bitcoin money supply is roughly the same as the amount of fresh money pouring out of a spigot into the FED's balance sheet every 10 hours (rough guess).

Like this could happen instead maybe:
Buy, buy, buy until they have a whole shitbox full of bitcoins, like way more than enough to move the market in a big way. It gets to the point to where the price is huge and everybody is giddy and nervous like you say, a bubble. Then they spout FUD and place huge sell orders at low asks, not with all their coins, but just enough to make the bubble pop. Then they immediately start all over again at the bottom, but they start out with more bitcoins than last time. If they did this repeatedly, people would get all annoyed and lose faith, and they could maybe get the vast majority of bitcoins.

I'm going to attempt to put everything in perspective (bitcoins, the bible, this particular topic, etc) and boil it all down to a convenient little nugget with just this one post. 

Let's say that the guy who originally wrote this section of the bible (like any observant person) understood that whoever controls the monetary system controls people overly, and said as much. Whatever he originally wrote got interpreted and translated a few major times, more or less by fruitcakes, and we're left with the bizarre edition we have now, although the original idea is roughly the same.

Let's also say that this forum is already half full of topics pointing out many, genuinely viable vectors of takeover of bitcoin by the current (or new) power elite.

Let's also say that with current technology, marking or implanting yourself to be able to spend and accept money without any tokens or externalities as a matter of convenience (or fear or "national security") is very easily achieved. This would give control of the population at least an order of magnitude higher to the monetary system controllers than what exists now, if everybody was doing it.

Let's say the current power elite have control of the biggest mass media FUD machine ever seen in the history of the earth, bombarding most everybody with FUD and misinformation all the time and convincing the stupid of whatever they want.

Let's say that there are a lot of stupid people and not a few ambitious, powerful control freaks.

As far as actually realizing this bizarro Revelations bible thing with bitcoins, I guess it all boils down to how mainstream bitcoin gets and how many stupid people there are marking or implanting themselves and how strong the ambition and power of the control freaks is.

That's about all I got.

Escrow(?) I'm half asking

That is their recipe for world domination... Divide and concur

Allahu Bitbar!

This may have also been discussed upthread, but it could evolve (or be initially programmed) to acquire a physical robotic form, by way of bribing or paying somebody with its excess bitcoins to build it or at least plug something that builds it into the wall connected to powerline ethernet. It will then bore its way into your skull.