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Comment by llcoolv | Hacker News Reader

Silk road days are gone. Ulbrich got disproportionately punished + convicted on very very dubious hired gun charges. Since then a similar approach was applied on almost every darknet marketplace around, resulting in that these days with BTC at ATH the darknet marketplaces are at an all-time crisis (even though legacy media is still pushing the "criminal's money" narrative :/). Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

Let's hope it is just a side-step given that BTC with censorship/regulation is just a breaking of a glass-wall away from perfectly free monetary unit.

P.S. If you are looking to get no-KYC truly anonymous BTC you'd better live in a top-10 city (e.g. Prague), because in a top-100 city (e.g. Sofia) it is not quite straight-forward and takes tons of waiting/selecting.

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> Ulbrich got [...] convicted on very very dubious hired gun charges.

No, he didn't. He got convicted of money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics. Evidence related to the alleged murder for hire scheme was presented at trial and was weighed in the sentencing phase in terms of what sentence he got within the range authorized for the crimes he was convicted of, but he was not tried, convicted, or sentenced for “hired gun charges”.

Ulbrich was never convicted of a violent crime. (Though plenty of evidence did show he tried to commit murder-for-hire.) He was convicted of money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics.[1] For this he was sentenced to two life sentences plus 40 years.

> Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

What do you mean by this?

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht#Trial

Sure, here is a great article by Juraj Bednar (close the slushpool people): https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu...

BTW Juraj is a great source on anything crypto-related. And from what I now there has been no resistance from the pools so far (at least the EU/US-based ones, though in China it is probably even more difficult.)

That post explains how it might be possible for someone with 10% of mining power (and 100% of legal power) to block certain transactions. Nowhere in that post does it claim that such an attack has succeeded or that mining pools are collaborating with governments.

It is not an attack since by current market conditions there wouldn't be the need for an attack. The owners of the mining pools are not stupid and BTC is not an anonymous (and FREEEEEE whatever this means) currency these days. I hope we can agree on at least this fact.

I haven't heard about the mining pools collaborating on censorship. Do you have any sources I can read up on?

Sure, here is a great article by Juraj Bednar (close the slushpool people): https://juraj.bednar.io/en/blog-en/2020/11/12/how-could-regu...

BTW Juraj is a great source on anything crypto-related. And from what I now there has been no resistance from the pools so far (at least the EU/US-based ones, though in Chine it is probably even more difficult.)

This seems to nicely lay out how the censorship may happen and be implemented. But it only briefly touches on one small example of censorship currently taking place. Is there anything else to support this portion of your previous post?

> Not to mention that all the major mining pools have voluntarily chosen to collaborate with governments on censoring the blockchain, etc.

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