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Started By
Message
Julian Assange's secret BTC chat with Eric Schmidt
Posted on 4/21/13 at 12:34 pm
Posted on 4/21/13 at 12:34 pm
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There's also a very nice little paper that I've seen in relation to Bitcoin, that... you know about Bitcoin?
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No.
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Okay, Bitcoin is something that evolved out of the cypherpunks a couple of years ago, and it is an alternative... it is a stateless currency.
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And very important, actually. It has a few problems. But its innovations exceed its problems. Now there has been innovations along these lines in many different paths of digital currencies, anonymous, untraceable etc. People have been experimenting with over the past 20 years. The Bitcoin actually has the balance and incentives right, and that is why it is starting to take off. The different combination of these things. No central nodes. It is all point to point. One does not need to trust any central mint. If we look at traditional currencies such as gold, we can see that they have sort of interesting properties that make them valuable as a medium of exchange. Gold is divisible, it is easy to chop up, actually out of all metals it is the easiest to chop up into fine segments. You can test relatively easily whether it is true or whether it is fake. You can take chopped up segments and you can put them back together by melting the gold. So that is what makes it a good medium of exchange and it is also a good medium of value store, because you can take it and put it in the ground and it is not going to decay like apples or steaks. The problems with traditional digital currencies on the internet is that you have to trust the mint not to print too much of it.
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And the incentives for the mint to keep printing are pretty high actually, because you can print free money. That means you need some kind of regulation. And if you're gonna have regulation then who is going to enforce the regulation, now all of a sudden you have sucked in the whole problem of the state into this issue, and political pushes here and there, and who can get control of the mint, push it one way or another, for particular purposes. Bitcoin instead has an algorithm where the anyone can create, anyone can be their own mint. They're basically just searching for collisions with hashes.. A simple way is... they are searching for a sequence of zero bits on the beginning of the thing. And you have to randomly search for, in order to do this. So there is a lot of computational work in order to do this. And each Bitcoin software that is distributed.. That work algorithmically increases as time goes by. So the difficulty in producing Bitcoins becomes harder and harder and harder as time goes by and it is built into the system.
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Right, right. That's interesting.
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Just like the difficulty in mining gold becomes harder and harder and harder and that is what makes people predict that there is not going to be a sudden amount of gold in the market, rather...
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To enforce the scarcity...
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Yeah, to enforce scarcity, and scarcity will go up as time goes by, and what does that mean for incentives in going into the Bitcoin system. That means that you should get into the Bitcoin system now. Early. You should be an early adopter. Because your Bitcoins are going to be worth a lot of money one day. So once you have a... and the Bitcoins are just... a Bitcoin address is just a big hash. It's a hash of a public key that you generate. So once you have this hash you can just advertise it to everyone, and people can send you Bitcoins, and there is people who have set up exchanges to convert from Bitcoin to US dollars and so on. And it solves a very interesting technical problem, which is how do you stop double spending?
All digital material can be cloned, almost zero costs, so if you have currency as a digital string of numbers, how do you stop me... I want to buy this piece of pasta
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Here is my digital currency and, now I take a copy of it. And now I want to buy your bit of egg. And then you go... and now I want to buy your radish! And you go, what? I've already got that! What's going on here? There's been some fraud! So there's a synchronization problem. Who now has the coin? So there is a point to point.. a spread network with all these problems, some points of the network being faster, some points of the network being slower, multiple paths of communication, how do you solve this synchronization issue about who has the currency? And so this is to mind actually the real technical innovation for Bitcoin, it has done this using some hashtrees and then a delay time, and then CPU work has to be done in order to move one thing to another so information can't spread too fast etc. OK, so, once you have a system of currency that is easy to use like that, then you can start to use it for things that you want to be scarce. What is the example of some things that we want to be scarce? Well, domain names. Names. We want names to be scarce. We want short names to be scarce, otherwise if they are not scarce, if it doesn't take work to get them, as soon as you have a nice naming system, some arsehole is going to come along and register every short name themselves.
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Right. That's very interesting.
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So this Bitcoin replacement for DNS is precisely what I wanted and what I was theorizing about, which is not a DNS system, but rather short names... short bit of text to long bit of text tuple registering service. Cause that is the abstraction of domain names and all these problems solved. Yes, you have some something that you want to register that is short, and you want to couple that to something that is unmemorable and longer. So for example, the first amendment, that phrase, the "US first amendment", is a very short phrase, but it expands to a longer bit of text. So you take the hash of this text, and now you have got something that is intrinsically coupled to that which is unmemorable. But then you can register "US First Amendment" coupled to the hash. And that then means you have a structure where you can tell whether something has been published or unpublished, you can... one piece of human intellectual information can cite another one in a way that... can't be manipulated, and if it is censored the censorship can be found out. And if one place is censored, well you can scour the entire world for this hash, and no matter where you find you know it is what you wanted precisely!
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Right
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So that, in theory, then permits human beings to build up an intellectual scaffold where every citation, every reference to some other part of human intellectual content, is precise, and can be discovered if it exists out there anywhere at all, and is not dependent on any particular organization. So as a way of publishing this seems to be the most censorship resistant manner of publishing possible, because it is not dependent on any particular mechanism of publishing. You can be publishing through the post, you can be publishing on conventional websites, you can be publishing using Bittorrent, whatever, but the naming is consistent. And same is for... publishing is also a matter of transferring, you can... all you then have to do is, if you want to transfer something anonymously to someone else, one particular person, you encrypt the information with their key, and you publish it.
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Posted on 4/21/13 at 12:34 pm to joshnorris14
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Random person named Scott:
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Are you worried.. basically this entire system depends on basically irrevocable key structures. Are you worried that the key structures would fall apart?
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Well the hashing, in terms of the naming part, going to patterns--it doesn't depend on the key structure at all. In terms of Bitcoin has its own key structure and that's an independent thing, there is all sorts of problems with it. Hackers can come in and steal keys etc. And the same problems that you have with cash. Armored vans are needed to protect the cash etc. And there are some enhancements you can use to try and remove the incentives one way or another. You can introduce a subcurrency with fixed periods of expense. So you retract for one week or one day and a merchant will accept or not accept.
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The average person does not understand that RSA was broken into an awful lot of private keys involving commerce were taken,
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Yes
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so...
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The public key structure is a tremendous problem, so in the same way that domain name structures are a tremendous problem. The browser based public key system that we have for authenticating what websites you are going to, it is awful. It is truly awful. The number of people that have been licensed to mint keys is so tremendous.. there's one got bankrupted and got bought up cheaply by Russian companies, you can assume, I have been told actually that VeriSign, by people who are in the know, although I am not yet willing to go on the public record, cause I only have one source, just between you and me, one source that says that VeriSign has actually given keys to the US government. Not all, but a particular key. That's a big problem with the way things are authenticated presently. There are some traditional alternative approaches, like PGP has a web of trust. I don't think those things really work. What I think does work is something close to what SSH does, and that's probably the way forward. Which is it is opportunistic key registration. So there is part of your interaction, the first time you interact, you register your key, and then if you have a few points of keying or some kind of flood network, then you can see that well lots of people have seen that key many times in the past.
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And one more technical question, and I think we should probably, Scott you were sort of...
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I'm ready! Ha ha ha.
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When we were sort of chatting initially we talked about my idea that powering, mobile phones being powered, is sort of changing society. A rough summary of your answer for everybody else is that people are very much the same and something big has to change their behaviour, and this might be one of them, and you said, you were very interested in someone building phone to phone encryption. Can you talk a little bit about, roughly, the architecture where you would have a broad open network and you have person to person encryption. What does that mean technically, how would it work, why is it important. That kind of stuff. I mean, I think people don't understand any of this area in my view.
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When we were dealing with Egypt we saw the Mubarak government cut off the internet and we saw only one - there was one ISP that quite few of us were involved in trying to keep its connections open, it had maybe 6% of the market. Eventually they cut.. eventually the Mubarak government also cut off the mobile phone system. And why is it that that can be done? People with mobile phones have a device that can communicate in a radio spectrum. In a city there is a high density... there is always, if you like, a path between one person and another person. That is there is always a continuous path of mobile phones, each one can in theory hear the radio of the other.
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You could form a peer to peer network.
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So in theory you could form a peer to peer network. Now the way most GSM phones are being constructed and others is that they receive on a different frequency to that which they transmit...
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Yes
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...and that means that they cannot form peer to peer networks. They have to go through base stations. But we're seeing now that mobile phones are becoming more flexible in terms of base station programming. And they need to do this because they operate in different markets that have different frequencies. They have different forms of wireless output, and so ... and also, even if there is not sufficiently flexible mobile phones, we are seeing that in the mobile phone aspect, maybe WiMax is coming along which will give them greater radius for two way communications. But also it is getting very cheap to make your own base station. There is software now which will run a base station.
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Right, right.
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For you. So you can throw these things up and make your own networks with conventional mobile phones pretty quickly. In fact this is what is done to spy, to keep spying on mobile phones. You set up a fake base station. And there's vans now, you can buy these in bulk on the commercial spy market, to set up a van and intercept mobile phone calls. During these revolutionary periods the people involved in the revolution need to be able to communicate. They need to be able to communicate in order to plan quickly and also to communicate information about what is happening in their environment quickly so that they can dynamically adapt to it and produce the next strategy. Where you only have the security services being able to do this, and you turn the mobile phone system off, the security services have such an tremendous advantage compared to people that are trying to oppose them. If you have a system where individuals are able to communicate securely and robustly despite what security services are doing, then security services have to give more ground. It's not that the government is necessarily going to be overthrown, but rather they have to make more concessions.
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They have their networks. So your argument that even with these existing phones they modify them to have peer to peer encrypted tunnels for voice and data, presumably.
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Voice is a bit harder. What we did internally in this prototype I designed was a -- which only works for medium sized groups - so a peer to peer flood UDP-encrypted network -- UDP permits you to put lots and lots of cover traffic in cause you can send stuff to random internet hosts.
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Oh, so, oh, so that's clever, so that way you can't be blocked, right?
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Yeah.
This post was edited on 4/21/13 at 12:42 pm
Posted on 4/21/13 at 12:34 pm to joshnorris14
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Because UDP is a single packet, right? So...
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Right, so you send it to random internet hosts and a random internet host doesn't respond, which is exactly the same thing as a host that is receiving stuff. And even structured... and using this you can do hole punching through firewalls and it means that normal at home people can use this. They don't need to have a server. And it is very light bandwidth, so you can put it on mobile phones as well. The killer application is not lots of voice. Rather it is chat rooms. Small chatrooms of thirty to a hundred people -- that is what revolution movements need. They need it to be secure and they need it to be robust. The system I did was protocol independent. So yes, you've got your encapsulating thing, UDP or whatever, and in theory you could be pushing it over SMS you could be putting it over TCP, you could be pushing it over whatever. You could be using a mobile phone, you could be using a desktop or whatever. You can put that into one big mesh, so that all you need, even when the whole country is shut off you just need one satellite connection out and your internal network connects to the rest of the world.
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Yeah, yeah.
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And if you've got a good routing system. If it is a small network you can use flood, and thereby -- flood network takes every possible path therefore it must take the fastest possible path. Right? So a flood network always finds a way but doesn't scale to large quantities. But if you've got a good routing system you just need this one link out. And in Cairo, we had people who hacked Toyota in Cairo, and took over their satellite uplink, and used that to connect to this ISP that fed 6% of the market, and so that sort of thing was going on all this time. There was a hacker war in Egypt to try and keep this -- I don't like to call it radical, but this more independent ISP -- that provided 6% of the market, up and going. But it shouldn't have been so hard. It should have been the case that all you need to do is have one connection and then the most important information could get out. And if you look at, if this is equivalent to SMSs, I mean look how important Twitter is and how important SMS is. Actually, human beings are pretty good at encoding the most important thing that is happening into a short amount of data. There's not that many human beings. There just aren't that many. So with one pipe you can...
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It's not a bandwidth problem.
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It's not a bandwidth problem. So all you need is one pipe. And you can connect a country that is in a revolutionary state to the rest of the world. And points within that country just as important. Cities within that country. And it's not that hard a thing to do quite frankly.
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Scott, do you wanna?
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It's hard to stop! It's so interesting!
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I actually, I have like five hours more...
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I know! Because it's like one thing and then there's like more and...
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How would you architect this how would you architect that... I think my summary would be that this notion of a hash idea of the name is a very interesting one, because I had not linked it to Bitcoin, or that kind of approach, with scarcity. That's a new idea for me. Have you published that idea?
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I've published... not the link to Bitcoin, that paper that came out about coupling something to Bitcoin was just trying to address the DNS issue. But fortunately the guy who did it understood that... why just have quadtets? You know, why limit it to IP addresses? It's sort of natural in a way to make the thing so that it could go to any sort of expansion. But the idea for... that there should be this naming system and the importance of this naming system, the importance of preserving history and doing these scaffolds, and mapping out everything. Yeah, so that's on the site, under... I think it is part of one of the Hans Ulrich interview.
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I think we should study this quite a bit more so we generally understand it... so we might have a few more questions about it... The other comment I would make is that on the assumption that what you are describing is going to happen someday is probable given that the incentive structure is...
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Well I've had these ideas several years but now I see other people are also getting into...
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Well there is enough people who are interested in solving the problem you are trying to solve. On the internet you see a lot of experiences. What I am thinking of is how would I attack it. How would I attack your idea. And I still think I would go after the signing and the key infrastructure. So if I can break the keys...
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There are different parts of the idea. So, if you publish some information or if you spread some information... this publishing thing is quite interesting as to whether when something has gone from not being published to being published its quite... interesting. So if you spread some information and you've got it well labeled, using a hash.
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That hash is important. It is something that has to spread in another way. So that is say by WikiLeaks signing the hash. But there is many ways for it to spread. I mean people could be swapping that hash in email. They could be telling each other on the telephone etcetera.
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You are saying that all of these systems are do not have a single point of attack, I can break down your HTTPS but you can still use the US postal service to send it, for example.
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Exactly, and you would know that you were getting the right thing, because of its naming it is completely accurate.
This post was edited on 4/21/13 at 12:47 pm
Posted on 4/21/13 at 12:49 pm to joshnorris14
The most interesting thing from that transcript was this comment Eric Schmidt made:
So if Google's CEO thinks that of this type of technology what kind of statement does that make about crypto-currency?
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The other comment I would make is that on the assumption that what you are describing (The arising of Bitcoin/crypto-currency to replace the current monetary system)is going to happen someday is probable given that the incentive structure is...
So if Google's CEO thinks that of this type of technology what kind of statement does that make about crypto-currency?
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:03 pm to joshnorris14
Didn't he also say google plus would overtake Facebook? 
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:29 pm to BACONisMEATcandy
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Didn't he also say google plus would overtake Facebook?
If you can't understand the difference between Google+ and Bitcoin to Eric Schmidt, I don't know what to tell you.
Did Google create Google+?
Did Google create Bitcoin?
If Google+ does well or poorly does it effect Google?
If Bitcoin does well or poorly does it effect Google?
Does Eric Schmidt have an invested interest in Google+ succeeding?
Does Eric Schmidt have an invested interest in Bitcoin succeeding?
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:36 pm to BACONisMEATcandy
What an epic conversation. Two visionaries.
I stand by my opinion on this topic:
1) I believe BitCoin will fail, but it sets the foundation for success to follow.
2) The innovation coming from the way BTC challenges our markets and politics is truly a game changer that is likely to revolutionize the way we live and transfer value.
I loved the P2P closed network discussion by Assange. Dude wants to protect the ability to communicate...and after everything he has been through, I can totally understand why.
I stand by my opinion on this topic:
1) I believe BitCoin will fail, but it sets the foundation for success to follow.
2) The innovation coming from the way BTC challenges our markets and politics is truly a game changer that is likely to revolutionize the way we live and transfer value.
I loved the P2P closed network discussion by Assange. Dude wants to protect the ability to communicate...and after everything he has been through, I can totally understand why.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:43 pm to joshnorris14
If their conversation was secret, then how did you get access to it? Why should I trust the opinion of someone who can't protect his private conversations about the security of other information?
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:47 pm to joshnorris14
Keep this Poli Board crap off of the Money Board.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:54 pm to joshnorris14
Magic: the Gathering Online eXchange hasn't posted a trade for just about 4 hours. Looks like another sell-off is about to occur.
I didn't want to start another Bitcoin thread so
I sort of jacked yours.
I didn't want to start another Bitcoin thread so
I sort of jacked yours.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:59 pm to Poodlebrain
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If their conversation was secret, then how did you get access to it? /quote]
Wikileaks leaked the information
[quote] Why should I trust the opinion of someone who can't protect his private conversations about the security of other information?
They wanted it leaked because it would provide fodder for Schmidt's book release next week.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 1:59 pm to LSURussian
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Keep this Poli Board crap off of the Money Board.
This is a lecture (essentially) on the validity of bitcoin as a crypto-currency and crypto-currencies future place as money.
This is not a political topic. I posted it here for that reason.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 2:00 pm to Poodlebrain
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Magic: the Gathering Online eXchange hasn't posted a trade for just about 4 hours. Looks like another sell-off is about to occur.
This has happened a few times in the past week and hasn't resulted in mass sell-offs.If that trend continues the price isn't going to be too affected by this.
EDIT: Price quickly dipped to $117 for a few seconds but appears to be rebounding
This post was edited on 4/21/13 at 2:38 pm
Posted on 4/21/13 at 2:40 pm to joshnorris14
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Google create Bitcoin
Maybe
Posted on 4/21/13 at 3:34 pm to joshnorris14
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This is a lecture (essentially) on the validity of bitcoin as a crypto-currency and crypto-currencies future place as money.
We do RA people here for touting stocks. Please explain the difference.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 3:36 pm to joshnorris14
You should have sold your bitcoins weeks ago 
I bet Alex Jones invests in bit coins so you have that going for you
I bet Alex Jones invests in bit coins so you have that going for you
Posted on 4/21/13 at 3:41 pm to foshizzle
He knows the entire link is about the political implications of bitcoin and has nothing to do with finance.
He's doing what he and wiki are infamous for doing: purposefully trying to break rules. He's snubbing his nose at the admins. I RA'd but they apparently don't care if the Money Talk Board is reduced to Poli Board Lite.
He's doing what he and wiki are infamous for doing: purposefully trying to break rules. He's snubbing his nose at the admins. I RA'd but they apparently don't care if the Money Talk Board is reduced to Poli Board Lite.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 4:04 pm to LSURussian
He's just mad because Buttcoins are crushing bitcoins. BUTTCOINS, MOTHER frickER 
Posted on 4/21/13 at 4:40 pm to LSURussian
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He knows the entire link is about the political implications of bitcoin and has nothing to do with finance.
Obviously he is just touting.
I don't mind an honest discussion of the theory behind whether bitcoins are money and in what capacity. That seems legit to me for this board, and in my interactions with him Wiki has at least been willing to do that.
"Secret BTC" chats are not about the theory of money though. This particular thread is just another tout.
Posted on 4/21/13 at 5:24 pm to LSURussian
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He knows the entire link is about the political implications of bitcoin and has nothing to do with finance.
The entire link is about MONEY. About how Bitcoin is MONEY. About how the MONEY works and is innovative.
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