One thing I always respected about Tim May is how relentlessly unapologetic he was when it came to the darker side of cypherpunk technology. Bitcoin, too, will be used by very bad people to do very bad things. Freedom has its price. (Referenced post: — but there are many like it.) image

Replies (59)

BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
This is really evil propaganda. It tries to excuse the bad actions. We must not excuse bad and evil wrongdoings. Privacy is human right. Freedom is for everyone. Bitcoin is Freedom Money. Everyone can use Bitcoin the way they want. Freedom of choice is for everyone. Though, terrorists who use Bitcoin are not EXCUSED! Criminals who kill with a knife are not excused for using a knife that is used in every house kitchen.
Totale kul uit een super sneu mondje weer, Jeroen. De anti spam crowd vraagt juist om geen wijziging mbt opreturn.
Aaron je bent een over het paard getild kruger-dunning mannetje. Tijdens covid kon iedereen zien hoe'n bang onnozel mannetje je eigenlijk bent. Wel bang voor de griep maar niet bang voor kinderporno op jouw hardware. In de woorden van Boris vd Ven: wat een ongelovelijke sukkel ben je dan!
"Privacy has its price. The ability of people to plot crimes and commit crimes behind closed doors is obvious, and yet we don't demand secret cameras in homes, apartments, and hotel rooms!"
Nuh's avatar
Nuh 3 months ago
He is pretending that CSAM on Bitcoin is something that helps criminals, not mere trolling... It is absurd, no one needs Bitcoin to sell CSAM or even relay it for free just to hurt the victims... As if the internet doesn't exist freely outside blockchains. This is so stupid I find it hard to accept it is an honest misunderstanding... More likely just trying to capture Bitcoin with this pearl clutching insanity.
I have to leave another comment since I now realized that you Sir are the author. Sorry I was tired after workout :) Huge respect and thank you. Massive body of work. The history of cypherpunk movement is absolutely fascinating! Are you working on any new things?
Pixel Survivor's avatar
Pixel Survivor 3 months ago
pixels are cheap. but freedom isn’t. (btw, you can zap me on nostr, or use lightning to paint.)
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
Now I understood where you "Four Horsemen" excuse came from. Aaron's evil propaganda IMPLIES that using freedom tech you pay the price - "Freedom has its price." No, you don't pay any price. Crimes are crimes and criminals must be punished.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
You need more brain. Fortunately people that read this have it. Its interesting that you oppose oppresive regimes. Thats nice. And yet, you with your actions actively try to destroy Bitcoin. You are attacking Bitcoin Culture and Values and and you support the financial interests of shitcoiners who are harming Bitcoin. Spam is harm to Bitcoin. And you don't realize that Bitcoin being the FREEDOM MONEY is the greatest weapon against oppresive regimes. ...
Agree that bitcoin purpose is to make payments. But we can not force every transaction to be a payment, as transactions can be used to different use cases.
I agree. I always need more brain. Never enough. So I pick some brain from OGs like Adam Back and from books Like Genesis Book that teach me how important the work of cypherpunks who were obsessed with censorship resistant protocols, really was. I came to conclusion that the fundamental value of bitcoin culture and ethos is censorship resistance at all costs..against all odds. Not sure what your idea of Bitcoin Culture and Values are. From what I hear you, like most Knots people repeat very generic stuff with focus nowadays on CP content on Bitcoin. It's just cringe to me honestly.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
>Not sure what your idea of Bitcoin Culture and Values are. So you didn't read this yesterday? image
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar BitcoinIsFuture
Bitcoin culture is under attack. We need to protect our Bitcoin culture. + Bitcoin Only + Bitcion is Freedom Sovereign Money + Maximum Decentralization + Bitcoin is for everyone, Bitcoin never refuses an account + Not your keys, not your Bitcoin + Bitcoiners value their health, their friends and families and their time + Bitcoiners value truth, honesty and liberty + We HODL Bitcoin + Stay humble, stack sats + Bitcoin is fixing the world + Bitcoin is Hope for Humanity Fuck shitcoins and shitcoiners, fuck their scams and rug pulls and fuck their centralized tokens created out of thin air. Fuck fiaty and inflation. Inflation is theft. Fuck CBDC. Bitcoin is THE Global Most Secure Decentralized Unconfiscatable Peer-to-Peer Scarce Hard Sovereign Freedom Money and Greatest Store of Value 🫒 image
View quoted note →
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
And here I showed you how you are attacking Bitcoin Culture and Values ...
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar BitcoinIsFuture
You and Core are attacking Bitcoin Culture and Bitcoin Values. You try to manipulate people. I am sure you would be aware when (during which events) in civilazation past history Culture has been attacked and destroyed and what were the results. Your propaganda goes like this. You don't what Bitcoin is. You don't what spam is. You don't know what is Bitcoin network - monetary or generic. You don't know who decides what transactions mean. Trust the Core devs. And I am attaching evidence of all this shit. Of course there is much more but I think that shows the point. And the real question is WHY are doing it and then we see Citrea dirty greedy fingers. View quoted note →
View quoted note →
You miss one main Value without which Bitcoin and we would not be around here: CENSORSHIP RESISTANT NEUTRAL NETWORK Not controlled by any government. Not edited by any committee. Not shaped by what’s “acceptable.” Just rules, math, and consensus. That’s what made Bitcoin work. That’s what keeps it alive.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
No, I don't miss that. I support that. Although, again, Bitcoin is MONETARY Network. Bitcoin FREEDOM MONEY is NEUTRAL and Censorship Resistant. Its Core who misses that and gives control to the shitcoiners who spam Bitcoin.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
Quite weak argument. Are you compromised by corruption from shitcoiners? There is A root cause for your denial. Ignorance at this point is out of the qustion.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
Privacy is a human right which I support. My age is irrelevant. Its your choice whether you use nsec/npub with public or private identity. Freedom of speech is for everyone. Also to me face, person, age is irrelevant. Actions are what is relevant and of course the thoughts/intentions leading to those actions. (You can decide if a 16 year old can write this.)
What do you think about making public lists with doxxed identities of those who celebrated Charlie Kurk's death online, to punish them and possibly put their lives in danger? Should freedom of speech allow people to celebrate publicly death of person they hated or is that hate speech like US government says and should be severely punished?
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
I try to stay out of politics. My fight is for Bitcoin. One can't fight all the fights. Although if we win the Culture, everyone will win and the basis of it is: Freedom is for everyone. Freedom of speech is for everyone. Bitcoin Freedom Money is for everyone. Freedom of choice is for everyone. Now to answer your question. 1. No one forced the people to celebrate publicly the murder of Charlie Kurk. They themselves expressed their thoughts. This is Freedom of speech. (right or wrong is a moral qustion but what I here would say is that "All lives matter.") 2. The people who are creating lists are exposing publicly the people who celebrate the murder. This is also Freedom of speech. (they probably do it becuase they think its immoral to celebrate it) 3. I haven't heard of someone being harmed because of the lists but ANY physical harm from both sides would be a Crime. 4. The murder is a Crime and must be punished a such. I say it again. All lives matter. 5. The act of murder has its root cause. People need to find the root cause. It may be a Culture dacay. On both sides. We need to follow good principles. The Constitution is an example. the simplest example of a good principle "Don't do to others that, what you don't want others to do to you." Praying for Charlie Kurk's wife and children.
So US government labeling what this people did as Hate Speech/ celebrating death of Charlie/ and promising to target, prosecute and punish this sort of language online is over reaching in your opinion and should not be accepted as norm?
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
No, there is no such thing like "hate speech". Society needs Freedom of speech. Bad speech, or rought speech or hate speech is just bad manners which I also have from time to time.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
To be more precise: There is no such Crime like "hate speech". Making it a Crime is acting against Freedom of speech which is very wrong.
So you oppose labeling speech as “hate,” because you understand how easily that leads to censorship by those in power. But then you support labeling Bitcoin transactions as “spam,” even when they follow consensus and pay fees, simply because of their content? It’s the same core issue: Who gets to decide what’s acceptable in open systems? In society, it’s supposed to be collective human judgment — not state-enforced definitions. In Bitcoin, it’s the fee market — not a handful of devs or filtered relay policies. Open systems self-regulate. If we start pre-filtering based on fear, optics, or personal values, we’re not protecting freedom — we’re rebuilding the very control structures we claim to resist.
BitcoinIsFuture's avatar
BitcoinIsFuture 3 months ago
But you see that hate speech leads to horrific results. I am not saying that people should endorse hate speech. Hate speech is not part of any Culture. Good speech needs to be endorsed. Same with spam. Spam will lead to terrible results. We can't 100% ban it or stop it but lets not endorse it and lets not make it an easy entry.
You don’t see the essence of it? Who decides what’s “freedom” and what’s “hate”? Governments and media. They don’t want society to self-regulate they want control. They reward, they punish, they define the boundaries of speech. Now ask yourself: Who gets to decide what is and isn’t spam on Bitcoin? Knots want that role. They want to be the gatekeepers. But they forget something fundamental: Bitcoin already has a trustless, self-regulating system: fees and consensus. That is the law. That is the beauty. So when you import the logic of the broken world :the logic of filtering, judging, controlling into the most neutral protocol ever invented… You don’t protect Bitcoin. You turn it into something else. Something dangerously close to the very thing it was built to escape.
Uffff relief..first normal knots user I meet. All I met till now were freaks telling me: YOU CORE PEOPLE WANT TO SUPPORT CP ON THE BITCOIN BLOCKCHAIN. On X some of them straight report normal node runners preemptively to FBI. Sorry. This is sick movement and that sickness started from top down..from Mechanic and Luke. image
Why? Are you suggesting laws don't apply to Bitcoin node operators? Unfortunately I live in a jurisdiction where using "code is law" as a defense in court probably won't work. By all means, legal tender and other unjust laws should be ignored or circumvened using bitcoin, but all of them? Even the abhorrent stuff we're talking about? That's insane. Bitcoin censorship resistance isn't some magic wand that eliminates morality. What is moral? Each individual node operator must decide that for themselves.
you're already picking and choosing which laws to respect ("unjust laws"). it's fine if you want to take a position about which information sharing activities you support or oppose, but don't try to lean on the law to do so. it's inconsistent. "code is law" won't work as a defense for you violating the "unjust legal tender laws" either. you can just say "i don't like people doing X, i believe they should stop". you said yourself that each individual decides what is moral. it sort of just ends there.. adding 'law' into it doesn't move the needle, just confuses the argument.
Nuh's avatar
Nuh 3 months ago
And? How is that attractive to pedos? Are they afraid of outliving their cloud provider or something? Also, any sufficiently popular torrent will last forever, arguably some have even more guaranteed longevity than Bitcoin. Bitcoin is not special it will last only as long as people care to share it's archival history. At some point everyone will say fuck it and start checkpointing their clients and hand picking UTXOs to delete...
I agree that what I as an individual decide is moral matters more (to me at least) than what is law. Legality is only a practical consideration in the sense that staying out of legal trouble and/or prison is generally something I strive for. There are many laws I agree with and the fact that they were enacted by the same government that also enacted legal tender laws doesn't change that. Because of this overlap it's easy to conflate what is moral vs legal, and you're right, I should have focused only on moral choices, not criminal, legal, etc. That being said, It doesn't change anything I said previously about op_return filters. Forgetting about legal ramifications and focusing only on moral/ethical concerns, do you have any issues with my previous two comments?
I run Knots because I believe in controlling my mempool based on my own moral judgements and who/what i do/don't want to interact with. Yea, no disagreement about any of that. Nice having a civil discussion with you 🫡
Baerson's avatar
Baerson 3 months ago
Important to be clear though, Bitcoin will be used as money? Or Bitcoin will be used as a permentant record of videos and pictures detailing human atrocities?
Bitcoin is a an electronic cash system. But I don't think you can really stop people from using it for other niche usecases, anymore than you can stop them from scribbling notes on physical dollar bills. Nor do I think that's a big deal. As adoption grown the bulk of it will probably be outpriced anyways.
Baerson's avatar
Baerson 3 months ago
What if instead of scribbling li'l notes it was storing CSAM and other horrors for eternity? No biggy?
That’s already the case. See eg.: But I don’t think the Bitcoin blockchain is very well suited for this, so I don’t expect it to be widely used for this purpose. Not now, not when Bitcoin Core 30 is released, and certainly not if and when blocks fill up and fee pressure increases.
Baerson's avatar
Baerson 3 months ago
Your lack of concern for this is alarming.
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jack⚡️ 3 months ago
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jack⚡️ 3 months ago
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jack⚡️ 3 months ago
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quixote 2 months ago
already plenty of bad bitcoin actors out there. evil always co-opts useful innovations. this is why decentralization is so important in the tech space.