The European Council has been persuaded by a group of vengeful, twisted computer illiterates in the beleaguered European Union that bitcoin is money, that bitcoin wallets are real wallets that hold real balances of money, and that they should be regulated. Of course, this is utterly absurd and represents a profound ignorance-based notion.
Since rational discourse with such individuals is impossible, a different, more effective approach to dealing with these aggressive individuals must be developed and put into practice. Their obsession with the notion that bitcoin functions as money has led to the opening of a terrifying Pandora’s Box of evil.
Bitcoin is not currency. To seek “compliance” is to invite trouble. People who want to see Bitcoin adopted quickly and widely shouldn’t look for approval or strict regulation. — Beaumont
Bitcoin wallet software developers must come up with a plan to avoid being targeted by the very misguided apparatchiks hell-bent on harming Bitcoin businesses in order to avoid the unethical attacks of the dribbling geriatrics in the United States and the delusional EU socialists.
Every piece of legislation relating to bitcoin uses misleading language as a definition and pretext. Not computer scientists or software developers, but ambulance chasers, are the authors of these definitions. Re-contextualizing Bitcoin wallets will make it possible to completely evade the legislative wrath of the EU and US lawmakers.
This is the procedure
Naturally, Bitcoin wallet developers have focused on using the conventions of money to translate what is going on behind the scenes into language that regular people can understand. Consumer grade Bitcoin wallets like BlueWallet, Wallet of Satoshi, Samourai, Pine, Phoenix, and Muun do not display “coin management” or UTXO information to users because it is useless to them.
Instead, to make everything in Bitcoin understandable to average people, a set of well-known, simple, and easy-to-understand conventions have been borrowed from the world of banking.
Because of this, Bitcoin wallets have adopted the design, terminology, and aesthetic of banking apps, which typically resemble these apps from Halifax and Lloyds, respectively.
Halifax and Lloyds bank apps. bought off the shelf from the same developer, obviously.
Coinbase mobile app
Airbitz now:
Any Bitcoin app can be recognized as a financial tool by a typical, ignorant, computer-illiterate person from the EU government because it resembles other financial apps they are familiar with. They have no idea what is happening internally in these vastly dissimilar classes of tools. They only look at the surface and base all of their conclusions solely on that. Due to this, they automatically equate Bitcoin with money and assume that the balance in a bitcoin wallet is comparable to the balance in a banking app in fiat currency.
There is a lot of discussion surrounding the use of “Blockchains” to enhance data integrity, but all of these solutions ignore what I refer to as “The Flat Screen Dilemma.” Nothing on a screen should be taken as gospel just because it’s there. The Flat Screen Dilemma
The reality, however, is quite different. The total number of UTXOs that you control because you have the private key is displayed by bitcoin apps. It is not a single balance; it is a sum of UTXOs. Additionally, the “money” is not present on the gadget. An app that stores a cryptographic key (a string of text) that enables you to sign messages for broadcast to the Bitcoin network is what the user has installed on their device. Bitcoin is not kept or received in bitcoin wallets. They merely inform you of the block chain transactions that your private key can sign.
I’m obviously simplifying the process by saying this. But compared to saying that a Bitcoin wallet “receives and stores bitcoin,” which never, ever happens and never has, the simplification I’m presenting here is more accurate. It is also incorrect to refer to a Bitcoin wallet as “unhosted” if it can sign a message at the user’s request and independently of anyone else. In fact, Bitcoin has no “wallets” at all. Just another analogy, really.
It’s a database, bitcoin. It does not function as a “payment network” and no value is ever “sent” over it. Additionally, there are no “wallets.” Sent to the network for inclusion in the public database are signed messages. It serves as a database for keeping track of who manages which outputs. It has never been money in the traditional sense and is not now. Bitcoin is not money just because some people use this database as money. There aren’t actually “Bitcoin wallets” that hold bitcoin in the same way that a leather wallet holds cash just because people use the word “wallet” to describe them.
For the benefit of the user experience, the term “wallet” is used to help users understand the main purpose of tools. These customs are a matter of preference; they are not laws and they are not universal truths. Therefore, anyone can select any standard or analogy they want to use to compare what occurs in their Bitcoin app. It is entirely possible for oil traders to measure and denominate oil in barrels using the block chain. Oil costs 0.0048 bitcoin per barrel right now. If a trader had 100 barrels allocated to his private key in a UTXO, then this would be represented as “100” in the trader’s wallet.
No one would assert that “bitcoin is oil” in this scenario, which is entirely plausible, but maybe they would? Apparatchiks are completely insane, and you would expect them to think insane thoughts.
BlueWallet merely provides the user with conventions they can comprehend. It is a block chain viewer and signing device, not a “unhosted wallet.” A mobile Bitcoin wallet is not, under any circumstances, a “financial tool” of any kind. A signing device would be classified as a financial tool immediately if some extremely stupid people made that mistaken classification. Tomorrow, BlueWallet could change its name to “OilWallet” and focus on the oil sector. The nature of bitcoin is unaffected by the fact that it is used as money. While “OilWallet” is used to manage the exchange of barrels of oil, they exchange it for goods, services, and cash. All of this has in common that Bitcoin is just a database; what you attribute to it is entirely up to you and has nothing to do with its core functionality.
WhatsApp authenticates users to one another using the exact same encryption methods as Bitcoin. You use a set of cryptographic keys to encrypt, decrypt, and sign messages so that the recipient of your call, text, or picture can be certain that it was sent by you and only you. In the same way that users of Bitcoin wallets are not shown the text of their private keys, WhatsApp users are not made aware of how all of this operates. The user only receives information that is pertinent to them because the software handles all of that for them. Text messages serve as that helpful information in the case of WhatsApp. It is the total of UTXOs associated with your private key that are recorded in the chain of blocks’ public database.
What is the solution, then? You’re bleating, I hear.
Calling Bitcoin wallets “viewers” and “signers” is the solution.
No one could dispute that wallets are “financial tools” or “unhosted wallets” if they changed their branding to “bitcoin viewers” to better reflect their purpose and distance themselves from the language of the financial industry.
All Bitcoin wallets act as viewers, or, to use an analogy, “Windows on the block chain,” displaying which outputs are in your control.
When you “send” bitcoin to someone, you use their public key (also known as a “Bitcoin address”; note how I put “send” in quotes because bitcoin is never sent anywhere; it is not like money), and you use your private key to sign a message transferring control of those bitcoin to the recipient’s address. Bitcoin addresses might have been referred to as “Bitcoin account numbers” if the money convention had been followed to its logical conclusion. This message-signing process has more in common with contracts than with handling money. This further dispels the ridiculous notion of having a Swiss bank account in your pocket. The terms sent, received, deposit, payment, and account must all be removed from the Bitcoin wallet interfaces, the Bitcoin Lexicon, and the general nomenclature in order to prevent the reckless, risky, and extremely harmful association of bitcoin with money.
As soon as the network of database administrators decides that the addition should be made, these messages are broadcast to be added to the public chain of blocks, either from your own full node, which is a copy of all the messages ever incorporated into the block chain. Not “miners,” “database administrators.” Are you beginning to comprehend? Companies use mining to remove precious metals from the earth. precious metals like gold, which, in contrast to bitcoin, is actual money. All of these comparisons and financial terminology must be eliminated from the vocabulary of Bitcoin companies.
Your block chain viewer will be able to see that the signature you created has been added to the public record and that the sum of your UTXOs is less than it was prior to the message being sent once the network has confirmed that the message is valid. According to the current wallet convention, this is expressed as a single number, occasionally in contrast to a conversion into fiat denoted by the symbol () for “approximately equal to” All of this is provided to aid in your understanding but is not a reflection of what is actually occurring or a requirement in and of itself.
Do you have “Liquid Bitcoin”?
Already, Bitcoin businesses offer “watch-only” tools like the outstanding Samourai Wallet. You can scan your keys with Sentinel, and it will then display the status of the UTXOs you control on the block chain whenever the chain of blocks is updated.
Sentinel is a “unhosted financial services application” according to the absurd, illogical, and stupid thinking of the EU because it displays your bitcoin balance as a single number. Why not, if it’s not a financial services application? Will they assert that a device that monitors a database qualifies as a “wallet”? No one is asking these questions because they have only a conceptual understanding of how Bitcoin functions.
Wallet Sentinel Samourai app
And let’s not even begin to discuss metal storage items.
In the end, a case before the U.S. Supreme Court will be necessary to persuade the corrupt and ignorant legislators to uphold their oaths and stop interfering with the right of American software developers to free speech. Bitcoin is not money; rather, it is speech, and no lawmaker has the right to censor the speech of Americans. In “Why America Can’t Regulate Bitcoin,” I go into greater detail about this.
The advantages for the United States will be enormous once this is resolved by case law. All Bitcoin software developers will race to incorporate in the nation and set up shop in Florida. Because the illiterate apparatchiks in the EU can’t tell the difference between a chat app and a bitcoin app, no one will dare to launch a Bitcoin wallet business there (pro tip: there is no difference).
When this occurs, hundreds of billions of dollars from around the world will pass through American-based Bitcoin wallet companies, which will then be subject to American taxation. For Uncle Sam to get his cut, the financial infrastructure and equipment used throughout the entire world will originate in and pass through America. USA triumphs once more.
Many illiterate people will exclaim, “This is just semantics,” upon reading this. These people are just as ignorant as the EU moron and American pensioner who want to destroy Bitcoin because they don’t use Bitcoin wallets, don’t own any bitcoin, and don’t operate any type of Bitcoin business.
Although they won’t foot the legal bill when this goes to the U.S. Supreme Court, they will benefit from software developers working with the Bitcoin database free from arbitrary, unethical, and unconstitutional restrictions preventing them from displaying the UTXOs you can assign with your block chain viewer and signer, which could change the world.
