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Great podcast, very informative.
Just 1 question – not really on bit coin – but on the electronic payments processing. Now the whole thing about cell phone meta data tracking is that because a 3rd party (the phone company) has a record of a call there is no expectation of privacy. Thus the government can scoop up the meta data of your phone call. (numbers dialed, locations(possibly) and duration etc) Now given that there is a 3rd party record with all electronic transactions, you therefore should have no expectation of privacy. Do you think that the government is scooping up all the “Meta data” of all electronic transactions?
Thanks very much!
I’m not entirely sure of the answer to your question. Bitcoin transactions are conducted on the internet. So they are not phone calls. Nevertheless, no doubt the government can intercept such messages including origin and destination. But can they identify those messages as bitcoin transactions? I doubt it. Add to that the fact that the transaction ledger (i.e. the blockchain) is a public entity anyway and I am not sure if they would want to…unless they were perhaps trying to specify the owner of a particular wallet. Again, sorry but not sure.
No, you kinda missed the point of the question… In normal electronic bank transactions (debit, credit cards etc) not bitcoin – do you think the government could be scooping up all the banking transaction data using the same legal theory that it scoops up all cell phone data? Namely the expectation of privacy, just like with a cell phone, the vendor’s bank and your bank both have a record of your transaction – thus there should be no expectation of privacy. Do you think the government is scooping up all that data?
Banks are highly regulated and a very susceptible to regulatory blackmail, as we have seen with “Operation Choke Point” which attempted to deprive otherwise legal (but unpopular) business access to banking services, thus reducing their ability to receive payments from prospective customers.
News item in BBC Science Focus #316, Christmas 2017:
23 TERAWATT HOURS
The amount of energy used globally by Bitcoin miners each year. That’s just short of the 24.8 terawatt hours generated by renewable energy worldwide in 2016.
@34:40…they end the bitcoin nonsense and the podcast actually begins.
@45:33-46:49…perfectly encapsulated. Nicely done, Feinburg :-)