> It's a bit like Amway but everyone is going to be in on it.

Is this supposed to be an endorsement?

Well all public companies are a bit like Amway in the sense that they have a lot of stakeholders which have an incentive to help the company grow. Amway is a very successful business after all.

I'd say that cryptocurrencies are more ethical than Amway though because they don't try to make a profit by selling starter kits.

Not a no-op, it wraps the awaited value in `Promise.resolve()`:

   async function foo() {
      const a = await {then(resolve) { resolve(123); }};
      console.log(a);
    }
    foo();

Indeed, you don't use `await` on functions either, it's used on promises. In fact, when used on a non-promise, it still waits an extra loop cycle before resolving and continuing the async function.

I see this argument about censorship resistance a lot but I don't really understand it. If the main purpose of the technology is to evade law enforcement is this not a massive reason for governments to ban cryptocurrencies? The user of the technology is presumably committing a crime.

Not necessarily. Online payment is currently mediated by a few large companies, the largest of them having their headquarters in a single country. There have been cases where these companies made things difficult for certain classes of sellers (for instance, erotica/pornography), or where pressure from that country's government made these companies block all payments to a specific recipient. In these cases I have read about, the person making the payment (and the person receiving the payment) would be breaking no laws.

I'm certainly not an expert in this domain, but how exactly would a government ban bitcoin? Is it possible to do without banning the Internet? Governments can eliminate centralized services like Coinbase. But that only makes Bitcoin stronger as OP indicated.

You may misunderstand how laws work. The government can make anything illegal. (Within the constraints of the various checks and balances, but those mechanisms do not turn quickly.)

The most obvious way is to make it a crime to exchange bitcoin for USD, goods, or services. (Doesn't even have to be bitcoin specifically; they can say "blockchain-backed digital resources" or whatever.) Scope it under interstate commerce, in the US; who's going to stop them? Obviously that wouldn't kill BTC overnight, but it would kill any legitimate market. If they're really worked up they can compel financial entities to disclose or block payments to/from known BTC exchanges, or compel telcos to do the same for blockchain mining traffic. They could even ban owning bitcoin; delete your keys or you're committing a felony.

How wouldn't they ban bitcoin, really?

Well when you put it that way...

In that scenario I suppose bitcoin's only hope would be that the countries of the world wouldn't coordinate to enforce a global ban. Seems unlikely that they would. But, back to your point, a total US ban might be enough to eventually kill the ecosystem.

Step 1: eliminate centralized services. This would only make Bitcoin stronger if it's already a functioning economy that doesn't depend on connections to the existing financial system. If you can't buy and sell Bitcoin with traditional currency, it becomes far less practical.

Step 2: make use of Bitcoin illegal. You know, "ban" it. It's a plaintext P2P protocol, not exactly magic. If you control the network, you can identify Bitcoin nodes and charge their owners, exactly how law enforcement can enforce laws against other illicit P2P traffic. This would drive any remaining die-hard users to services like Tor.

Step 3: if Bitcoin is somehow still popular enough to be considered a problem, block Tor.

Helpful. Thanks.

In this scenario where your Government is doing this do you leave? Subvert? Comply? If your answer is comply, congratulations for your obedience.

Would love to understand the rationale for the down voting here. It would seem to be that the suggesting of disobedience to Government is immediately wrong.

“One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.

You can't 100% eliminate speeding or child poverty or drugs or car accidents or corruption or gambling or unsafe working conditions or prostitution - but that doesn't stop governments trying for a reduction.

Oh, I'm pretty sure that governments will try to ban bitcoin, given that it gets more traction as an actual medium of exchange. I'm trying to assess if they'll succeed, and if so, "how?"

It doesn't sound like the OP is claiming that at all, Coverity and tools like it use a technique called Symbolic Execution [0]

[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbolic_execution

from the blog post:

> the integrity of these 106 packages were never jeopardized.

are we operating with different definitions of jeopardy here? 106 packages were absolutely at risk of harm during this window. The fact that some community members stepped up is irrelevant, a bad actor could have done a lot of damage here. I think this blog post is completely disingenuous, and doesn't make me trust npm.

I was replying to 0x0's claim, not making a broad statement about npm's policies.

0x0 claimed the code uploaded as duplexer3 was "undesirable code" and implied that it was a "malicious actor". It was completely utterly benign.

A relatively tiny number of people will ever download the blockchain, a relatively tiny number of people use Tor, how many bits of information does a state level adversary need to deanonymize someone?

Where does this "bitcoin is a store of value, not a medium for exchange" nonsense come from? Literally the first line of the white paper:

> A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.

And it is. When you pay Coinbase, they send you BTC. Then you're free to send your BTC around if you decide the $20 transaction fee is worth it.

In that scenario you're not using bitcoin, you're asking a centralised, trusted third party to adjust a couple figures in a database.

If I wanted to do that, I would ask my bank to do it, because they're better at it.

Maybe free money isn't free. That is, liberated money isn't free (as in beer). Potentially it can be, but this is a great first step.

Which is fine until they decide to freeze your assets.

Yeah, that is the problem with relying on Coinbase. You have essentially no recourse when they freeze your assets, which happens a _lot_ more often than the banking system, with its consumer protections and actual regulations.

The response when somebody tries to do transactions on-chain:

> And it is. When you pay Coinbase, they send you BTC. Then you're free to send your BTC around if you decide the $20 transaction fee is worth it.

The response when somebody tries to do transactions off-chain:

> That's why you don't store assets on coinbase...the whole point of crypto is that it allows you to be in exclusive control of your assets. Why is that so hard to understand?

The important thing is to make sure that no matter what anybody does, they're wrong, and that way bitcoin cannot possibly have any flaws.

Which planet is that? This will either explode on launch or orbit the sun for a billion years before burning up

It will orbit the sun for hundreds of millions of years

... Until it is recovered by space pirates and sold as a historic artifact....

Imagine a human like alien civilisation discovering the car. They would be like we found the chariot of God.

The cost of the second hand Tesla is nothing compared to the PR value of doing this.