> A key premise of this comment ... seems to be false.
Seems false? I don't think you are even sure yourself.
> Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private.
And is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains' and they knowingly hid their ties to Adjoint Inc.? At least the Bitcoin maximalists are a bit honest at disclosing their associations and holdings when discussing such topics despite their delusional view of a cryptocurrency replacing the whole financial system.
> They say that public blockchains specifically are a privacy disaster, which seems fair enough since this genuinely is a difference between public and private blockchains.
Ah yes, A 'privacy disaster' especially when no-one knows who the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin really is (unless you do somehow?) or how one can't easily figure out which address belongs to another random address or even when users can generate and have multiple addresses tied to them which makes it harder to trace. No different to tracing someone's IP addresses.
As with having 'privacy', it is also a double-edged sword as it is no different to why E2EE messengers like Signal is also a favourite and safe-haven for terrorists, extremists and scammers to hide and encrypt their communications. Does that mean we need to ban E2EE messengers?
> You keep talking about "the folks at Adjoint" etc...
So they are not at Adjoint? Is that what Crunchbase [0] and Companies House [1] says? Why is Stephen Diehl still CTO of Adjoint? [0] Their services of their private blockchain offering has shutdown but the company has not.
> Do you have evidence for whatever more sinister "long utopian conquest" scheme you're suggesting they're engaged in?
Evidence of what? Trying to ban all cryptocurrencies and projects just like those wanting to get rid of all non-free software completely? Have they all 100% fully gone yet? It's been like 37 years for the free-software movement to remove all non-free software and 13 years for cryptocurrencies to be totally stopped.
A very long utopian conquest indeed attempting to stop all of them.
I said "seems" rather than just "is" mostly to be polite. In view of your response I am regretting that.
I do not know what you mean by asking (I assume mostly rhetorically) "is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains'?". Why the quotation marks and italics on "mention" and "blockchains"? Why should they have "mentioned stopping all blockchains"? So far as I can tell, they are not in fact arguing that all blockchains should be stopped.
I didn't mean to (and do not intend to) get into a debate about whether in fact public blockchains are as bad for privacy as the open letter claims, or whether it's a bad thing if they are. My only point was: whatever you make of that issue, it is definitely one that doesn't apply to private blockchains, so it is not surprising that when bringing it up they did so specifically with reference to public blockchains, so the fact that they did that is not evidence of any sort of sinister motivation.
How do you know that Adjoint-the-company has not shut down? (To be more precise, it looks to me as if the company is no longer functional even if it still exists as a legal entity. Note that your link [1] shows that the CEO has resigned (and shows no sign that another CEO has been appointed) and that Diehl is no longer a "person with significant control" (i.e., he no longer holds >= 25% of shares or voting rights) and in fact there are now no such people. This looks to me like a failed company in the process of being taken apart for scrap.
If they are no longer offering a private blockchain product, how does that fit with your insinuations that their executives are trying to shut down public blockchains in order to give the private blockchain company they're associated with an advantage?
My question about the "long utopian conquest" stuff was: what evidence do you have that these people are in fact aiming at any sort of "long utopian conquest"? So, indeed, if you think they want to ban all cryptocurrencies and projects, do you have actual evidence that they want that? Again, this open letter doesn't seem to offer any such evidence.
Seems false? I don't think you are even sure yourself.
> Almost everything the open letter says about blockchains is neutral on public versus private.
And is that why they didn't 'mention' stopping all 'blockchains' and they knowingly hid their ties to Adjoint Inc.? At least the Bitcoin maximalists are a bit honest at disclosing their associations and holdings when discussing such topics despite their delusional view of a cryptocurrency replacing the whole financial system.
> They say that public blockchains specifically are a privacy disaster, which seems fair enough since this genuinely is a difference between public and private blockchains.
Ah yes, A 'privacy disaster' especially when no-one knows who the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin really is (unless you do somehow?) or how one can't easily figure out which address belongs to another random address or even when users can generate and have multiple addresses tied to them which makes it harder to trace. No different to tracing someone's IP addresses.
As with having 'privacy', it is also a double-edged sword as it is no different to why E2EE messengers like Signal is also a favourite and safe-haven for terrorists, extremists and scammers to hide and encrypt their communications. Does that mean we need to ban E2EE messengers?
> You keep talking about "the folks at Adjoint" etc...
So they are not at Adjoint? Is that what Crunchbase [0] and Companies House [1] says? Why is Stephen Diehl still CTO of Adjoint? [0] Their services of their private blockchain offering has shutdown but the company has not.
> Do you have evidence for whatever more sinister "long utopian conquest" scheme you're suggesting they're engaged in?
Evidence of what? Trying to ban all cryptocurrencies and projects just like those wanting to get rid of all non-free software completely? Have they all 100% fully gone yet? It's been like 37 years for the free-software movement to remove all non-free software and 13 years for cryptocurrencies to be totally stopped.
A very long utopian conquest indeed attempting to stop all of them.
[0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/adjoint-inc
[1] https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/c...