Honestly, I have more questions about ASICs, Bitmain, and Ycash. Those are systemic governance issues, not one person’s questionable choice of relationships.
You overestimate how much freedom people in Monero community have, and underestimate how centrally directed the trolls are. I have to deal with the business end of that.
Check his forum history to see what I’m referring to.
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Thanks for the warning, but I don’t think it’s necessary. I’ve known the Monero community for quite some time. This negative culture never existed before modern crypto Twitter. It appeared with the advent of the ability to set up botnet farms. I assume that someone has invested heavily in this. Then real people joined the bots, because some people literally behave like banderlogs in a community where everyone can behave inappropriately, and this is not only not prohibited but also encouraged in every way by the creator of this bot farm. You know who I mean. The offended guy with a penchant for stealing other people’s money, who was caught informing on others. When you talk to any of these real Monero-people one-on-one, they are all very friendly. But the bot farm encourages hyena-like behavior.
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I know that, but you’re wrong about the “bot farm.” A few of my ex-friends are JWs - they were friends until I helped an ex-member who was thrown out by their adoptive parents on their 18th birthday. Then they all suddenly became “ex-friends” overnight.
Hey, if you think you know him, ask him to let you into Charuto’s channel on Matrix (the one with around 3,000 members). You’ll see how the sausage is made there. Those are real people… unfortunately… not bots.
I do not get it…
What does it matter if Epstein used Bitcoin, Zcash, Xbox or Playstation? That means that brands are accomplices to his crimes? And what if he invested, saved, traded, or held Zcash?
I don’t see the point…
THis is just FUD, cheaper FUD!
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What do you expect him to say other than the likes of, ‘The meeting was as innocent and academic as you can infer from the e-mails. Oh and definitely nothing nefarious was plotted, lol.’
It seems you have your mind made up with nondescript, sinister insinuations such that it doesn’t matter what he’d say, as you wouldn’t be convinced. What you want to hear is something ridiculous and not close to any likely truth.
Like I said, Epstein met with many of the academics at MIT. He was a benefactor specifically of the research lab Madars worked for. You can get a sense of how many academics Epstein interacted with from the scientific papers in his inbox alone.
I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t think to perform a criminal background check if I’m introduced to a wealthy donor to my university department who seems excited to discuss my work. The insinuators about this act as if they knew anything about Epstein prior to his second arrest.
The latter quote may not be a good look, but someone can have a reputation for being a colorful if not notorious person, and not have that be a disqualifier given professional ties. That’s entirely different from having knowledge of any details of his then crimes. To those who did get some drift of his past conviction, Epstein often concealed it as having been a minor legal issue from a decade earlier surrounding simple prostitution (a result of the charges the plea deal left him with). And if you know anything about Madars, you know he’d surely have admiration for Jesus and His willingness to break bread with characters of all reputes to share His gospel. (Again, I dislike reading e-mails I’m unentitled to, but perhaps revisit the note about the card for Eucharistic adoration.)
Anyway, people are making a mountain out of an obvious molehill with this, when there are actual fish to fry with Epstein. They can see this for what it is (at worst, an academic and innocently social meeting but lacking of warranted skepticism); or they can grind away at their axe against Zcash even though this has nothing to do with it, given Madars’ involvement with the R&D work of Zerocash being mostly five years prior to these e-mails.
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There is a grand conspiracy being pushed in XMR chats, that this is all part of a grand plot by **** (I’m sure you can fill in the blank) to take over the world. That’s why the focus is on Zcash, rather than on Madars’s questionable choice of friends. And why it is being disproportionately blown out of proprotion.
Antisemitism legitimizes Zionism under a guise of opposing it. One should not become racist in opposing racist ideologies. But Epstein’s and Robert Maxwell’s links to Mossad are somewhat well-established, and turning a blind eye isn’t the way to go either. Ever heard of Whitney Webb, writer of One Nation Under Blackmail?
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Beyond that, Epstein is known to have systematically switched to phone calls or meetups whenever things got too spicy for email. Early correspondence ending in a Skype call, followed by several meetups - while emails switch to only general crypto talk - is not reassuring at all. It reeks, and leaves all the room for the worst scenario possible, at least in eyes of the layman. If people can come with technical arguments why we needn’t worry, that would be a lot more helpful than just “you’re overreacting”.
Anything is better than crickets. Straightforward clarity would be ideal. It would also be nice to know to what extent @madars had access to relevant code during this period. If he had, for someone who understands the technology to double check the commits, etc. This information is not something to make light of. The only possible way to spin this is “big investor saw potential”.
And this thread not being closed or deleted gives me hope.
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I don’t work with the codebase, but tech documentation says it was dropped with Sapling (never mind Orchard). As you probably are aware there is a double-safety feature in Zcash where total deposits into a privacy pool must be larger or equal to total withdrawals. Even if there was a backdoor in Sprout, it would be contained to ZEC there, which is barely 25,000 ZEC as of current block (most likely loose change in lost wallets).
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Two questions here. One matters, one doesn’t.
Does this affect Zcash’s security? @fireice_uk answered that. Sprout is contained to ~25k ZEC. Sapling and Orchard are clean. The protocol is sound.
The personal stuff is for @madars to address. Not our job to defend him.
Calling this “Monero FUD” doesn’t help. Neither does demanding confessions. Both miss the point.
What I care about: is the crypto secure? Yes. Everything else is unnecessary drama.
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I’m not asking for confessions. And I don’t see how anyone - who actually read what I wrote - could read it that way. My point is exactly that it is not farfetched to think this was more than just “personal stuff”. However, if it is technically impossible for the network to be compromised in this manner, this situation could actually be turned into something positive. If - whenever someone brings it up - people are able to explain how and why Zcash is even “Epstein-proof”.
Would someone here be capable of reducing such a response to a single jargon-free paragraph for use by “the promo-team in the trenches”?
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very kind of you to just call this thread “a new accusation” rather than calling it “Zcash founder associations with Jeffrey Epstein”
until we have some feedback from @madars all of this stuff is punching in the dark and confirmation biases getting revealed.
everyone knew that Zcash founding has a lot of deep ties with Israel and Jewish academia, but i would say nobody anticipated ties to the Epstein evil.
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@madars is great.
I have nothing but appreciation and support for the work he’s done.
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Agreed, I strongly support @madars and am grateful to all of the support he’s given Zcash over the years.
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I implore you to not conflate Judaism with Zionism, and - in the same vein - plenty great things come out of Israel. Cooperation with people of Jewish faith or heritage should not be a red flag. There are many anti-Zionist Jews in the world, and many non-Jewish Zionists. In fact, the “father of Zionism” was himself secular and - according to his own diary - in favour of increasing the suffering of Jews. The core “go away” tenet of the movement is itself antisemitic.
Judgement of any supremacist movement should not extend to those who are not on board, nor translate to suspicion of the entire category of people it tries to appeal to.
ties with Israel and Jewish academia is exactly what I meant, there is no implication that “Israel” or “Jewish” equates to the Zionist atrocities the world is witnessing right now. Zionism is the ideology that is currently damaging Israel the nation, and damaging Jewish people all around the world.
I’m glad you agree. Still it’s hard for me to read this as not suggesting a summation of red flags:
For those interested in this affair, there’s a website that has put all the data dumps into a searchable gmail like inbox:
A bit creepy to see how your digital life can be exposed to the whole world even after your death…