If they can fill a block with compliant transactions then they lose no revenue. You just lose out on getting your non-compliant transaction confirmed by them.
Discussion
I don’t believe much if any of the hash would stay in any pool if the were openly censoring txs for any government. No chance.
There’s definitely a chance, but it’s a big risk to their business.
I don’t see it as a large threat (especially since it would require coordination and cooperation between the United States and China) but ultimately the only thing which mitigates this completely right now is the fee based model and the credible threat to fork which would render all mining equipment worthless.
Future improvements like having independent block template generation could make censorship risk even lower, but ultimately right now the most likely risk is that certain transactions would have to wait an extra cycle or two to make it in a block.
I agree that we cannot become complacent.
Tail risk with work arounds and game theory that makes it an improbable scenario. But imo it’s not a existential threat.
I’m not arguing to be complacent, but either way, there is nothing I can do personally. I think the open Network will find ways to get stronger and solve for more tail risks over time as it’s shown to do effectively over time. I know the best minds in the world are actually working on mitigating these low-probability problems but this is v low probability in my opinion.