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Recently at an Atlanta BitDevs meetup we spoke about Blackrock's ETF filing and the speaker

@HODLBarbarian

mentioned that in case of a fork, Blackrock gets to decide which Bitcoin chain is the valid chain. I just looked up the filing document with SEC and here's what I found:

With respect to any fork, airdrop or similar event, the Sponsor shall, in its sole discretion, determine what action the Trust shall take. In the event of a fork, the Sponsor will, as permitted by the terms of the Trust Agreement, determine which network it believes is generally accepted as the Bitcoin network and should therefore be considered the appropriate network, and the associated asset as bitcoin, for the Trust’s purposes.

This concerns me a lot, traditionally the Bitcoin network has been very resistant to such attacks but when big players enter the game, things could change. What if Blackrock causes a fork and says our chain is the valid one? Of course nodes and miners have to switch but the fund is so massive and there will be so much price pressure and anything could happen.

In my opinion this is like an attack on Bitcoin, curious on what others think.

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Discussion

bitcoin.rocks 2y ago

In 2017 the majority of miners and companies (like Coinbase) supported a different fork than the users, and the users still won.

The same will be true of any Blackrock decision.

nitesh 2y ago

Yes, I am aware of that, but the scale of the attack could be very different now.

やトナ 2y ago

These are generic protective clauses tailored to bitcoin in case a block size war happens again and they need to be protected from psychos claiming their fork is the real chain.

Blackrock will not make their own fork, that opens them to a world of potential liability with little downside. Everyone is thinking WAY too hard about those clauses. Any lawyer drafting those documents, that did their homework and learned about the block size war, would include those clauses. Otherwise you’d have people like Craig wright suing and telling them that their ETF is making false representations because it’s “not the real bitcoin”.

Clockwerk 2y ago

One could say similar things about Saylor. I don't know what kind of timeline this etf is looking at, but it seems unlikely to me that they will begin purchasing much prior to halving- so the existing culture has a headstart.

Tech wise it's less clear to me, but to maintain cultural power I think emphasizing holding culture is key to maintain existing network . Lobbying( for example, mining regs got defeated) and pushing for adoption in other places like El Salvador, etc. Also very important.

Clockwerk 2y ago

By "hodling" culture, I mean the culture of not selling - this is to prevent existing stake holders from cashing out directly.

Technicly, long term this will mean lending protocols that allow borrowing against btc so people don't get tempted to switch into real estate later.