Curious how that type of coercion would be manifest. Logistically the regulators would need an automated mechanism in place to evaluate transactions going into each block. Then respond quick enough to the regulated miners before they’re included and coded into the immutable chain. Could they keep up? #TickTockNextBlock

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

They never do anything in advance unless they are the gatekeepers (like SWIFT and FEDWIRE). For mining farms and individuals they'd sanction, fine, jail well after the fact for supporting terrorism.

Governments are at war with their subjects, they are not beholden to them.

If we're lucky, black market operations will proliferate and the cat and mouse game continues

Censorship has a direct cost to miners: they forgo the fees the censored party would have paid. This makes non-censoring miners more profitable.

The end result is that censoring miners go out of business… eventually.

Or move to friendlier areas that will allow them to make the most profit. Those transactions that people try to censor will be worth a lot for miners.

North Korea will have to pay miners in China or wherever handsomely to get their transactions through.

So maybe they would put the onus on the regulated miner to police transactions, knowing that punishment could come later. Tax implications, fines, jail time. And the list of unallowable transactions would be forever changing and near impossible to keep current and “correct”, whatever that even means in this context.

Not really, all they do is force the regulated miners to use a government sanctioned mining pool, and the government pool builds the blocks. They will be forced to comply or be shutdown and have their equipment seized for money laundering and terrorist financing.