Thought of the day.

The Bitcoin Blocksize war of 2015 - 2017 is often referred to by people in the know as the fork wars and really was about the ability to allow hard forking within the Bitcoin protocol.

If this would have been allowed, then the current FUD issued by Blackrock suggesting the possibility of increasing the 21M coin limit would be real.

However, the actual war was about centralisation, if you allowed bigger blocks, that would enforce centralisation of the blockchain to large companies running it in public data centres. This would create centralisation, which is an attack vector that can be used by governments or large corporations.

Also, the “Big blockers” are right, Bitcoin base layer cannot be used as a scalable "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", as described in the white paper.

But if it were to be scaled to provide this, it would become the new Visa / Mastercard or Central bank, which can be taken down by any significant government or be taken over in a hostile move by any large corporation or consortium.

I would suggest that the Blocksize wars were actually the Decentralisation wars.

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Discussion

sold my BCH at 4K per coin back when the split happened. BCH is now like $500. I’m still giggling about it

I had a slightly smaller and more recent win with BCH. I bought some (with permission from NOSTR) for my recent trip to St. Kitts, Roger Ver’s adopted home, as the adoption there is significant.

On return, I sold it for 20% more than I purchased it a couple of months later even after spending a small amount while I was there and a small amount on Mullvad VPN and exchange fees 😂

I’d love to have that Kitts passport

I’ve decided on Barbados, I discuss it here

I’m currently going through the residency process

https://habla.news/u/mhardcastle@nostrplebs.com/1733073827410

Nice. Hardly any hurricanes get down there, so it’s like the safe zone of the Caribbean

also I agree. Roger was dishonestly trying to make it about everything and anything else, but the decentralization was the murder target

Roger is right to say the base layer is not scalable to make it a payment system, he is also right that Lightning is a bit of a shit show.

The part he fails to acknowledge or even discuss is the cost of centralisation.

This, as you say, is the killer and makes BCH and BSV follies.

Agree with all points, but of course bitcoin’s decentralized network out-values those other benefits. He doesn’t talk about his desired centralization because he knows how unpopular it is. That’s his dirty little secret. Lighting kinda sucks, but seems to work well enough for me to go out drinking on!

Could also consider:

✅ Field Wars

✅ Governance Wars

give it a listen:

https://open.spotify.com/episode/2g1V34g0MgTrp9hKz2c8Wk?