That will shake out the higher time preference spammers but not the volume.
They spam when they have fiat to burn making their next gainz.
The shitcoin hype train is running out of steam. People are seeing that smart contracts are overblown database scripts being hyped as the future of software.
Sad, but watcha gonna do? As p.t. barnham said, there's a sucker born every minute.
I'm also thinking about what happens when the fed starts using full blocks as a way to attack Bitcoin
Price is gonna skyrocket if they go that route, but I still somewhat expect them to try.
Controlling US-based miners with regulation is the most obvious attack I’d expect, trying to use them to block “non-compliant” TXs
Yes, and since they are all just registered companies this is very low hanging fruit.
Correct. These are not the type of entities that are going to sell their asics and shutdown, realistically they will comply for their shareholders.
What’s the defence? Make it impossible for them to differentiate TXs somehow?
Ring signatures would work, but requires a hard fork. Probably not worth it.
Censoring transactions isn't all or nothing for the network. Disapproved wallets will still be able to have transactions included in the block, they'll just have to wait until a non-compliant pool finds the block first. Slower and less predictable, maybe slightly higher fees.
Yes exactly. Censorship resistance is a function of fees. If US miners censor transactions, the fees go up until there's enough "illicit" hashpower to put those censored transactions into a block.
Leaving usa. It's literally china ban 2.0
Many of these miners are US publicly listed companies - they’re not going to up and leave the country, they would sooner comply than do that.
I don’t think US regulating miners will be at all comparable to China banning it.
Last I checked, Riot is ~2-3% of global hashrate.
IIRC China didn't exactly outright ban it, they just said you're not allowed to use subsidized electricity for mining, and also wanted to end the china fud (before the ban, everyone was saying how Bitcoin is controlled by china cause they have most of the hashpower).
I know a large number of miners operating in china today, one of them told me they estimate that 15-20% of the current global hashrate is china.
Very likely, exactly the same thing. Not banned, just more taxed and a portion of the installations will be relocated to canada, alaska and mexico.
Nothing about the rules will make an onerous cost to move their setups to places with more friendly rules and some miners will do it out of necessity.
The Sun God worshipping environmental doom cultists don't recognise even Bitcoin mined with poop gas at pig farms. Mainly because meat is murder and methane is murder.
Payjoin.
It'll be the China ban 2.0. that only increased hashpowerp
