Not FUD, just a hypothetical.
What would happen if the US government arrested all the core devs, took their keys, etc? Don’t appeal to due process or rights, they don’t exist. They can arbitrarily detain anyone on Earth for any length of time.
Discussion
I think the space is still quite vulnerable, people are lying to themselves if they think it isn't. Just a few arrests and some legislative threats and people are already starting to freak out.
Bitcoin could turn into the first cbdc.
What would happen?
Millions would cheer the death of bitcoin - "yay. America numah one"
Bitcoiners would keep developing and the cycle would repeat until someone gave up or shooting started.
End of the day, just a roadbump to progress which is inevitable. Zoomers and other generations that grow up with apple pay and venmo will see the use case for bitcoin much more clearly than they're preceding generations.
These are genuine questions, idk: How would they keep developing if the whole core process was seized? Is that language even applicable? How censorship/seizure resistant is GitHub itself?
Easier to just fund Dev so it takes on more ambitious things. Funding then becomes lever. they capture the center ground.
I think this underway now
Going forward, more devs should be more anonymous and have better opsec, but this is still a valid concern for now. Maybe it's also effective to exploit rivalry between certain nation-states. But that all could just turn the devs into assets to be captured or killed in the shadows rather than tried in corrupted systems of so-called law and justice.
Ideally, governments should fear backlash of many individuals when treading on the rights of a few, but we seem far from that balance of power presently.
Well said
Just as the difficulty adjustment imo. Node runners gonna node. On and offline. Devs develop in secrecy. Progress slows down till gov improves.
If opsec is good their keys are not confiscatable. If they gave them up then that’s on them.
There would be massive legal battles and huge blow back from Bitcoiner’s and cypher punk types.
Bitcoin would still work. New radicalized anon devs would likely step up globally. Spot price would take a hit but tick tock and global adoption would continue.
I know personally my resolve wouldn’t waver. I’d move out of the US and renounce citizenship for sure though. I bet > 100,000 other Bitcoiner’s would too.
Bitcoin would dump massively and there would be legitimate concern over the future of the network because new people would be afraid to step up and maintain it. I imagine it would just be nyms that try and updates would be difficult to push.
Thnx for posting this.
In the event of horrible images/fragments/links getting uploaded to Blockchain ..........
I think the most immediate threat to Core Devs would be very angry corporate entities, hedge funds who lose money or a Bitcoiner who is just old with nothing left to lose.
The Trumps are all balls deep into Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining. There are quasi Mafia/quasi Legit private companies that I'm sure are deep into Bitcoin, Russian & Iranian & Chinese elites rely on it .... if they suffer permanent deep losses ... welp ... there'd be serious repercussions.
Core Devs are essentially the Trustees of Bitcoin ..... now a $2.2T asset. 40 years in Ross Ulbrecht's old cell ... that'd be their best hope.
There's funny stories of very serious Russians showing up at Sam Bankman Freid's villa before Sam went away. The Russians got their coin back.