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Another issue is what happens in practice when you take "bitcoin for enemies" a bit too far :-) https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/12/former-ethereum-developer-virgil-griffith-sentenced-to-5-years-in-prison-for-north-korea-trip

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

I also suspect that as more enemies of the US adopt Bitcoin, it will not just chill and watch it happen. It seems inevitable, but not necessarily good news.

There will be increased pressure for censorship, whether it be through exchanges, miners or developers (pressure existing ones, or introduce new ones and persuade economic nodes to use them through force or propaganda).

Bitcoin has favorable properties to resist such pressures. E.g. a general reluctance to deploy protocol changes, lots of people and small businesses (hopefully) running their own nodes. The (relatively) simple nature of the protocol also helps to make it easier to call out blatant attacks. E.g. "this new line of code downloads the AFAC list".

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Discussion

minestr.app 1y ago

Increased pressure to censor will also incentivise other countries to increase mining capacity

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Sure, but more mining capacity doesn't help if the protocol itself is captured. Or if the majority of miners is forced (and money printer subsidized) to reorg non-compliant blocks.

minestr.app 1y ago

What do you mean by captured? There is no way to force every node runner to run a specific version. Transaction fees will incentivise miners to operate in other jurisdictions and mine "non-compliant" blocks, no?

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

That incentive can be compensated with fiat payments. For every "bad" transaction you don't mine, government pays you 3x the fees in fiat. At the current fee levels they could afford doing that for centuries.

You don't need every node operator to cooperate to force a bad change through. But even if you did, you mislead people through propaganda, malicious or coerced developers, etc.

SegWit2x failed at both of these approaches, but they were rather incompetent.

minestr.app 1y ago

Are you assuming that all global governments will act in unison?

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

No. Just have the majority of hash power under the control of US corporations and friendly / obedient countries. Force those to reorg others that don't comply. After a few demonstrations of a willingness to do this, most other miners won't take the risk of getting a stale block. All of that for the price of a Tomahawk.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Bribes to foreign miners are even cheaper: show us proof you mined a block that didn't include (top of mempool) sanctioned addresses and we'll compensate you 3x for lost revenue.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

(maybe I shouldn't give such detailed instructions to future CIA readers :-)

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Proper mining pool decentralization should mitigate this to some extend, so it's important to work on.

minestr.app 1y ago

I think maintaining the integrity of the social layer is equally important. Especially in states with a lot of hash power. The scenario you are suggesting implies that the people in government is not interested in holding Bitcoin on a personal level. I think ita becoming the opposite in the US?

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

> maintaining the integrity of the social layer is equally important

I think that's exactly the point nostr:npub1mznweuxrjm423au6gjtlaxmhmjthvv69ru72t335ugyxtygkv3as8q6mak is making. Don't just assume Bitcoin inevitably wins without effort.

minestr.app 1y ago

Indeed

minestr.app 1y ago

Ok, so let's brainstorm ways to do this effectively. How to ensure we keep winning.

1. Supporting people like Lola who take action.

2. Talk about Bitcoin to family and friends.

3. Debunk FUD.

4. Elect bitcoiners

...

With 4, it's probably more efficient to orange pill existing politicians than to get bitcoiners elected?

minestr.app 1y ago

Assuming the US holds a lot of Bitcoin by the time this happens and that ETFs allow people to cash out, what is the incentive for them to harm the network and crash the Bitcoin price?

Jeroen Ubbink 1y ago

They will try to gain control in one way or another.

Just imagine that in some way you are able to control most aspects. The biggest power anyone ever had?

Fortunately you can only control 1 thing:

- Your keys

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

Which are useless if your address is blacklisted at the protocol level. Or even confiscated like what CSW tried to do (incompetently).

Jeroen Ubbink 1y ago

But the free market aspect of bitcoin should be able to outcompete that. They can try to organize themselves on an international level but if your addresses get blacklisted you can just increase your fees.

It's not ideal for sure but at some point some miner thinks this will be to good to ignore and enforcing blacklisted addresses seems a very futile endeavor since you can easily hide the traffic of your mining operations through tor or a vpn.

Sjors Provoost 1y ago

As the saying goes: markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay liquid. Most people will probably just use other means to move value if Bitcoin becomes unusable for a few decades.

> hide the traffic of your mining operations through tor or a vpn.

I'm not talking about censoring pool internet traffic. Rather to reactively reorg "bad" blocks. The mere thread of that should cause most rational actors to self-censor. Even if you offer 10x the block subsidy in fees for a single transaction the US government can easily afford reorging them all and wasting your money. But as I said above, at those prices that are cheaper ways to move value.

Jeroen Ubbink 1y ago

Ok you are much more knowledgeable on this subject than i am.

I just wonder if the US will be able to do these reorgs and for how long. If the money is on the side where the US has no jurisdiction will we not see an increase in mining on parts of the world that do not agree with this? And how will they then organise reorgs if they do not have the capacity from mining operations within the US? Do you think the government will throw tax dollars at it to have their own mining infrastructure?

Sorry if i'm overseeing something simple. I know very little on this subject.