Avatar
Vlad, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast 1y ago

How can Bitcoin covenants get used in an evil way which harms Bitcoin?

According to Blockstream head of research Andrew Poelstra, some government agencies can put themselves in the middle to condition the release of funds. Basically, users wouldn’t get their money without government approval.

This would increase the whole gap between “whitelisted” bitcoin and “black market” coins.

However, Andrew Poelstra also believes that the concerns are overstated and the benefits of covenants on Bitcoin outweigh any drawbacks.

To learn more, listen to S15 E17 of the Bitcoin Takeover podcast!

#bitcointakeover #bitcoinpodcast #bitcointakeoverpodcast #btctkvr #covenant #bitcoincovenant #andrewpoelstra #blockstream #podcast

https://youtube.com/shorts/KXaLWVDiN98?si=Ewsf36ASTd2fWGQO

Reply to this note

Please Login to reply.

Discussion

Avatar
Big Barry Bitcoin 1y ago

The government in the middle attack has already been disproven. You are not "given" BTC, you accept it. And a wallet, even one that supported covenant locked BTC, would not accept BTC locked in a recursively limited way.

Also theoretically if it would, then a government could simply use multisig to keep bitcoin permissioned. They would never give you BTC directly, they always move funds to a multisig where they are one of the parties in a 2 of 2. This way you must ask permission to move funds and they only grant it if you move funds to a 2 of 2 with themselves or another "trusted" authority.