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They don't have to coordinate.

Nations can have their own self-serving regulations and laws that choke out Bitcoin mining making it a great burden to do (economically and legally). They could also force all miners in their jurisdiction to censor certain transactions. As fee pressure rises on censored transactions you *might* be able to get other miners in a different country to mine it, but it's going to cost you a lot of money and confirmation time so it won't be an everyday thing that most people do.

If Bitcoin was private and anonymous you couldn't pick out and censor individual transactions because they all would look the same. Anyone attacking the network would be forced to indefinitely censor the *entire* network to stop a few transactions, which is much costlier and harder to do all things equal.

CPU mining is relatively easier to attack, but easier to spin up more CPUs to push back against an attack once it is in progress

ASIC mining is relatively harder to attack, but harder to spin up more ASICs to push back against an attack once it is in progress

OT 1y ago

They could... But that ship has sailed IMO. Like with the silk road case, some FBI agents apparently took some BTC for themselves. Politicians, businesses and countries are themselves holders of bitcoin and the incentive is to play along. Democratic politicians like to get the popular vote and bitcoin has now become a mainstream popular thing now (whether we like that or not).

Bitcoin is too big. A trillion dollar market cap says something. Of course they won't just let their power go so easily which is why I think their best strategy of attack is just to tax harder.

As for monero, I think its just too small and unfortunately has a bad branding problem too. Not that I personally care about that. It has better privacy that bitcoin, but nothing else (network effects, fair distribution, decentralization, story etc).

Also privacy will improve on bitcoin as it goes on. There are countless projects working to improve different aapects of bitcoin that no one can keep up with it all.

You should look for some of these projects. I bet there are some trying to use monero properties on a pool of bitcoin. If there isn't, then you should start one.

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Saberhagen The Nameless 1y ago

My point is that nations dont even have to coordinate for each one to have their own self-serving unique set of laws that are bad for Bitcoin miners.

I think you're over estimating how big our bubble is. The masses really don't care about Bitcoin. And if they own any, they see it more like stocks they keep on an exchange so they have zero impact on TradFi.

Politicians can just pretend to be pro-bitcoin and do the opposite in office like they always do.

Even if politicians, businesses, and countries own Bitcoin, they can makes rules "for thee and not for me" just like they do now with everything. They can outlaw transactions on the white market without approved custodians and/or make it a nightmare to be compliant and legal.

They're not going to start playing fair with laws just because they own Bitcoin. Any transactions under white markets means you are following rules and asking permission.

This is why all that is really relevant long term is black market adoption (permissionless markets).

I think the strongest argument you have is that now theyre forced to make their taxation more overt for anyone self custodying Bitcoin. They can't hide it behind inflation where people don't "see and feel" it. I agree with you on that.

I do kind of keep up with these privacy projects. But they are not fully private (LN, Liquid), missing the sovereignty of onchain txs (ecash, Liquid), no one uses them, or are just pure vaporware.

I think the things with the most promise are coming from people like Paul Sztorc(DriveChains), PolyD(Enigma), and Moonsettler(DarkPools) using. Maybe the ZK stuff too.