An X put up by Anita Posch warning concerning the dangers of governments and establishments shopping for up giant quantities of bitcoin went viral this week— even when simply due to the trollish neighborhood observe that appeared beneath it. I feel the principle concern right here is that these huge holders may affect the Bitcoin consensus guidelines to impose censorship.
Relating to censorship particularly, mining centralization is definitely a extra direct risk. But when it’s simply miners censoring, it will solely final for so long as a majority of miners is prepared to maintain doing it— on the expense of forfeiting transaction charges. If and when the censorship stops, transactions would begin confirming once more as if nothing occurred.
If financial nodes had been to implement censorship as new protocol guidelines as effectively, nevertheless, it might certainly be thought-about a comfortable fork. On this situation, miners can’t revert from the censorship with out splitting the blockchain between “upgraded” (censoring) and non-upgraded nodes; that will represent a tough fork. Patrons and sellers of the 2 variations of bitcoin would then decide which blockchain is extra precious; that is why some bitcoiners are involved about governments and different giant establishments accumulating a major share of the bitcoin provide.
It’s an inexpensive concern, and one thing to pay attention to. On the similar time (and just like my argument in this Take), it’s not apparent to me that governments or giant establishments can be prepared to danger all of it by betting on a censorship fork of Bitcoin. However much more importantly, there isn’t a lot we will do to cease governments or different establishments from shopping for bitcoin anyhow— nor ought to there be, as that will (mockingly) itself symbolize a type of censorship.
The most effective countermeasure, on this regard, was truly already proposed by Nikolaus: Don’t promote MicroStrategy your bitcoin.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are totally the creator’s and don’t essentially mirror these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
