An X submit by Anita Posch warning concerning the dangers of governments and establishments shopping for up massive quantities of bitcoin went viral this week— even when simply due to the trollish neighborhood be aware that appeared beneath it. I believe the principle concern right here is that these large holders might affect the Bitcoin consensus guidelines to impose censorship.
In terms of censorship particularly, mining centralization is definitely a extra direct menace. 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 properly, nevertheless, it could certainly be thought-about a gentle 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 beneficial; because of this some bitcoiners are involved about governments and different massive establishments accumulating a major share of the bitcoin provide.
It’s an inexpensive concern, and one thing to concentrate on. On the identical time (and much like my argument on this Take), it’s not apparent to me that governments or massive establishments can be prepared to threat all of it by betting on a censorship fork of Bitcoin. However much more importantly, there isn’t a lot we are able to do to cease governments or different establishments from shopping for bitcoin in any case— nor ought to there be, as that will (satirically) itself characterize a type of censorship.
One of the best countermeasure, on this regard, was really already proposed by Nikolaus: Don’t promote MicroStrategy your bitcoin.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are totally the writer’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.