An X post by Anita Posch warning in regards to the dangers of governments and establishments shopping for up giant quantities of bitcoin went viral this week— even when simply due to the trollish community note that appeared beneath it. I believe the primary concern right here is that these massive holders might affect the Bitcoin consensus guidelines to impose censorship.
In relation to censorship particularly, mining centralization is definitely a extra direct menace. But when it’s simply miners censoring, it could 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 nicely, nonetheless, it might certainly be thought-about a delicate fork. On this state of affairs, miners can’t revert from the censorship with out splitting the blockchain between “upgraded” (censoring) and non-upgraded nodes; that may represent a tough fork. Consumers 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 big share of the bitcoin provide.
It’s an inexpensive concern, and one thing to pay attention to. On the identical time (and much like my argument in this Take), it’s not apparent to me that governments or giant establishments could 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 may (satirically) itself characterize a type of censorship.
One of the best countermeasure, on this regard, was really already proposed by Nikolaus: Don’t sell MicroStrategy your bitcoin.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are completely the creator’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.
