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 large holders may affect the Bitcoin consensus guidelines to impose censorship.
In relation to censorship particularly, mining centralization is definitely a extra direct risk. But when it’s simply miners censoring, it might 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 have been to implement censorship as new protocol guidelines as nicely, nonetheless, it could actually certainly be thought of 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 might represent a tough fork. Patrons and sellers of the 2 variations of bitcoin would then decide which blockchain is extra helpful; for this reason 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 concentrate on. 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 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 anyhow— nor ought to there be, as that might (paradoxically) itself signify a type of censorship.
The most effective countermeasure, on this regard, was truly already proposed by Nikolaus: Don’t sell MicroStrategy your bitcoin.
This text is a Take. Opinions expressed are solely the writer’s and don’t essentially replicate these of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Journal.