nerd2ninja; 🥪 on Nostr: Vigilance is still necessary to maintain Bitcoin's status quo. Even though it's ...
Vigilance is still necessary to maintain Bitcoin's status quo. Even though it's properties allow the vigilant to maintain a strong position with ease, if that ease results in relaxation, the ever persistent games of subversion (of the majority SHA256 hashrate chain).
At present I would judge the current Bitcoin community at large to be decently vigilant with a major failing in being way to lax about ETFs and custodial Bitcoin that I believe stems from ignorance of the systemic risks they pose.
This is typically an ebb and flow of newbies believing some nonsense that gets corrected by a slap in the face by a rugpull (a rugpull is a less concerning risk among the risks that custodial Bitcoin presents btw), but there is a growing corperate interest in propagandizing and maintaining this belief in growing a lax custodial Bitcoin userbase.
The vigilance required here is with maintaining culture basically. It should be the case that people will all self custody eventually because Bitcoin is literally the easiest thing in existence to self custody in bulk, but only so long as it stays easy to self custody (another thing that requires vigilance. Wallet design that empowers users and even sensible soft fork discussion that achieves that end)
At present I would judge the current Bitcoin community at large to be decently vigilant with a major failing in being way to lax about ETFs and custodial Bitcoin that I believe stems from ignorance of the systemic risks they pose.
This is typically an ebb and flow of newbies believing some nonsense that gets corrected by a slap in the face by a rugpull (a rugpull is a less concerning risk among the risks that custodial Bitcoin presents btw), but there is a growing corperate interest in propagandizing and maintaining this belief in growing a lax custodial Bitcoin userbase.
The vigilance required here is with maintaining culture basically. It should be the case that people will all self custody eventually because Bitcoin is literally the easiest thing in existence to self custody in bulk, but only so long as it stays easy to self custody (another thing that requires vigilance. Wallet design that empowers users and even sensible soft fork discussion that achieves that end)
quoting nevent1q…9cshThis is a community note proposed to Anita's post, and I think we need to talk about it.
The past years have brought a swarm of new people into Bitcoin, and these posts and comments show how hard we failed them.
First off, to address the majority of commenters in Anita's post that also like to spam my posts with the same nonsense (and then tell me that I'm stupid because I have a vagina (?)), in the Bitcoin network, you do not get to vote for anything. Your node allows you to control the rules that your node runs by. That's it. That's all it does.
There is no voting in Bitcoin.
Second, miners run profit oriented businesses. This means that miners follow the rules adapted by the nodes with the majority of economic activity.
In the event of a hard fork, it does not matter how many nodes you run – if the majority of nodes generating profit for miners apply new rules, those are the rules the miners will follow.
Bitcoin positions do matter to the extent that they generate economic activity.
I understand that the voting analogy can be helpful, so here's one that you can make: in Bitcoin, you vote with your feet.
If a large exchange was to signal for, say, a Bitcoin compliance fork, you can threaten to pull your money out – to the extent that the exchange still allows you to.
Lastly, what Anita is referring to in her post is Bitcoin's social layer.
Bitcoin is run by humans, and humans can be influenced.
Humans can be influenced by setting positive incentives, such as gov subsidies or developer grants, or by applying violence, such as threatening to throw the people running and building Bitcoin in jail.
This is a reality of human nature and should not be controversial - How to prevent such actors from influencing open source development is often discussed in the open source community.
If this topic interests you, look up Operation Orchestra at FOSDEM.
Let's remember that the memes are not always your friends.
Influencers spent the past few years so focused on "hyperbitcoinization" that half-truths about how Bitcoin works are now taken at face value.
Because so many "Bitcoiners" now genuinely believe things like "Bitcoin can't be censored," "one node equals one vote", "Bitcoin is for enemies," or "everything is good for Bitcoin," we have created a culture that believes paying attention to the creation of an adversarial environment is unnecessary.
These memes are mental shortcuts. They are true to some extent, but do not reflect reality.
In the case of my posts, next to the obviously snarky comments here and there, the majority of commenters are not posting these things with bad intentions - they genuinely think that this is how Bitcoin works.
If you are an educator, influencer, or in any other way have the capacity to better explain these things to people, _please_ take the time to do so.
The memes are fine to get people interested, but we all need to do a better job at combating these misconceptions. The future of BTC could depend on it.