Bitcoin is a Social Construct, Not Crypto \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Since Bitcoin had a price, people have tried to recreate it, but with twists like "the owner of this one gets a huge chunk of supply, then supply gets released when mining" or "this one has this cool development team or technology behind it therefore better than Bitcoin". These recreations all focused on the idea of Bitcoin as a technology, when in fact, even the technology used to run Bitcoin is subject to change at the whims of social consensus.

Take Robux for a minute. Robux is a popular digital asset issued by the Robux corporation. It has exchanges (though mostly underground for fear of reprisal from the Roblox corporation). What is the functional difference between Roblox using an SQL database between their servers and Roblox using a private blockchain where only Robux servers can create the proofs of work for transfer? It's still permissioned, Roblox still has full say over whether transfers even happen between accounts, and Robux is still sold by the Roblox corporation.

Crypto is much more akin to Robux in this way. Crypto is not subject to the whims of its userbase, it is only subject to the corporation behind it.

Bitcoin does not work in this way. Bitcoin is a social construct. The Bitcoin core developers have done a pretty good job at making sure nothing that would upset the people who run the software gets through, but what would happen if they did? New rule, block sizes will now be 10gb instead of 4mb. The first problem they'd run into, is that the new software is not compatible with the software everyone else is running. People who run the software would be pretty upset at hard drive space filling up rapidly and fork the project into a new repository.

You now have two chains, but which chain is "Bitcoin"

So that's what I mean when I say Bitcoin is a social construct. Any argument you'd make over which gets to be Bitcoin is you enforcing that social construct. The current construct around "what is Bitcoin" is that the chain that is compatible with the older software gets to be Bitcoin.

"Wait but the original Bitcoin GitHub repo gets to be Bitcoin!" I hear you scream. So, let's talk about the next problem the original repo would encounter from ignoring the people who run Bitcoin. When you use a Bitcoin wallet and you don't run your own node, you use the node that software wallet defaults to. Now maybe that software wallet enforces the idea that Bitcoin is the core repo, but it could just as well decide to enforce the social construct that Bitcoin is whatever is compatible with an older version of the software. In fact, it probably would do this by default via not noticing that a new client was even released. I mean I can't help but notice that the Bitcoin subreddit has a link to download version 23 of core even though version 24 was released.

Miners and price. I can't talk about the role that miners would play into this without also including how the price of each chain would affect the miners. If users prefer to use one chain over the other, its price will go up which makes miners want to mine that chain instead of the other one. This means the chain that goes against the users wishes is vulnerable to the hash power of the chain that supports user decisions. Being part of the dominant monetary network has its perks.

The dominant monetary network is evidence of the strength of the social construct at hand. Right now, the strongest social construct for money, is that government issued paper is money. Bitcoin is here to challenge that social construct with its own.

5 sats \ 1 reply \ @NorthKoreanHostage 12 Dec 2022

Bitcoin is the proof of work crypto with the highest hash rate.

Nice word salad.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @nerd2ninja OP 12 Dec 2022

Hash rate increases with user usage, not purely by miner decisions. A fork that occurs due to a UASF and a URSF at the same time for example would result in 2 Bitcoins. Using an older version of the client does not resolve this conflict. Miners may choose to support one initially, but if the other one has more user support, miners will switch due to profit incentive.

Hence, Bitcoin is a social construct. The answer to "What is Bitcoin" is entirely determined by the people who use Bitcoin, not the repo, not miners.

To blow your mind even more, it is entirely probable that cryptography becomes entirely broken, but some other method allows for the same security. Because the previous version of Bitcoin is inoperable and the new version is functional, the new version is Bitcoin and in this scenario doesn't use cryptography, therefore is not "crypto"

Saying Bitcoin is crypto is essentially that same as saying dollars are paper. It misses much of the picture. Dollars are required by the people living in the US in order to pay taxes. That this means it has to be money and nothing else can compete is can and should be challenged by the onset of Bitcoin.